SSG - Mainly spent my time leveling up my side team while doing side missions. I returned to the far north where I reforged the Godslaying Saw and started a mining venture where I got to make mines in the area, but it seems to come at the cost of destroying all of the natural magical landmarks in the area. I didn't quite finish this one, but I'll come back to it. Instead I'm doing two smaller quests in the region where the cult kept trying to summon an Infernal. One quest involves gathering offerings for a Beast Spiritual, though I'm having issues finding the second material. The other quest involves the party saving a young lady from a flock of carrion birds. We meet her at this old castle that is rumored to be home to a witch, but the girl has been super nice to the team. The only creepy part was spending the night had Urpina wake up to find the castle in ruins and in the midst of a graveyard. This one NPC I think I can recruit is also in the area looking for this witch and is harassing a fisherman who keeps telling Urpina the girl is in fact the witch and not to listen to her. So of course I'm ignoring that and helping her now break some jars. I'm hoping this will net me this particular player character, because I've read she's pretty good. I did manage to recruit the mayor from a small town near Urpina's kingdom and he's another Club user and dressed like a fruity Renaissance nobleman, with the page boy haircut and everything.
I also feel like I'm running out of gear to earn tech skills from. I'm making tier XIII stuff at this point and I'm pretty sure I maxed out the Blacksmith ranking. I'm now at the annoying part where I need to keep an eye out for all the rare materials needed to level up the stuff.
I feel my only real complaint so far with skill acquisition in this game is that once again, magic is more of a chore than it needs to be. It's pretty potent, but I am annoyed with the casting times for a lot of spells. Especially the group targeting spells.
Romancing SaGa 3 - Wasted half my evening, and then sort of made up for it? I did a bunch of things and ended up switching around my team a bit, which proved to be a bad idea. I'm a little too late in the game to be trying to build an endgame team, especially since my one goal is to tackle the final boss in his true form because I guess I'm just a masochist like that. Anyway, I went after the Fire Sinistral and got destroyed for my efforts because he has that obnoxious perma self-immolation shield that does insane damage if I try to attack him with short range melee. Not helped that I forgot to restore my health before heading in, so I was low on TP/MP so I lost pretty good. The problem was that I hadn't saved in hours (which is why I hate save anywhere systems, because I will forget to save) so all of my endeavors for the evening were lost. But I took this in stride because I was seriously having second thoughts about a lot of the decisions I was making. Sadly, I learned far too late that I've locked myself out of Katarina's Golden Ending, because I apparently needed to have Mikhail in my final team, but he's only available for recruitment for a short time when Bunei attacks Loanne. Otherwise, you can't access his castle for some dumb reason. Despite all this, I cleared up a few side missions I forgot about and I'm starting to play around with building up my magic. I discovered I never finished this one optional dungeon, and I'm grateful for it because the boss of the place has the potential to be an Asura, which is one of the best enemies in the game to spark techs with. So I'm hoping I can fill out more of my weapon tech list since I'm missing a skill or three with each weapon type.
My two biggest gripes at the moment are these: 1) I really hate the fact the game forces an 11th hour ranger into your team at the end to get to the final dungeon. It makes party planning a bit tougher when you know you're going to have to keep one slot open for them. Even more annoying that a very good character can only be recruited by this 11th hour joiner and so unless you plan it carefully, you may not have easy access to means of leveling this character either. 2) Tomahawk is the bane of my existence in these games. This isn't something against RS3 in particular, it's against this skill in general because it's almost always required to spark axe weapon skills or high end axe techs in general. It's a crappy low level skill as well, so my main damage dealer always seems to be nerfing themselves because I have to stick to this one skill to spark the five to nine techs attached to it. Ugh...
If I could add a third complaint it's that tech mastering is a chore.
So here's the team setup at the moment:
Katarina - She's mainly trying to spark the final Greatsword tech I need and mastering Scattered Petals. Afterwards, I have to sacrifice her TP Crown so I can level up her Lunar Magic and make use of the Shadow Copy spell that is going to make her a serious powerhouse. Once she has enough MP, I'm going to try to get her TP Crown back and get her HP into the 800s. I could also try to master Disarm, but that skill is a pain in the ass.
Black - Is still trying to master one final Axe skill which is thankfully not attached to Tomahawk. Otherwise I need to level up his Lunar and Soryu magic a bit. More his Lunar really so he can also take advantage of the Shadow Copy spell since he's my other main damage dealer. Wind magic is honestly not that great in this game, so maybe I should drop it for access to another Revivar spell? I also want to get him a TP crown as well and get his HP up.
Charl - He has quite a few Spear techs to learn and master if we're being honest here, but spears are very good in this game so he's not that far behind in damage output. His Fire magic is really good, and I'll need to get him him Revivar once the Fire Sinistral is dead. I gave him Solar Magic as well, but I'm not too impressed with it at the moment. I may stick to beefing up his spear potential more while raising his HP.
Nora - My main debuffer. I have an awkward relationship with mace weapons and skills in this series. They're useful for their utility, but I wish they had more damage potential. I honestly don't think they come into their own until SSG. She has two more skills to spark and four to master. I need to level up her Earth magic as well since it's surprisingly the best magic of the four, though Hypergravity has the least utility of the ultimate spells. Part of me was thinking of dropping her so I could beef up the Workshop, but I've kind of grown attached to her and it's going to take too damn long to raise up another character.
Muse - Probably my most neglected characters, I don't do solid mages very well and she's not leveling up magic as fast as I would like. I have found her some great equipment though. She also has really high DEX and SPD, so she's actually competent with a bow and rapier so I have those equipped in case I need some extra attack power. I need to get her more Lunar Magic and give her more Water magic. She's basically going to be my dedicated buffer/healer but I need to get her some better armor and way more HP/MP to get that dream off the ground. She's going to take the longest to get where I need her to be. Partly because magic is less useful in this entry with many of the game breakers being relegated to Commander mode or heavily nerfed in this entry.
Leonid - He's quirky, with a lot of weird rules that makes him different from other characters. He has no LP and can't be perma killed, but he can't be healed or revived either. He starts with 666hp and as far as I can tell, he can't raise it either. He comes with the best armor in the game though and he has auto-regen. He is great for sparking epee skills and such, but has terrible stats for using it. He also has his own unique magic but the spells are interesting if highly impractical. A fun character to play around with, but he's going to be my sacrificial lamb when The Boy arrives. I've only kept him around because he managed to spark a good sword tech I didn't have and I needed him to master it for me quick. I am a little sad he's too quirky for his own good because I like my vampires.
SSG - Okay, found where I left off and remember why I stopped playing. Lol. So I've cornered my Chapter 2 Big Bad Sigfrei back to the old imperial capital and it looks like it's the final showdown thing with him. The issue is that he's a cheating ass. He's a squishy mage, technically, except in addition to getting immunity from being knocked out of casting, he is also just flat out immune to taking damage unless he's casting or my team activates a unite attack. His magic is also devastating when it activates as unprotected, half my squad can be wiped out by one of his group spells. So I'll need to figure out what to do here. He also has this interrupt/counter move, but I can't figure out what type of attack activates it. So, I'm a bit annoyed because my main team is sort of built on doing high damage in one round, but cheater boy here has limited that since he can kind of just choose not to take damage, and it's dangerous to let my team go on the offensive during his one vulnerable time since his spell has a quick cast time and can do around 600hp per character in a game where 999hp is the max. I'll need to figure something out...
SSG - Sigfrei is down for the count. I think my issue was surprisingly being too cautious and also just having bad luck. He tried to cast Call of Thunder which takes two turns to cast and I still had most of my heavy hitters alive, so we just all went ape trout on his ass for two rounds and managed to finish him off. With him defeated, Chapter 2 is finished and I'm now on what I believe is the final chapter of the game. Urpina's family doesn't want her to leave to figure out what's going on in the world, not without taking one of them with her. So I got to choose between her Father, Brother, and Stepmother. Technically the stepmother is unique to her chapter, but I went for her brother instead because he's basically a second Urpina with access to Dual-Wield as well, so I'm currently leveling him up. I may start looking up how to unlock roles so I can outfit my team better, but at the moment, I haven't started any major quests in this chapter yet.
I was really hoping for more of a remaster of the original 16-bit version like RS2/3 but I guess it makes sense to just skip it for Minstrel Song since it largely fixed most of the issues I had with the original.
With Minstrel Song coming out, I figured I should get back to this and try to finish SaGa Scarlet Graces. I also fell off the wagon and re-downloaded Romancing SaGa Re: Universe for mobile.
SSG - I'm in the third chapter. I wanted to activate the Shard quest but instead activated the Phoenix one instead. It's been pretty cool actually. The party encounters a phoenix that they slay, and it leaves behind a feather. The phoenix only dies after it's laid an egg and they're powerful, so Urpina is trying to track the egg down by using the phoenix feather's memories to trace the Phoenix's journey back to it's origin. It's been nicely finishing up some loose plot threads like the Woromir Prince trying to become the new emperor and the tower to the Celestials. So it's been pretty neat. I also like how the background plot we're given about the Firebringer really shows his influence from Norse mythology. The Firebringer is more or less SaGa Loki. Being a Celestial who just likes to cause mischief and pitting the Infernals and the Celestials against each other. yet, like Loki, there has been a several stories showing him as a good guy as well, like discovering the false emperor's mishandling of the Celestials gifts which gets them to strike him down with holy wrath. I also find it amusing that Urpina is pretty much the Lawful stupid of the four main characters. Her faith in the Celestials is charming to say the least.
Re: Universe - Sadly, my old phone died before I could transfer my data, so I have to start all over again. But I'm not far from catching up in the story where I left off, and I've gotten some great pulls from the gacha nonsense. I almost have my old team re-assembled. I'm only missing Ellen. I also wish I could get a Gustave XIII that isn't his Regal form. I also need to get Rocbouquet's other forms so I can expand her abilities, her Tower form is okay, but lacks the versatility of her other forms ability lists. I have been getting lots of incarnations of Khalid and Albert though, like two SS Class types that are both fairly overpowered. May have to move Gerad out of the team. Funny enough, they're doing an SSG event currently and celebrating the series two year anniversary.
New SaGa game was announced this year. SaGa Emerald Beyond
The game has four main characters again, and seems to be lifting a lot of mechanics from SaGa Scarlet Graces. Though it also looks like it's bringing back some elements from the GB entries and SF1 in the form of different races. Will be interesting to see if they work mechanically different like they did in those entries. I noticed Sensei's slime race from the GB games in some of the official art, and a Sephira monster (they're angelic female warriors fought in the 16-bit entries) fighting in a battle. The game also seems to be leaning hard into the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure aesthetic, cause hot damn if this game doesn't look like it could be part of that universe through the character designs. I'm excited, but really need to finish SSG first.
Just chiming back in to let people know that Square-Enix recently released a demo for SaGa Emerald Beyond for PS4, PS5, and Switch like a few days ago. It let's you try out three of the characters and gives you a good feel for the first few hours. I just downloaded it tonight, so I'll have to post about it later.
Took a break from MMX6 to check out the SaGa Emerald Beyond demo and was pleasantly surprised. Visually and mechanically, it plays like SaGa Scarlet Graces, so people not vibing with the storybook pop up visuals and Visual Novel cutscenes are going to be disappointed, but the game has certainly fixed a lot of issues from SSG. For one thing, there is more of a tutorial for how mechanics work, which is nice, even though the voice over sounds very insulting when explaining stuff. Unite Attacks have been changed for the better. In SSG, the only way to activate one was to kill an enemy whose turn took place between two party members turn, which was easier said than done because enemies are downright tanky in SSG. SEB on the other hand takes the mechanic back to the Frontier series where Unite Attacks are simply activated by having party members use attacks that overlap with each other on the turn order. Even better, unlike the Frontier entries, this game gives you a visual cue to show if this will happen. Of course, like SSG before it, enemies can do this as well, so it's not always the best strategy to get Unite Combo happy. There is a new mechanic that lets your characters activate a second unite combo as well after performing one which was interesting. The other two QoL changes is the game is far better about explaining where you need to go and what to do on quests using a special visual cue called the Emerald Path, maybe not quite hand holding, but far better than most of the series is known for. Secondly, weapon and armor upgrades can now just be done from the menu screen and so you don't have to traipse around the map finding the right blacksmith.
The game also seems to be bringing back unique leveling mechanics as the tutorial mentions only Humans can Glimmer/Waza. The demo only allowed you to play as Mido and his puppets, but speaking of, his puppets learn skills by mimicking them off of other characters, this includes enemies as well. My samurai puppet Musashi mimicked a two handed sword tech from a mini-boss while my fencing puppet kept mimicking skills off of Mido. Not sure how magic is going to work in this game though. I did have two characters who could use magic, but the process of learning or leveling it up never came up in the game. But it might be fair to say they are not keeping SSG's version, which is likely for the best because it was just as unintuitive as Unlimited SaGa's magic mechanics.
The demo lets you play as Mido the Puppet Master who seems to come from a version of our world. His family used to be guardians of the Japanese government through the ages, but their powers have largely disappeared until Mido was born and showed he had the power to see the Emerald's Glow that guides his life. Though he resists it at every turn. His uncle sends him to the Gate of the Heavens which allows him to traverse to other worlds and his goal is to take the four puppets he has and imbue them with powerful spirits from other worlds so his family may regain their magical powers. The worlds he traverse are ones the other characters you can choose as your main character come from. In the demo, I got to see the magical cat girl Ameya's home world, and I got to reach Yomi where the Dismal King's homeworld resides. The game is being very heavy handed with references to the Game Boy originals with even Mr. S's monster species returning as enemies and Mr.S himself appearing as an NPC in the Emerald Road world to offer tutoring. The voice acting wasn't bad either though Mido's voice feels way older than he looks, but it fits his attitude really well and gives him a Trashy Parker from Into the Spiderverse vibe which I digged. Overall, I'm more excited for the full game which comes out next week.
Surprised this game of all things got a 3D remake, but not complaining since it's one of my personal favorite entries in the series. The demo for it is out and I have finished it. I'll give a breakdown a little later when I have a bit more free time.
Looks like the SaGa mobile game has reached the end of its life and the global version is closing on the first of December. Going to be sad seeing this game go, not only because it was relatively solid, but also because it got me through a tough time in my life.
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