>>11934151
>one of the characters you can get to the credits in under an hour
To be fair, Lute's scenario filters way more first-timer casuals by having full freedom and not knowing where to go than being a snoozefest for veteran player because fucking nothing happens during it (so you just do the usual playthrough checklist) and Spriggan is basically the only boss fight.
>if you pick Asellus and give up 3LP you get the best weapon
Asura is a very good weapon, but it's not even the best sword in the game, let alone best weapon in the game. Though I will say that Asura and Sand Timer are the only two things anyone should ever pick from LP Shop.
>>11934465
>Tanzer is probably one of the biggest hurdles.
This I can agree on - I've had several friends who dropped the game because Tanzer ate them up without a warning and they couldn't get out.
>>11935137
Kawazu is an oldfag like Horii Yuji who wanted to copy Ultima, D&D and Wizardry. He imported English copy of D&D Guidebook and did his best to figure out how the rules work without any knowledge of English language... and he basically designed SaGa games with similar experience - game doesn't tell you how most of gameplay mechanics work, you need to figure out shit by yourself. But once you start cracking on them the game becomes pretty easy, and in many cases you can just break the balance of the game by pulling out OP combos - you don't even need to follow some crazy minmax guides for that.
In short - only the first playthrough of Frontier 1, Unlimited, SaGa 1 (Minstrel Song) etc. are long, every following playthrough will be much shorter and easier because you already figured out a bunch of stuff by then. I'd recommend checking guides only if you're really bad at figuring things out at your own pace yet still want to tackle on such RPG series. Frontier 1 is one of the newbie-friendly SaGa games - scenarios like T260G, Asellus and Red even try to hold your hand and tell you where to go next.
