While it’s not the flagship series of Squaresoft, the designers do tend to have a bit more fun with these games. I bought the Final Fantasy Legend trilogy as well as Romancing SaGa 2 & 3 (1 isn’t available on Switch), Saga Scarlet Grace, and plan to get the Saga Frontier Remaster - although I kind of dread this one 
FINAL FANTASY LEGEND 1
Final Fantasy Legend 1 was a bit longer than I recall it being... but not for the right reasons. As a kid, I remember zooming through this one in less than a day. Laying on a hammock at the cottage and finishing the whole game in a single sitting. Lots of great memories... completely CRUSHED by the fact that this game really did not age well at all. It has some interesting bits, but everything felt so uninspired compared to my memories.
It’s still not a long game, I clocked in about 6 hours from start to finish. It FELT way longer because today the really long dungeons with lots of cheap battles. Lots and lots of fiddling in the menus. It probably didn’t bother me as a kid, but it does now. This is why I can’t play the original SNES Final Fantasy II (FF4) anymore. By the time I finished it, I was glad to be done with it.
I’ll probably never return to this one unless it’s to play them through start to finish for someone else’s entertainment... although this game is NOT entertaining. I tried playing this one with my wife watching, and she couldn’t stand anything about it. The Bayako music was the high point of the game. Low point, buying dozens and dozens and dozens of potions/roids to upgrade my two humans... I probably avoided this class as a kid. I am guessing I could have avoided a lot of the circle-run stat grinding with a different class setup.
FINAL FANTASY LEGEND 2
Fearing the worst about my faulty memories, I dreaded playing this one. But after the first bit of the game, I sighed with relief... this game is as good as I remember!
Being so burned on humans from FFL1, I went with two mutants and two Robots. I remember the game well enough to recall Robots are the best; while equipping weapons halves the charges, Inns will recover all of them. This makes them great for holding onto rare weapons like Odin’s Gungnir later in the game. I picked 2 mutants and 2 robots. Mutants also have rechargeable/learnable magic, the bottom slot is always at risk of replacement, so move good spells to the top, and the worst one at the bottom. Another tip, equip 5 items ASAP, so you can have 4 armour pieces and 1 but able weapon, otherwise you’re stuck with 4 spells and 4 equipment slots out of your 8 slots - FFL1 doesn’t allow this strategy.
In the early game, mutant spells crush everything. Then when you get SMGs for your robots, they begin to take over as the more important characters. But mutants will catch up as their magic becomes more powerful.
SMGs are great, because they attack groups of enemies with splash damage. That means one robot can kill a group of 6 in one turn. Mutants have attack all magic, which means in the early game, a couple blasts of Blizzard/Flame magic from your mutants clears the field. While it sounds simple, it’s incredibly satisfying.
The story is much more interesting than FFL1, instead of just 4 worlds with some long dungeons, there are a lot of short dungeons, towns with recurring characters, and even though the dialogue is short it conveys enough to shape a fun story of gods and heroes. Oh yeah, the part about Lynn being the main character’s half sister implying the father had an affair definitely flew over my head as a kid. Story is MUCH more fleshed out thanks to in-party dialogue - a feature heavily used in Dragon Quest games later. This is the first game with a logue/encyclopedia, something that will come back in Tetsuya Takahashi’s (who got his start on the SaGa dev team) games like Xenosaga, and also Yasumi Matsuno games like FF Legend 1.
The gameplay is significantly smoother. Even the longer dungeons are much better designed. The longest so far is going inside a character named Ki’s body. The dungeon is segmented off, so you can leave and restock/recover, and come back in and continue on with little to no retreading.
FF Legend 1 was poorly balanced, some enemies would do annoying this to your party which sent you into the menus after every second battle. FF Legend 2 doesn’t do this. While you’ll go in for some curing from time to time, it’s less frequent and FAR less annoying. You spend about 1/40th the time in menus in FF Legend 2 than Legend 1, and that’s NOT an exaggeration.
Another big improvement are the equipment, using a little guide online, it’s very easy to see the formulas “Damage - defence” and a bit of RNG; damage is calculated by Value * Stat - and some use mana, others use Agi, and others Str - so damage for Sabre = Agix12, and if my character has 10 Agi then their base damage is 120. Then there are weapons like bows which don’t calculate against stats and have a flat damage rate, GREAT weapons for mutants in the early game. SMGs are great because they have splash damage, which means you can slaughter a group of 6 enemies. This game is a massive improvement over the first, and am having a blast playing it.
On my progress: I’m currently in Apollo’s World, which is the fourth, after the first world, Ashura’s World, and Giant World. Getting close to one of my favourite parts: Venus’s fascist city state.
More later.
FINAL FANTASY LEGEND 1
Final Fantasy Legend 1 was a bit longer than I recall it being... but not for the right reasons. As a kid, I remember zooming through this one in less than a day. Laying on a hammock at the cottage and finishing the whole game in a single sitting. Lots of great memories... completely CRUSHED by the fact that this game really did not age well at all. It has some interesting bits, but everything felt so uninspired compared to my memories.
It’s still not a long game, I clocked in about 6 hours from start to finish. It FELT way longer because today the really long dungeons with lots of cheap battles. Lots and lots of fiddling in the menus. It probably didn’t bother me as a kid, but it does now. This is why I can’t play the original SNES Final Fantasy II (FF4) anymore. By the time I finished it, I was glad to be done with it.
I’ll probably never return to this one unless it’s to play them through start to finish for someone else’s entertainment... although this game is NOT entertaining. I tried playing this one with my wife watching, and she couldn’t stand anything about it. The Bayako music was the high point of the game. Low point, buying dozens and dozens and dozens of potions/roids to upgrade my two humans... I probably avoided this class as a kid. I am guessing I could have avoided a lot of the circle-run stat grinding with a different class setup.
FINAL FANTASY LEGEND 2
Fearing the worst about my faulty memories, I dreaded playing this one. But after the first bit of the game, I sighed with relief... this game is as good as I remember!
Being so burned on humans from FFL1, I went with two mutants and two Robots. I remember the game well enough to recall Robots are the best; while equipping weapons halves the charges, Inns will recover all of them. This makes them great for holding onto rare weapons like Odin’s Gungnir later in the game. I picked 2 mutants and 2 robots. Mutants also have rechargeable/learnable magic, the bottom slot is always at risk of replacement, so move good spells to the top, and the worst one at the bottom. Another tip, equip 5 items ASAP, so you can have 4 armour pieces and 1 but able weapon, otherwise you’re stuck with 4 spells and 4 equipment slots out of your 8 slots - FFL1 doesn’t allow this strategy.
In the early game, mutant spells crush everything. Then when you get SMGs for your robots, they begin to take over as the more important characters. But mutants will catch up as their magic becomes more powerful.
SMGs are great, because they attack groups of enemies with splash damage. That means one robot can kill a group of 6 in one turn. Mutants have attack all magic, which means in the early game, a couple blasts of Blizzard/Flame magic from your mutants clears the field. While it sounds simple, it’s incredibly satisfying.
The story is much more interesting than FFL1, instead of just 4 worlds with some long dungeons, there are a lot of short dungeons, towns with recurring characters, and even though the dialogue is short it conveys enough to shape a fun story of gods and heroes. Oh yeah, the part about Lynn being the main character’s half sister implying the father had an affair definitely flew over my head as a kid. Story is MUCH more fleshed out thanks to in-party dialogue - a feature heavily used in Dragon Quest games later. This is the first game with a logue/encyclopedia, something that will come back in Tetsuya Takahashi’s (who got his start on the SaGa dev team) games like Xenosaga, and also Yasumi Matsuno games like FF Legend 1.
The gameplay is significantly smoother. Even the longer dungeons are much better designed. The longest so far is going inside a character named Ki’s body. The dungeon is segmented off, so you can leave and restock/recover, and come back in and continue on with little to no retreading.
FF Legend 1 was poorly balanced, some enemies would do annoying this to your party which sent you into the menus after every second battle. FF Legend 2 doesn’t do this. While you’ll go in for some curing from time to time, it’s less frequent and FAR less annoying. You spend about 1/40th the time in menus in FF Legend 2 than Legend 1, and that’s NOT an exaggeration.
Another big improvement are the equipment, using a little guide online, it’s very easy to see the formulas “Damage - defence” and a bit of RNG; damage is calculated by Value * Stat - and some use mana, others use Agi, and others Str - so damage for Sabre = Agix12, and if my character has 10 Agi then their base damage is 120. Then there are weapons like bows which don’t calculate against stats and have a flat damage rate, GREAT weapons for mutants in the early game. SMGs are great because they have splash damage, which means you can slaughter a group of 6 enemies. This game is a massive improvement over the first, and am having a blast playing it.
On my progress: I’m currently in Apollo’s World, which is the fourth, after the first world, Ashura’s World, and Giant World. Getting close to one of my favourite parts: Venus’s fascist city state.
More later.
