Romancing SaGa

[Julius Seeker]

This series likely needs no introduction on this forum, it is the sequel series to Final Fantasy Legend. Originally released on Super Nintendo, none of the games came out in North America until the remake of Romancing Saga 1 came out on PS2.

I’m currently playing Romancing SaGa 2 for Nintendo Switch. The first thing I heard of this game is that it has “Dark Souls” levels of difficulty and is torture to play. I’ve never played Dark Souls, but I’m over 20 hours into the game and am not finding it too much more difficult than Final Fantasy Legend 2, in fact, easier in a lot of ways because the game is kind of proto open world, which means if I hit a spot that’s too difficult, I just go some place else. Legend 2 is linear with only a few optional areas - the Nasty Dungeon being the most notorious. This game is easier than FFL2 in that inventory space isn’t as limited, and so I’ve yet to run into a point where I have to flee the dungeon, skip treasure, or drop items to make room. The game is also significantly easier than FF Legend 1, which I will say was indeed 5% fun, 95% torture.

Romancing SaGa 2’s progression is based, not on story, but on expanding your empire. The story elements are typically very basic “this is the cause, now this is the effect, you need to now fix things” or “here’s the problem, find the solution.” The story is more expansive than the FFL games, but there isn’t a cohesive narrative like FFL2 unless you’re talking about how everything contributes to the growth and prosperity of your Empire. Expanding the Empire is done by completing the quests and winning people over or conquering them—there’s usually two to four different ways on going about it.

There is permanent death in the game, characters have roughly 10-15 lives. If they are KO’d, enemies can reduce lives further by hitting them when they’re down. If you get wiped out, you will reawaken back at your castle, hire a new party, and this one might be a lot better than your last one. Some things may have developed - as there are a projects you can invest in. Although, most projects are timed based on the number of battles you fight.

Anyway, it’s an interesting game to play in short bursts. The game seems to be highly divisive as people think it’s either the best or one of the worst of the series. I’m guessing most later SaGa games are really easy or more conventional. I like this game for it not adhering to standard conventions - but I haven’t played Romancing SaGa 1 or 3 yet.

Also, there’s a New Game+ feature which gives you your money, items, and levels (global levels). I originally started up with a plan of getting so far and restarting the game, but I think I might just play all the way through. Hard to say, I know a lot more about what I’m doing and feel I can probably get back to where I am now fairly quickly, and with money invested much more efficiently than my first attempt. But the game isn’t as difficult as I thought.

[Don]

Romancing Saga 2 is said to be hard because the last save point has no other enemies you can fight, so if you can't beat the last boss you have no way of improving yourself and have to start the entire game over if you didn't have an earlier save, and it is very possible to be nowhere strong enough to beat the last boss if you're just barely scrapping by.

From what I can tell the Saga games just have way overpowered stats on the enemy and it's dependent on randomly learning some equally absurd skills to balance it out and if you didn't learn them it's borderline impossible because the stat system makes it hard if not impossible to pile up enough stats to brute force stuff the traditional way.

[Julius Seeker]

New Game Plus is always an escape hatch.

The difficulty level scales based on the number of encounters fought rather than the power of the party. Running from battle counts as an encounter, and so people who run too often will have problems. New Game Plus resets the counter to zero. The player will have all their power, but enemies will be back down to nothing.

With New Game Plus the player keeps their global levels, learned skills, magic levels, and money. However, all investments are reset to zero.

To explain the investment system a little further.
1. Treasury Income - the two ways of acquiring treasury income are by finding large sums of money in treasure chests and winning battles. Income from battles is based on your salary level. So, if it is 25,000, each battle will earn 25,000. Salary is impacted by areas owned by the empire and by facilities in town.
2. Infrastructure - After certain objectives are met in the story, sitting on the throne will ask about projects to complete. These will include salary increasing facilities, but also locations where certain classes of characters can be found, and where magic can be learned.
3. The Magic School - Once built, the magic a character can learn will be equal to what was available in the previous game since it’s based on global levels, not monetary investment. Magic runs on linear progression, that means every player will get fireball as their first fire spell, immolation as their second, flame whip as their third, etc… There are also combo spells which combine elements, these are based on basic spells learned + investment. I believe they reset, but should be learnable from the time the school’s built on New Game Plus.
4. Weapons and Armour - shops will provide weapons and armour based on what’s researched. Players learn by dumping X00,000 into weapon or armour research and waiting for 15 battles, then a new piece of equipment becomes available in the shop. These will reset to zero on New Game Plus.

And provinces conquered will also reset to none with New Game Plus, so the player will have to conquer them all over again. Should be fast and easy to do so very quickly.

My current strategy is to head into New Game Plus, so I’m amassing huge amounts of money and not investing any unless it means an increase in salary/revenue. That way, it will be constant investment early on in my new game with nothing missed or falling short of completion before the final generation. But, honestly, I’m thinking it’s possible this strategy is overkill as I’m not finding the game to be as difficult as it’s reputation - but if it is all based on that ending, then it’s probably best I stick to this strategy.

Final Fantasy Legend (SaGa 1-3) are the only other games I’ve played in the franchise. FF Legend 2 is more difficult than most RPGs of the 1990s, but anyone on this forum will be able to finish it. I always found its contemporary, FF Adventure (Seiken Densetsu 1), to be an easier game. FF Legend 3 is the easiest of the first four GB RPGs, I forget how much easier, though, because it’s the only one of the four I haven’t played recently (played FF Adventure twice, once with the iOS near 1:1 remake, and the other being the port in the Seiken Densetsu collection) - it’s not Dawn of Mana which is about 60-75% different from the original. I also played through FFL 1 and 2 both a few months ago with the SaGa collection. FF Legend 1 is by far the most difficult.

Legend 1’s difficulty mainly comes from sloppy design.
1. Vague quests that rely on riddles that seem like fairly random dialogue rather than a key objective meaning it’s easy to get somewhere and have no clue what to do for hours without a guide - and then even with the clue it’s not easy to understand what needs to be done.
2. The level up system is ridiculous. Humans, for example, are dependent on stat potions. The player has 12 slots in their inventory, potions bought each take up one slot, and each potion raises one stat by 1 point - so it becomes a massive chore of buying individual potions, using each potion individually, heading back to the shop to buy more, repeat, repeat, repeat… to level up humans.
3. Difficulty spikes, in the last two thirds of the game, especially, the enemies in each new area will feel like they’re from two dungeons/areas ahead of where the player’s currently located until stats and equipment are properly upgraded. The game requires significant resource/level grinding. Most bosses are. Fine, but The Creator at the end of the game is ridiculously difficult… in a Breath of Fire 3 end of game boss type of difficult - which means the most important strategy is making sure sufficient resources are on the party.

The Creator (FF Legend 1), Tyr (Breath of Fire 3), and The Patriarch (Xenosaga Episode 2) are still the most ridiculous end boss spikes I’ve ever come across. Xenoblade Chronicles 1 has a ridiculous spike at the end as well, but it’s far more manageable than those two. The Patriarch from XS Episode 2’s difficulty comes from the fact that he’s got phased. So the first 50-60% is a long slog through a weaker phase, but the player can’t just unload all their most powerful attacks off the bat because at the 60% mark he starts hitting with ridiculously powerful attacks, and will kill the player fast. Because there’s no indication of when this crazy phase is imminent, the best way to do it is to count how much damage has been delivered with each attack then start unloading with the most powerful skills and Ether attacks just before that phase begins. So yeah, The Patriarch is a ridiculous battle.

[Don]

You can't just reset your game in the original Romancing Saga 2. If you run with one save and you saved in the spot before the last boss and you couldn't beat it, you have to start over and the last boss is enough of a difficulty spike that this is entirely possible. It's same as how some people saved outside the room where you fight Wiegraf in FFT and had to start over too. Overall I find the Saga games to be pretty hard but mostly for bad reason, namely very high spike in stats and weird mechanics that depends on getting some special broken skills to have a realistic shot at beating the overpowered enemies.

Tyr I think they expect you to know what the combination is for Kaiser Dragon and it's fairly easy if you have Kaiser Dragon on her because Kaiser Dragon basically can't die so you just need one person healing the whole time while the other person uses items to keep up Ryu's MP. But if you don't have Kaiser Dragon it takes so long to do any damage that you can definitely run out of stuff.

[Julius Seeker]

That’s unfortunate. Makes me happy I got into the game once they’d added that feature.

I don’t mind replaying games. So, playing toward an eventual New Game Plus isn’t an issue. I’m also going to be very wealthy on my next playthrough and formulate my own walk through based on my learnings. Although, I’ll probably research some other good things I missed on my first playthrough and add them in. I know there’s a building that collects all the different characters from around the world in one place so I don’t have to travel to three different parts of the Empire each time my party gets wiped. That’s my strategy at least for the second game. On this first one I’m focused on treasure hunting and becoming wealthy above Empire building progress… although, much of the time they go hand in hand.

This game has something called the Maze of Memories, it’s basically the Nasty Dungeon from
FF Legend 2. The difference is treasure is restocked every time the player exits the dungeon; there are escape hatches every 2-3 floors; there are four different routes corresponding to elements; and instead of the Warmech at the end, it’s one of four dragons based on the element of the route taken. Much like the Nasty Dungeon, the treasure in this dungeon is ridiculous and it almost deals like cheating to be playing it. The downside is it’s a very long dungeon that (IMO) might be better to break up into multiple play sessions… Particularly if you’re not a fan of the FF4/FF5 era dungeons - although, not quite as bad, as they have Earthbound/Lunar style encounters so whole floors can be cleared with 0-2 fights.

[Don]

The dungeon sounds a lot like Lufia 2's 100 level dungeon and the stuff you get out of there makes the main game a cakewalk and bizarrely does not require stats to beat the game to get stuff out of the dungeon.

[Eric]

Oh Persona 5 handles modern JRPG difficulty really well specifically Persona 5 Royal. Originally the game punished your exp/item/money gain at the highest difficulty this just made the experience take longer and forced you to grind more, Royal fixed this issue by actually increasing exp/money/item drops, made the overall experience much more fun and challenging from start to finish. Royal did lower your damage some more but honestly damage is busted late game in Persona so it worked out heh.

Difficulty Damage Received Damage Dealt Exp Items
Safety x0.5 x2 x3 x5
Easy x0.5 x1 x1 x1
Normal x1 x1 x1 x1
Hard x1.6 x0.8 x1 x1
Merciless x1.6 x0.8 x0.4 x0.4

Persona 5 Royal
Difficulty Damage Received Damage Dealt Exp Items
Safety x0.5 x1.6 x1.5 x1.5
Easy x0.5 x1 x1.2 x1.2
Normal x1 x1 x1 x1
Hard x1.6 x0.8 x1 x1
Merciless x1.6 x0.65 x1.2 x1.2

[Don]

That kind of reminds me of Grandia 2 which is a relatively hard game and they put this hard mode and all people do is farm stuff that drops stuff that gives you permanent stats (apparently rare off very easy stuff) and then you have enough stats to trivially beat anything. It's like what's the point of even challenging yourself if you're just going to go in a circle for much longer to make up for it?

I ended up beating the game without healing spells, items (except on Melfice for the achievement), or intentionally killing any extra enemies. Can't beat Eyes of Valmar this way though (need to heal once or twice, she does way too much damage), and it's a nonstarter on the Valmar Core. The last boss surprisingly wasn't quite doable this way too even though you can almost perma stun it with Paralyzing Gaze because it hits really hard and chances are one of the turn it breaks out of paralyze you'll have to take a big hit and he does have enough HP that you'll probably get enough bad breaks to lose without healing.

[Julius Seeker]

An update on Romancing Saga 2.

I’m playing Romancing SaGa 2 during the week, and Witcher 3 on weekends - since Witcher 3 demands much longer play sessions, and I do pomodoros at work, meaning I take two 5 minute breaks every hour, and I tap Romancing SaGa 2 during that time, it’s easy to cut it up into 3-5 minute sessions because it’s an SNES style RPG with a very concisely delivered story, and rapid paced battles with simple UI and short animations.

46 hours into the main game I’ve cleared out all 4 parts of the “Nasty Dungeon (FFL2)/100 level dungeon (Lucia 2)” area and have developed some ridiculous magic skills.

Magic in Romancing Saga 2 isn’t by chance, it’s awarded on a linear path - much like materia in FF7 or the level unlock system of FF4. The spells are unlocked by an “AP” system, and AP is gained by using certain spell elements in battle. Something like: (AP awarded) = (Tech points)*X(spell usage times)*Y(spell mp value)
- tech points are awarded each battle like experience points.
- X and Y are modifiers.

When enough AP is acquired, a new spell unlocks. Every character can equip that spell at the Magic School back in the capital city of the empire. Characters can hold up to 8 spells at a time. The only other limitation is that characters can’t hold spells of opposing elements: so, if a character has a fire spell, they can’t have water, no wind + earth, and no light + dark.

As a bit of an illustration: high level mages have about 150-200 mp. My most powerful magic user has 161 mp. Ether potions can’t be used in battle, and they are hard to come by - they can’t be purchased. So, the spell points a party has when entering a dungeon is a limited resource. The only way to replenish them without potions is at an Inn.

Some of the spells I’ve found that are ridiculously valuable are:
Galactic Rift - this is a light elemental spell, very expensive at 13mp - it’s the Ultima/Meteo spell of this game, hitting harder than any individual enemy targeting spell while hitting all enemies . Very good for large groups of very dangerous foes and bosses.

Hasten Time - is the most expensive spell in the game by far at 36mp. This spell gives the player a free turn, so as long as the player keeps using the spell the enemy can’t attack. Yeah, it’s cheap and I’m OK playing cheap if the option is there

My strategy on all bosses in the Nasty Dungeon/100 Level Dungeon area was to conserve magic by only using special attacks in battles with 1 or 2 strong enemies, and using 1 mp spells that strike all enemies in all other battles. This conserves most of my mp for the boss battles, dragons. The dragons are fought by using Hasten Time every turn until my MP runs out. My party is powerful enough that I was able to kill the dragons before draining all 5 members of their mp. I had my main magic user cast attack buffs on all other characters (which increase attack power from between 20% and double depending on the type of attack), another character casts Hasten time, the three remaining characters just hit with their most powerful skills. When they were buffed up, my most powerful mage would then switch to using Galactic Rift. It worked, all four dragons are dead.

And I wonder if this strategy will be good enough to take down the final boss of the game when I get there in the final generation.

[Julius Seeker]

I’m picking up Romancing Saga 2 again, I’d put it down for the summer, but with the summer winding down I’m getting back into gaming.

The plan was to start with New Game+, but I’ve found it’s easy enough to continue after a break given its episodic nature. Right now I’m at over 1000 battles, and so the bosses are easier than the regular enemies thanks to level scaling… even though I’m in the later game. I’m actually hoping I get to the final generation soon, because I want to New Game+ then explore the Eastern part of the world more, my exploits have been mainly in the west. There are also many classes I haven’t touched as I got comfortable playing basically Ninja, male Crusader, female Crusader, Naga, and Tactitian.

There are 25 classes, but those classes are, in a way, divided into two sub-classes because a male version and female version tend to be different enough from one another… while male and female Crusaders have access to mostly the same stuff the male crusaders are much better on the physical end, while female crusaders are much stronger on the magic end. Then apart from gender, there are different types of characters and they also have a number of other strengths and weaknesses. This leads to 25 classes, but hundreds of sun-classes. And, unlike core FF games, players can only have one party member of each class and gender at a time—players can have one male crusader and one female crusader. The story reason is they exist in the world as characters, so you go to the castle with the female crusader—ask her to join and she joins, going back, you’ll speak to her heir who cannot join you until the previous female crusader perishes (all life points drained).

My next goal is Romancing Saga 3. While Romancing Saga 2 feels like a Secret of Mana era game, somewhere between FF4/5 and FF6, Romancing Saga 3 looks like it’s more of a late SNES era game, somewhere post FF6 - in the realm of Mario RPG, and Chrono Trigger. There was a tremendous gap between 1993 and 1995. Romancing Saga 3 also had the benefit of having some if FF6’s talent onboard: including Kaori Tanaka/Soraya Saga taking over as the Graphics Director.

Interesting enough, Romancing Saga 2 had a Pre-Chrono Trigger Mitsuda onboard for the sound effects, and Uematsu aiding Ito in the composition (as he had for all previous Saga games, except Legend 3), but Romancing Saga 3 is the game that is praised for its music and sound with Kenji Ito in charge of a team of rookies. Uematsu had worked with Ito on the first 5 Saga games as well, including FF Legend 2.

I also learned that FF Legend 3, while the third SaGa game, was not made by the same core team that developed FF Legend 1 and 2, or the Romancing Saga trilogy. Romancing Saga 1 was developed at the same time as FF Legend 3. FF Legend 3, IMO, fell short of FFL2, and while it had way fewer issues than FFL1, it also lacked the spirit of that game.

It feels out of place in the same sort of way FF9 and 12 feel out of place. Not saying FF9 doesn’t feel like Final Fantasy, but it clearly feels more like a Sakaguchi game, while FF6, 7, 8, and X were very much Kitase games. Actually, I’ll just finish this post with what I find the differences are in the storytelling of Sakaguchi games, SaGa games, and Kitase games:

ROMANCING SAGA
Literally just independent short stories that all take place in the same world. There is some relation to the major parts of the stories, but think of the first two Witcher books, and that’s the SaGa series. The world is also divided up into different contained regions, and there’s usually a lot of them.

Villains are well defined.

Usually the party has something to do with a major faction. FF Legend 2 is the Guardians, Romancing SaGa 2, you’re literally the Emperor of an Empire. In both cases, trying to bring order to a world you have a major stake in.

SAKAGUCHI
Very plot-driven, but I find his stories always lose focus after the beginning only to pick it up at the end—most of his games feel like there is a big lull from about the 25-40% mark until the 90% mark. This was as true with FF1 as it was with FF9. FF4, IMO, was his best work and doesn’t have much of a lull at all.

Just for an example of how it happens in FF1: the story starts about stopping the Fiends from draining the elements of the world, and the Earth fiend was very much about a rotting Earth, but then after it switched around to the fiends actually enhancing the elements around them without any real explanation for the change, and those parts of the game start to feel like formulaic scenarios without a lot of interesting stuff happening. I found FF3 and FF9 to be much the same. FF4 differs because the scenarios are a little wilder and more interesting, and feel like they tie things together in interesting ways: particularly Rubicante. It’s not that he changes his style so much as FF4 is just the best version of it.

His world, like the SaGa games, feels very divided and with different features and such. The villain tends to appear when the player’s main party appears, and causes a problem in what was normally a location without issues. It feels like a plot mechanic, and nowadays comes off as contrived in a way I didn’t notice as a kid. Lots of coincidences. Again, I still think FF4, despite these things, is an enjoyable story.

In SaGa and Sakaguchi games, the villains are much more defined and they have little mystery about them—even the ones that don’t really have much to do with the story until the end, like Zemus and whatever the guy at the end of FF9 was.

Sakaguchi is the odd one out with characters typically being independent actors or outcasts. Sometimes, like in the case of the Light Warriors, the team is unified, but their identity ends there. Cecil and Kain are more or less independents that team up with others.

KITASE
The story feels a lot more free form, it doesn’t feel mechanical at all. It also feels much more character-driven. Characters are often lost, flawed, even loser types, and trying to find their way, and finding themselves walking into situations they need to adapt to… often, because of their abilities, stumbling into greatness.

The world feels WAY more integrated than either of the other two. Usually things already suck in the world, and the villains are already causing problems. In FF6, 7, and 8, there respective Imperial powers are all over the place and already causing issues. The nations feel like they integrate a lot more than they do in the other games, instead of: Here is Elf Town, here is the Water town, here is the Air town, etc… And the relationship between these different nations in the world tend to change and grow as the game continues. This doesn’t happen so much in SaGa or Sakaguchi games.

There also tends to be a lot of mystery around the main villains… not so much Kefka, but certainly Sephiroth, Ultimecia/Sorceress, and Sin… It’s to the point that there are wildly differing opinions on certain elements of these characters even by people who have played the games multiple times.

One other element about Kitase stories is the main characters are always part of a faction: The Returners, Avalanche, SeeD, Yuna’s Pilgrimage. The faction tends to be rebellious against the major powers… not so much in the start of FF8 and FFX, but it becomes that way later on in both games. FF8’s SeeD is intended to destroy a future Sorceress (Ultimecia) who has possessed a present day sorceress Edea, the founder of SeeD, and later possesses other sorceresses: Rinoa and Adel.

I think in short, the best way to differentiate the three:
• SaGa - short stories that combine into a saga of sorts. The plots main plots are typically basic.
• Sakaguchi - plot driven story, on the nose, chapter story. Tend to have big lulls in the middle.
• Kitase - character driven, often with mysterious elements throughout, and is more of a big story with sections that aren’t necessarily as defined as chapters. Usually are strong all the way through with gap at the end.

That’s just my take.