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OK I think the worst part of this game just might be completely owning a final boss, and then having to turn around and have a bunch of beginner wimps for the next quest.
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Dec 22, 2013 03:21
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Funktor posted:OK I think the worst part of this game just might be completely owning a final boss, and then having to turn around and have a bunch of beginner wimps for the next quest. A justified fear, but SF at least slightly addresses it. Once you beat a file, you can save to the system data that you can make when starting any character, and load up that same system data when starting a new quest. Doing so will start your characters out with more stats and skills, plus you'll start out against higher rank enemies. Nothing gamebreaking, but nowhere near as bad as starting a fresh file.
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Dec 22, 2013 03:38
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dude789 posted:A couple of the final bosses are much less dangerous than they seem in game. Some of them like Diva aren't really malicious at all, and a bunch of others get taken out with WACKY hijinks. What was Diva's deal, anyway? Every other final boss at least makes some modicum of sense, but Emelia's comes right out of nowhere and doesn't get mentioned afterwards either. Does Essence have anything to elaborate on that?
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Dec 22, 2013 03:53
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a cartoon duck posted:What was Diva's deal, anyway? Every other final boss at least makes some modicum of sense, but Emelia's comes right out of nowhere and doesn't get mentioned afterwards either. Does Essence have anything to elaborate on that?
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Dec 22, 2013 03:54
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a cartoon duck posted:What was Diva's deal, anyway? Every other final boss at least makes some modicum of sense, but Emelia's comes right out of nowhere and doesn't get mentioned afterwards either. Does Essence have anything to elaborate on that? IIRC, canonically it was just there. It has no connection to anything. I think that's stupid, so I just like to think it was some kind of guardian to Cube.
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Dec 22, 2013 04:36
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I sort of thought it was the guardian diety of Yorkland, like the amulet she just got from Mondo. Incredibly angry at the lack of self preservation sense and deciding to kill the group before they do something even stupider... i.e split up and look for Joker while Emelia jumps in the shower or something or runs from Joker while breaking a heel. Also, villains and monsters are genetically drawn to construction sites and churces. Diva could just have been going there to lay her eggs or something. FeyerbrandX fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Dec 22, 2013 |
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Dec 22, 2013 04:55
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Welcome back. Last time we finished up Emelia's quest and as I mentioned before we will be doing Blue's quest so that we can continue the magic quests. Today we'll be doing some general start of quest errands like starting the magic quests and collecting party members.  Look at this smug motherfucker. He's definitely got a reason to be though at least at the end of his quest. Theme of Blue    The beginning of Blue's quest is a bit over dramatic. There's all this ominous music and pans up and down from this artwork of angels. Really it's not much more than a typical graduation.  After careful examination we unanimously decided to award the title of Master Magician to Blue. Blue please step forward.  I made the mistake of going to the general graduation ceremony at my college. 3 interminable hours of me sitting there while I could have been drinking and playing video games.   The graduation ceremony here is brief at least. It's kind of funny that Blue is the only one they bother to mention. "Congrats Blue on being the best magician ever. What? You other shits are still here? Well hurry up and get out, we need this space for an awards banquet for Blue. You can pick up your diplomas at the front desk."  It pans back up to the painting while the schoolmaster speaks giving the distinct impression that the school master is in fact the painting.  But living in your brother's shadow, you will never be a true magician. Your destiny leads you. This very day in another place your brother, Rouge also attends his graduation. Our kingdom does not need two incomplete magicians. We need a superior one. And that, we believe is you. Now go and discover magic's most profound secret, acquire its power and... Oh dear...   After that rather abrupt end, the game dumps us into this screen. This is the region map and it is very convenient. Basically you can use it to warp to a region directly without having to use a port. Our only two choices are Devin and Luminous right now but more areas are added as we visit them.  This is false by the way. You can take your sweet time getting as many of the gifts as you chose for your party. I guess this is trying to tell us that Rouge will get whichever of Light/Shadow and Rune/Arcane that Blue didn't choose.  This time we pop into the Arcane Palace which is a little more ornate than the simple Rune tent.  Please, come closer. Arcane Magic summons the mysterious power of the tarot. To summon the higher tarot, you must acquire their gift. Since the Arcane and Rune cannot coexist, possessors of Rune Magic must first give it up before they can learn this magic. (Ask about the gift) To acquire the gift for Arcane Magic, collect all 4 cards in the various regions. The Shield Card is in IRPO. The Gold Card is in Baccarat. The Grail Card is in Yorkland, and the Saber Card is in Wakatu. Collect the cards? (Yes) When these 4 plain cards become Arcane tarot cards, you will acquire the gift for this magic.  After we pop over to the Rune hut to get the 4 runes we zip on over to scrap to pick up more party members.  But you're kinda cute. I can use a little bit of Light Magic.  That's fantastic (She seems very useful) I must acquire the gift and master various magic. Can you help me? All right. I'll go with you.  My names is Blue. I am studying magic. I am T260, serial number 7893874. I am collecting data concerning my own past and the lost mission. (this is absolutely hopeless) I am also gathering "data" about magic. Don't you think we can help each other? Affirmative. Take me along.  After we pick up Mei-Ling, T260G and Lute we Region Map out of there thus avoiding that scam artist and her cab fair.  We warp to Koorong and head to the backstreets to pick up another character. Along the way we bump into one of the bird enemies flying around. You may notice that our starting stats seems a bit higher than Emelia's group. That's because we have the system data from beating Emelia's tale. Saga Frontier gives humans and mystics stat bonuses at the start of the game based on how many other stories you've beaten. It's most notable right now with Lute who got around 70 more HP. Blue is also quite the badass right now. Blue's one of the stronger starting characters and the stat bonueses make him even better.  We enter this dimly lit waiting room outside of the sewers. This is the office of Dr. Nusakan. He's interesting to say the least.   Well that was disturbing.   At this point, most characters would freak the gently caress out and run away, but Blue's got a job to do so he nuts up and asks the good Doctor about runes.  The Hide Rune is inscribed in the underground stone. Our town depends on that stone. Confusion and poverty in our town are on the rise. I think something has happened to the stone. If you're going after the rune stone, let me go too. (seems like a useful character.) The stone is in the cavern beyond the sewer.  Next we head over to Shrike to pick up another robot party member.   I can help with mechanical problems. (Help us). Now I can finally work. Engineer Car will join you if you have any other mecs in your team. We have T260G so he joins right up. We're almost done collecting party members. We now go to Yorkland to pick up Thunder who will join us if Lute is in our team.  Big Bro.  Yo what's up Thunder? That voice...Big bro'!! You came back to us! This is great. No, no, Blue and I are just passing through Yorkland Can you take me with you guys?This is my buddy Thunder. How about it? Wanna take him along? (ok)Yessss! wait until you see him in battle.Sadly we will be waiting till the next update to see Thunder in battle as we don't get in any more fights in the rest of the update. You won't be disappointed though.  I saw it! The guy used a steel   What does he look like? He wears a headband and a T-shirt. Doesn't exactly look like a real samurai. What's his name. I think he said his name was Gen. The last character we'll be picking up is Gen but we need to talk to this Skeleton first which I forgot to do the first time I was here.  The region map is really such a wonderful thing.  Can you take me to Wakatu Castle? ...Wakatu...What the hell's that? I know you're from Wakatu. I need to get the Saber Card.Saber Card...Saber Chamber...All right, I'll take you there. But, are you good enough to get the card? Our party continues to grow like some sort of fungus and here is where we will end this update. Next time we will challenge the shadow labyrinth Omble and find out just how much more of a pain in the rear end it is than the Luminous Labyrinth. buddychrist10 fucked around with this message at 20:23 on Dec 24, 2013 |
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Dec 24, 2013 20:20
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Please do Yorkland soon. That's the only part I liked when I was trying to figure this game out as a kid.
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Dec 24, 2013 20:38
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Tater Love 
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zakharov posted:Please do Yorkland soon. That's the only part I liked when I was trying to figure this game out as a kid. He did the Rune quest in Emilia's playthrough, so it only makes sense that the Arcane quest - along with Yorkland  - are going to be part of that.Hopefully he does it before he hits Kraken rank, though, because by that point it's HELL.
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Dec 24, 2013 21:20
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KataraniSword posted:He did the Rune quest in Emilia's playthrough, so it only makes sense that the Arcane quest - along with Yorkland There're a few ranks of the place that can spell major trouble, though Kraken is one of the most egregious ones if you don't have the right gear.
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Dec 24, 2013 21:28
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Raitzeno posted:There're a few ranks of the place that can spell major trouble, loving Crystal Trees.
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Dec 24, 2013 22:58
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I hope you go to IRPO first, so you can ditch Lute for a really good character in that area.
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Dec 24, 2013 23:24
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Thwack! posted:I hope you go to IRPO first, so you can ditch Lute for a really good character in that area. Nah do IRPO last, so you can do the secret there.
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Dec 25, 2013 00:02
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zakharov posted:Please do Yorkland soon. That's the only part I liked when I was trying to figure this game out as a kid. It would have been better to do the rune quest with Blue. I know Emelia was railroaded in the other direction, but the fun of Yorkland is lost on Blue His text never seemed to change during the progression, so it took 2 or 3 more quests before I realized that it was worth the drinks. also he's a dick to Fei On like no one else is. I haven't played the game in years, but I was smacking my head at the fact you didn't talk to the skeleton first.  Did you mention before that when you are in the middle of one Arcane or Rune's quest you're temporally locked out of the other? Namely, if you got a card or a rune, you couldn't recruit from the other branch? Such as Gen or the Doctor. Since you didn't start the quests, you're free to get them. Finally, does anyone know if that fresco is an actual piece of art? I swear I've seen it before, but could never identify where. Reminds me of something like Raphael.
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Dec 25, 2013 00:16
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Blue is cold as ice. I have to kill my brother? Okay, not gonna protest. You're a creepy Mystic doctor? Yeah, sure whatevs. Go to haunted old castles? Bitch, I can loving teleport.
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Dec 25, 2013 02:55
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Shitenshi posted:Blue is cold as ice. I have to kill my brother? Okay, not gonna protest. You're a creepy Mystic doctor? Yeah, sure whatevs. Go to haunted old castles? Bitch, I can loving teleport. Yeah he is wonderful
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Dec 25, 2013 03:08
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FeyerbrandX posted:Did you mention before that when you are in the middle of one Arcane or Rune's quest you're temporally locked out of the other? Namely, if you got a card or a rune, you couldn't recruit from the other branch? Such as Gen or the Doctor. Since you didn't start the quests, you're free to get them. Most people can't get Nukusan anyway; he's usually restricted to Blue and two other people that he joins for reasons unrelated to any runes. But yeah, the minute he grabs a card, he's locked in until he finishes the quest, which means he can't pick up Roufas or Annie either, to say nothing of the Tanzer crew. Come to think of it... what happens when you use the RegionMap inside of Tanzer? Can you go back to the spacewhale dungeon later? That seems kind of unfortunate if you can screw yourself that way. (Oh, and can I say gently caress Omble yet? Because gently caress Omble. Luminous is a million times more tolerable, especially on repeat playthroughs) Raitzeno posted:There're a few ranks of the place that can spell major trouble, though Kraken is one of the most egregious ones if you don't have the right gear. Basilisks, Krakens, and CrystalTrees in that order, right? I think those are the top three ranks, even.
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Dec 26, 2013 01:53
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Yes, but I also recall having major problems with Genbus my first time through there. That WAS my first, blind playthrough though...
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Dec 26, 2013 06:31
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KataraniSword posted:Most people can't get Nukusan anyway; he's usually restricted to Blue and two other people that he joins for reasons unrelated to any runes. But yeah, the minute he grabs a card, he's locked in until he finishes the quest, which means he can't pick up Roufas or Annie either, to say nothing of the Tanzer crew. I think it counts as you getting the rune. At least that is what it looked like from the speed run of the game I had seen.
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Dec 26, 2013 07:12
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KataraniSword posted:Most people can't get Nukusan anyway; he's usually restricted to Blue and two other people that he joins for reasons unrelated to any runes. But yeah, the minute he grabs a card, he's locked in until he finishes the quest, which means he can't pick up Roufas or Annie either, to say nothing of the Tanzer crew. Also the last 3 ranks for the reptile sprite enemies are Genbu/Basilisk/Kraken. Crystal trees are the last plant type enemy. Edit: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA You know how White Rose was tanking damage like a boss in the Diva fight? I was skimming the mechanics guide and it turns out that Saga Frontier included a multiplier to innately give upper class mystics an advantage over lower class mystics (this distinction from a plot standpoint will be more thoroughly be examined once we get to Asellus's tale.) This multiplier reduces any damage done from a lower class mystic to an upper class mystic to 1/4 of it's original value. White Rose (along with most other mystic characters) counts as an upper class mystic. Diva on the other hand is classified as a lower class mystic. buddychrist10 fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Dec 26, 2013 |
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Dec 26, 2013 17:42
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Man, I knew that this series had some obscure mechanics, but that just takes the cake. I mean seriously, how the flying gently caress were you supposed to figure that out?
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Dec 26, 2013 20:33
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Zaldron posted:Man, I knew that this series had some obscure mechanics, but that just takes the cake. I mean seriously, how the flying gently caress were you supposed to figure that out? Maybe you just weren't. Some games revel in being indecipherable.
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Dec 26, 2013 22:05
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So since I didn't have anything better to do while waiting on these cookies to bake, I have an update! Welcome back! Today we'll be challenging Shadow magic's counterpart to the Luminous Labyrinth, Omble. So the first thing we have to do is get our butts to Luminous.  The region map always reminded me of the planet selection screen from Star Fox 64. Just all those little bits floating around in the air.  Here we are at the entrance to Omble which can be accessed by heading northeast in the main crossroads of Luminous. The lady here is the shadow magic master.  Shadow Magic utilizes shadow and illusion. To master higher spells, you must acquire their gift. Since Light and Shadow cannot coexist, possessors of Light Magic must first give it up before they can learn this magic. (ask about the gift) Go to the shadow region, Omble, and you'll acquire this gift naturally. Go to Omble? (yes) Mecs and monsters cannot return once they enter the region. Light Magic users also are not allowed. Want to try it without them? (Challenge away!) Pay attention to the character to the right. He's really the only reason to go to the Shadow Labyrinth unless you just have to have Shadow Magic on your main character. He's not really worth it.   Immediately once we enter the labyrinth our shadow runs away from us. To leave we will have to reclaim it. It's kind of a pain.  Yup. And this place has a +2 encounter rank modifier for your party that probably won't have its entire main team. What fun!   But, it appears Silence had some wrong information. (Help out) All right. But, I can't be much help to you as a shadow. I can help you after you get out of here. Beware! The real Silence is mute, just like his name.If you want Silence you have to be sure to talk to his shadow. He's not a great character but he's on the way so there's no real reason not to pick him up.  I will admit. Omble does look pretty cool. It's probably another one of those areas that's much harder to navigate if you're playing on a television with bad lighting.  Dammit. We're already fighting these guys. One disadvantage of starting a new quest off of clear data is that it starts the enemies off at a higher encounter rank. The +2 modifier and higher starting encounter rank make the fights here quite nasty.  To make matters worse, this is what the enemies look like. They can be hard to spot and it's almost impossible to tell what type they are.  The shadow of the old lady runs a shop here in this room. We don't buy anything because all of her items are terrible.  Eventually we reach this room with a whole bunch of shadows. These are shadows of all the main characters. Our goal is to find the one that correlates to our main character and bump into it. Blue's is easy to spot because his pony tale is so distinctive.  Once you touch it it runs off into this joining room. We also accidently bumped into Lute's shadow on our way out of the last room so he's here too. Once again we have to touch our characters shadow and it will run off. Fortunately this room is much less crowded so it should be easier.  Your shadow runs into this final room where we have to fight it. If you bring the wrong shadow to this room it will just have basic monsters.  Once in the fight these balls of light will flow out of your characters to create shadow clones of them. This can be very dangerous if your characters have a lot of MT moves, and turns the fight into a brutal quickdraw.  In this case Blue just goes first and blows them all up with the Magic Stone that every character starts with in their inventory.  So we leave Omble never to return because the fights are a pain and the treasure (Silence included) is worse than what you get in the Luminous Labyrinth.  Next we go over and send the rest of our folks over to the Luminous Labyrinth so they can get light magic. Sadly they are all lazy and do not try to bring back all the treasure with them. And with all that finished we have our final team for Blue's run: Blue, Engineer Car, Mei-Ling, Thunder, and Silence. I know I've been giving Silence a lot of crap, but he's not unusable, just replaceable. If you can get Silence, you can get a better mystic. For the purposes of showing off as many characters as possible though, we will be using him here.  Next we're going to go around picking up money bags because we need a certain amount of cash to do one of the Arcane quests. The Koorong sewers are good for a couple hundred and also for showing off some of our team. See that Trisaur handing off to the left? That's Thunder.   Thunder is a very popular choice for new players because with his default set of monster absorbs he tends to bounce back and forth between his default ogre form (decent for now) and the Trisaur form (way overpowered for early game.) In fact, most of our team is very good for the early game. Mechs can get their stats very high in a hurry, Blue as mentioned earlier is great early on, and for as tepid as Silence is overall, he starts with a good set of absorbs for the early game. This team will probably be able to cruise for a while.  Of course the main danger of using mechs and characters like Thunder is that they'll take out enemies to fast and your humans won't get to spark skills. Fortunately, our team setup takes this into account as Blue and Mei-Ling will be focusing on magic and guns. This is a good strategy if you want to use one or two humans in a team filled with Monsters and Mechs as they learn their skills after battle and don't need to get any turns. Anyway, we grab some more gold in Mu's Tomb, and we'll end for the day in Shrike. Next time we'll continue our quest for riches and start one of the arcane quests. Probably the one in Yorkland. I hope you will join me then.
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Dec 27, 2013 04:44
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dude789 posted:Edit: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA You know how White Rose was tanking damage like a boss in the Diva fight? I was skimming the mechanics guide and it turns out that Saga Frontier included a multiplier to innately give upper class mystics an advantage over lower class mystics (this distinction from a plot standpoint will be more thoroughly be examined once we get to Asellus's tale.) This multiplier reduces any damage done from a lower class mystic to an upper class mystic to 1/4 of it's original value. White Rose (along with most other mystic characters) counts as an upper class mystic. Diva on the other hand is classified as a lower class mystic. From what I remember, all playable mystics, including transformed Asellus, are classified as upper mystics (with one exception, but I don't believe we've seen that character so I won't say which one), while all enemy mystics are lower mystics. This includes one of the FINAL BOSSES (well, another final boss besides Diva) that you would think is an upper mystic. I won't say which one just yet, even in spoilers, but it doesn't make a whit of difference anyway; almost all attacks in that battle are performed by his flunkies, which are classified as humans, and the one attack he performs himself ignores the entire upper/lower class mechanic. I guess they didn't want you to run a bunch of mystics and gimp the hell out of him, and I guess coding an enemy as an upper mystic would be a pain for just one enemy, but why they didn't just not code him as a mystic at all is beyond me. P.S. dude, if you think any of this might be considered a spoiler despite my caution, I can either hide it in tags or delete it.
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Dec 27, 2013 05:34
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Dr. Nusakan can floor Silence's rear end. Shame you don't get to use him too often. The one endgame Shadow spell really makes Shadow magic worthwhile. If you decide to metagame Blue for an unorthodox take like ditching Realm magic for Mystic magic, and give up Psychic Prison it can be the cornerstone of many useful strategies against some of the endgame bosses that would be otherwise completely hopeless.
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Dec 27, 2013 05:41
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 Go Blue team. 
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Dec 27, 2013 07:35
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TurnipFritter posted:
Um, Engineer Car is brown.
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Dec 27, 2013 10:42
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TurnipFritter posted:
Aww yeah. Really digging the mouth stitching on Silence. Also Blue is one handsome motherfucker.
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Dec 27, 2013 14:37
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Pneub posted:Um, Engineer Car is brown. That is like the least off-model part of the Engineer Car in that drawing.
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Dec 27, 2013 20:27
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TurnipFritter posted:
My name is Thunder, and I speak for the team.
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Dec 27, 2013 20:40
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I'm getting some JJBA vibes out of that Blue.
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Dec 28, 2013 00:22
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Thwack! posted:I'm getting some JJBA vibes out of that Blue. His official portrait has a pretty Jojo-looking outfit to begin with. Just put that diamond pattern on a hat to match his belt, and there you go.
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Dec 28, 2013 08:09
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I assume "Omble" is supposed to be "Umbra"? Also this game is confusing and I never know who anyone is or what's actually going on.
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Dec 28, 2013 14:30
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It's probably a corruption of Umber, but the spelling is intentional as far as I know.
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Dec 28, 2013 17:56
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SloppyDoughnuts posted:Also this game is confusing and I never know who anyone is or what's actually going on. This is the true SaGa Frontier experience, especially if you're American and thus have limited access to Essence. SaGa Frontier is really a game you play for the battle system more than any sort of story.
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Dec 28, 2013 18:39
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SloppyDoughnuts posted:Also this game is confusing and I never know who anyone is or what's actually going on. Don't worry, that's normal for
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Dec 28, 2013 18:46
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Blue is such a douchebag. He's the first character I played as when I had this game as a kid (why wouldn't I? He's on the box!), and his "story" and personality were so abrasive that I almost gave up on the other characters right afterwards. I'm glad you're getting him out of the way so early.
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Dec 28, 2013 20:54
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FeyerbrandX posted:It would have been better to do the rune quest with Blue. I know Emelia was railroaded in the other direction, but the fun of Yorkland is lost on Blue His text never seemed to change during the progression, so it took 2 or 3 more quests before I realized that it was worth the drinks. also he's a dick to Fei On like no one else is. Yeah, I just played through the Yorkland part for the next update and it's kind of lame that Blue's dialogue doesn't change during that sequence. I'll be sure to show it off with some of the other characters because it's pretty funny. Also, after this next update, this team is going to faceroll the game for a while. Thunder seems to be pretty entrenched as a Butch with a Manticore as a backup form, Mei-Ling has a Duel Gun and all of the gun techniques (or at least all of the important ones), Silence just absorbed a bunch of Genbus, and Blue learned Vermillion Sand.
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Dec 28, 2013 21:40
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TheUkuleleFanboy posted:Don't worry, that's normal for Hey now, Saga 1, 2 and 3 were fairly easy to understand. 1) Climb this tower and kill Ashura! Oh, and God is a dick. 2) Collect pieces of a statue and kill gods. 3) Go into the future/past/other universe so you can punch God in the face.
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Dec 29, 2013 00:25
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Thwack! posted:I'm getting some JJBA vibes out of that Blue. At the end of this storyline he unclips his hair extension and reveals that he was Dio all along. Randalor posted:Hey now, Saga 1, 2 and 3 were fairly easy to understand. Romancing SaGa 2 is reasonably clear about things. I mean, it at least sits you down at the beginning of the game and says "Hey this is why you're doing the main plot" as opposed to RS1 and RS3 where you end up doing it because it's there. dude789 posted:Yeah, I just played through the Yorkland part for the next update and it's kind of lame that Blue's dialogue doesn't change during that sequence. I'll be sure to show it off with some of the other characters because it's pretty funny. Also, after this next update, this team is going to faceroll the game for a while. Thunder seems to be pretty entrenched as a Butch with a Manticore as a backup form, Mei-Ling has a Duel Gun and all of the gun techniques (or at least all of the important ones), Silence just absorbed a bunch of Genbus, and Blue learned Vermillion Sand. I think you're gonna be ok.
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Dec 29, 2013 00:43
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