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an extremely spicy take is that unlimited saga would be much better received in 2021 than it was back in whatever year it was released in, because over the past decade we've really seen a rise in experimental titles, particularly in the quote-unquote indie scene, that have really expanded the concept of what games can be. honestly if unlimited saga had used a card-based system instead of a reel-based system it would have been enough evidence for me to confirm that kawazu is time traveler.
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Apr 12, 2021 23:12
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No Wave posted:Are any of the other SaGas comparable in content/quality to SaGa Frontier 1? I tried 2 and it didn't have any of the elements that I liked about SF1. Try any of the Romancing SaGa games. They don't have the oddball science-fantasy setting that SaGa Frontier does, but they do have a similar structure with multiple protagonists, similar combat systems, lots of side quests, that sort of thing. As others have pointed out, Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song (the Romancing SaGa 1 remake on PS2) is a fantastic game all around and it's a reasonably safe bet that you'd like it if you liked SaGa Frontier.
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Apr 12, 2021 23:34
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So having played Unlimited SaGa not too long ago, I really wanna say that I think the gimmicky mechanics aren't really the problem with it. Like yes, they're very off-putting, but I don't think it takes too long to figure out how they work. Reels are deterministic so it just takes some practice to always get the result you want, and the panel thing is frustrating but it's not too difficult to just have a dump space where you put all your lovely panels. And panels especially, while some of the overworld skills can be esoteric, most are pretty obvious what they do and you can directly see the change in your stats from them. No, I think the problem with Unlimited SaGa is the encounter design. There are so many dungeons with time limits or gimmicky puzzles that don't make any sense that it's suffering to play through. One thing I got stuck on (and that I thought was a bug) was a mission where bandits attack you in the middle of the night. Your goal is to defeat all of them, but what the game doesn't tell you is that they're literally constantly respawning. If you don't know where the bandits start on the map and immediately start culling their numbers I'm not sure it's even possible to win. I had to restart the fight after defeating like, over 20 encounters of bandits and taking up way too much time. Also, quite frankly, the game seems like it's pretty drat hard for a SaGa game, and requires you to engage with and understand a lot of its systems to succeed. Which is...not really a good thing when we're talking about a series as obtuse as SaGa.
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Apr 12, 2021 23:42
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Yes. SF1 only works because you don't actually have to understand the mechanics at all, you just keep playing and things that feel nice happen. The one time you're expected to have system understanding (the ring lord fight) is infamous.
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Apr 12, 2021 23:45
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TurnipFritter posted:an extremely spicy take is that unlimited saga would be much better received in 2021 than it was back in whatever year it was released in, because over the past decade we've really seen a rise in experimental titles, particularly in the quote-unquote indie scene, that have really expanded the concept of what games can be. honestly if unlimited saga had used a card-based system instead of a reel-based system it would have been enough evidence for me to confirm that kawazu is time traveler. Not just that but also it's far easier these days to look up (and for communities to compile) the details of the mechanics in obtuse rpgs.
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Apr 12, 2021 23:47
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TurnipFritter posted:an extremely spicy take is that unlimited saga would be much better received in 2021 than it was back in whatever year it was released in, because over the past decade we've really seen a rise in experimental titles, particularly in the quote-unquote indie scene, that have really expanded the concept of what games can be. honestly if unlimited saga had used a card-based system instead of a reel-based system it would have been enough evidence for me to confirm that kawazu is time traveler. Yeah, I've made pretty much the same argument before - you could no joke take Unlimited SaGa's character growth system, reskin the panels to cards with no other changes, and it would feel right at home in an indie roguelite chasing the success of Slay the Spire. I think the only things the game really needed was a better tutorial and UI. UI is probably the bigger one honestly, the way it is now it almost works against you figuring out how the game works. A UI that did a better job of presenting the information that's currently relevant would go a long way in making the game more understandable.
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Apr 12, 2021 23:48
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ACES CURE PLANES posted:However, I can't say it's not improved by dialing up the super robot/super sentai stylings up to 11 This is goddamn amazing. Something that always struck me about the GB SaGas, even across composers, was how hard they went on using stereo sound to cover for the GB's weak sound capabilities. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z0aO6Yc7gI 's giving the (for lack of a better term) hub world BGM echoes and an openness that the melody could never support otherwise, or the final boss theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2606kfN5Fs that's somehow managing to evoke a strings (left)/organ (center)/piano (right) ensemble with occasional bells coming in from above.
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Apr 12, 2021 23:55
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The music is great though!
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Apr 12, 2021 23:55
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No Wave posted:Yes. SF1 only works because you don't actually have to understand the mechanics at all, you just keep playing and things that feel nice happen. The one time you're expected to have system understanding (the ring lord fight) is infamous. Even that fight has some elements that make it a little easier than it would otherwise be, like the fact that the ring lord doesn't attack to split up your combos. If anything, the Magma Slimes are the harder battle in that place
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Apr 13, 2021 00:08
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I've got some intense nostalgia for the Legend series. Looking forward to playing Frontier.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:10
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Last Remnant 2 waiting room
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Apr 13, 2021 00:15
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Dackel posted:Last Remnant 2 waiting room YO DAVE THAT WAS ACE
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Apr 13, 2021 00:28
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Ace Transmuter posted:I mean, sure these are spiritual successors to varying degrees (the last remnant is a bit of a stretch), but I mean, you also left out Octopath Traveler. Octopath doesn't even have tech sparking and there aren't any recruitables besides the main 8. There isn't any SaGa obtuseness in Octopath. No Wave posted:Are any of the other SaGas comparable in content/quality to SaGa Frontier 1? I tried 2 and it didn't have any of the elements that I liked about SF1. edit: oh yeah scarlet grace is a good one too Gyoru fucked around with this message at 00:47 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 00:40
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i hate rush so much that it colors my perception of the rest of the game. that said, you know how lr has a full equipment crafting system that you can't actually use for anyone but rush and also it pays to stick to one weapon type for him? there's an entry in an .ini file that allows you to simply enable equipment changes for everyone else.
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Apr 13, 2021 00:45
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MonsieurChoc posted:I love my giant four-armed cats and tiny rabbit-frogs. 
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Apr 13, 2021 00:58
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I finally got the chance to play Unlimited Saga recently and even once you understand the systems it's only ok. The combat system is interesting but the core of the difficulty is different from most Saga games. Typically fights in Saga are fast and brutal. A good portion of the making progress is learning which enemies are priority targets so they don't take out half your team with Maelstrom or whatever. Most of the games balance this by having really generous save systems. In Unlimited Saga the challenge is more about managing resources and time limits in a long dungeon crawl. The dungeon and quest design is also all over the place. The game is pretty fun when you're finishing a difficult dungeon by the skin of your teeth, but other dungeons are tedious and the growth panel system exacerbates this. You might spend 400 turns trying to figure out the puzzle in a 700 turn dungeon while swatting away weak monsters only to finish and get a bunch of panels nobody wants.
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Apr 13, 2021 01:16
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This song (or more specifically, this remix of it) was my first ever exposure to the series and it's remained lodged in my head for over a decade and I've been meaning to check the games out ever since. The only game I've actually played so far is the gacha game that I started last week so I'm gonna grab Frontier as soon as I can. I've also played T260G's final boss theme way too many times in Theatrhythm Curtain Call.
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Apr 13, 2021 01:16
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The gacha game is halfway decent for a gacha game; if anyone wants me to write an effortpost on it, I might sometime
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Apr 13, 2021 02:33
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Leraika posted:The gacha game is halfway decent for a gacha game; if anyone wants me to write an effortpost on it, I might sometime RS: Re;universe very f2p friendly - free currency at a good tick with decent pull rates time intensive - timewhaling is more important than actual whaling due to the game's auto grinding focus to the degree where most vets play on an android emulator and macro their runs - gives out so much stamina (energy needed to run missions) it might as well not exist, which feeds into the time sink
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Apr 13, 2021 02:57
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SaGa games have always interested me (Not to mention the ever present Akitoshi Kawazu. Does he know where the bodies are buried? Doea he have the receipt for the shovel?!). I really like that for the Frontier remake they actually are going back and adding the stuff they had to cut out for time. I have heard that Frontier was infamously incomplete and it is cool that they are going back and fixing it up.
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Apr 13, 2021 02:58
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SaGa Frontier wasn't so incomplete that it felt like you were being cheated out of anything, it just didn't have anything to neatly tie it all off after you finished all the stories, which was kind of part of the original plan with Fuse (whose scenario didn't make it in originally). There's some other scenes that were known about that also didn't make the cut but nothing so major beyond the last scenario. There was a lot of material in The Essence of Saga Frontier which the Remaster will likely draw from.
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Apr 13, 2021 03:26
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Unlucky7 posted:SaGa games have always interested me (Not to mention the ever present Akitoshi Kawazu. Does he know where the bodies are buried? Doea he have the receipt for the shovel?!). I really like that for the Frontier remake they actually are going back and adding the stuff they had to cut out for time. I have heard that Frontier was infamously incomplete and it is cool that they are going back and fixing it up. I'm just gonna quote myself from the RPG thread a couple months back. Kawazu has immense seniority at Square. He has been a game designer at Square since 1985. He has never worked anywhere else in the industry (except for a brief period when he ran one of Square's shell corporations). Having a 36 year run as a console game designer, at one company, is incredible. So every once in a while, he uses his built-up clout to do something he wants to do. Rumour has it that that's why SaGa Frontier is getting its remaster: because he really wanted to, and he pushed hard for it. And, honestly, good on him. Joining in 1985 means he has been at Square longer than it has been an individual company, as it didn't split off from Den-Yu-Sha, where it started out as a computer games division, until late 1986. Which means probably only Sakaguchi and maybe Tanaka predated him as a designer; Sakaguchi left Square in 2004 and Tanaka in 2012. So he does, in fact, probably know where all the bodies are buried; he has years and years of work for Square, and sometimes they just let him do what he wants because of it.
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Apr 13, 2021 03:42
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iirc Masanori Ichikawa (producer on Scarlet Grace Ambitions, the RS2/3 remasters and the gacha game; also credited as "SaGa series producer" variously?) took credit for pushing to have the series reissued on modern platforms a while back- but none of that probably happens without Kawazu being the Most Senior Design Guy at the company, yeah The previously mentioned gacha game maybe helps get more SaGa projects greenlit as well since the Japanese release has been pulling in shitloads of money over the past couple years.
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Apr 13, 2021 04:24
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The first SaGa is also Square's first million-seller. Obviously buoyed by how innovative even having a portable RPG at the time was, but it was also just as flashy in terms of soundtrack, script, and big expressive monster sprites as an FF, rather than the deliberately throwback Sword of Hope that was its only genre competition that holiday season.
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Apr 13, 2021 04:47
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The series is popular enough in japan to have gotten one or two stage shows.
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Apr 13, 2021 05:52
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Did the Wonderswan remake of Legends ever get a fan translation like the DS remakes?
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Apr 13, 2021 06:11
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Mr. Maltose posted:Did the Wonderswan remake of Legends ever get a fan translation like the DS remakes? Yeah 
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Apr 13, 2021 06:32
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Hogama posted:SaGa Frontier wasn't so incomplete that it felt like you were being cheated out of anything, it just didn't have anything to neatly tie it all off after you finished all the stories, which was kind of part of the original plan with Fuse (whose scenario didn't make it in originally). There's some other scenes that were known about that also didn't make the cut but nothing so major beyond the last scenario. There was a lot of material in The Essence of Saga Frontier which the Remaster will likely draw from. I remember gaming magazines ('Member those?) absolutely hating the game at the time, particularly one rant in the letters section ('Member that?) of Ultra Gameplayers where it becomes a bitch session about what you are talking about. I am looking forward to the game though it will be a little weird considering I spoiled myself on Blue's scenario. Also good god ya'll the art from the character designer: https://twitter.com/Dreamboum/status/1381761735980384256 Also also I should get back into Scarlet Graces. I liked what I played.
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Apr 13, 2021 06:44
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Unlucky7 posted:Also good god ya'll the art from the character designer: Dear God, that character portrait of Doll is amazing. I enjoyed the heck out of Scarlet Grace for a while but I kind of got burnt out on it. Maybe I'm not supposed to do as much as possible in every region, but I was getting tired of getting dicked around by the drat Phoenix quest. My main party (9 characters rotated in and out) were at close to 600 hp and level XIII gear and I still hadn't gotten through chapter 1 yet.
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Apr 13, 2021 07:34
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I will always respect this series for its absolute insanity and incomprehensible (to me) popularity I've played a lot of them, finished a few, but they're just fukken weird man
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Apr 13, 2021 08:13
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i ended up playing re:universe for a while despite it being desperately dull and grindy simply because they used kobayashi art as loading screens.
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Apr 13, 2021 09:56
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My understanding is that at release SaGa Frontier 1 was popular in Japan but not at all in the west (as mentioned above, gaming magazines were giving it scores like 6/10 which seemed completely unfair to me at the time and even moreso now) I'm hoping some more people might get to enjoy it now who didn't before.
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Apr 13, 2021 12:41
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As someone who didn't grow up with a PSX my problem with SaGa Frontier 1 has been that with zero nostalgia for the game it just looks really bad, the combination of the art style and technology used do not work for me at all and it's all just a blurry mess. Like it sits in this really awkward and unappealing middle spot between Square's gorgeous 2D games and their later 3D games once they figured out how the PSX works The higher resolution of the remaster makes it looks so much better, and with all the other additions and updates I'm definitely going to finally play it because it does seem pretty cool otherwise
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Apr 13, 2021 13:05
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Gyoru posted:There's a thread here. good effortpost, thank you for saving me the trouble edit now that I'm caught up with the thread: I really recommend people take a look at the SaGa artbooks if they can find them; they're full of weird and wonderful and beautiful art and I can't recommend it highly enough. Leraika fucked around with this message at 13:26 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 13:22
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Veib posted:As someone who didn't grow up with a PSX my problem with SaGa Frontier 1 has been that with zero nostalgia for the game it just looks really bad, the combination of the art style and technology used do not work for me at all and it's all just a blurry mess. Like it sits in this really awkward and unappealing middle spot between Square's gorgeous 2D games and their later 3D games once they figured out how the PSX works It's definitely a weird-looking game in any resolution I think. It's weird in a way that I enjoy, but it's definitely weird. Hell, if anything the higher resolution kinda highlights how goofy some things look. Check out this weird cannon tortoise!  It rules
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Apr 13, 2021 14:09
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Yeah, I love the weird aesthetic and as a kid, it was just so different from everything else I'd played at the time
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Apr 13, 2021 14:11
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I was watching some videos of the original earlier and during a video of one of Blue's boss fights (specifically the duel with Rouge) that the player had Blue using sword skills. It never occurred to me to build him as a sword/magic hybrid. How well does he do that way? I went pure mage with him way back when I first played (and it seems like the "canon" way to go) but I'm curious about swordmage Blue. I do already know that if you want to keep any non-magic skills Blue knows, you have to win the duel with Rouge--Rouge will only inherit Blue's magic skills and stats if he wins. Harrow fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Apr 13, 2021 |
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Apr 13, 2021 14:22
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if i recall correctly pure mages that aren't blue kind of suck, so it is generally good to give them a couple weapon skills.
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Apr 13, 2021 14:31
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Yeah from what I remember, offensive magic is great for AoE but pales in comparison to weapon skills for single-target (honestly, not a bad way to balance it, either). Blue's a special case because of how sky-high his magic stats can get during his own playthrough, so he can deal a lot more damage with spells like Tower than anyone else. On the topic of Blue spoilers: I wonder if the remaster changes the "canon" from Essence of SaGa Frontier. In Essence, it's canon that Rouge won the duel with Blue, but if you look at the party Fuse can assemble in the trailers, Blue is there, not Rouge. Could be something they tweaked for the trailer to avoid spoilers (someone looking at the list and going "where's Blue?") or it's possible that in Fuse's version of events, you can still decide whether Blue or Rouge wins.
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Apr 13, 2021 14:35
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If I were designing Fuse's quest I'd want to make all seven of the other main characters recruitable to make it feel special and exciting.
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Apr 13, 2021 14:39
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