Finally remembered to look at this. Ephemeral race sounds awesome! Their explanation of Chains and Pursuits just leaves me with more questions. And finally... motherfucking Final Emperor???
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SaGa Emerald Beyond
- Thread starter Peklo
- Start date
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
if there really is No Healing In Combat, Ephemerals sound like they have basically no downside, since their base stats seem to be along the same lines as regular characters. I guess it probably depends on how powerful non-Ephemeral Roles are in comparison.
they sound like they're just, like, the opposite of interrupts. Afterrupts, if you will.
they sound like they're just, like, the opposite of interrupts. Afterrupts, if you will.
Yeah, it seems like just a another way to manipulate turn order, which matters if you're trying to get characters lined up for a combo, or to prevent enemies from lining up a combo. Chains guarantee you go after an ally, Pursuits guarantee you go after an enemy. Unlike Interrupts, Pursuits can't kill an enemy before it acts , but since this is shifting to a combo based system sometimes what matters most will be to break up a potential enemy combo.
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
SaGa Emerald Beyond will receive a demo tomorrow, on the Playstation family of consoles, Steam, and Nintendo Switch. It seems like the character you're allowed to play as depends on the platty: Tsunanori for Playstation, Amemiya for Switch, and Diva 5 for Steam?
I... might play all 3
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
i don't actually know if it's the case that the demo is a different character for each platform, but that sure seems to be what the attached graphic suggests? but otoh journalists who have already played it have implied they were able to play as any of the three characters. i guess we'll know in a couple of hours.
nvm Famitsu article confirms it is indeed different characters for different platforms
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Played through the demo on PS5, so with Tsunanori. Brilliant game as expected, and didn't really go full on trying to unpack the mechanics in this brief preview and just focused on sampling the overall tone. The writing voice and localization effort as in Scarlet Grace is still just something else; it's funny basically all the time through phrasing, vernacular and all the rest of it. Especially impressive when it's filtered through a character like Tsunanori whom you might typecast as a generic protagonist sort at a glance, but no, he's a weirdo and really distinct beyond all presuppositions.
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
I'm also playing Tsunanori's demo. I ended up in Yomi as my first "real" world, and I really appreciate the areas having more of a distinct aesthetic design compared to Scarlet Grace's world map. Allegedly the demo has all the optional side battles removed, so you do have to bounce from story beat to story beat and can't really play around with the combat system as much as maybe you would want to. For example, Tsunanori's Puppets can equip additional Roles via souls enemies drop, but I haven't really had the option to get many of those.
The writing is fine so far, there are some elements in this world that were a little... dark for this type of game, and it seems like Lita, the main partner character for Tsunanori, is only gonna show up in his "main" story worlds, because when I popped up here a new partner character also popped up to be my guide. On one hand, fun, variety is the spice of life, but on the other I'll miss the interactions the main characters and their partners had in Scarlet Grace.
Even though I've absorbed all the promo material it still took me a bit to get acclimated to the UI. One thing that does bother me is that on the equipment/status screen you can swap between characters with the L2/R2 buttons?
I'm glad Combos are back instead of Unite Attacks, and it's good that Tsunanori's default formation is one that incentives Combos. The Puppets look cool but I can definitely see myself replacing them as new options become available. Achieving Overdrive is satisfying.
The writing is fine so far, there are some elements in this world that were a little... dark for this type of game, and it seems like Lita, the main partner character for Tsunanori, is only gonna show up in his "main" story worlds, because when I popped up here a new partner character also popped up to be my guide. On one hand, fun, variety is the spice of life, but on the other I'll miss the interactions the main characters and their partners had in Scarlet Grace.
Even though I've absorbed all the promo material it still took me a bit to get acclimated to the UI. One thing that does bother me is that on the equipment/status screen you can swap between characters with the L2/R2 buttons?
I'm glad Combos are back instead of Unite Attacks, and it's good that Tsunanori's default formation is one that incentives Combos. The Puppets look cool but I can definitely see myself replacing them as new options become available. Achieving Overdrive is satisfying.
God this battle system owns bones. I did 2 Combos, Ameya ranked up a skill during the first one, that first one also triggered an Overdrive and during that Ameya also glimmered a new Custom Tech.
This was super unclear to me... Ameya's opening bits felt extremely rail-roaded, but not necessarily in a way that was unintended. Like... maybe this game's structure is such that each protag has a short-ish linear opening part and then lets you go free after that? I made it to my first "other" world and briefly started the events there, but it did seem odd that I couldn't visit any locations outside of the specific things the Emerald Vision pointed me to.
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
If anyone is playing the demos across multiple systems, please let the thread know if the Switch shows any sort of issues in comparison to the other available systems. Or just let me know. I'm selfish like that. Nintendo Switch seems like the ideal way for me to play a SaGa game, but Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth did prove I can still have the patience for a variety of sidequests on a tv-tethered system.
As far as I could tell there were no major differences between how the game runs on Switch and PS4. (Yes the game has a lower framerate on PS4 too I don't get it)
Anyway, nothing against the dub but it sure would've been nice to have a Japanese voice track option and I'm disappointed that there isn't one. Especially given how clearly in Japan the two different console demos are at the start.
Anyway, nothing against the dub but it sure would've been nice to have a Japanese voice track option and I'm disappointed that there isn't one. Especially given how clearly in Japan the two different console demos are at the start.
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
Get on the Deck
It is the same game engine they used for Scarlet Grace. There's some pretty noticeable input/UI lag in the Switch demo, unfortunately, but for all I know that could've been present in Scarlet Grace too and I just forgot about it. I intend to try it out on my Steam Deck this weekend, but I already know I'm getting it for Switch regardless because that's where all my other SaGa games live!
So I'm more wondering about like... are there any side events not present in the demo that should be? Or is it literally they just removed repeatable battles and that's it? I dunno, the opening segment just felt really sparse, and since it's a demo with tweaked content, I couldn't be sure if that was the "true" game experience or not.
So this seems to be a bug. You can swap between characters with Left or Right on the dpad, not the triggers.
I reached the end of the demo. I think I have a sense for how the game progression goes, and it seems to be a lot more straightforward compared to Scarlet Grace. Of course, I've still only played as Ameya so perhaps the others have different structures.
Ameya's story is fun, but her theme music already started to get grating to me over the course of the demo. She gets a decently varied mix for her starting retinue: 1 monster, 1 puppet, another human spellcaster, and a human bodyguard-type. Monsters feel a bit more reliable here because you have control over which monster skills you want to forget and replace with a different monster.
I know some of this is because I'm better at this battle system, but the early stuff here felt a lot easier than Scarlet Grace too; didn't really encounter anything as potentially deadly as those pigs in SG. Plus the combo system here is much easier to abuse than the unite attacks in SG.
Ameya's story is fun, but her theme music already started to get grating to me over the course of the demo. She gets a decently varied mix for her starting retinue: 1 monster, 1 puppet, another human spellcaster, and a human bodyguard-type. Monsters feel a bit more reliable here because you have control over which monster skills you want to forget and replace with a different monster.
I know some of this is because I'm better at this battle system, but the early stuff here felt a lot easier than Scarlet Grace too; didn't really encounter anything as potentially deadly as those pigs in SG. Plus the combo system here is much easier to abuse than the unite attacks in SG.
I don't really get the level of ire there. Unwinnable opening battles for narrative reasons have been a genre staple since at least Final Fantasy II, and the scan function is completely binary: you hold the button down until it activates and lines up all the points of interest on the map. Its context may shift and develop across a playthrough but there's nothing else to it in the demo as far as I've seen.
I'm playing the other demos and I would honestly avoid this on Switch if you have a choice between platforms. The menu navigation feels really unsatisfying and clumsy with the level of lag present, for a play element that's the most important to nail in a game that's all menus in how you interact with it. It's not really surprising, and surely something one could get used to... but yeah.
I'm playing the other demos and I would honestly avoid this on Switch if you have a choice between platforms. The menu navigation feels really unsatisfying and clumsy with the level of lag present, for a play element that's the most important to nail in a game that's all menus in how you interact with it. It's not really surprising, and surely something one could get used to... but yeah.
You... hold the button down.
I made the mistake of reading the Steam forums for this game as I went to grab the demo. It was kind of disheartening to read all the negativity but I have to remind myself that Steam/PC users collectively are pretty terrible.
Finished the Ameya demo. It could be that her early sections are simply tuned easier than Tsunanori's (you certainly don't have as much choices in where to go, nor are optional Hard/Brutal battles present the way they are for him), but the battle system really started to cohere around here after sort of flailing through it with Tsunanori. Knock-outs happened only once or twice, and I was regularly pulling off Mr. S's trial requirements, which felt pretty good after how rarely I managed to satisfy those criteria in Scarlet Grace's optional battle goals. Even more pumped for the full release now and seeing where the scenarios will go; huge problem to want to play everyone's stories.
I started the PS4 demo and now I am extremely torn; this feels much better than the Switch version. It might be worth it to me to split up my modern SaGa collection with how much better this performance is.
Dang I am actually vibing pretty hard with Tsunanori. Not sure what to make of his party composition choices; 4 Kugutsu is entirely too many for 1 human to make effective use out of long-term, and then his 2nd human character is a mage. Unless... can Kugutsu mimic from other Kugutsu? That could be interesting...
After completing his first world and the other demo, I see even better how this game's progression could play out. He gets to choose 1 of 3 worlds for the next place, whereas Ameya didn't have a choice at all, and 1 of his choices is the same place Ameya goes. So I wonder if Ameya will get more of a choice for her 3rd world.
And yeah, Tsunanori's battle choices were definitely tougher than Ameya's so far. I didn't actually try the Brutal or Hard fight, but there was one side event with another Hard fight that me took 3 tries to win.
After completing his first world and the other demo, I see even better how this game's progression could play out. He gets to choose 1 of 3 worlds for the next place, whereas Ameya didn't have a choice at all, and 1 of his choices is the same place Ameya goes. So I wonder if Ameya will get more of a choice for her 3rd world.
And yeah, Tsunanori's battle choices were definitely tougher than Ameya's so far. I didn't actually try the Brutal or Hard fight, but there was one side event with another Hard fight that me took 3 tries to win.
I played the Steam demo and uh, wow. Diva No. 5 is instantly and consistently thereafter solidifying herself as one of the best protagonists RPGs have seen, from visual design (in both humanoid and mech form), narrative premise, and particularly in performance and personality. She has a Scottish brogue going on which on its own lends a lot of character to her bearing and she is in a word, very sweet to everyone she meets, in a way that's not naive but very deliberately committed to adhering to that baseline. It's somewhat unusual for SaGa because the series is full of heroes who are not particularly heroic in a morally good sense, but in the older definition of the word in pursuing great deeds at whatever that cost may be to themselves or others. If her individual qualities didn't endear herself to me, her companions would, because the default gathering of misfits that are assigned to work with her is an outstanding gallery of weirdos that I immediately latched onto.
For that strong start and the gradual process of learning to play this game, her scenario is what I played most thoroughly out of the three: if there was a battle, I would challenge it, and I managed to hit a groove where I didn't have to walk away from a single one, even though several were rated Hard and one was even Brutal. The win for that latter one was particularly exhilarating and fully reawakened the sensations that Scarlet Grace crafted years ago, in that yes, this is probably the best RPG battle system ever conceived, and working your way through it makes you feel like a brain genius just because the interactions had in it are so flexible and dynamic. The way United Attacks work now might even lower the barrier of entry for the spectacle since it's easier to set them up in their basic configurations, but all the wrinkles added by Chases, Pursuits, Interrupts, Deflects, Counters, Overdrives, Showstoppers... it's overwhelming at first blush but when you start internalizing the rules there's just nothing like it in anything else, and that's on top of the SaGa dopamine of glimmering techs of which you can feast in multiple flavours this time. I've always argued ever since starting to familiarize myself with the series that it contains proportionally the most battles in the genre in relation to other play elements, and the state its mechanics on that front are in now more than justify the emphasis it has on them.
Combination of performance concerns and sense of investment in what I've played so far probably means I'll stick with the Steam release of the game upon full release. Those Switch performance woes aside, what these demos have presented of the game has been absolutely stellar.
For that strong start and the gradual process of learning to play this game, her scenario is what I played most thoroughly out of the three: if there was a battle, I would challenge it, and I managed to hit a groove where I didn't have to walk away from a single one, even though several were rated Hard and one was even Brutal. The win for that latter one was particularly exhilarating and fully reawakened the sensations that Scarlet Grace crafted years ago, in that yes, this is probably the best RPG battle system ever conceived, and working your way through it makes you feel like a brain genius just because the interactions had in it are so flexible and dynamic. The way United Attacks work now might even lower the barrier of entry for the spectacle since it's easier to set them up in their basic configurations, but all the wrinkles added by Chases, Pursuits, Interrupts, Deflects, Counters, Overdrives, Showstoppers... it's overwhelming at first blush but when you start internalizing the rules there's just nothing like it in anything else, and that's on top of the SaGa dopamine of glimmering techs of which you can feast in multiple flavours this time. I've always argued ever since starting to familiarize myself with the series that it contains proportionally the most battles in the genre in relation to other play elements, and the state its mechanics on that front are in now more than justify the emphasis it has on them.
Combination of performance concerns and sense of investment in what I've played so far probably means I'll stick with the Steam release of the game upon full release. Those Switch performance woes aside, what these demos have presented of the game has been absolutely stellar.
Pajaro Pete
(He/Himbo)
I will say that the Ritgrams feel very... like... why are these here, let's be serious.
I'm not playing the demo because I'm busy with other games now and whether or not I'll play this isn't really a question, but I'm enjoying hearing everyone's experiences with it.
Kawazu tweeted that repeatable battles were removed from the demo because if they were there it would allow characters to scale up indefinitely, which makes sense.
So, when the localization director said they had to choose between repeatable battles and carrying over their save file to the fullgame (as is posted above), that's presumably the reason why. You could of course do this in these areas in the full game if you wanted to, but I don't think they want to encourage everyone to do it while they wait for the full game to release (or to give away the ability fully grind a chararacter to the limit for free).
I wouldn't worry about it too much. For better or worse, the series is niche and low budget, and basically any niche Square-Enix game has a bunch of silly Steam forum posts that are all like, "It's a slap in the face to Gamers that the makers of Final Fantasy would release this. You expect me to buy this???" I think you have to remember that a lot of these people are probably 13 years old and/or just have no understanding of why a company would put out games at a variety of scales, or that some people might prefer the smaller games more.
Also, even as someone who loves Scarlet Grace, I definitely understand that path SaGa has taken right now is definitely not for everyone, even if it's very much for me. I could definitely understand why someone who loves Saga Frontier or Minstrel Song or whatever would be turned off by this, even if I don't feel that way at all.
Kawazu tweeted that repeatable battles were removed from the demo because if they were there it would allow characters to scale up indefinitely, which makes sense.
So, when the localization director said they had to choose between repeatable battles and carrying over their save file to the fullgame (as is posted above), that's presumably the reason why. You could of course do this in these areas in the full game if you wanted to, but I don't think they want to encourage everyone to do it while they wait for the full game to release (or to give away the ability fully grind a chararacter to the limit for free).
I wouldn't worry about it too much. For better or worse, the series is niche and low budget, and basically any niche Square-Enix game has a bunch of silly Steam forum posts that are all like, "It's a slap in the face to Gamers that the makers of Final Fantasy would release this. You expect me to buy this???" I think you have to remember that a lot of these people are probably 13 years old and/or just have no understanding of why a company would put out games at a variety of scales, or that some people might prefer the smaller games more.
Also, even as someone who loves Scarlet Grace, I definitely understand that path SaGa has taken right now is definitely not for everyone, even if it's very much for me. I could definitely understand why someone who loves Saga Frontier or Minstrel Song or whatever would be turned off by this, even if I don't feel that way at all.
Detail for an event in a particular region (Yomi) that I adored: that they recorded a 30-second death metal ditty with Dolores growling her heart out, with fully English-localized and performed vocals, and said lyrics directly antagonizing the Warden of Sloth she was belting it out at... yeah, that's one of the most incredible things I've seen and heard come out of this series.
I would've thought the battle rank system had a ceiling based on how much you've progressed the story; one of the game tips implies as much, anyway, and so it doesn't seem like you'd be able to go too crazy with it. But if Kawazu is saying it too then my understanding of how it works exactly must be incomplete.