SaGa Emerald Beyond

[Pajaro Pete]

It certainly feels the same way to me. Administrator Gold is the only character I've really gotten multiple times so far, and Mechs don't exactly benefit from being active in multiple runs as much as everyone else does.

Checking this guide, it does appear that Emily can join Bonnie and Formina too, but it does appear to be something that happens in a different time and place.

 

[YangusKhan]

This could be a biased viewpoint caused by the routes I've played first, but I think this is a smidge too stingy with extra party members relative to Scarlet Grace.

I think this is also compounded by how complex the scenario writing and choices can get. I did Mare Nostrum with Siugnas last night, it was my 2nd time visiting it across my 3 files, so it was a new remix of the story. In the end I didn't end up getting any new characters, even though I know for a fact that both Ivar and Azure in there are recruitable, somehow, so I'm pretty sure it's because I just didn't make the proper choices to get them. I wasn't about to reload some earlier saves just to replay like 2 hours and hope for a different outcome.

 

[estragon]

Checking this guide, it does appear that Emily can join Bonnie and Formina too, but it does appear to be something that happens in a different time and place.

I think this is also compounded by how complex the scenario writing and choices can get.

Interesting. This particular one could definitely be a case of there being so many variables that most guides aren't complete yet. In any case, I still do wish it seemed a little easier to identify an optional party member who you could pick up relatively consistently across routes.

 

[estragon]

I'm now immediately happier about the party members across runs situation because when I went to the world connected to the default member of Siugnas' party I like the least, I got the option to ignore his quest entirely and just do a quest to recruit one of the other protagonists instead. Minor gripe resolved.

 

[estragon]

Finished with Siugnas, which ended with a three phase boss fight where the second and third phases both gave separate achievements (Thrill Seeker and The Ultimate).

I ended up not making any party members into Knights. I've heard that something about making people into Knights makes something about Siugnas' last boss easier, but I gave it a blind run in the hope I could get through the run without doing any more party tinkering or upgrading, and it ended up working out. I had Mido as a longsword/rapier user, and Humans have a longsword skill that hits all enemies that move after him with a chance to Stun (effectively just hitting all enemies most of the time, because he moves early and had a Role to help him go even earlier), and a rapier skill that hits all enemies and undoes all Reserve arts. Between those two skills, it made the accompanying boss support enemies with a high guard rate a lot easier to deal with. If I understand correctly, he woud have lost those as a Knight because those are Human exclulsive, so I'm glad I gave it a blind run before converting everyone into Knights, since those skills carried me through. Plus, now I have more materials in reserve for whatever comes next.

I'm playing scenarios from the ones I'm least interested into to the ones I'm most interested in, but I ended up really liking Siugnas' scenario. He seems to get a lot of unique events because of his role as a Dark Lord, and the focus on exploring the worlds his initial party members are from adds even more, creating something resembling the companion system in Scarlet Grace, which was an element that was missing a bit for me during Mido's run. I also liked that the tone was more Adams Family for readers of Boys Love comics than actually edgy. It's comedy dark, not actual dark.

I feel like I have a grasp on how magic works now, and by the end of the run Philospher was a pretty effective mage. It definitely feels toned down a bit from Scarlet Grace, but I think the flilpside of that is that it's now possible to be a good mage and a good melee character. Also, if you have strong spells in your skill list, there's a chance of using them during an overdrive, so you can end up firing off a spell that normally requires two turns of charge time for a low BP cost with 0 charge time. There's a luck element to that so it's not very reliable, but when it happens it's very satisfying.

In Siugnas' final area, there was a hilarious fight that kept scaling to ridiculous levels every time you won, to the extent that the time I lost that enemy was doing damage in the multiple 1000s. Maybe it's theoretically winnable if you've done countless loops and have the best of everything with some very tweaked build to reliably Stun or Paralyze, but I thought it was a funny way to do a "you're not actually meant to win" style encounter.

I was a bit unsure which of the next three to start next, but I think I'm going with Ameya since it sounds like even more than the others she's built around doing multiple loops before it opens up, so I want to get at loop in rather than putting her off.

Also, FYI, there is at least some support for this game planned, because Kawazu is very active on Twitter taking bug reports and talking about some UI changes planned for the next update, like having some visual indicator of what equipment you currently have materials to upgrade.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1787487062545018904

 

[estragon]

Finished Ameya and started Diva No 5. In general, I'm liking this more the more time I spend with it. It definitely has more friction than Scarlet Grace due to its complexity, though, for better or for worse. I'm enjoying it and growing to like it more over time, but I can see why someone wouldn't.

Ameya was hilariously short for me, because the first world was one I'd already done with both Siugnas and Mido, and Ameya had the option to just say "I'm just here to find my cats" and leave without doing anything there, and the next world was new but fairly short, especially with my party equipped with stuff from two prior runs and knowledge of how to efficiently learn spells. Doing Ameya 3rd really drives home just how busted her scenario's unique equipment is, because the run itself was very short, but already everything but her HP is more or less equal to a character ready for endgame. They really set her up to be the ultimate mage.

Question: Does Ameya keep equipment, stat boosts, and newly learned spells from her previous runs if you do a second run with her, or does she start from scratch every time due to her scenario until you find cats again? What about if you're carrying her over into another character who can recruit her, assuming that's possible?

With, Diva No. 5 I basically just experience the intro cutscene, looked at her party, and decided I needed a break. Even though it's my 4th scenario, she has enough weird stuff going on with her intial team that I was too overwhelmed to start equipping anyone and setting them up for encounters. There's two characters that seem human-ish, but seem to have monster abilities also, and I think one of the two is also an Ephemeral I saw in the PR materials. Diva's initial group really throws you into the deep end of a bunch of new character types. Plus, I never really used a mech in previous runs, and there's a full on monster and I barely scratched the surface of monsters in Ameya's brief run. I don't think this is necessarily bad, but the variety of character types introduces a lot ot friction to Emerald Beyond across multiple playthroughs, just because there's so much to learn.

It's not bad friction, but there's a lot more to master. Ameya's brief run was like a little victory lap where I could just apply what I learned and also the carry over equipment from the previous two scenarios, but now with Diva it's like I still don't know anything at all. The game is very stuffed full. As someone who played Scarlet Grace an obscene amount, this is probably better for me because I don't feel like I'm immediately just coasting through, but it's definitely daunting.

 

[YangusKhan]

Does Ameya keep equipment, stat boosts, and newly learned spells from her previous runs if you do a second run with her, or does she start from scratch every time due to her scenario until you find cats again? What about if you're carrying her over into another character who can recruit her, assuming that's possible?

She loses all the things she gets from her cats when you re-start her own file, but if you find her in someone else's she has everything. So, she retains all her spells minus the Metal ones in her own file, and in other files she keeps the Metal ones. (I am pretty sure). You certainly get to keep her Cat gear when playing as someone else, though she is the only one who can equip it. Knowing what I know now about Showstoppers and BP management, she is incredibly set up to do some disgusting things with Showstoppers.

 

[YangusKhan]

Finished with Siugnas, which ended with a three phase boss fight where the second and third phases both gave separate achievements (Thrill Seeker and The Ultimate).

I ended up not making any party members into Knights. I've heard that something about making people into Knights makes something about Siugnas' last boss easier, but I gave it a blind run in the hope I could get through the run without doing any more party tinkering or upgrading, and it ended up working out.

I also finished my Siugnas final yesterday. I Knighted 2 people. There's a lot going on with his final boss, but the game does an excellent job at throwing you bones to deal with it. All his Blood techs are Unblockable, and his Sanguine gear grants Death immunity roles on top of various status effect resistance. I dunno if the boss does Death for other characters, but yeah that's a real dick move to throw on top of everything else. But anyway, that meant phase 1 was super easy for the most part since I could just ignore the Haniwa monster's block timing (when they Tackle, they block until after their turn). There was also definitely something going on with the boss' actions on the timeline and being right or left of its attacks, but I didn't really figure that out.

I ended up having to fight its 3rd phase two times, and the last time it came down to the wire with Warrior only alive and Siugnas petrified. But Warrior popped off a Showstopper and got to use all of his interrupt techs, which dealt just an obscene amount of damage.

For my next file I've decided on Bonnie & Formina. I've switched around their initial weapon types slightly and gave Formina martial arts instead of guns, and Bonnie guns instead of martial arts. 3 cats is entirely too many monsters for one party in this game, so I'm looking to dump 1 of them ASAP.

 

[estragon]

She loses all the things she gets from her cats when you re-start her own file, but if you find her in someone else's she has everything. So, she retains all her spells minus the Metal ones in her own file, and in other files she keeps the Metal ones. (I am pretty sure). You certainly get to keep her Cat gear when playing as someone else, though she is the only one who can equip it. Knowing what I know now about Showstoppers and BP management, she is incredibly set up to do some disgusting things with Showstoppers.

Interesting. The more I learn about it, the more I like the complex ways various scenarios interconnect like this. Ameya's own scenario is very short, but if you just do it once she's set to be an extremely OP mage if you run into elsewhere. However, one of her preset party members is the puppet Bo, and you can only earn Souls and adjust Bo's Souls while playing as Mido. But also, Mido also has a pretty short campaign with very few default human party members, so as a puppet Bo is more able to learn skills from humans while playing as Ameya. (And presumably also future longer Mido loops where you can do more recruiting, but I still think it's an interesting interaction...)

 

[YangusKhan]

Ameya is a bit like Mido too, because her subsequent runs can be much longer than the initial one. I still have an open question whether it's possible to recruit Mido + another Kugutsu with any other characters; I can think of situations where you can get 1 or the other, but not both. And even if you could, would you even have access to their unique souls? And yeah, my Boh learned a decent amount of stuff in my Ameya files (since I made her a 1H gun user), so that'll be a nice leg-up when I do Mido later.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

Oh the menu update is nice. Everything actually responds the way you'd expect it to.

 

[estragon]

Nearing the end of the Diva scenario and liking the game more and more.

I realize now I incorrectly assumed that Scarecrow was a monster or ephemeral, but he's actually a weird looking human. So, I think him, Ameya, and Mido are the three human characters who are probably the easiest humans to pick up and raise across multiple loops. Is there anyone else?

edit: I think Dolores is another, now that I think about it.

 

[estragon]

Diva's last boss was definitely tough. It does seem like it would reward you for going in with an largely mech party, with a bunch of AoE status effects that mechs are immune to. It probably wouldn't take a lot of setup to throw in an extra mech or two at the end to tank those abilities to protect the non-mechs. I didn't do this and just managed to get lucky and squeak out a win retrying the final phase, but it seems like that would be one solution to make things easier...

Thinking about whether or not I want to do Mido or Ameya or both again before Bonnie and Formosa... Hmmm....

 

[estragon]

Thinking about whether or not I want to do Mido or Ameya or both again before Bonnie and Formosa... Hmmm....

I ended up doing three more Mido runs, which more or less finishes him out. Technically there are apparently two endings of his that I've not seen yet, though. One is only available as the bad end on a second playthrough, and you can't go back to 2nd cycle version of Mido's scenario once you hit the third cycle. The other is the the "I'd rather not fight a final boss" type option in the final cycle, which I mght potentially see if I want to try to visit all worlds with Mido and/or want to change Bo's equipped souls for an Ameya playthrough. Mido's 3rd cycle bosses have some of the nasty tricks that Diva's do, so I can definitely see doing the no boss route if I want to do more cycles.

Emerald Beyond has a funny extension of how in Scarlet Grace you would mostly (I think there were some exceptions) recruit party members by choosing the dialogue of the party member being recruited (e.g. Your protagonist would automatically ask, "Do you want to come along?" and then you'd select the potential recruits responce.) Here, Mido's big final choice at the end of the story isn't choosing what he says or does, but rather you choose the motivation of the antagonist, creating the backstory behind Mido's scenario. So, as a player, you're not so much in control of Mido as in control of the universe he exists in. Your narrative reward for getting to the end is that you get to pick the domino that set things in motion. It's an interesting example of the general philosophy behind this game, which has a lot of choices but often isn't really about player or protagonist agency.

I've been using a guide more freely on these Mido cycles, and it's fun how you can definitely see how the huge number of variations makes it difficult to fully catalog, even after a few weeks. I took Mido to a world where I saw a guide note that only Siugnas could recruit a certain character there, but then I recruited them with Mido with no issue.

There seem to be some worlds that track progress across all protagonists, and other worlds that track each protagonist's trips individually. One world I've been to very often seemed to maybe just give me the option of which variation of it I wanted this time, maybe as an unlock for having seen all the options? I'm not sure, though. Most worlds start with just one option, and this time it let me pick one of 4 openings instead of the usual 1, and I would guess that's picking which of the possible variations I wanted to go through...

 

[YangusKhan]

I finished my first Tsunanori file and I think I immediately want to do another one; I started it just to see how it was different, and it's intriguing enough to grab me into wanting more. Also, just, in general, the way I like to do SaGa character growth jives very well with shorter playthroughs (mine ended around 14 hours).

Diva is still gonna have to wait for her first clear...

 

[estragon]

I've been too busy to play this recently, but I dipped in again very briefly because another patch is out.

They made more improvements to the UI. Between the two patches, the feel of playing the game has improved significantly since launch. I'm playing on PC, so I imagine that the Switch version is still pretty sluggish, but on better hardware I think it's now reached a point I'm pretty happy with. It's too bad it wasn't there at launch, because the UI friction probably did a lot of damage to word of mouth around the game, but unfortunately this is the state of things these days more often than not.

The only big change I would want now is an in-battle fast forward like in Scarlet Grace, because the game is built around loops and at this point I've seen more or less everything.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

Back at it in the Emerald Beyond, and finally got back to finishing up Bonnie and Formina's story after stalling out about halfway through. I was getting pretty worried about tackling the final boss because of how weak my team was feeling overall, but the final world I attempted (Vermiglio) had everyone gaining stats and glimmering new techs like crazy. Like, Scarecrow (finally) joined in the penultimate world I did with them, and he was able to get up to par and glimmer all the good techs he needed for the final boss in the final world.

The last boss itself seemed much easier than it did in Siugnas's route. I don't know if my BR was just that much lower, or if Siugnas's version has different AI/abilities, or what (Supporting fire from Tristan every two rounds did not make much difference). Final squad was Guinevere (1H Swords and the Turn Order Up Role for Airswell maxxing), Formina (1H Guns for Interrupts), Bonnie (Martial Arts, mostly for Pressure Point), Scarecrow (2H Swords for Flowing Slash/Vertical Slash), and Minstrel (Guardian Program and Frenetic Advance).

I'm on Diva 5's scenario now. Her team feels like... A Lot. Diva and Boudica are probably gonna be the only girlie who stick around the whole time, because I just... don't like working with Monster Skills or Ephemerals. Since Crowrealm was one of her starting options, I picked up Scarecrow again and I think this time instead of him being my 2H Sword guy he'll be my 1H Gun guy. He's got the Dexterity for it.

Thoughts:
I don't care for the Trading or the Trial mechanics. The Trials are fine in concept, but constantly having to manage them is a pain. You can set them to auto cycle, but then you'll end up on like, "do a spell combo" and "kill all enemies with instant death attacks" just sitting there. Same goes for Trading - it's just constant managing, and even with the UI/menu updates it's still really tedious to constantly juggle after every battle.

Being able to do sidegrades to different gear paths is good, but aside from the obvious "main" upgrade component bottlenecks (Ironstone/Magic Stone/Obsidian), it feels like there's a lot of materials that are weirdly difficult to come by.

Siugnas's game really is the high point so far.

Bonnie and Formina's game really made me wish it were easier to recruit characters, because their starting team is just absolute garbage.

I'm still missing like... four worlds? I haven't officially been to Great Tree, Brightholme, or Capitol City. I have no idea what the last one I'm missing is.

 

[YangusKhan]

I don't care for the Trading or the Trial mechanics. The Trials are fine in concept, but constantly having to manage them is a pain. You can set them to auto cycle, but then you'll end up on like, "do a spell combo" and "kill all enemies with instant death attacks" just sitting there. Same goes for Trading - it's just constant managing, and even with the UI/menu updates it's still really tedious to constantly juggle after every battle.

This is a shame, truly. I actually re-bought this game on Steam because the UI input lag on Switch was just too much of a bummer. And the UI responsiveness is noticeably better on Steam, but of course there's still a lot of tedious menu-ing for managing Trials and Trading.

Bonnie and Formina's game really made me wish it were easier to recruit characters, because their starting team is just absolute garbage.

Yeah their starting team isn't great. But they do you give you Guinevere once you finish Avalon with them, which is technically their 2nd world but feels more like their actual intro world.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

Doing Capitol City and this whole Election storyline is... Very Funny, considering, you know, Current Events. Just everything about it, from the way the Newscaster and the Pundit talk, to what the Issues are, it's all so....

 

[Pajaro Pete]

about halfway through Diva's game. didn't get the option to recruit anyone in Cinq or Capitol City despite there being eight characters running around between those locations. the boss of Capitol City wrecked me pretty bad and i only squeaked out a win because he delayed Scarecrow into a Showstopper.

fortunately Miyako City was an option in my next junction visit, and it has both infinitely Easy Battles and (seemingly always) the option to recruit Mido so that was an easy choice. Blathe got benched, i know she can get a lot of really cool techs but Ephemerals are too much of a liability (though as i understand it, one of her Late Gen abilities protects the party from bad status...). i'll still need to hunt down a replacement for Imakoo, although he's got a Stun/Delay move and a Defense Down move, so he has enough to make himself somewhat useful in most situations. is he one world/diverse heavens material as it stands though? probably not.

i've also been experimenting with magic for the first time, really. i didn't realize Holy Water hit the whole party, so that's an actual swell thing to have on hand. is Wall of Air a similar deal?

it really is annoying that Obsidian showed up like four times in a row on the trade menu, asking for Magic Stones that i literally just used. it definitely feels like the trade menu taunts you with trades that it knows you can't complete.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

staying up til 1 am trying to defeat the earth dragon in diva's brightholm scenario, only to discover after the sixth attempt that if you actually let it get to a party wipe instead of smashing the reattempt button the game just moves on >>>

oh well, at least Mido and Dolores maxed out their Parry techs, and he glimmered Air Swell. i probably did waste a lot of useful materials trying to craft anything with fire resistance. tech wise we should be in pretty good shape for the final boss - i still want Mightier Than The Sword on Dolores, but she's got the Threat Response, and that's (more or less) the most important one.

 

[MrChris]

about halfway through Diva's game. didn't get the option to recruit anyone in Cinq or Capitol City despite there being eight characters running around between those locations. the boss of Capitol City wrecked me pretty bad and i only squeaked out a win because he delayed Scarecrow into a Showstopper.

[. . .]

i've also been experimenting with magic for the first time, really. i didn't realize Holy Water hit the whole party, so that's an actual swell thing to have on hand. is Wall of Air a similar deal?

The game pulls kind of a jerk move on Diva with Cinq, since you only get to recruit someone if you choose not to take the reward the priest offers at the end of the scenario. As far as magic goes, I regret to inform you that Wall of Air only protects a single character, although 15 turns is a long time. I don't find it especially useful, although you could do worse than to throw it onto whoever has Holy Water at the beginning of a battle, if you're worried about status effects; it's probably easier and cheaper than assigning someone to use Deflect or a similar defensive move to shield your water magic caster from debilitating status effects.

The only other really useful support spell I've found is Song of Souls or whatever the second-tier fire spell is called, which gives you a party-wide attack buff while also clearing enmity. Like most of the non-damaging spells, it's really easy to get the cost down to 1 BP, making it the most cost-effective buff I've seen thus far. But really, Holy Water seems to be easily the best of the low-level support spells, such that it's probably worthwhile to stick with the Water Tribe on your first trip to Cinq, or to do whatever you need to do to get a Tumbler when it shows up on the trade menu.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

i don't even think i got the option to get a reward in Cinq with Diva, even though i focused on the water tribe exclusively.

but yeah, it's v funny that most of my characters had max rank Holy Water before they were able to learn Sharp Pain at all.

 

[YangusKhan]

Magic learning feels really odd in this one. There's like certain stat thresholds where you only start learning higher tier spells, otherwise it just won't happen at all. It's a combination of Intelligence, elemental skill level, and staff skill level. This is essentially what makes Ameya so much easier to learn spells with in her own scenario because her Intelligence can max out very fast.

 

[Pajaro Pete]

And that's Diva's scenario cleared. That sure was an ending huh. I might jump back into Mido's and try to do his actual storyline, but I'm definitely passing on Ameya's full story.

I'm not sure how I'd even go about ranking the characters scenarios. Mido's first run is basically a glorified tutorial. Ameya has annoying music and an annoying meta progression system, but I like the structure of her game and running around Miyako playing Magical Girl. Siugnas's probably feels the most Complete Experience, but it also feels like it'd have the least variety in multiple playthroughs (unless his harem's storylines change on even playthroughs). Bonnie and Formina's party is awful and the structure of their scenario is like a less interesting version of Ameya's, but theoretically they have the most freedom to go wherever. Then you have Diva, with her absolute banger of a map theme, who only has a few mandatory worlds and a lot of optional ones, but her mandatory events seem almost identical to the normal versions (Siugnas's Harem was at least bringing something to the table for their events), and she doesn't really seem to have much else going on with her game structure.

Technically I've popped the "I've been to every world" achievement but I'm still missing a few passports. Grelon is still The Worst, it's long, it's repetitive, the storyline isn't interesting, and there being like 10 possible outcomes is insane given how little control the player seems to have on the outcomes? I liked Vermiglio the first time I went through, but when I went back in Diva's scenario is was almost identical (I also made the mistake of Doing Everything in my first visit, so I ended up with The Double Boss, and now if I want The True Boss I would have to visit it four more times and I just don't expect I'll be doing that, to be quite honest!). Yomi and Crowrealm are very short and sweet, although I've been to Crowrealm 3.5 times now the story has largely played out the same except I guess whether Engineer/Professor/Wiseman is the primary human contact. I expect Kosmos will be in the same boat when I revisit. Great Tree and Avalon's Board Game Realness is... fine? I know Avalon has a lot of different things you can aim for, recruitment wise, but Great Tree seemed kinda pointless (fortunately Diva was given the option to dip almost immediately lmao). I appreciate the effort though! Providence and Brighthome will require further visits to see what's different. If Providence is home to a bunch of randomized visions, that's awesome. If it's just mostly the same ones over and over, that's less awesome, but I guess it gives you the option to fuck around and cause problems for comedy purposes. It's my understanding you're actually expected to pick your destinations in Brighthome on future visits.

 

[estragon]

I am the freak who is considering buying Vampire Survivors for the first time because of the free Emerald Beyond crossover DLC (???).

 

[spines]

there are two of us!! i was actually laughing earlier today as i thought "i might literally be the only person who is finally thinking of trying vampire survivors a little bit after this." my very first reaction was pretty cynical but apparently the developer is a huge fan and pushed for this and i guess square is pretty fine getting free publicity for a game that i have the impression had a pretty disappointing launch (based on steam and psn reviews and ratings, it seems like revenge of the seven sold better by an order of magnitude). i really hope this gets more people to try it out...

 

[Peklo]

Vampire Survivors is very referential of other video games the dev likes to begin with but the ℕ𝕆 𝔽𝕌𝕋𝕌ℝ𝔼 SaGa Frontier nod as a weapon evolution certainly tipped off the possibility of a collab like this somewhere down the line.

 

[YangusKhan]

I am so amazed this happened. poncle is such a real one.