What's a MAGI, anyway? Let’s Play Final Fantasy Legend 2

[Beowulf]

Final Fantasy Legend 2, known in Japan as SaGa 2: Hihou Densetsu (Roughly “SaGa 2: Legend of the Hidden Treasure”), was release in the US in 1991 and was received by yours truly as a birthday gift the following year. It was one of the few rpgs available for the Game Boy—at the time, the only system I owned—and my love of the genre was just blossoming.

I’m going to recommend reading my LPs of Final Fantasy Legend, the game that came before, and Final Fantasy Legend 3, the game that came after. Why did I take so long to do this one? Well, that’s a complicated answer, but it’s a combination of there being a lot of very thorough LPs out there already and this being my least favorite of the trilogy. But it still holds a special place in my heart, so you’re going to get a proper Beowulf experience of it.

I’m not going to post 100% of the manual, but I do want to hit some important highlights.

Like Final Fantasy Legend, your characters are defined by their races rather than their classes. There are a few differences from that game, though: Humans now gain stats randomly after battles depending on the weapons they use. Mutants also keep that growth strategy and still acquire special abilities randomly, but now you can control which ability gets replaced.

Monsters still change form into other monsters by eating meat dropped by enemies. This version of the system is much less breakable, unfortunately: There’s no method for getting a top-tier monster in the first world anymore.

Robots are new in this game: They have 7 unrestricted equipment slots (that is, they can wear multiple suits of armor or four helmets, which humans and mutants can’t) and their stats are derived from the things they’re equipped with. Also, weapons halve their uses when equipped on a robot, but until the robot removes them, resting at an inn returns them to that value. So as long as a weapon is equipped on your robot, it isn’t really breakable and functions like mutant or monster skills. Handy!

The manual gives a few tips to navigating these changes.

Important to note that this is not a challenge run or even a super-thorough mechanics run (though I’m going to comment on those from time to time). So I’m going to take the party I think is the most fun: 1 Human, 2 Mutants, 1 Robot.

The manual also gives us a breakdown of how to use weapons and items. The manual is not actually terribly helpful in this regard.

The game also came with a pack-in map, however, and one side of it was a full list of all the weapons, armor and spellbooks in the game, with such useful details as their price, how much damage they did, and how much bonus HP they give a robot. This is invaluable data, because there are no in-game hints regarding how useful any given weapon or armor is.

Nintendo Power also had a wonderful feature on the game in issue #27.

They introduce some of the other differences from FFL1 (more enemies in battles, a note-keeping feature and three save slots) that all seemed like big deals at the time.

The Nintendo Power feature heavily spoiled parts of the game (as did the maps on the flipside of the pack-in) so I’m going wait and show relevant parts as I go along.

But now for important audience participation! My party will be 1 Human, 2 Mutants, 1 Robot. Please provide me names for one Unlikely Hero Out To Find His Father, two Magically-Endowed Youths, and one Extremely Helpful Robotic Companion.

 

[Mogri]

The character limit is 4, right?

I'm interested to learn what makes this your least favorite.

 

[Mr Bean]

John, Paul, Gorg, and RNG0?

 

[FelixSH]

I'm a bit sad, that you don't have a monster in your party, but it's also understandable. Looking forward to the LP.

Don't monsters just get a new set of abilities, when they transform? Just wondering about the "restore all of their abilities" part, that would imply that they can keep at least part of their abilities.

 

[Beowulf]

The character limit is 4, right?

Yep, we're in classic Game Boy mode. There's a hack that purports to increase character name limits, but it makes a lot of other changes, too.

Don't monsters just get a new set of abilities, when they transform? Just wondering about the "restore all of their abilities" part, that would imply that they can keep at least part of their abilities.

Yeah, that's just badly written. When a monster transforms, they become fresh copy of the new monster with full HP and abilities, but nothing carries over.

 

[Octopus Prime]

The monster ability and health retire thing is Helpful when you need a refresh mid dungeon, that’s their main benefit.

Anyway, as per my own naming scheme for video games;
OCTO for male characters
SHRK for female characters
CRAB for non-binary characters (robots are excessively binary, granted)
SMOO for… any other character

 

[Mogri]

Human F: Wnda
Mutant F: Jean
Mutant M: Scot
Robot: Visn

 

[FelixSH]

Human F: Wnda
Mutant F: Jean
Mutant M: Scot
Robot: Visn

I second that.

 

[Torzelbaum]

I had also thought of Jean and Scot for the mutants but was trying to think of different names for the other characters. (I had ERiC for the robot.)

 

[Octopus Prime]

Well, there’s Douglock.

 

[Lokii]

Fry Lela Zoid Bndr

 

[Lokii]

Han Luke Leia R2D2 (or C3PO I guess)

 

[Mr Bean]

Fry Lela Zoid Bndr

I like that. This one gets my vote.

 

[Mogri]

Those are both very good

 

[Beowulf]

Okay, so:

• Team Beatles: John, Paul, Gorg, and RNG0
• Team Aquatic: OCTO, SHRK, CRAB, SMOO
• Team X-Men: Wnda, Jean, Scot, Visn
• Team Star Wars: Han, Luke, Leia, R2D2
• Team Futurama was actually used for one of the Archive LPs, so I'm going to veto it.

I think there are currently two votes for X-Men? I personally like Star Wars, but I'll bow to the crowd's wishes. Solidify your choices!

 

[Torzelbaum]

Well depending on how you want to count my vote it might be 2.5 or more.

 

[Mogri]

Star Wars has the advantage of not fighting against the four-character limit.

 

[Torzelbaum]

True but R isn't really a fighter.

 

[Mogri]

That's only because Luke didn't think to install eight swords on R2.

 

[Torzelbaum]

That is a good point. I think I'll switch my vote to Star Wars then.

 

[Mr Bean]

I’m down for team Star Wars.

 

[Kahran042]

At first I liked Team Beatles, but I think I'll go with the flow and vote for Team Star Wars.

 

[Beowulf]

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…

Father: Luke…Luke!

Luke: Mmm..hmm.. Dad .. What is it?
Father: I have to leave now. Will you keep.. .. Hey! Luke! Wake up!!

Luke: I'm sleepy..
Father: Listen! Do not lose this! Got it?

Luke: Dad! Are you Leaving again?
Father: Yep. Take care of Mom.
Luke: Okay …. Come home early.
Father: ...Yeah. Be good, Luke.

And dad jumps out the window, into the night.

Luke: Why does he always go out through windows? What is this….?

Luke: Mom, .. I ..um...
Mother: What? Tell me, Luke.
Luke: I want to go look for Dad.
Mother: Oh.. I knew you would say so someday. You're adventurous like your father.
Luke : But …. I’m worried about you, Mom. You'll be alone.

Mother: Don't worry about me, Luke. I'll be okay. …. Go ahead.
Luke: …. Yeah.
Mother: Tell Daddy that I’m doing alright.
Luke: …. I will.
Mother: Take care!
Luke: Mom,.. I ….
Mother: Go to school and tell Mr. S that you're leaving.
Luke : Okay.. Mom, I’ll be back with Dad!

Mr.S: So you're leaving…. Then I have to tell you this. The ancient gods made this world.
Luke: Yes. I know.
Mr.S: Their legacy is left all over this world in form of MAGI.
Luke: ......
Mr.S: What you have received from your father is one piece of it. 77 of those MAGI make a statue of a goddess, Sana.
Luke: This….?
Mr.S : Each MAGI has its own power. Some are using the power of MAGI and trying to become new gods.
Luke: Why did my father have such a thing?
Mr.S: Preventing MAGI from being abused for wrong purposes.
Luke: Like a hero?!
Mr.S: Well….yes....Kind of. If you wish to find your father, search for MAGI.
Luke: I will!
Mr.S: Your MAGI is called the Prism. It tells you the number of MAGI in the same area. It will help you.
Luke: Thank you very much, Sir! I will study more about MAGI also.

A crowd of other kids comes in.

Luke: What should I do, Sir?
Mr.S: It’s good to have reliable partners. Take 3 with you.

I’ll take my good buddy Han, and Princess Leia, and my faithful droid R2D2…wait, I can’t put numbers in his name. Um. Okay, Two Rs and two Ds it is!

Mr.S: You should go to a town beyond the Cave of North first.
Luke: Thank you! Good-bye, Sir!!

And with that, our party sets out.

Luke comes with a Hammer, the ability to conjure blizzards, and a suit of bronze armor. Han has a Long sword and a suit of bronze armor. Leia has a Bow, the ability to create Flame, and her own bronze armor. R2, because he’s a very capable droid, has a Colt revolver and a natural immunity to paralyze and poison effects.

We can wander around town and say our goodbyes before leaving.

Chewie is understandably skeptical about us bringing Han along. He gives us a Cure potion for the road.

Bail wants us to make sure Leia behaves.

And C3P0 is shockingly on-brand.

And mom will let us rest at home for free if we need it.

On our way out of town, we’re stopped by Mr. S.

Mr. S joins the party as a fifth character, who can act in battle just like our regular party members. He’ll never get stronger, but that doesn’t particularly matter given how much he outclasses us.

The manual spoils a bunch more NPCs joining our party. This is hardly the full list, though.

Nintendo Power also talked about Mr. S.

He’s our crutch character for the very beginning of the game; significantly stronger than any of our characters at this point.

This opening area of the world map is just a valley with the single small town and a cave to the north. I’ll discuss the geography of this game and the ramifications later on.

We head into the Cave of North, and our very first battle is against a Spider. All of the enemies in this cave are relatively weak and every one of them can be one-shot by Mr.S, with Dissolve hitting one enemy and refilling his health, and Fire hitting a stack of enemies.

Leia, as a mutant, gains her very first new ability in our very first battle: Immunity to poison.

As I implied above, monsters can come in “stacks” in this game, where the single tiger image here is actually three tigers. Single-target attacks always hit the top enemy on the stack.

We head into the second part of the cave, and on the upper level here we find some equipment.

The bronze shield isn’t actually very useful to my team—shields waste a turn that you could be killing things before they kill you—but we can equip it on R2 for a mild stat boost.

He gets 2 DEF and 9 HP from the shield. When I de-equip it later, he’ll lose those stats and the shield will go down to 12 uses. I’ve just removed any real resale value from this shield, but there wasn’t much to begin with.

This is a big battle and where mutants can be really useful: Flame and Blizzard are weak, but they hit all enemies. Skeletons are even weak to Flame and will die in one hit. Note that each of those three enemies shown can be a stack, so the theoretical max enemies in a single battle is 27. (Not that I think I’ve ever seen that.)

Leia gets a second immunity to poison. This…is worthless.

Gangs are humanoid enemies that never drop meat, but sometimes drop Punch items.

An extra Bow and an extra Hammer are here. They’ll eventually get used.

The boss monster is a Babywyrm, which is also one of the options for a starting monster, and that should give you an idea of how strong it is. Even without Mr.S, you’d be four times as strong. (Mr.S kills it in a single hit.)

I putter around the cave for a bit, earning money and using up Mr.S’s skills. Leia gets some more Mana, Han gets some more HP.

I get meat drops, but they’re useless to me because I don’t have a monster in my party.

Leia learns Warning, which prevents surprise attacks. It’s still better than an extra immunity to poison, so I move the second oPoison to the bottom of her list so it’ll get replaced.

Luke also learns Warning. Then we head out.

Mr.S: I must stay and guard our town. Good luck!
Luke: Thank you. I will come back with my father. Good-bye, Mr.S!

And with that, the training wheels are off.

And we walk into the town ten minutes away from home and the very first person we see is wearing a distinctive hat.

Luke: Dad? …Oops, mistake!
Man: Huh? Who are you? ….By the way! MAGI might be left in the relics of ancient gods. Do you happen to know where it is?

Now, if you look at that sprite, you can come to one of several conclusions: That Luke is an idiot who sees any man in a hat and thinks it’s his father; or that dad was in fact ten minutes away from home and slapped on a fake beard and glasses when he noticed Luke there. I lean toward the former.

The townspeople tell us about an important geographic feature that we really already should be aware of: The Pillar of the Sky.

The world of FFL2 is a special sort of place, and deserves some in-depth discussion and speculation. I'll discuss it more later when we get there.

We also hear about Ashura, one of the new gods.

Buying a drink from the bartender in some towns will give you hints. Here, it’s a waste of money.

Luke’s Log, Day 1: Today we set out on our journey. Mr. S was really kind to come with us through the Cave of North, because the monsters are scary and all I have is a hammer. I’m having some real trouble keeping up with Leia but I’m sure we’ll all learn to contribute equally. I thought I saw Dad, but I’m kind of glad I didn’t, because if he was just on the other side of the mountains this whole time, I’d be really upset that he didn’t come to visit.

 

[Mogri]

Now, if you look at that sprite, you can come to one of several conclusions: That Luke is an idiot who sees any man in a hat and thinks it’s his father; or that dad was in fact ten minutes away from home and slapped on a fake beard and glasses when he noticed Luke there. I lean toward the former.

The latter is very on-brand for Dad, though.

 

[Torzelbaum]

Like some kind of Final Fantasy Legend too?

my faithful droid R2D2…wait, I can’t put numbers in his name. Um. Okay, Two Rs and two Ds it is!

I guess you could have tried using B since it's the second letter of the alphabet but RBDB seems even farther away from what you wanted.

the ability to conjure blizzards,

Force Blizzard?

I never played any of the FFL games but I've always liked that design for a treasure chest graphic since Mystic Quest uses something similar.

 

[Beowulf]

Entry #2: A Digression About Mechanics

So, now that we’ve asked around the town and gotten a few leads, it’s time to get some new equipment. The items and armor shop sells bronze gloves and helmets, so we’ll buy those for Luke, Han and Leia. Humans have 8 slots for equipment, so you should always have them in full suits of armor. Mutants effectively have 4 slots, with 4 eventually occupied by their talents, and we’re eventually going to want them to each have a weapon, a magic book or wand, and two armor pieces (but for now we’ll go for three; they each have a perfectly fine attack spell anyway).

The weapon store has a lovely collection of bottom-tier weapons of various strengths. The thing is, Han is really the only one who’ll run down his store-bought weapons at the moment. Mutant powers and Robot equipment both get restored at the inn.

Inns cost 1 GP per 1 HP restored, but abilities are a free bonus. If you get a healing power on your mutant, hold on to that for the whole game, because it’ll make grinding much cheaper.

The next thought is, “So, do we dive headlong into the plot, or do we grind?” And for this game? We really need a little grinding. Our characters haven’t gotten much in the way of stat-ups and R2 needs a better loadout. But I’ve always found he grind in this game to be frustrating—it’s a slower curve than FFL1 and there are fewer ways to cheese it.

Well, fewer still isn’t none. I’m not going to do these things, but I want to talk about them.

If you have the patience, it’s easy to get robots to an Agility score as high as you want. Like human stats in FFL1, Robot stats in this game aren’t actually capped at 99, though that’s the highest they display. They can go up to 255 and wrap around. The way to do that is by exploiting skills like Punch and Kick.

Unlike weapons, when you equip a skill on a robot, the uses don’t half and they aren’t restored at the inn. The robot gets a stat boost (6 Agility and 27 HP for Kick), and can use the skill in battle as normal. But when the skill is used up, the slot opens up, but the boost doesn’t go away. So you can (for example) equip another Kick and get another 6 Agility and 27 HP and use it up again.

(Enterprising players have derived from this that the initiative system in this game is based on a truncated Agility value: It registers 101 Agility as 1, and your robot goes last, but then 199 Agility is 99. The optimal strategy is typically to get robot agility into the 170ish range and then use Agility-based weapons like a Rapier, Saber or Catclaw.

The problem with this method is that it involves hours of having your robot punch and kick things to use up the skills, and it does nothing for your other characters.

But what about the other characters? They all gain stats from battle, right? So why not just fight a million battles?

And yes, you can do that. Unlike later games that instituted some kind of leveling curve or cap on stats, this game wasn’t that advanced. While the equipment you use seems to skew what stat increases you’ll get somewhat (and you need to act in battle to trigger a stat increase), it’s actually mostly dependent on the RNG. (Mutant powers are actually scaled; I’ll explain that later.)

You see, on an original gray brick Game Boy or Game Boy Pocket, there was no clock to randomize things off of. There was just a seed that the system reset to at every hard reboot. Which meant that every time you booted up the game in the same area, you’d get both the same sequence of battles and the same sequence of stat-ups. This can be helpful if you’re grinding for something early in the sequence and a pain if, for instance, the first dozen battles of the sequence boost one mutant but not the other. In general, a team with one human and one mutant could fight a dozen battles, save and hard-reset, and fight that same dozen battles repeatedly and end up nicely stronger for it. I’ve done that; I don’t actually recommend it.

You’ll recall that I spent a couple of hours grinding FFL1 right at the outset, but I think what made that feel easier for me was that it includes progress on multiple axis (I was hunting for the specific sequence of meat to max out my monster at the same time), the battles are simpler (only one monster type at a time), and I had a reasonable stopping point (HP 200 for the humans, top-level monster) because I knew that leveling the humans would be massively easier in the second world. I have no such guarantees here, and the battles feel both more complicated and more tedious.

So, why not just charge forward with the game? I could do that. It’s hard to get totally toasted in the first real dungeon even if you haven’t done any grinding, but then I’ll just end up in this same situation at the end of the first world, because the monsters take a big step up in the second world.

So you’re going to see how young Beowulf actually figured out how to enjoy beating this game. Enter: The Game Genie.

First we’ll put on FF8-B98-E6A, which lets us sell a Cure potion for max money. That cuts the grinding significantly.

The manual mentions that there are stat-increasing potions (buying them to level up your humans was a staple of FFL1) but that you can’t buy them in stores. But why should that stop us?

We’re going to start playing with XXA-408-082, which controls what’s in the first slot in the item store of the first town. Replacing the XX with 43 makes it a Power Potion, but if we also include FEE-C38-E6E, that Power potion has unlimited uses. So one will be sufficient to boost us to whatever levels we see fit.

We’ll also be buying a…

44 Speed Potion (AGL Up) FEE-C48-E6E

45 Magic Potion (Mana Up) FEE-C58-E6E

46 Body Potion (Hit PTS Up) FEE-C68-E6E

Then I use the potions to give each mutant +10 mana and agility, and Han +10 strength and agility, which is all the grinding we really need at the moment.

And let’s not leave poor R2 out of the fun. I could load him up with endgame equipment, but given our theme, let’s see what we could buy.

Yes, I think sticking five lightsabers onto our little droid will do nicely for now.

Leia’s Log, Day 2: Despite the fact that we brought a smuggler with us, we’re struggling for cash and good equipment, and the local store only has some bronze accessories and crappy weapons. Not good enough for this princess! Turns out that if you happen to know the secret password (“I can set you on fire with my brain”) the storekeeper will tell you exactly where he’s been hiding the performance-enhancing drugs. He also was able to turn up enough lightsabers for all of us. Luke insisted we aren’t allowed to use them until we get further in our Jedi training, so I had Han hook them all up to R2 so he can be a whirling plasma death machine. It’ll do for now.

 

[Mogri]

This is surprising to me. I don't consider FFL2 to be a particularly grindy game. I will stop one step short of suggesting that this might be why you don't care for the game.

I've done the robot karate grind, and it's fun to have a karate robot, but it's hardly necessary. More recently, I did a no-robot run, ran from a whole bunch of fights, and ended up just fine. I'd like to call out two advantages to monsters: they don't require grinding, and they heal fully on transforming, meaning you can skip random battles without any penalty. The real disadvantage to monsters is that it's super easy to transform them into something totally useless, but if you know what you're doing, they're rarely the least useful team member, and they cut down the temptation to grind.

 

[Octopus Prime]

Coincidentally I started playing this with the same party myself.

Really wish there was an in game way to see how gear scales and affects a Robot; even online resources aren’t helpful

 

[Mogri]

There's a very good GameFAQ for that - the one by chessjerk lists the robot effects for everything in the appendix.

 

[Beowulf]

Force Blizzard?

Clearly what Star Wars was missing was Force weather control. Though that sounds like something Kevin J. Anderson would have put in an extended universe novel.

I never played any of the FFL games but I've always liked that design for a treasure chest graphic since Mystic Quest uses something similar.

The same design carries over to FFL3, and the team that made that also made Mystic Quest. I'm going to guess they just carried over this sprite design.

This is surprising to me. I don't consider FFL2 to be a particularly grindy game. I will stop one step short of suggesting that this might be why you don't care for the game.

To be fair, you have a much better appreciation for both learning the strategy of a game and for failing and trying again.

To give a fuller explanation: I was introduced to this game as a kid who had only played a handful of jrpgs, and the first one was Dragon Warrior, a game that you could beat in an hour if you started at level 30. I was also a "gifted kid" who was not well-adjusted to frustration and an anxious child with a deeply instilled fear of failure. I loved the idea of being able to grind enough that you wouldn't fail and hated the idea of getting 90% of the way through a dungeon and dying and losing all of my progress. I also didn't like breakable weapons or limited resources in general; the fact that this game basically had no unlimited "attack" command caused me angst.

SaGa games, much more than most, are driven by an anti-grinding, "try it and see," "sometimes it just hates you" design approach. They never want you to stop and grind, they want you to go into the next dungeon a bunch of times and map out the traps and treasures; they want you to try every boss on the first go because sometimes you'll die (and lose an hour of progress) but sometimes you'll get through by the skin of your teeth and feel awesome doing it. Still to this day, that style of game doesn't do great things for my blood pressure and I don't really enjoy the experience.

I adore a number of things about SaGa games. I love, love, loved the individual stories and the changing world in Romancing SaGa and the sheer amount of exploration in Romancing SaGa 3 and SaGa Frontier as you piece together the fully story. But I need to play them in "tourist mode" with cheats or I just can't get into a mindset to enjoy them.

I've done the robot karate grind, and it's fun to have a karate robot, but it's hardly necessary. More recently, I did a no-robot run, ran from a whole bunch of fights, and ended up just fine. I'd like to call out two advantages to monsters: they don't require grinding, and they heal fully on transforming, meaning you can skip random battles without any penalty. The real disadvantage to monsters is that it's super easy to transform them into something totally useless, but if you know what you're doing, they're rarely the least useful team member, and they cut down the temptation to grind.

If you know what you're doing, I suspect you can blaze through this game without ever fighting an extra battle. That's my secret, Captain: I never know what I'm doing.