Grinding: it's not just for coffee anymore. Let's Play The 7th Saga!

I agree that Esuna's a good choice--I feel like you covered most of the Olvan-only stuff in the main LP; and I don't see how a Wilme run would be that different from a Lux run. (Also, I've done a Lejes run myself. It kinda sucked.)

Did you ever get around to trying Mystic Ark, it occurs to me to ask?

For some reason I though this was from a Final Fantasy thread.

Esuna is a good choice in any RPG series.

(Cue Sky Render's explanation on why it should be S-Null or something like that)

I wasn't going to throw a vote in but now I have to:

I vote for S-Null.

Okay, so what if I go with Esuna or Bust, but the joke then becomes about boobs?

So, how are those signs coming along?


Eh. It'll do. What about some buttons?


Could stand to have a '13 on there, but still, great job Johnson! And the billboards?


Damn it Johnson! Use a goddamned spell-checker! There's no E!

Do you remember this exchange from back in January (of 2012)?

If you do end up getting Busy, it might be a thing to consider trying.

Which is amusing, because it's more likely actually meant to be an abbreviation of Eien SUtetasu NAosu.

I'm gonna try to give this a try in about 3 hours (about 1:15pm PDT). The channel URL is http://twitch.tv/ttmogri.

I just happened to catch up on this thread today (I don't know why I stopped following it!) and thought of something neat.
In the past the runes seal away Gorsias power, while in the present they empower the apprentice. You could look at them as essentially "Gorsia Batteries", where they give you a tiny portion of the power they stole from Gorsia every time they are used.
This game is pretty great.

As a heads up to all of you who are waiting for this with bated breath: de-bate your breath. I'll probably start in about half an hour, and I'll post here before I start.

OK, we're good to go. I'll be starting on the hour, pre-streaming immediately.

Made it to Red Pison. Red Pison is much more difficult than his earlier incarnation.

Well, he has come back from the Dark World.

Thinking of streaming again today.

If you missed the last episode, we made it to Red Pison at level 10 -- earlier than LAVOS -- but he was dealing over 50 damage to Kamil under B Protect. Ridiculous! We went back and mostly cleared the Cave of Melenam before wiping, which took us to 11. You may remember that as the level LAVOS and Lejes were at when they made it through this boss. Can S-NUL and Kamil pull off the same feat? I don't know! Let's find out together in about 15 minutes.

Edit: channel link

Patrof is clear; the rival apprentice is dead. Who was it? Find out!

I'm gonna try to stream again tomorrow.

The story so far: S-NUL got killed by a dog, then killed the dog with a whistle. She killed a mysterious bounty hunter, joined forces with Kamil, killed the mysterious bounty hunter a second time, ditched Kamil for Wilme, then killed the traitorous apprentice (Lejes) who took over Patrof. With three runes in her possession, she must travel to Bone, where an important question will finally be answered:

S-NUL and Wilme are at level 15, four or five levels below "recommended" (depending on your FAQ of choice).

Gonna kick off in about 10 minutes (1:25 PDT).

This question has been put to rest using the powers of Science.

This LP was good.

I enjoyed it!

I've had a hankering for more 7th Saga lately, but I don't want to play it on PC, and I don't want to play it without emulator speedup. #world1-1problems

This got me to load the game up on my SNES classic. Bern rocking an Esuna/Lux playthrough, and I'm just about to get to the traitor reveal. Trying not to grind too much as per the philosophy of this LP! But I've definitely died a lot.

Beware of spiders! If you can make it past the traitor, you can do anything -- that might be the biggest roadblock in the game.

Mogri, did you ever get around to playing Mystic Ark? I recall being really curious about your thoughts on it.

I never did, but I am still interested in doing so. If someone provided me with a copy, I would give it a spin after my delinquent Ogre Battle LP.

Edit: I have remedied the situation

I am potentially excited!

I've also been inspired by this LP (and the TAS) to replay the game, which I'd always thought was great, but like so many, I'd been under the impression that some level grinding was necessary. To hell with that, let's have a small elf lead the party and omit needless experience.

Up until the Cave of Earth, this game had an excellent opening (for Esuna). I'm aware of no other JRPG of this era where the first half-hour's interesting decisions revolve around when to cast Drain, or how to ration your Death spell (which is what ICE1 initially is), or which items you will need for reaching the next town on the map. The Chimeras threaten you with Osmose more than their attacks, but can be OHKOd by ICE1 and are themselves MPCTCHR targets, while the Statues are endurance rounds and potential HPCTCHR targets. The single MHerb 1 you're given is best saved for right before Romus so that you can encounter a Chimera and get two chances for Osmose, since you gain just enough levels from exploring the castle that the Chimera starts to lose in melee against Esuna. I fought Romus at level 5; a B Protect and nine potions were just enough to win without the Whistle.

To make the rationing more interesting, I think I would change the design somewhat here: give the player a map of the castle, 1-2 additional MHerbs to find, and increase the Chimera's odds of landing Osmose / survivig ICE1 slightly. Otherwise, though, I found myself amazed at this point by how well-designed the game appeared. I had remembered it as hilariously, staggeringly unfair.

Enter the Cave of Earth. The solitary Undead encounter wipes Esuna with two physical attacks unless she dodges one and lands her ICE spells, which does not happen often. Then, once these start becoming more manageable (but still threatening) at level 7 thanks to ICE2 which pushes them into range for their HEAL1, I blank out to Androids on the way to Bonro. I eventually bought some B Protects for use in random battles (!) just because I knew exactly where Bonro was located and what I would find there; not marking towns on its world map is one of the worst flaws of 7th Saga. Gothic lets you run into absurdly powerful encounters right away, but only if you walk the unsafe routes to certain settlements (which certain NPCs will warn you about, too), and gives you a useful world map right away (if you choose to buy it while your money is still tight, that is).

Once I reached Bonro/Zellis and picked up a companion, though, the game jumped right back to very interesting. This seems to be the definitive pattern of The 7th Saga: you enter a new area where everything kills your party immediately, except for one or two less serious encounters. You scramble towards a town (or, sometimes, a treasure chest) in order to pick up some combat upgrade, sometimes accompanied by e.g. the realization that Esuna might be better off casting POWER on herself and meleeing certain enemies. I've died countless times to dice rolls and yet I've also found that, at least in the boss battles, I could almost always have made a slight adjustment to give me a better chance.

Case in point, I drew Valsu at Patrof. After two dozen failed attempts, some of them with Lux, I realized that the robot would never dodge his spells consistently enough to win and bought a melee upgrade for Esuna instead (might have been from Bone, even). This equipped, she could spend a B Agility and Protect, cast POWER on herself, hope to dodge (and spam the Water Rune when not, even on "light" wounds), use a normal physical attack twice (without Defending, which would just give Valsu more chances to crit ICE1 for the guaranteed OHKO), and then Defend after the next dodged ICE1, after which a physical would be likely, and Attack for slightly more than doubled damage just above 1/2 of Valsu's health, with no danger of his HEAL1 kicking in. Success thus came at level 15 (I had reached the Eygus sage at 12, I think).

While critical hits appear to be pointless harbingers of frustration (having found the strategy that ended up winning, I still died a dozen times to ICE1 crits), showing the worst side of 7th Saga, that battle had also showed its best: buying a melee weapon for your mage is sometimes bad (the Saber would have been a "caviar gun") and sometimes essential.

They've done great work in making the runes matter, too. Every single one of them (as far as I can tell, having obtained half of them so far) immediately and remarkably improves your situation without being a silver bullet. Never mind top-down storytelling, because GORSIA seizing them will mean all the more once they've ensured your survival for the larger part of the game.

Right now, I'm at Telaine. The 3x R. Demon group at Serpent's castle wipes me due to the amount of F BIRD spells they can cast per round, while ICE2 won't OHKO any one of them. The snake leg man at Bilthem takes off half of Lux' health through the Star Rune boost. The golden boys north of Serpent's castle are insurmountable. The ubiquitous Mutant + Cocoon encounter is a party kill unless I get lucky with VACUUM1 or make the escape roll. Nonetheless, I don't feel stuck or driven to grinding: even if the Cave of Telaine turns out no more amenable, I could go back into the Patrof caves and try to clear out the R. Tricks with the Star Rune on hand, or into the Cave of Milto, which I've walked right past.

In short, this is a great game -- if sometimes blatantly unfair. It is certainly not above critique. The most vital items shouldn't be invisible. The world map shouldn't be useless. The mimics shouldn't be party wipes when treasure chests are also the only source of vital stat-boosting items. Said items should not give random boosts that prompt and reward the busywork of pressing RESET and nothing else. Some enemies that are pushovers from the get-go (the 1x Defeat encounter near Pandam, or 2x Manta anywhere) have far too high Agility that leads to pointless battles taking a dozen turns. Some enemies involve all the strategy of a dice roll. Despite all this, I've hardly ever played a JRPG that makes me feel so eager to create one of my own.

I'd likewise be very interested in Mystic Ark -- I know nothing about it.

Yes! I'm happy to see a resurgence in 7th Saga interest, even eight years after the fact, and I love reading the account of someone who "gets it." I regret that the LP was unable to showcase some of the finer points you mentioned: buying weapons for your mages is very counterintuitive but often the right move. We did get to peek at a few situations where you definitely want to attack instead of defend-attack, at least.

I think your critiques are overwhelmingly correct (although I feel like 1x Defeat is more powerful than you give it credit for), but I will say that the overly-deadly Tricks and the critical hits are part of the game's charm... such as it is. (See also: Mutants, Spirits)

Unfortunate to have drawn Valsu as your rival. Maybe you'd rather have a more physically-oriented partner, but you never want to take Valsu off the table completely.

I sunk about a dozen hours into Mystic Ark once upon a time. I feel like it's going to be a disappointment if you're expecting it to have the same depth as 7th Saga, because mostly all I remember about it is fighting a lot of mindless random battles and having incredibly quirky world design.

Let's get random

The 7th Saga randomizer is now something you can play. We're gonna do it.

Meet the Heroes

Here's the 50-foot view of our cast. Who's worth taking? Here are some considerations:

• Magic and Speed are the most important stats, in no particular order. You can compensate for Power and Guard with equipment. Unfortunately, everyone has low Magic growth but Esuna, who has the worst Speed growth (although 3 is average in the vanilla game).
• Spellcasting ability and equipment availability are also extremely important. While the spells and equipment available to each character are random, the number of spells and equipment available to each character are unchanged (in our flagset). This means Wilme and Lux are at a disadvantage.
• HP is nice to have, but not as vital as you might guess: most often, if you're dead, you're extremely dead (usually because the other guy cast a very powerful spell). MP is usually less important, but not always: since anyone might get ELIXIR or a superpowered but dreadfully expensive BLIZZARD 2 or whatever, you want to be able to cast what you learn.
• Starting stats are almost completely irrelevant. Your growths are much more influential. That said, you can set yourself up for a pretty impenetrable early-game.

The chart above is autogenerated by the randomizer. Here's my attempt at something a bit more readable:

So who's good?

Actually, this is a pretty balanced spread, with everyone bringing something to the table but suffering some major handicap. Kamil is pretty excellent all around except for his poor Magic; Olvan has better growths in every area except HP and Guard -- but man, his HP, though; Esuna is a magical powerhouse sporting the lowest Guard of the group; Wilme is a slugger who will never cast a spell; Lux is a somewhat more balanced Wilme; Valsu is extremely tanky but has no attack power whatsoever; and Lejes is, uh, not really outstanding. But they can't all be winners.

In actuality, though, it's hard to tell from this list. Maybe Lejes has his ultimate weapon in the starting town, maybe Lux has an incredible spell selection, and maybe Kamil can't equip anything available in the first few towns. That's the fun of a randomizer!

Aside: Because the creator has some obsession with the number 7, the default settings in the randomizer modify everything to 14-700%. This ends up extremely swingy, and you will probably have at least one character who's absurdly good. I've instead set growths to 50-200% and basically everything else to 33-300%. For whatever reason, you can't set the minimum and maximum independently; instead, everything is always modified within a (1/N)..N range.


Personally, I enjoy a rough start, and so I've got my eye on Olvan. But any of these characters can make it past Pison and onward to a more palatable companion, so let's put it to a vote.