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The SaGa Thread

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
I do like how unintentionally weird this game gets because of the technical limitations; there’s only so many sprites for the map so you see a lot of monsters in towns like it’s no big deal. Even the final boss is hanging around towns (that part might be intentional).

And the lack of space for text makes your party look like a wandering group of psychopaths who just kill people with basically no thought whatsoever
FFL2 gets better with the "some monsters are people" and also "some people are monsters" with enemies that are explicitly humans and never drop meat.

Silk Hat hanging around in towns giving hints is 100% intentional and actually foreshadowing the ending.
 

Destil

DestilG
(he/him)
Staff member
There are actual people that don’t drop meat in Legend 1 as well. Magicians, Samurai, Knights.
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Silly question: I don't suppose anyone has see a "translation changes" list or anything like that for the new versions? I'm deathly curious, but I kinda want to replay the WSC remake of FFL rather than the original...
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
For the SaGa 2 DS remake - I'm assuming HP caps once you go over 1000? My human has 1005 HP and hasn't gotten any HP ups in a while. Once I saw it go over 999 I wondered what the cap was, but am I correct in assuming that once you hit 1000+ HP you don't gain any more?
 
For the SaGa 2 DS remake - I'm assuming HP caps once you go over 1000? My human has 1005 HP and hasn't gotten any HP ups in a while. Once I saw it go over 999 I wondered what the cap was, but am I correct in assuming that once you hit 1000+ HP you don't gain any more?

Yes.

Boosts stop after 999 HP and 99 for all stats. You can theoretically go over it with stat boosting items. The in practice max is 1038 HP and 101 for all stats if you get all available stat boosting items and use them at 998 HP and 98 in each stat . . . but that difference is not going to make or break anything.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Yes.

Boosts stop after 999 HP and 99 for all stats. You can theoretically go over it with stat boosting items. The in practice max is 1038 HP and 101 for all stats if you get all available stat boosting items and use them at 998 HP and 98 in each stat . . . but that difference is not going to make or break anything.
Gotcha. Thanks!

The remake is fantastic, by the way, for anyone curious. Some QoL improvements, but it still retains the difficulty of the original for the most part (just like in the Gameboy version, I had to grind up some Agility around Venus's world, for example), and it's a blast. Went with Human (F), Mech, Mutant (M), and Monster this time around, and while I've struggled a bit with the monster, I've come to enjoy the balancing act of figuring out when to and when not to eat meat. I got lucky on the racetrack - I got the meat for all three bosses and my monster is no longer dead weight, it currently is the fastest party member I have, though not the strongest. My human has gotten ridiculously lucky with stat boosts - her HP is at 1005, her STR is in the high 80s, AGI is in the 60s, so for single target damage, she's by far my strongest. My mutant has been, conversely, pretty unlucky with stat ups - his MAG is only in the 40s along with his AGI around the same amount, though his HP is in the 900s at this point. My mech is getting less useful as the game goes on, but the built-in Mech status resists along with a high DEF rating has allowed it to tank some bosses while the more glass cannony people such as my mutant/esper whatever they're called in the remake Fires/Thunders/Blizzards them away.

I'm having a bit of a defense problem with everyone besides my Mech, however. I'm in Edo World right now, and there's some good armor there, but it is expensive as hell (and I spent a ton of money on upgrading my Mech, who was by that point in dire need of it). Still, though - the game is a blast, and reports of it being a lot slower than the GB originals are overstated, so long as you make sure to turn fast forward on. It's a zippy little game, otherwise.
 
So, based off of some good memories of what I know as Final Fantasy Legend 2, and discussion about it due to its release in the switch collection, I decided to give Scarlet Grace a try because of how unreservedly it appears to be recommended around here. I picked it up on my phone, decided that form factor doesn't work for me personally with this game, and grabbed it on Steam, which was a lot more my style. I've been enjoying it, but it feels absolutely punishing at times, and I have a couple of questions that I'm hoping will make it a bit easier, so I can experience all of the other aspects of the game.
  1. It feels like the beginning of the game is just unrelentingly brutal (the comet gave me Urpina's path, which I understand is a fairly typical outcome). After I broke free of the first area things evened out a bit (they can still punish me unexpectedly very easily, but it feels like I have tools to deal with a lot of situations at this point). Is this observation actually true, or was the beginning what I should expect going forward (I'm honestly not sure I have the capability to play all the way through if that's the case, I just don't think I'd be good enough).
  2. Along that line, in the third area I ran into what seemed to be fairly easy set of battles capped by a brutal fight at the end. I squeaked through with a couple of retries, and I'm wondering if it's save to do a bit of grinding at a nearby cave in order to get some LP back? I normally hate that idea, but it should only take 6-10 battles if I understand correctly. My main worry is I've also read that repeating battles increase the difficulty of the game overall, and I find that idea horrifying.
  3. It feels really nice to play a game where you can just kind of do whatever you want, but every site or event feels somewhat relevant. It feels almost completely unguided, but I don't feel any need to use a guide, which is a bit unusual for me. My main hope is that I can't hurt myself too badly by doing this, or that mistakes, in, say, how I upgrade my weapons aren't going to destroy me because of point #1 above.
Anyway, this is my first SaGa game since FFL2, which I probably played 30ish years ago. I may have bounced of one at some point in the intervening years, but I couldn't tell you why at this stage, since I have nothing but fond memories of playing that one, and I really am enjoying Graces when I'm not feeling crushed. Any pointers to help deal with the above issues would be appreciated, I want to enjoy my time with this one as well.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
Is this observation actually true, or was the beginning what I should expect going forward
Yes, the very early game is really tough with pretty much every protagonist unless you're coming in with a new game+ type file or are already really well-versed in the game's mechanics. It smooths out as you upgrade gear, gain ranks with skills, learn new roles, and acquire new formations.
My main worry is I've also read that repeating battles increase the difficulty of the game overall, and I find that idea horrifying.
This is a series-wide SaGa mechanic that is mostly overblown in how impactful it ends up being in practice. But for Scarlet Grace specifically, if you repeat the same fight over and over, it will increase the "difficulty" more slowly compared to doing different fights all over the place.
My main hope is that I can't hurt myself too badly by doing this, or that mistakes, in, say, how I upgrade my weapons aren't going to destroy me because of point #1 above.
Weapon upgrade paths end up being extremely convergent once you get to the end of the smithing system, so there's really only 2 or 3 endgame "normal" weapons for each weapon type.
 
Addressing your two main worries:

Repeating the same battle scales enemies very slowly, so you absolutely can grind if you want to, and the effect of that grinding will be that you will be relatively more powerful than the enemies as the characters who participate in those battles get rubber banded up to around the max of their possible weapon skills and HP for the current level of enemy scaling, while the enemies aren't scaling that fast. If it starts to feel like you're seeing dimishing returns, you probably are so either rotate in new characters or stop. (Without grinding, your characters will basically always be well behind the diminishing returns point relative to enemy scaling, unless there's someone who dies very infrequently who you never need to rotate out.)

In the Vita version of Scarlet Grace, it was theoretically possible to miss skills because you'd run out of base weapons to upgrade (well technically you could grind for drops but that would take forever), but the Ambitions version makes it very easy to get new base weapons and armor, so you really can't miss skills or items (except for some that event-based, I guess) and there's no real downside to upgrading anything whenever you can.

My simplest tip to make the game easier is to get a mage who is good at Water magic, and ideally Water and Earth magic. I also think rapier type weapons are very, very good in this game, especially with someone who has good stats for getting status effects to land. Because healing is rare and/or complicated, the crowd control that rapiers provide with the Sleep inducing attack and their interrupt that can shove enemies to the back of the turn order solves a lot of problems in this game. (Better to not get hit in the first place than to need to heal.)
 
Thank you both, this makes me feel that I can continue to play the game as I want without being punished for it later, which is what I care about. I'm not the biggest fan of grinding things out, but I also would like to run around with a bit more than 1LP on everyone, and it was getting pretty close to that point. One further followup question:

In the Vita version of Scarlet Grace, it was theoretically possible to miss skills because you'd run out of base weapons to upgrade (well technically you could grind for drops but that would take forever), but the Ambitions version makes it very easy to get new base weapons and armor, so you really can't miss skills or items (except for some that event-based, I guess) and there's no real downside to upgrading anything whenever you can.

Do I need to re-buy base weapons\armors at some point for skill purposes? I did notice that my most used characters skill lists are mostly filled in now, but I figured that new ones would come with more advanced weapons, not new bases. I also kind of figured I should mostly keep people on a single type of weapon, so I don't have to relevel all of their weapon levels, but I'm not sure if that's true either. If none of this really matters, than don't worry about it, I'll figure it out as I play, which is preferred anyway.
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
Do I need to re-buy base weapons\armors at some point for skill purposes?
This only applies for when upgrade paths diverge into different sub-types. I forget what the game calls it in the menu, it's the thing where for eg. a sword can be of type Standard, Technical, Curved, etc. There's generally only 1 endgame blacksmith weapon for each kind of weapon, which means it only has 1 subtype for its skill list (there are ways to get other endgame weapons of different subtypes, but it's not the most straightforward thing to find). So that's just a long way to say "Yes, but only if you're really dedicated to learning all the skills for a weapon type."
I also kind of figured I should mostly keep people on a single type of weapon, so I don't have to relevel all of their weapon levels, but I'm not sure if that's true either.
There's certainly some value in branching out to 2 or even 3 different weapons for a single character, but I also wouldn't advise doing that until you feel more comfortable with the game. It isn't that rough to level up someone later with a weak skill level, because of inherent rubber-banding in the character growth systems.
 
I figured that new ones would come with more advanced weapons, not new bases.

There are new skills on higher level weapons, but generally your characters are not going to learn every skill for a certain weapon over the course of a playthrough unless they're someone who basically never leaves your party and they never change weapons and you do a lot of side content. You have some control over what skills you learn based on what you equip, so in some (most?) cases it might be worth it to prioritize a low level skill you missed instead of aiming for a high level skill. A lot of those early skills are kind of bread-and-butter actions that expand strategic possibilities, but the the highest level skills tend to be different ways to deal big damage numbers that you're realistically not going to have enough BP to use very often, so in general I'd prioritize filling in lower-level skills over flashy endgame skills. If you've got one skill that basically takes up all your BP for that turn in order to hit hard, you're probably good. (There are some high level skills with good effects, too, but if you can stun someone or put someone to sleep or push their turn later for 1BP and then everyone else in your party also gets to do something with that much of an effect for 1-2BP, that's probably helping a lot more than one person hitting very hard and maybe also having a useful effect.)

In the original Vita game, because access to base weapons was more limited, if you fully upgraded for example your only two maces (for example), then it would be possible that you would have no way to get lower level mace skills that were only on different mace types you no longer have access to because they reached the end of their upgrade path. But now it shouldn't be an issue. Honestly I shouldn't have brought this up and I only thought of this as problem because I played the Vita version first, it probably does not even register to anyone as a concern in the Ambitions release.
 

Octopus Prime

Mysterious Contraption
(He/Him)
In FFL2, do robots also get the benefit of martial arts strengthening when their durability gets low, and Of so, does it take the reduced, regenerating durability Robots get from their gear into account?
 

Destil

DestilG
(he/him)
Staff member
In FFL2, do robots also get the benefit of martial arts strengthening when their durability gets low, and Of so, does it take the reduced, regenerating durability Robots get from their gear into account?
Yes, robot don't degrade martial arts on equip/removal.
 
Thanks again for the answers, sounds like I can just play the game and not worry too much, and dive into the systems as I feel things out.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Is there a way to increase humans or espers/mutants natural defense stat in the SaGa 2 remake? I ask because I can't seem to get their defense very high with equipment. Or, at least, not as high as I'd like. My robot and monster both have defense in the 80s - but neither human or esper/mutant go above 60, and even then I'd like to boost my esper/mutant a bit becuase I'd like to give him both a Flare book and a healing staff for the last boss, rather than take up 3+ inventory slots on defensive equipment... All of this is because the second form of the last boss's (as far as I've got so far) adds do about 100 damage to my robot and monster, while doing 300-400 to my human and esper/mutant. I would like to mitigate this so it's not a crapshoot that they survive a round!
 

Beowulf

Son of The Answer Man
(He/Him)
Is there a way to increase humans or espers/mutants natural defense stat in the SaGa 2 remake? I ask because I can't seem to get their defense very high with equipment. Or, at least, not as high as I'd like. My robot and monster both have defense in the 80s - but neither human or esper/mutant go above 60, and even then I'd like to boost my esper/mutant a bit becuase I'd like to give him both a Flare book and a healing staff for the last boss, rather than take up 3+ inventory slots on defensive equipment... All of this is because the second form of the last boss's (as far as I've got so far) adds do about 100 damage to my robot and monster, while doing 300-400 to my human and esper/mutant. I would like to mitigate this so it's not a crapshoot that they survive a round!
The Parasuit should still be in the Nasty Dungeon; that's a full defensive suite for your mutant in one equipment slot.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
The Parasuit should still be in the Nasty Dungeon; that's a full defensive suite for your mutant in one equipment slot.
Thank you for pointing this out - the game wouldn't let me equip it on my mutant because he also had a helmet and gloves on. I had to unequip them to even equip what the game calls the "Power Exosuit" which increases his defense stat beyond the stuff he even had equipped, and also boosting some of his other stats a little. I'd put the suit in storage because I assumed it was another mech piece of equipment, as I'd already equipped one to the mech lol
 

YangusKhan

does the Underpants Dance
(He/Him/His)
I think that's a remnant of armor from the Romancing SaGa games, now that I think about it. Those games had armor suits where you couldn't be wearing anything except shirts and accessories to equip them. Those were also in SaGa Frontier IIRC.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
I think that's a remnant of armor from the Romancing SaGa games, now that I think about it. Those games had armor suits where you couldn't be wearing anything except shirts and accessories to equip them. Those were also in SaGa Frontier IIRC.
...

This also explains why I couldn't find use for some equipment in Romancing SaGa 2. See, this is why I ask TT! lol
 

Destil

DestilG
(he/him)
Staff member
Thank you for pointing this out - the game wouldn't let me equip it on my mutant because he also had a helmet and gloves on. I had to unequip them to even equip what the game calls the "Power Exosuit" which increases his defense stat beyond the stuff he even had equipped, and also boosting some of his other stats a little. I'd put the suit in storage because I assumed it was another mech piece of equipment, as I'd already equipped one to the mech lol
You can mostly get away with strapping shields onto your robots (as they boost `bot defense), though by the end game there's always the Tank cannon anyway.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
You can mostly get away with strapping shields onto your robots (as they boost `bot defense), though by the end game there's always the Tank cannon anyway.
Robots are weird because I've got like 6 weapons slapped on mine to make it do more damage, including the Gungnir which rules on robots because it's rechargeable... but I have to have that many weapons it to max out its attack stat. I guess I can turn it into a pure tank and put it in the front of my party...
 

Destil

DestilG
(he/him)
Staff member
The best weapons have roughly 32 in a stat, so you can max out a robot with 3-4 slots. Then Selffix and PA/PO leaves at least two for defense.

Or just add a laser.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
The best weapons have roughly 32 in a stat, so you can max out a robot with 3-4 slots. Then Selffix and PA/PO leaves at least two for defense.

Or just add a laser.
I'll have to look up what I have equipped to it later when I can access my DS, but iirc at least one of my weapons is there for some agility, too. Maybe two? More than once, I've wanted to drop the PA/PO for another piece of equipment lol
 

Sarge

hardcore retro gamin'
I remember Lasers being very effective weapons. Been a while, so I've forgotten a lot of the finer details, though.
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
The final boss is ridiculous. It's not so much he kills me, it's that I run out of weapon uses before he dies. Guess I have to grind up my mutants stats or something because he's not dying fast enough. Also my robot can't hit him with anything besides Gungnir, which only has 15 uses - he has Sun Swords otherwise, and next to no agility, and just misses every attack with those. Does anyone know what the lasers are called in the DS remake? IIRC those are 100% accurate in the Gameboy version, so I might stick a few of whatever those are called on him (I ask because I've not seen anything called "laser" in the DS remake).
 

Mightyblue

aggro table, shmaggro table
(He/Him/His)
Do the Haniwas still drop Seven swords? (which, yes, does still entail reliably beating them without burning a ton of resources)
 

Kazin

did i do all of that?
(he/him)
Do the Haniwas still drop Seven swords? (which, yes, does still entail reliably beating them without burning a ton of resources)
Probably. I don't even know how to encounter one of those, though my team did comment on seeing one in a little cutscene thing.
 
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