Final Fantasy is baby's first RPG, they said. There are just the tip of the iceberg, they said. And yet, every time I try a new RPG, it confirms that, no, FF is the top of its genre and the supposed hidden gems that never left Japan were right to stay there. Today's exhibit is Romancing Saga. All three of them.

The first Romancing Saga, I really wanted to like, because its sprites were literally edited FF1-3 sprites. Then it turned out it borrowed something else from those games and made it worse. Remember FF2 progression system? Now picture this: FF2 progression system, but asswards. It wasn't ideal, but at least you knew which actions could raise which stats. In Romancing Saga all stat gains are completely random and happen at random times. You can have one character proc several stats in one battle, then spend an hour without any progress.
Weapons are levelled up separately from plaer stats, and if you unequip a weapon and equip it again on the same character, it will start from zero again. Of course, there is never reason to do that, but it's counter-intuitive that they programmed the game this way.
There is a subgenre of RPG players who loathe random encounters and praise wandering monsters. The one good thing that came from Romancing Saga, for me, is that now I can smear this game into their faces and say "here, this is what you wanted". What happens with wandering monsters in this game is that when you enter a new dungeon level, everything in it will home in on you. If you don't know the map and make your way quickly, you will find yourself fighting another battle every step. Fight too much battles, and you will be locked out of some quests, because everything in the plot is tied to the number of battles fought.
...Except you want to fight more battles, because the only trigger to the endgame is also tied to an... astronomical amount of battles fought, which meas this game is impossible to speedrun.

>>11796196 (OP)
Lastly, the game is unfinished, with only seven of the ten plot-important gems available (I am using "plot" loosely here, after all, this is a game where big bad's name is Saruin, because ugh... he is like Sauron... and he brins ruin). There exists a WonderSwan port, made almost a decade later... which is also unfinished. The gems themselves are supposed to give you immunity to various attributes, but even though Nasir had left Square by that point, his legacy stayed strong and half of the gems don't work. I learnt it the hard way, when I was in an inescapable dungeon, with the save overwritten, with no way to level up and the only road forward blocked by a boss who killed me in one turn, with the gem that was supposed to counter him not working. That's when i said "fuck it" and edited the RAM. I feel no shame for that, as the game cheated first.

>>11796197
Then was the second game, aka the good one. The number of stats that could go up was decreased and the enemies actually give out experience, which goes to weapon/magic you use in battle, though the mechanism of how it's distributed among your stats is obscured (until the recent remake). They also made a unique, for the genre, mechanic, where everyone is replacable, including your lead character. Sometimes, its's even a valid tactic to sacrifice your entire party to a boss, for the chance that they will proc a defense skill that you can then apply to a new party to make the same battle easier. The bosses themselves are a huge improvement over Saurthing, with actual personalities and, without spoiling much, interesting body horror design. (Also, probably, the ony game with seven big bads, with no one of them, in particular, being in charge). A lot of body horror among regulat enemies as well. For example, other games depict a slime as a piece of jelly. Or, sometimes as a jelly with a face. Here it's a jelly that has someone's half-digested skeleton sticking out of it. And thank god, wandering enemies are now anchored to their rooms. The only complaint I had was when i found out that there were several strategies to the final battle, but all of them required levelling your magic to around level 25. Well shit. I never missed a chance to level it in battle and had it at around level 15 by the endgame. So I had to gring, which extended the playtime by 30%. it's still the game i'd recommend. Ironically, it's also the one of the three that's not translated.

>>11796198
Romancing Saga 3 was supposed to be the peak. And it is, graphically. The progression system is back to randomness. They added the thing where if you get no stat ups in a battle then someone will get one more hp, which feels like an insult. The mechanics for getting new skills is the same as in 2 (you randomly proc them in battle), but the mechanics of transplanting a character's skills onto other characters have been made frustrating. Basically, you need to use the skill repediately, until the game RANDOMLY decides the skill is "mastered", which is a problem for defence skills, because "using" them requires the character with the skill to be hit with a specific attack, which happens randomly and you end up filling your the limited space in the character's skill list with unmastered defense skills that just sit there instead of learning attack skills. There was a section in the game where there was only one type of enemy spawn, in infinite amounts, and the walkthrough advised to get and master one defence skill from them, so I tried. Even in those ideal conditions it took an hour. I wasn't amused.
In the first and the second game you went to specific places to learn of new quests. They somehow fucked this up. Now it's a where the fuck do I go kind of game. Can you see the white dot on this screenshot? It's an unmarked location you need for three quests, with no in-game hint that you need it for those quests, and no in-game hint that there is an unmarked location. And then there is the part where you are told to search for aurora borealis. How to find it? You open the world map and wait several minutes, again with no in-game hint that this can happen.
At one point I run out of sidequests, but was still underlevelled for plot bosses. The walkthrough advised having 450 HP, while I had 300 (I may be misremembering exact numbers' you'll soon learn why). So I had to grind again.

>>11796203
The unique feature on the game is the "commander mode", where you remove your protagonist from the active party and the party becomes computer-controlled. This feature needs work, because in this mode you level up SLOWER.
This was the time when Square decided that games need minigames. One pretends to be an economic strategy with complex mechanics, but amounts to "mash one button fast enough". Another is an army battle with incomprehensible rules that I can best sum up as "you lose randomly". Apparently there is one more minigame if you choose Michael as your player character, but can't review it, because I couldn't beat the army battle at the start of his story.
When I reached the final boss (a random personification of entropy, a la Necron) I found myself underlevelled again, even though the boss gauntlet before it died with no effort, so I looked up walkthrough again to find out what I was doing wrong. "Have twice more HP than what you have now. And also raise both magic and weapons on every character, in a game that up to this point rewarded you for rasing pure magic or pure warrior characters". Thank fuck for that! This was the point where I had to take a break from the game. For half a year.

I will never understand liking FF1 or 3 over FF2. 2 is so much better. And it's s a legitimately groundbreakinng game

Your opinions about Saga frontier 1 and 2?

>>11796217
Haven't got to Frontiers yet.

>>11796270
I've only played 1 and it plays exactly as Saga 1.

STFU and go back to your containment board, essayfag.

There's no point in playing any saga game than saga frontier 1. Anything after saga frontier you're wasting precious time that could be spent on other games

Was thinkibg about trying the series but this put me off

>>11796606
I haven't seen that guy in a while

RS2 does sound interesting. I wonder why it hasn't been translated yet? Is it another one of those Princess Crown cases where a translator or group called "dibs" and proceeded to do fuck all for a decade and a half?

I'm playing the original SaGa on gb and it feels like the game was put together by AI

>>11796196 (OP)
What about the music? That's one of the things that "good" RPGs get praised about the most.

>>11796196 (OP)
>The one good thing that came from Romancing Saga, for me, is that now I can smear this game into their faces and say "here, this is what you wanted"
Do you really not see the fault in this logic, that maybe making 1000 monsters conga line up to you the instant you enter a floor might not be the system people are asking for? Did you consider that in your argument with yourself?

Next essay you should work on understanding the other side of the people in your head you are arguing with, because if you tried to rub this in someones face to win a non-existent argument it wouldn't accomplish anything.

>>11796196 (OP)
>What happens with wandering monsters in this game is that when you enter a new dungeon level, everything in it will home in on you.
Right. But no one asked for that... you're taking their argument and adding an extra feature to it that was not requrested.
They said wandering - not homing. These words are not the same.