SaGa 2: Goddess of Destiny

Also known as Final Fantasy Legend II in the West, SaGa 2 was remade for the Nintendo DS earlier this year. I never played the original but I’ve played some of the other SaGa games and liked them a lot, so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this game. I’ve got a team of two humans, a robot and an esper. The male human (Seamus) and the robot (Kannon) focus on power attacks while the female human (Liruka) and the esper (Mokochan) focus on magical attacks. It’s been working out great so far. I just beat Odin by the skin of my teeth but the random battles in that area are brutal!

The nice thing about SaGa 2, and other Saga games is that stat ups are random, so you can just move on with the story without worrying too much about leveling up. You’ll get stronger when you get stronger, pretty much. Wikipedia claims that “unlike the original, where a character’s stat increases through gaining levels was largely randomized, characters now become stronger in a “less opaque” fashion, with more defined growth tables for each playable character,” but a casual player like me doesn’t want to mess with tables and figures and stuff like that. And of course if you run into an area where you’re having problems, you can always go back to the first town, equip your weakest items and grind a bit. You gain stats the same, whether you’re fighting in the final dungeon or the first dungeon. Money’s a bit tight in the early stages, but at this point I have 350,000g to play around with so I don’t have to suffer to get stronger.

The only thing that’s been bothering me is my defence. It’s terrible! I hear you can train it by using shields, but I’ve got to wonder about that. I haven’t had a single defence level up in my whole game,my only defence comes from the equipment and magi I put on. Will I be okay for the Final boss like this? ‘Cos all the boss battles so far have been reaming my buttocks, first Venus, then Odin, now who’s next? Hmm…to go back and grind a bit or not to go back and grind a bit? I think I’ll go a bit further till I hit the next boss and see what I’ll need to do to take him out. Hopefully I’ll run into a store that has uber-equipment so I can buff up a bit more.

Anyway, that’s how it’s going. I think I’m almost done with this game, and then I’ll be able to concentrate more fully on Dragon Quest 9 and Harvest Moon: Innocent Life (PS2) and the other dozen games I’m playing right now. Go, go Seamus!

4 thoughts on “SaGa 2: Goddess of Destiny

  1. Isleif says:

    I’m currently playing Final Fantasy Legend II and totally loving it! I really can’t fathom why these DS remakes were not localised at least in North-America, since the Gameboy original games were all released there… Oh, well. Anyway, I think I will get these remakes and shelve them preciously until I understand enough japanese to play them.^^

    • Kina says:

      Saga 2 is pretty newbie unfriendly, especially for the younger, more casual audience the DS was targeting. But Saga 3 was a great, fairly easy game that really should have come over. Maybe it will be available for download in English one day.

      • Isleif says:

        Well, Final Fantasy Legend II itself is quite complex and difficult to approach, so I guess that makes sense; I actually needed an FAQ to figure out the basic rules, which is quite uncommon for a Gameboy title. But it’s definitely worth the hassle, for this game is great! And what an amazing soundtrack… I can’t get enough of the “Legacy” theme, really.^^

        • Kina says:

          I didn’t read up on the rules until I was almost done and found myself getting rocked by even field enemies. Once I did I wished I’d done so from the start. SO much less frustrating!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *