Finished Saga 2

02.11.10 / Japanese, RPG, Square-Enix, Video game / Author: / Comments: (0)
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Yippee, I finally finished this game! I hate leaving games unfinished, so even though I’ve started several other games in the meantime, it was nagging at the back of my mind that I still hadn’t finished Saga 2: Goddess of Destiny.

The last boss was a pain in the ass, though. The first time I fought him I lost because I didn’t have enough healing items. You really need that “Healing Book” item, because the boss has attacks that hit your whole party and you can’t afford to heal them one by one. I had two magic-users, Momoko and Liruka, but it was still all I could do to stay alive. Work on your HP before you get to the boss. Have at least 900HP before you face him!

Actually, despite my best efforts, three of my party members got wiped out and the final showdown was between Liruka and the boss. Liruka had blazed through her Flare books and had only a Blizzard book with 1 use left when the boss croaked. What saved me is that when his life is low, he uses a very predictable pattern where he charges for two turns and unleashes a 700+ attack on the third. So I attacked, attacked, healed, repeated, and just when I was down to one last Blizzard, he croaked.

The ending? You, your mom and your dad jump out of the window to go have another adventure. Apparently it’s the same ending from the GBC edition. I was hoping for something a little more exciting after all the effort I went through, but whatever. I’m just glad it’s over, honestly. Will it ever get released in English? Hmm, on one hand it IS from Square-Enix. On the other hand, it’s not very user-friendly and the story is decidedly bland and out-of-date. The updated graphics are very blocky and the battle and levelling system will leave a lot of new users scratching their heads. I’m not even sure I’d recommend it to anyone I know. I enjoyed it but I won’t be playing this again. So…yeah.

Saga 2: Goddess of Destiny

02.11.10 / Japanese, RPG, Square-Enix, Video game / Author: / Comments: (0)
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Also known as Final Fantasy Legend II in the West, this game 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 this, and other Saga games is that stat ups are random, so you can just move on with the story without worrying too much about levelling 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’l 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!