The SaGa Thread

[gorha]

Another trailer just for Fuse's scenario

 

[Lokii]

Wow SE stealing from Persona 5 again

I dig Fuse's interdimensional spaceship police cruiser ACaB

 

[Peklo]

I never especially wanted Fuse to be more focal than he ended up being in the original release, because he's a perfectly executed Cobra or Lupin III-style pulp protagonist jackass creep, but I'm sure I'll survive him. Look at him try to haul in Kirin.

 

[estragon]

The guy doing the corny detective story voice in that trailer is Benny Matsuyama, who wrote the Fuse Investigation Journal as a tie in for the original game and who is also working on this scenario.

(Also just in case anyone is wondering . . . they put in disclaimers saying that there is no voiced dialogue in the actual game.)

 

[Lokii]

All this SaGa news has me jonesing for some SaGa.

Re: Universe seems pretty okay!

 

[MetManMas]

Personally I am hoping that Fuse's scenario will take him down a peg or two 'cuz he is an asshole and I want him to be miserable.

 

[Wiggy]

There's a tinge of befuddlement and bitterness expressed, sometimes (not really here), towards the seeming level of quality this remaster exhibits, or for its existence at all--ostensibly in favour of other, more loved works. Part of that's because of how poorly SaGa's understood outside of Japan, and partly it's a sensation heightened by the seeming lack of care and attention in how Square Enix maintains other parts of its past, so there's a sort of resentment directed at SaGa--this inexplicable thing--being afforded the premier treatment. It's not something that needs to be "explained", really; the series is demonstrably wonderful and worthwhile to curate, and its main creator and other project-leading folks are there to do it, but what I think is more impressive than any singular release is that this is how they've always treated it, extending far past the mostly recent push to bring the older works to current platforms, worldwide. To briefly summarize most of the significant times a SaGa was re-released, remastered or remade:

• Makai Toushi Sa·Ga remade for the WonderSwan, 2002. Every bit as lovingly attentive a remake as the Final Fantasy remakes for the platform.
• Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song in 2005, providing a total overhaul of the Super Famicom original. A remake that goes above and beyond of what's "required" or expected.
• the DS remakes of SaGa 2 and 3, in 2009 and 2011. In part very faithful treatment of the material, and in others extensive reworkings of it, particularly in the case of the third game which in being brought "in line" with the rest of the series only made it more unconventional in a more general context. Remakes that are unafraid to interact with the material outside of just merely preserving it.
• the Romancing SaGa 2 and 3 remasters of 2016 and 2019. This is where the perception of SaGa having it better than its peers when it comes to preservation mostly comes from, as the games maintain the original aesthetic exactly insofar as character sprites go, and embellish around them in more convincing and artful fashions than other similar projects have. They're not ideal in every instance, but again are thoughtfully executed versions of the original work.
• Scarlet Grace's port of 2018 and later. For the short turnaround from the original release, the intent here seemed to have been primarily to rescue the game from the Vita, and allow other audiences even the chance to play it. The Ambitions release which served as the worldwide debut of the game implemented tons of player feedback suggestions, technical improvements, and added material to the game. Even these smaller releases see them do their utmost in improving the games in meaningful ways.
• the out-in-a-few-weeks Collection of SaGa, for the Game Boy trilogy. Anthology release with the bells and whistles customary to old RPGs re-released today, like a fast-forward function. Total authenticity is what these will offer, in likely good to great quality.

And that's the short release history of how the series has treated itself over the years. I wanted to line this out in an attempt to underline that Frontier's remaster, if it turns out as well as it seems, is not so much an exceptional state of things rather than the status quo for how the series reintroduces and maintains itself, time and again. It's one of the more consistent records of such for any series I can think of.

As someone who has only been getting into the SaGa series this year and has been massively enjoying the games, thank you so much for this writeup. I'm very excited to play this remaster in particular because I have a couple friends for whom SaGa Frontier is their favorite of the series, so having a version of it that's finally "complete," as well as adding things like singular they for T260G sounds incredibly appealing to me.

 

[spines]

collection is up on the eshop! dove right into the first one and played for an hour or so to try and see what i could get out of what is going on before i looked up a bit of basic mechanics stuff...which i'm glad i did, lol. doesn't seem to be a "manual" type feature, which obviously tends to hurt quite a bit with these old rereleases, and especially gameboy games, where there really just aren't many ways to describe everything you might be expected to know in in-game text.

i picked mutant for my character, then made a party of two humans and a monster (who the game seems to have decided is my party's speaker? lol), so i guess i'll see how that works and if this ends up mega grindy as a result. the fast forward will be nice if it comes to that, but to be honest i find the default pace pretty pleasant so far. finished the weird bandit/lizard dungeon mostly due to my main character really starting to scale out, though i'm getting close to expiring the saber she started with and then things might get a bit more tight.

 

[Beowulf]

collection is up on the eshop! dove right into the first one and played for an hour or so to try and see what i could get out of what is going on before i looked up a bit of basic mechanics stuff...which i'm glad i did, lol. doesn't seem to be a "manual" type feature, which obviously tends to hurt quite a bit with these old rereleases, and especially gameboy games, where there really just aren't many ways to describe everything you might be expected to know in in-game text.

i picked mutant for my character, then made a party of two humans and a monster (who the game seems to have decided is my party's speaker? lol), so i guess i'll see how that works and if this ends up mega grindy as a result. the fast forward will be nice if it comes to that, but to be honest i find the default pace pretty pleasant so far. finished the weird bandit/lizard dungeon mostly due to my main character really starting to scale out, though i'm getting close to expiring the saber she started with and then things might get a bit more tight.

To be fair, the manual in the original was only somewhat useful and occasionally lied about how the mechanics worked.

Hey @Mogri, any word on when the LP archives will be accessible? I want to point spines at my FFL LP.

 

[Kazin]

I bought the collection too, I'm going to give these games an honest shot. So far FFL2 seems a bit more fair and less confusing than the first game, though not entirely. My monster, currently a skeleton, has a "X Fire" spell that doesn't seem to show up in the battle menu? I'm not sure how to use it, it doesn't appear even if I scroll all the way down. I've healed up and still nothing.

These games have fantastic music.

 

[Beowulf]

I bought the collection too, I'm going to give these games an honest shot. So far FFL2 seems a bit more fair and less confusing than the first game, though not entirely. My monster, currently a skeleton, has a "X Fire" spell that doesn't seem to show up in the battle menu? I'm not sure how to use it, it doesn't appear even if I scroll all the way down. I've healed up and still nothing.

These games have fantastic music.

xFire means that the character has a weakness to fire. (oFire would mean a resistance.) It's an innate quality, like a robot's oPa/Po, meaning immunity to Paralyze and Poison.

 

[Kazin]

xFire means that the character has a weakness to fire. (oFire would mean a resistance.) It's an innate quality, like a robot's oPa/Po, meaning immunity to Paralyze and Poison.

Ah, okay - that makes sense. This is where a manual would come in handy! At least now I don't have to wonder why I can't cast a spell lol

 

[Octopus Prime]

I think it might just be in 2, but whatever skill you set in the top slot of a Mutant won't ever be swapped out, if there's one you want to keep

 

[Kazin]

I think it might just be in 2, but whatever skill you set in the top slot of a Mutant won't ever be swapped out, if there's one you want to keep

Also good to know. How do you move the skills around so I can do this?

 

[Lokii]

I think a lack of documentation is probably the biggest misstep here. I know it was probably outside the scope of the project and there was likely minimal resources, and that something like Phantasy Star Switch's in-app databases are way out of reach, but some digital manuals would go a long way to helping new players get a toe-hold.

That said I am very excited for SaGa! I'm going to start with 3. That Water Entity wont know what hit him.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Thankfully, having no documentation in 2020 is a wildly different situation than when we had no documentation in the 1990s

 

[Kazin]

Thankfully, having no documentation in 2020 is a wildly different situation than when we had no documentation in the 1990s

This is extremely true, and I'm not going to let the lack ruin the SaGa collection for me, but the aforementioned Phantasy Star built in databases spoiled me for rereleases of old RPGs.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Here's a Transformation simulator for FFL1

The basics of it are that each monster species has about 4-6 tiers, and what monster you turn into depends on which species you start as and which tier of which species it is that you eat. It's effectively like two Pokemon type charts overlapping one another.

FFL2 is much the same but with a bigger bestiary.

And 3 is... err... four of them overlapping

 

[Kazin]

Here's a Transformation simulator for FFL1

The basics of it are that each monster species has about 4-6 tiers, and what monster you turn into depends on which species you start as and which tier of which species it is that you eat. It's effectively like two Pokemon type charts overlapping one another.

FFL2 is much the same but with a bigger bestiary.

And 3 is... err... four of them overlapping

GameFAQs is blocked at work, but this is not. Kawazu wins again, [my employer]

 

[Kazin]

Oh also, I want to point out for anyone on the fence that the faster speed option doesn't mess with the music, which is how you properly do a speed boost in an RPG.

 

[Mogri]

To be fair, the manual in the original was only somewhat useful and occasionally lied about how the mechanics worked.

Hey @Mogri, any word on when the LP archives will be accessible? I want to point spines at my FFL LP.

We have a bead on how we might be able to do it, but I'll need access to some things I can't currently access. I'll ping the appropriate parties again.

 

[Kazin]

I kind of wish you could switch Gameboy Color palettes too, but again, this apparently wasn't done by M2 so I need to lower my expectations. Still, I'm looking forward to putting more time into this after work.

 

[Mightyblue]

SaGa 1 is basically a dry run for 2 (a very Evil Dead 1 and 2 sort of situation), but grinding is pretty modest; you'll end up doing the most with Humans and Robots since they rely on gear and humans on stat up items too, Mutants are sort of a middle ground due to their limited gear slots and RNG-growth natures (i.e, what would become normal for the series by Romancing), and Monsters are tier limited by world.

The game is pretty beatable with any party comp ignoring bugs like the final boss chainsaw kill. SaGa 2's a bit harder in some aspects, but that's also balanced out by the Magicite system.

 

[Sprite]

I’ve never played FFL1. If a character runs out of life points, it’s permadeath, right? And will any replacement just start over at zero?

Also, should I be resetting to keep Mutant abilities I want or just let that slot machine fly?

 

[Lokii]

I’ve never played FFL1. If a character runs out of life points, it’s permadeath, right? And will any replacement just start over at zero?

That's right. A monster death is fairly painless to replace as a few meals will get a new character back to appropriate-ish tiers. A human death means all the money sunk into stat points is gone and is far more painful.

Also, should I be resetting to keep Mutant abilities I want or just let that slot machine fly?

You can try but SaGa 1's mutants are always subject to the whims of the RNG. Attempting to steer their growth most likely means saving after every battle.

 

[Vaeran]

I’ve never played FFL1. If a character runs out of life points, it’s permadeath, right? And will any replacement just start over at zero?

It's been a million years so I could be way wrong, but from my recollection each character starts with 3(?) life hearts that indicate how many times they can be revived. Additional hearts can be purchased but are heck of expensive. No hearts = permadeath.

The secret best part of SaGa 1/FFL1 is the error message when you try to revive someone with no hearts left: "He don't."

SaGa 1 is basically a dry run for 2 (a very Evil Dead 1 and 2 sort of situation), but grinding is pretty modest; you'll end up doing the most with Humans and Robots since they rely on gear and humans on stat up items too, Mutants are sort of a middle ground due to their limited gear slots and RNG-growth natures (i.e, what would become normal for the series by Romancing), and Monsters are tier limited by world.

The game is pretty beatable with any party comp ignoring bugs like the final boss chainsaw kill. SaGa 2's a bit harder in some aspects, but that's also balanced out by the Magicite system.

I don't recall SaGa 1 having playable robots. I thought it was just humans, mutants and monsters. (Maybe I'm misunderstanding your post.)

 

[Destil]

I think it might just be in 2, but whatever skill you set in the top slot of a Mutant won't ever be swapped out, if there's one you want to keep

Yeah, this is 2 only. Note that the mutant must have a free slot *or* four abilities to lean new ones, if you know 3 and carry 5 items you won’t learn any more (which can be fine with two good early rolls, it’s hard to get anything better than their starting AoEs over the full course of the game).

I picked up the collection and it looks great, wish it had a few more display options (FFA in the Mana collection has more) and backgrounds and maybe a transform guide/preview.

 

[Destil]

SaGa 1 starts hard but gets easier as you go, sometimes running into a steep cliff (World 4 in particular has nasty random encounters).

SaGa 2 honestly starts really easy, Robots, Mutants and BabyD are all absurd starting kits that can trivialize the first few worlds. It picks up a bit after monsters start outpacing these.

 

[Sarge]

As far as FFL2 goes, while not the most exciting team in the world, I often would roll with two humans and two mutants. Sometimes, though, I'll swap out a human or a mutant for a robot, but usually the human. While monsters can be powerful at certain points, I find them generally inadequate once you hit the endgame.

It's also entirely possible I didn't get the best monsters in my playthrough, either. So your mileage may vary. There's nothing wrong with using the Human/Mutant/Robot/Monster lineup like the manual suggests, and then you get to play with all the systems.

 

[Destil]

Honestly monsters tend to be terrible until the end game without work or luck. Ghost and Fairy families are almost always good, everything else is pretty hit and miss.

Once you hit the final stairway you'll fight Fenrir and TitanLung on the way down, eating their meat (100% drops) is the only way to get a monster to the final tier, and once they're at that tier they can't drop into a lower tier, just into another family. Very few of the final tier of monsters are legitimately bad, though they fall a bit behind endgame robots and mutants (maybe humans, but I find humans take way more work than the other classes to reach max potential).