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Veryslightlymad posted:I could see myself really digging this game, since I quite like the idea of my characters maybe turning out significantly different between various playthroughs depending largely on circumstance and luck. Though some systems are shared between Unlimited and the other games, there's really nothing quite like it. But you definitely might enjoy the series! I actually wrote a thing for Imp Zone because of the Romancing SaGa 2 port, which I suppose is appropriate to repurpose here. What is SaGa? SaGa is the result of an attempt to try and keep the open nature of oldschool CRPGs in a console RPG setting. They were inspired by stuff like Ultima, where you're basically just exploring the world and a lot of stuff has nothing to do with the main conflict. The main director of all the Saga games always says his favorite game ever is Ultima 4, because the game is more about exploring and dealing with the systems than a single, overarching plot. In Ultima 4 you can get to the final boss in lots of ways, and there's a lot of stuff you can skip or miss, and you can basically do the whole thing in any order you like. The actual plot events in those games were often very limited, because the focus was more on questing, exploring, and having an your own adventure than following a long, intricate plot, and generally you could develop your character however you wanted. The Ultima series was a big hit in Japan, and is the basis for a lot of the Saga series. FF2, with its strange leveling system, was the first attempt to accomplish this, and then after some time working on handheld stuff (The Final Fantasy Legend games were called SaGa in Japan) he got the chance to make a followup with Romancing SaGa. Once you understand that they're trying to sort of be Western RPGs a lot of stuff makes sense. In Romancing SaGa 1 you can pick from a bunch of different characters to start off, and you can travel anywhere in the world from the start, more or less. You can just get on a boat and go find some quests to do. Eventually, you get strong, fight a big evil god or whatever, and you win. It still has Final Fantasy combat, and the writing isn't amazing, but it's completely open in a way that very few console rpgs were at the time. There was a downside, though: to accommodate the nonlinear world, they did the same thing Bethesda did, and put in level scaling, and just like in a Bethesda game if you end up leveling up a stat that's worthless you end up outclassed by everything and then the final boss kills you forever. RS1 is super dated, but it was a hit, and so they let Kawazu basically do whatever the hell he wanted for a while and he made Romancing SaGa 2. If you're curious, there's a PS2 remake which is super good, and includes a bunch of the systems from later games in addition to more quests, more stuff to do, and some fantastic music. Also, tutorials! RS2 is even more experimental, in that it doesn't even have characters, really; it's about building an empire, and the sidequests can be completed not just in any order, but by any person in the dynasty; as you finish them, the regions join your empire and you can recruit new types of characters from the residents. It's loving weird but you can sort of see what it's trying to do, and also how it's again an attempt to sort of replicate the weird 1980s era of CRPGs where characters died all the time and it didn't matter at all because the player's resources were still increasing. If Dongs the Bard dies in Bard's Tale you just make another Bard and you give him all the old bard's equipment, right? RS3 goes back to the more traditional party-based rpg concept, with specific named characters and backstories, but it's still neat and has a lot of freedom and genuinely some of the most amazing art you'll ever see on a 16-bit console. Sadly the fan translation is... not great. But it's basically from the height of the series, when it was getting funding and dev time equivalent to the actual Final Fantasy games, and it shows. Then there's SaGa Frontier, which is from that time when every PS1 Square project was getting its funding slashed so they could pay for Final Fantasy. Xenogears got the floating chair, and Frontier got a bunch of cuts to its plot and as a result is very weird and disjointed, but it is also completely insane and has robots, Manhattan, shape-shifting monsters, the CIA, vampires, and a bunch of other crazy poo poo. If you played FFL you'll remember some of this stuff, but I guarantee it is crazier here. One of the party members is literally just a car. Again, you get to pick from a bunch of protagonists with different mechanics and storylines, with varying degrees of quality and completion. Good for if you want to play around with weird worlds and characters and don't mind obscure mechanics. SF2 is a big homage to RS2 and has a cool emperor, a massive plot spanning a century of history, and is both more traditional and more bizarre than the previous games. It's got a pretty normal JRPG plot, involving an ancient relic and warfare and stuff, and the plot is completely linear... but your experience of it is not. You get presented with a world map and it's got all these scenarios and dates, and they unlock other ones, and you see stuff in order of difficulty rather than in order of when stuff actually happened. Sometimes choices will affect other scenarios because they happen in the future; in other cases, having some skill from a future scenario may help do some side-stuff in the past. It's very strange. They also made the final boss way harder in the English release, for some reason, and it's very easy to get to the end and be stonewalled with no recourse. Still, it's a neat game. After this, they made Unlimited Saga, which of course is what this thread is all about. It's got a lot of mechanics meant to imitate playing a tabletop game, and was very controversial on release. So they tried to scale that stuff back with the next game, Minstrel Song. Ostensibly a remake of Romancing SaGa 1, Minstrel Song is much larger and more complex, with mechanics taken from across the series. The player has much more direct control over their characters' development, since you can assign classes and you buy skills directly (though you still have to spark techniques), but the non-linear exploration is still present and, because of how the level scaling works, it's pretty much impossible to do every quest in one go. Based on where you go and what you do you may choose to develop your characters differently or even recruit entirely different party members altogether, many of whom have some small quest or plot connected to them as well. After that the series basically went away. There were a couple DS remakes of the Final Fantasy Legend games which try to make them more like the later Saga games (there's fan translations of 2 and 3!), there was The Last Remnant which was essentially a SaGa game in all but name, and then recently there was a vita game, Scarlet Grace, which we'll never get to play. Also many, many mobile and facebook games which will never ever be localized. RS2 is probably the most famous one of all in Japan (thus being ported to everything) but I wouldn't say it's the best one to start with. It doesn't explain anything at all. You can give it a try though, it's definitely cool; just accept you may get to the end and be unable to ever beat the final boss. corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Dec 25, 2017 |
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Dec 25, 2017 05:15
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Yessss, god speed for doing this. I'll have to dig out my copy and give it another blast. It took months to learn some of the poo poo in the game, and even then only some of it.
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Dec 25, 2017 05:33
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Would it make sense to savescum for a fire tablet, given that the final boss is apparently such a huge bitch?
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Dec 25, 2017 15:58
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I wish they'd try to remake SaGa Frontier 1 someday. I'd love to play a remake of it with all the cut content being in it along with whatever other bits of insanity they're bound to chuck into it.
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Dec 25, 2017 16:29
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Speaking as someone who beat Saga Frontier 1 multiple times and managed to get all the way through Saga Frontier 2 (EGG), I could absolutely not get into this game at all. It is so intentionally obtuse and impenetrable for no reason. Good luck on this journey.
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Dec 25, 2017 17:07
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Oh no, an unlimited saga LP. The end times are upon us!
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Dec 25, 2017 19:07
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Which of the SaGas was the one where a monster is killing some towns as part of the plot, and facing it is an optional challenge that you have to build your party around? I remember reading about it and it seemed quite interesting.
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Dec 25, 2017 20:28
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Thank you so much for this Let's Play, Corn in the Bible. I've been fascinated reading a through explanation of what this game is, and this is definitely the only way I would experience it. Two questions: You mentioned you haven't beaten every character's story yet, who are the missing ones? Is there real ending that you get from beating the game as all seven characters? mycot fucked around with this message at 20:36 on Dec 25, 2017 |
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Dec 25, 2017 20:28
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Fat Samurai posted:Which of the SaGas was the one where a monster is killing some towns as part of the plot, and facing it is an optional challenge that you have to build your party around? I remember reading about it and it seemed quite interesting. That is Minstrel Song.
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Dec 26, 2017 03:36
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Fat Samurai posted:Which of the SaGas was the one where a monster is killing some towns as part of the plot, and facing it is an optional challenge that you have to build your party around? I remember reading about it and it seemed quite interesting. That was Minstrel Song. The monster in question was a jerky frog monster known as the Jewel Beast who woke up at some point in the game and started blowing up the tiny towns out on the frontier. When it happened varied a lot actually because, like nearly every other SaGa game, Minstrel Song was weird. To clarify Minstrel Song had a mechanic known as "Event Rank" which went up as you fought battles and effected what quests were available. The gimmick on the Jewel Beast was that it eventually woke up and started blowing up towns, but you could delay when it woke up for quite a while by doing other sidequests or by fighting incredibly brutal mid-boss encounters in its lair. This is important because you wanted to be as strong as you could be before fighting the jerk, and If you were serious about killing it you also generally wanted to fight it in its lair because it almost never used its ultra instant death attack if you fought it in its lair (Jewel Blaster, an attack that did about 1200 damage in a game where HP capped out at 999). Minstrel Song was a ridiculous hodge-podge of a game as well. It's nowhere near as opaque as Unlimited SaGa but it had some wacky stuff in it. For instance Minstrel Song was a game where you could do stupid wizard tricks to take infinite turns. It also had a complex system that was never explained in any way where your actions could earn you the favor of the gods and they could help you out in various ways and was important in determining your end-game questline. It also had one sidequest that required a minimum of three playthroughs to complete. There was also another sidequest that required you forge a blade using a metal, but didn't mention that said metal actually had something like 6 different versions that all looked exactly alike and only one of them would work.
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Dec 26, 2017 05:17
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That seems horrifying and interesting, I may check it out, thanks
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Dec 26, 2017 10:56
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Minstrel Songs sins are all forgiven thanks to https://youtu.be/1k1OsApDSIw Rigged Death Trap fucked around with this message at 11:09 on Dec 26, 2017 |
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Dec 26, 2017 11:04
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Minstrel Songs sins are all forgiven thanks to Not an empty quote.
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Dec 26, 2017 16:05
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Omnicrom posted:It also had one sidequest that required a minimum of three playthroughs to complete. How does this work? Just NG+ and it carries over a quest item or...
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Dec 26, 2017 16:43
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Randalor posted:How does this work? Just NG+ and it carries over a quest item or... It's one of those "meet this NPC at <x> locations." But you could only do 1/3rd of the meetings in a single playthrough.
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Dec 26, 2017 16:56
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Randalor posted:How does this work? Just NG+ and it carries over a quest item or... In this one single instance Quest Progress carries NG+. The quest in question is the aptly named "The Unlucky Woman". Every 2 Event Ranks the woman in question appears in a different city and you can talk to her to hear a sad story. You need to talk to her 12 times in all 12 cities to progress the quest, but she vanishes after Event Rank 10, which means you can speak with her a maximum of five times on a single playthrough. Thus to finish the quest you need to be on at least your third playthrough, assuming you talked to her enough times on your previous files. If you didn't speak to her enough on the first or second playthrough it could take even longer to progress the quest.
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Dec 26, 2017 17:02
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Minstrel Songs sins are all forgiven thanks to Not to mention https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51PjXPBPWco Minstrel might have been kind of a mess in a lot of ways, often requiring you to run from most encounters if you wanted to dothe early game quests and gets the items and jewels you needed to rank up well, but gat DANG if it did not have some absolutely incredible music. It might help that I heard this theme a shitload grinding on the fire guardian for sparks, since he was a high level enemy you could lose to without game over in a way that didn't increase ER, ha.
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Dec 26, 2017 17:39
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This is, or contains, a remix of a song from some other game, which I want to say was on the Gameboy. What am I listening to here?
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Dec 26, 2017 18:15
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Rigged Death Trap posted:Minstrel Songs sins are all forgiven thanks to The SaGa games have a universally great soundtrack all around. I love that song and the https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRZ0VPTn5s8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFfhbbHrJ9o versions of it. Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tuu4VXNllV4 Dragonturtle fucked around with this message at 18:29 on Dec 26, 2017 |
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Dec 26, 2017 18:23
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:This is, or contains, a remix of a song from some other game, which I want to say was on the Gameboy. What am I listening to here? This song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXxvHzss0pI
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Dec 26, 2017 18:25
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:This is, or contains, a remix of a song from some other game, which I want to say was on the Gameboy. What am I listening to here? For clarity, Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song is a remake of the SNES game Romancing SaGa. It's just updated to the PS2 with some stuff tossed in, so all of the music is remixed versions of its old tunes. So, you know it from itself.
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Dec 26, 2017 18:40
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Omnicrom posted:There was also another sidequest that required you forge a blade using a metal, but didn't mention that said metal actually had something like 6 different versions that all looked exactly alike and only one of them would work. Ah yes, the Falcata/Demon's Brand. It's worth noting that the Mullock you'd use would register differently when you'd try to smith with it, but you still wouldn't know this until after you went back to a smith to try to upgrade. This was also kind of maybe forgivable, since for 7 of the 8 playthroughs this would give you the ultimate form of the weapon. If you were playing as Gray, though, it lead to the end of his primary quest...
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Dec 26, 2017 19:13
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The Happy Hyperbole posted:For clarity, Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song is a remake of the SNES game Romancing SaGa. It's just updated to the PS2 with some stuff tossed in, so all of the music is remixed versions of its old tunes. So, you know it from itself. I'm pretty sure SNES Romancing SaGa didn't have anything like this in it. Minstrel Song's soundtrack had a lot of remixes, but it also had new stuff, pretty sure its soundtrack is much larger than the original game's. It's also awesome. Overall I mean, not just the soundtrack, for all it's idiosyncrasies (Gray's sword and Mullock, including a class that gets bonuses to Sorcery and Necromancy when the player never gets access to those spells, favor, never telling the player about the button to skip through dialogue without waiting for the voiceovers...) Minstrel Song is probably one of the best and most complete SaGa games, and just overall super fun even if you don't know what you're doing. Unlimited Saga, on the other hand, is insane. I've been slowly plodding through Laura's story and even reading this I'm still realizing further and further the many ways in which you can doom yourself by not knowing exactly what you're doing. Mullock why must you always hate sense. (The turn limit on that mansion sidequest kills me too. Failed it so many times...) Mimingless fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Dec 26, 2017 |
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Dec 26, 2017 19:23
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Did somebody say ssssssssssssSSSSSAGA?! :iamafag: Holy moly, that interface looks putrid.
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Dec 26, 2017 19:50
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Mimingless posted:(The turn limit on that mansion sidequest kills me too. Failed it so many times...) The mansion is what killed my will to play. Also, glad to see Chokes still lives, I hope to see more SaGaY'all (or something) someday.
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Dec 26, 2017 19:57
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Unlimited Saga, Part 4: Undercity Ms. Pharr-os Last time we did some sidequests and started in on the process of learning magic. But it'd be nice to have a full party, ad that means doing the rest of the plot... so we have to walk to Iskandaria.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyleSEAz96g Both Mythe and Sapphire, our casters, have tablets to work on. I want them to cast at least one spell every battle, after which they can also try to deal damage or let Tiffon and Grace blow the enemy away. Casting spells will also make it more likely they get magic-related skill panels, which is good. Money is still short, so sometimes Mythe has to step in and drop-kick the birds to death. Martial arts can't reach the same damage potential as weapons, but it's free and so making your protagonist or one of your early members a martial artist isn't a bad idea. For best results you want to use someone who is either very light or very heavy because their weight class and armor combined determine which martial arts they use. Light martial arts are generally best but heavy martial arts can do some seriously powerful status effects, including the legendary BLACKOUT which drops HP to zero immediately and basically ends fights before they even begin. Medium-range is the worst and that's what our entire team is right now, so... martial arts are bad. Sinker's pretty nice for what it is though:  Road guide skills allow you to search a location, and also expand the minimap. Familiars always include at least one of the guide skills, so if you look up some guy's build and he says to put road guide or cave guide somewhere you can usually trade off a small amount of stats in exchange for having a familiar. Here's a screenshot from later, showing off what that looks like:  Mythe's Lv2 Fire Familiar has an applicable guide, but the range isn't very big. A higher level would expand the map! So we've got a couple tablets. Let's talk about that! People learn the spells on a tablet in order. If they already know a spell they get to skip it, so you don't have to teach someone Magic Lock over and over. Sapphire has almost learned Magic Lock herself! Those mimics better watch out!  The important thing is that this tablet has Shock, which actually deals damage to everything on the field. It won't be hugely effective since Sapphire is bad with Metal Arts, but it'd be nice for her to be leveling her magic while actually doing something useful. Casting through familiars tends to just get you more and better familiar panels; for actual magic-related stuff you gotta cast things yourself. Grace has a bow, which is working great.  However she has no Bow skill, which means she's unlikely to spark anything or to use it once she does. Using a bow a lot will make that more likely, though! Here's Mythe's tablet:  He already knows Purify so it's not on the tablet. Every other skill here is terrible and I already regret giving the tablet to him. Rainbringer maybe could be useful, I guess; it increases the efficacy of water spells. Otherwise, a bunch of bad spells I don't need. I think maybe my powergaming has made me outclass the random encounters right now. Tiffon and Grace can kill anything with zero effort.  However, as we kill enemies that will change. Remember, this game has a sort of scaling level system, and as we fight encounters everything will get stronger. So will the tablets and growth panels we're given, though. If you find a dead end in the map, there may be hidden treasure there. You can use the applicable guide or familiar skill to check it out, but it may be too well hidden to be found at your current level. You could sit there forever and spam it, I guess, but the game isn't really balanced with that in mind.   Nice! We have some people who know Sharpeye, so we can check the chest for traps and locks.  These symbols, from left to right, tell us that the chest has a magic lock, an explosive trap, and a mimic on it. If there's a mimic you might as well just open it and fight the mimic, because they're not that strong and can drop essentially any item in the game, including magic tablets of any level. It's not that likely, but you'll probably still get a crafting material even if they don't drop a tablet. It's especially nice if the chest isn't also rigged to explode, since you still get the contents of the chest. This one is, though, so I had Tiffon defuse the traps. This requires a reel spin, determined by your Defuse level and the level of the chest. Fail, and you either try again or the trap goes off. The magic lock is a different story. To open it you need a character who actually knows an attack spell. Familiars do not count for this! Sapphire doesn't know shock yet, and I forgot Grace has Ice Needles, so I couldn't open the chest. So instead I decided to smash the box open directly. Choosing a melee action means we try to break open the box. This spins another reel, and a success will open it, but there's high odds the contents will be destroyed by your powerful fists of fury. Still, if you have time and there's no other option then you might as well try it. Later, we find another chest with a mimic trap. Let's fight the mimic this time, and see what happens!   Mimics have pretty powerful magic, but we have the otherwise-useless spell Magic Lock on our side. It's not a 100% chance, but if it works then the mimic will be unable to take any actions at all, leaving it defenseless. With this spell even a low-level party can kill any mimic. Sadly, it didn't drop a magic tablet, but we did get some cedar. That'll be good for repairing things, or making more steel. Steel is the most consistently available thing to make powerful stuff out of; there's much better materials, of course, but they are rare or require save-scumming to get reliably. Steel can be made at any time, as long as you have wood and some iron. When we finish the first leg of the journey, everyone gets new skills. I really wanted a bow skill for Grace but she rewarded me with a bunch of things she doesn't really need. I gave her Sharpeye because at least it grants more Skill and that's useful for her damage output.  Sapphire would do a ton of damage if she knew any fire spells. I may eventually give up on that and try to get her some familiars, which at least can access the lowest-level fire attack spell for free. As you can see, everyone is getting Lv3 skills now, which means that even if we don't get something new that we want we can replace the old ones and everybody's stats will still improve. We wind up in Escata, which has been destroyed.  Escata is the focus of Laura's quest, and we can see some hints at her storyline in the Inn here. For example:  Anubito are dog-people, and a group of them led by Dagul Bos destroyed the city. We can visit his castle later, but he won't be there. We can also loot Escata palace of all its treasures, but we should probably finish finding Pharr first. Also, I bought Grace some crocodile mail.  The double circle means it's got better Hit protection than our Cloth Armor offers. This can range up to a bunch of symbols, but right now it's pretty good. We could likely handle a fair number of sidequests now, but I'd like a full party so everyone can level up. Now we're in a cave.  Tiffon has learned quite a few dagger skills now, and with a better dagger she'd probably be able to hold her own. As it is, she needs others' help to soften up the enemy a bit first. As you can see, though, the odds of landing a special attack go up a lot as you get better skill panels. Since there's usually a nice long line of specials soon after the start of the reel, and because for a given skill level the reel is always the same and always starts in the same place, if you get the timing down it's easy to get the one you want on a fairly consistent basis. It's like Timed Hits.  Those two spaces in the middle will, I think, be replaced with the level 4 technique if she sparks it. Assuming you pick a weapon type and stick with it you'll end up doing plenty of damage by the end. Here's a spooky skeleton: https://thumbs.gfycat.com/KeenPartialArgentineruddyduck-mobile.mp4 Now, let me show you one way to make money. You'll need a high-level fortuneteller for this to work reliably, but it's nice. First we need a chest with a trap that won't blow up the contents. You can use sharpeye to find one. Get rid of any locks first, because their difficulty is based on the chest's level and we're going to boost it as much as we safely can. Then you do this:  This is still a gamble, but it's probably not got much in it right now anyway. With such a high skill Sapphire's reel is mostly Successes.   Succeed and we see what's in the chest. If it's a material then you might as well just open it, because those don't seem to change much. If it's money, though, like this, then the amount of money scales with chest level. And every time you succeed a spin, the level goes up. So you should see where this is going, yes? A failure will either drop the level a bit (bad) or drop it to 1 and open the chest, giving you like 500kr and making you sad. You can do this as long as you feel comfortable, but remember the odds go down as the chest levels up. If you wanted to use save-scumming in an emulator you could get enormously rich, but I'm trying not to do any of that stuff in this LP. So here's what we ended up with, because I am an idiot who got lucky:  At this point, defusing the trap is almost impossible, but since it'll just hurt our characters and not the gold, it doesn't matter and we can just open the thing regardless. If it's a mimic chest, that's even better! Iskanderia is in a cold region, so as we approach the landscape changes.  We're starting to see some new monsters, too, like this "bird."  It has far less HP than a boss, of course, but it does have more than 1 LP, so without piercing weapons it'd be annoying to fight it. Assuming you at least have one fighter, one thief, and one wizard in your team, though, you're ready for most random encounters. Not particularly dangerous, though, and we kind of want enemy encounters to get stronger because it'll help the characters get stronger too. Bosses are always best for sparking techs, but fighting these gives better odds, and better drops, than the earlier enemies. In a lot of SaGa games the bosses all scale too, but Unlimited generally doesn't work like that. So we don't want to keep everything weak, as you might in Saga Frontier; we want them to get stronger so we can get stronger. Just make sure you're always upgrading equipment or you'll get outpaced and die! Iskanderia is also described as being on a mountain, so we climb higher as we approach.  Finally, we get there. Phew! Mythe got a Lv3 Fire Familiar to replace his Lv2 one. That doesn't sound exciting, but it actually is: At level 3 the familiar is able to cast Fire Arrows and Mythe can finally deal damage through magic. Now, as I said, relying on familiars will just get you more familiars to replace them, but it at least gives him something to deal damage that doesn't wear down his terrible, hard-to-repair guns. Grace has a line of keys (generally, these are chest-related skills like defuse or sharpeye) on her panel now, which means she gets bonus Skill.  You can check the bonuses in their status, so it's not a secret that they happen. You have to experiment to figure out the good ones, but it's pretty easy to just give any skill character three key skills in a row and reap the rewards. Similarly, strength characters can benefit from having three fists -- they give good stats anyway, they give a boost to strength as a combo bonus, and since there's three different kinds (punch, kick, and throw) you're not wasting space on duplicates. But you can, indeed, put any two symbols together and you'll get something out of it. There's also triangles (three points on the outside, forming a triangle), though they are tougher to build around. Grace still didn't get a bow panel. Tiffon did, though, so I am considering giving the bow to Tiffon. We'll see if Grace gets either one next time, and that'll decide things. Alright, let's go find Ms. Pharr.   Pharr is our new party member and she's not very good. She has 8 LP, which is terrible for a physical character, and her other stats don't really make it worth using her regardless. She also is set up to use spears, which is nice except I already have two people who are doing just fine with piercing weapons, thank you. Spears are an interesting weapon, in that they are good at both HP and LP damage; however, to use them effectively you want to build both strength and skill to bolster both of these outputs. That can be tricky, but they're very effective if you do it right! If you want a tank who can be used effectively at any part of a battle, spears are a good choice -- never as effective as the other weapons, but they'll always be useful. If Pharr had more LP she'd be great, but it's dangerous to pull someone out who's that fragile if they aren't going to deal massive damage as a result. I bet if built properly she'd be quite effective regardless, but it's just a weird character design to have this cool, grizzled explorer who can't take a punch without falling over dead.  It's been a while, hasn't it, Ms. Pharr? Is that guy behind you your new beau? He's quite a catch. Oh Ms. Pharr! You are such a tease. He'd like to ask you about the photo you so kindly sent me. Unfortunately, I'm only the guide. I am Mythe, an apprentice of Nevilson, the inventor in Longshank. I'm doing some research on the photo. I've never seen one so lifelike. (Their all-knowing eyes seemed to have seen right through to my true intentions. No, can't be. How would they know? I only need to remain calm and lie my way through this.) You're "Nuts" Nevilson's apprentice, eh? You must be a decent inventor, yourself. I found that photo in the Undercity Pharos. The Seven Wonder, Pharos!? Please, take me there. No matter how far it is, I'd like to go. Pharos is right below our feet.She's right. In fact, anyone can visit Undercity Pharos at any time, once they reach Iskandaria, because it shows up in the location list as the "Abandoned Fortress."  Well, that's only partly true. Without special knowledge, most of the city is closed off and inaccessible. Only characters with plot-related reasons to visit it can fully explore the dungeon, and that's Mythe, Ventus, and Ruby. Everyone else gets a small, enclosed area to visit and then has to leave. Still loads of treasure, though, so it's worth checking out. Every other Seven Wonder has a special sidequest version with a unique boss, designed for characters to visit and complete when they aren't sent there by the story. I am sure we'll go do some of those once we get our full party, but for now we're going to go check out Pharos and see if we can't find where the photograph came from... next time! So stay tuned. Also, TooMuchAbstraction posted:So is Mythe, the womanizing protagonist, going to end up with a party consisting entirely of women he's completely ignoring while he seeks out the (presumably dead, given the timescale involved) woman from the portrait? YEP corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 20:53 on Dec 26, 2017 |
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Dec 26, 2017 20:45
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Mythe's standard battle sprite looks like he's being punched in the gut and it's great.
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Dec 26, 2017 21:36
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I am really enjoying the fact that Mythe's party is literally all women and he's ignoring all of them. It's a shame that most of the party members he's getting aren't super good overall.
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Dec 26, 2017 21:42
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MachuPikacchu posted:Mythe's standard battle sprite looks like he's being punched in the gut and it's great. I also like his portrait, where he looks like someone trying to give directions to somewhere he's never actually been. It's probably... over there? Turn left? Maybe? Ubiquitous_ posted:I am really enjoying the fact that Mythe's party is literally all women and he's ignoring all of them. It's a shame that most of the party members he's getting aren't super good overall. Honestly, many of his characters are quite strong. The problem is they're almost all glass cannons! For example, Pharr has 8 LP, and later we'll pick up someone else who has 6. But on the other hand she can focus down one of the final bosses by herself if properly equipped... after which she will likely die through sheer attrition. Ironically it's Mythe who is probably the weakest member of his team, but since you have to use the protagonist I have to make him as effective as possible 
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Dec 26, 2017 21:53
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One of the things that strikes me is that all these ladies had jobs and/or lives and basically only promised to help him find the next lady in the quest line, but because this is a game they just keep plugging along with Mythe looking for something that means nothing to them personally. Do Sapphire or Tiffon, for example, even talk anymore?
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Dec 26, 2017 22:46
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corn in the bible posted:I also like his portrait, where he looks like someone trying to give directions to somewhere he's never actually been. It's probably... over there? Turn left? Maybe? Probably the only downside to playing through only one playthrough for the LP is that there’s just so many drat side characters... some of them being quite strong too. I wonder if you can pick up the one I’m thinking of in Mythe’s story.
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Dec 27, 2017 00:10
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marshmallow creep posted:One of the things that strikes me is that all these ladies had jobs and/or lives and basically only promised to help him find the next lady in the quest line, but because this is a game they just keep plugging along with Mythe looking for something that means nothing to them personally. Look, they're gonna get back to whatever they were doing, just...he's so damned pretty. Tomorrow. Tomorrow they'll leave.
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Dec 27, 2017 01:53
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Ubiquitous_ posted:Probably the only downside to playing through only one playthrough for the LP is that there’s just so many drat side characters... some of them being quite strong too. I wonder if you can pick up the one I’m thinking of in Mythe’s story. I don't know who you mean, but the people we've got left are Laura (hooray), Marie, Michelle (sans gauntlet), and of course Silver Girl.
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Dec 27, 2017 05:01
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corn in the bible posted:I don't know who you mean, but the people we've got left are Laura (hooray), Marie, Michelle (sans gauntlet), and of course Silver Girl. Anzan, but then I forgot that despite being the tankiest character, he's got terrible growths in ways that he needs to protect that LP.
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Dec 27, 2017 07:32
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Ubiquitous_ posted:I am really enjoying the fact that Mythe's party is literally all women and he's ignoring all of them. It's a shame that most of the party members he's getting aren't super good overall. I'm glad it doesn't really feel like a harem, at least not in this format. I agree that the women's motivations are pretty strange, though. I'll assume there's more that the game isn't revealing right now, but that may be too charitable. Also the art in this game is beautiful. The presentation of the stills reminds me strongly of the original FFT. It's kind of strange how much feels just a little familiar to me thanks to playing The Last Remnant, right down to strange skill learning systems.
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Dec 27, 2017 14:39
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Speaking of the presentation: does every character have
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Dec 27, 2017 17:29
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I remember, back in the early 00's, getting a preview of this in Game Informer, which I had because I was an idiot. To this day, the one thing I remember about it is that there was a cut-out of Laura's official artwork with the caption: 'Check out her leg game!' I tried to find any scans of it online, but I've had no luck.
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Dec 27, 2017 19:45
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POOL IS CLOSED posted:It's kind of strange how much feels just a little familiar to me thanks to playing The Last Remnant, right down to strange skill learning systems. That's no surprise, The Last Remnant is a SaGa game in pretty much everything but name 
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Dec 27, 2017 21:49
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Unlimited Saga, Part 5: Undercity Pharos Mythe and his party have made it to Iskandaria, and they've got a lot of money as well. Check out this rad accessory:  It's so expensive because it's already got all its skills revealed, but I have a ton of money now so that's just fine. Accessories made of a given material always have the same skills, so we know from this that bone accessories will always, eventually, get life protection. With armor you can work out a tradeoff between actual defense and protecting your LP, but with accessories the only defensive skill is this one. Unless you're doing tricky builds with specific weights, there's no reason not to give physical attackers at least one. Damascus armlets have it, plus the highest actual defense, plus Water Support, meaning they make your healing more effective... but we won't get much damascus in this playthrough, so we'll make do with other stuff. No worries. Pharr starts with almost no equipment, and her skills aren't that great either, but she does have Artiste, meaning I can finally replace Sapphire's panel and still get rare items in stores. If you spend a lot of money in shops then their items improve, but it's certainly nice to be able to expand a shop's inventory and she won't be doing much else. Every character can recruit up to 8 members, and you can never use more than 7 in a mission, meaning someone has to get left out. If you can get some shop skills on them first, all the better! I also made a steel knife for Tiffon. Everyone's pretty well set, so let's go do the dungeon.  The Undercity is one of the Seven Wonders, ancient weird locations from the Golden Age. This one is literally under the city, and so you first start out in the ancient ruins above-ground, before descending into the depths. Like so:   You're free to wander about and find treasure up here. It's got some monsters but is relatively safe, plus you can actually leave from the place you entered it. That doesn't work once you're actually on the big finale quest for Mythe, but we aren't yet so it's fine.  I figured I should at least show Pharr in action but she wasn't even able to attack an enemy, due to being stunned.  Good work. These zombies have an attack with an amazing name:  My go-to strategy at this time is to let Mythe or Sapphire lead off with a spell, which lets the enemies take all their turns. Then, in one long combo, Grace shoots everything with Random Arrowshoot while Tiffon stabs them individually. It works great! The ruins have a fair number of chests to find, and as you explore it you'll find giant doors that block your way. One of the doors is open, letting us enter the Undercity proper.  Near the entrance, there's a button with a weird label on it.  I can't read it. Let's not touch it.The Undercity is divided roughly in half, and we can only explore one part of it right now. To get to the other side we need someone with knowledge of the ancient world. You can unlock the other doors as you progress, as it turns out they were only barred on the inside.   The city has multiple levels, and there's a lot of staircases and, though they are deactivated right now, elevators as well. You can see what it's meant to look like from the paintings in the upper left, and from the battle arenas when you get into a fight.  There are many doors we can't go through right now.  Here's a terrifying shark about to eat Sapphire:  It's in these large dungeons that the Guide skills really come in handy. First of all, you know that empty rooms have some hidden treasure in them, so it's easy to search for them; secondly, the map can be very helpful in figuring out where you haven't been. Eventually, we come across this weird spiral corridor leading to a staircase.  Downstairs is a path which leads to this device, which Mythe is willing to mess with. https://thumbs.gfycat.com/LightCarefreeCony-mobile.mp4  Oh no! Fortunately, while these guys seem intimidating, they really aren't. Plus, Sapphire finally learned Shock, meaning she can do this:  A nice touch: you can see she's using her dagger to channel the spell. Shock deals metal damage to every enemy, and so Sapphire is able to help with crowd control when fighting large numbers. She's not great with metal, but it's still nice to have, and I wouldn't use shock for single-target boss fights anyway. It also means that, at last, every party member has some effective way to deal damage, which is great! Remember, characters restore HP when they're not used during a combat turn, so in protracted fights you want to cycle them in or out. Sapphire can now deal damage when out on the field, and while casting to learn new spells. Meanwhile, Tiffon can do Lightning Thrust. It's a thrust, with lightning.  This is one of the techs you can spark from using Stunner. Usually, the level 4 and 5 techs look cool, and others tend to be rather less impressive. Still effective, though. Now, people have pointed out that many of the party members don't have things to say in cutscenes. This is true! They do, however, still say things when doing skill checks or stuff like that. For example, Grace failed to disarm this trap:  They have a variety of lines for these things, and sometimes they're funny or add character... but yeah, their relevance to the plot is pretty diminished. Some of them have larger parts in other storylines, but really this is Mythe's story and everyone else is there to push it along. On the other hand, check out Mythe's familiar!  Thank you, fire parrot. Every so often, the way will be blocked by a barrier.  These are deactivated by switches, but of course Mythe doesn't want to mess with things he doesn't understand. But some of them are open, thanks to the one we pressed before the insects attacked. More weird devices:   We're looking for another spiral staircase, so we can go deeper into the labyrinth. Like this:  There's lots of treasure chests here, and if you keep fighting mimics you may find some more magic tablets. If not, you'll get some nice materials and maybe cash. I picked up a magic tablet, which I found out later was a basic water arts tablet -- something which teaches Purify! Eventually, we end up in an isolated area near the original entrance.   Here you are. This is where I got it. All the valuables were looted, so there's nothing left. The Golden Age people lived in places like this... I wonder what kind of dreams that girl was having here... This place, this very room... There's no evidence at all here that she exists now. One thing is for certain -- she lived more than a thousand years ago. I felt something die deep inside me. Hiding that kind of pain was not going to be an easy task.So, as everyone expected, the mysterious woman in a picture from thousands of years ago lived thousands of years ago. That's unfortunate, though since we finished the quest everyone still gets new skills. Mythe picks up Fortuneteller, which has nice elemental growth generally and is good for spellcasters. Usually you might want someone to specialize, but since he's doing both fire and water casting right now it's not a bad skill to pick up. It goes right in the middle, so it can raise everything by a small amount. Sapphire gets the water tablet, since she's the other caster I have right now. Grace and Tiffon both got the opposite of what I wanted -- Tiffon got a nice Bow panel and Grace a lv3 Dagger -- but since they both scale off skill I realized I might as well just swap their weapons and accept it. So from now on Tiffon will be the archer, and Grace will have a dagger, and that'll be fine. Pharr didn't get any useful panels, so I just put something down that raises endurance.  Apparently Mythe was so upset by these events he went straight home. Haah... No mind for anything. So this is what they call love... Oh dang it's Laura  Are you listening!? Uh... yeah... Relics last over a thousand years. But she's a mortal human. Give it up Mythe. It's pathetic.It kind of is pathetic to be honest. Laura hands over this weird dagger:  This is the Blade of Escata, which is the central focus of her scenario. However, here it just serves as a way to introduce her to Mythe. Also, it's not her dagger but Henri's, and he's nowhere to be seen, so... I don't know how she got it, or when this happens relative to her story. It's strange. This is not a weapon. Fire! Fugar's mansion is on fire!! Hah. Fugar's finally getting what he deserves. Let it burn... all of it. I don't know him, but you shouldn't rejoice at the misfortune of others. !!!!!Mythe runs off, taking the dagger with him. Where're you going!? The dagger!! We're dropped right into another mission. The mansion is on fire, and we have to find the photograph and save it so Mythe can pine over it some more.  Every so often, you have to spin the reel to dodge wreckage from the mansion.  Even if you fail, though, it doesn't do much damage. This is really a race against time, since this mission actually has a turn limit. In one of the rooms on the first floor, you can find a magic tablet. This mansion is used for a sidequest in other characters' scenarios, and you can grab it then too.  In this case, since Mythe is the only character, he's the only one who can use it, but I can't say no to a free magic tablet. The real gimmick of this quest is that there's a bunch of locked doors which you can't lockpick. You have to find the "Keyaxe" and then use it to break the doors down.  In a sense it's good game design: they wanted you to deal with reel checks and a short turn limit to add suspense, but it's certainly possible -- even likely -- that the player won't have Mythe learn to lockpick. If you're quick you can break open lots of doors and find good loot. If not, the proper path is fairly obvious and distinct from everything else, and looks like this:   Looks like the fire's boxed us in. Only one way out now! So, I guess he jumped out the stained glass window? And he goes back to his shop, where Laura is waiting.  I know that this girl is someone from the past. Even though I knew that I would never have the chance to meet her, I couldn't just let her be consumed by the fire. You're a fool to risk your life over something like that! What's useless to one person can be another person's treasure... I think... I've seen this girl before. Really? Then again... Which is it!? I saw her get on the ship to Vaftom.Whoah, what a twist! And we'll find out what that's all about next time, when we go to Vaftom and see the Festival. Stay tuned. corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 01:42 on Dec 28, 2017 |
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Dec 28, 2017 01:37
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| # ? Jun 7, 2024 18:01 |
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Of course the person who our protagonist is trying to find is still alive despite being thousands of years old. It's still really pathetic though.
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Dec 28, 2017 02:01
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