'Heckin' cripes.';

'LETSSSS GOOOOOOOOO!';

'No matter how much the dolphin nigger and first emperor jew me out, i know my man Cyclops has my back.';

'Just wish there was some more variety in the enemies, hopefully we get some new ones should we get another game since the battle system is pretty much perfect now.';

'>>3480133
what the fuck is dolphin's problem?';

'>>3480139
the variety is plenty for me, but i'm at a high br so it throws sephiras and boss sephiras and horses and earth dragons and lizard fortresses and fucking skolls and rascals and blue kelpies and you know who i haven't seen in a minute, the flying smileyface fuckers, but besides them there's always the odd long tongue anteater with a hammer and who can forget the war hogs? or the flying squirrel which is just behind a hard door of combat just because, complete with boss music';

'>>3480139
It could be better, but I really can't complain after Scarlet Grace, that game had like a third of the variety of this one and a lot more fighting.
I do kinda miss unique bosses though, the idea of having boss nodes with ever changing enemies is neat in a way, but the lack of truly unique enemies like the Phoenix, Savnok or Macha sorta hurts, especially when it comes to things like the Deus Maris or the Lord of the Earth, which can also be a Paradox body mech for some reason.';

'>>3480154
>it turns out to be easier than many of my "normal" or "easy" battles
I'LL FLAY THE FLESH FROM YOUR BONES';

'Do you guys rotate your party in EB?';

'>>3480165
kinda? it depends, but it's MUCH less than i did in scarlet grace (i loved making as many people as i cpuld into martial arts magic masters and i would recruit everyone) but more than i did in minstrel song';

'>>3480159
Oh yeah for sure, it is def better than SG’s.

>>3480159
Do wish we had more unique bosses yeah, a couple times really disappointed me such as the queen in Albion just turning into a dragon. Strangely it doesnt feel like you get to face that many humanoid enemies.
Speaking of unique bosses, has anyone seen the whale outside of plant world?';

'>>3480180
The whale is a high BR boss that can appear anywhere.
I've seen it as the Lord of the Earth in my latest Siugnas' playthrough, the Divine Metal Spirit in Tsuna's scenario, the Hindenburg boss in Crowrealm or the whale boss in that one quest in Providence, pretty sure I've had it as one of Ancykar's fiends in Kamala too.';

'>>3480114
What determines if you get a dress shirt or ticket? Random chance?';

'>>3480185
Fairly sure it's random';

'>>3480165
barely, I replace monsters out of the starting parties when possible because I just don't like them mechanically, but otherwise I mostly stick with the starting parties because most other characters are so conditional';

'>>3480185
from the washing machine? whether you do business via shipping or bidding, it seems, at least that was the only way i got a dress shirt instead of a cleaning ticket and desu a dress shirt is less valuable since it can be gotten easily through shipping whereas the cleaning ticket cannot';

'>>3480165
yeah i rotate in my buddy scarecrow and rotate out some heckin' giant cats';

'>>3480194
i just rotated out scarecrow for da low rez';

'>>3480165
Mostly to keep the LP high and to have a decent amount of chars i can switch around as needed, training with Mr. S helps a lot, but eventually i settle down on an A team that gets most if not all the action.';

'>>3480165
Nope. It's easy to rubber band base stats but putting parity in tech library and skill ranks? Swapping out a human I'm using for a weaker flavor of the human I was using?

That ain't it';

'>>3480165
I'm going to try to use a different party every run.';

'>>3480203
Mr. S can get weapon skill ranks up to par in a handful of fights. Worth considering if you want to try a weapon combination a character's not experienced with in games with a lot of potential party members like Diva.';

'>>3480208
Oh I meant to say things like tech ranks
Protect doesn't take (that) long to upgrade. But it still takes awhile. Pulling elemental salvo off of a person whose already reduced it down to 1 BP to put it on somebody who now has to retrain it down to 1BP?

Eh~
I do use different combinations of techs et all to keep things fresh. But when shit's getting real I want my team of alpha, not some tech level 1 jobbers.';

'>>3480196
put me back in, coach';

'>>3480203
For some reason a couple of my human characters just refused to level health, so i ended up replacing them with newer ones down the line. Thankfully doesnt take that long at high BR to glimmer techs, but ranks are still an issue ofc.';

'Speaking of tutoring, what does the blue vs. yellow vector mean on the tutor screen mean?';

'>>3480219
blue means good, yellow means on parity/average, red means bad, in terms of growth';

'>>3480213
lolno';

'>>3480224
heartless bastard';

'>>3480226
Fair enough.';

'Mido 2 down. Do I jump into Mido 3 now? Is his true end just locked behind replaying his story or is there some weird fuckery I have to do in another playthrough for him?';

'>>3480235
Can't tell you if there were requirements in other playthroughs to get it, but I felt like playthrough 3 felt pretty definitive and had the full final boss
Just test if you see his mother at the start, then you can probably get it';

'>>3480235
i did 3 midos and then moved to doing 2 run throughs of everyone else';

'>>3480235
According to JP he has like 7 endings total.';

'>>3480238
I got his mother at the start of the 2nd playthrough, I've heard it's random for people.';

'>>3480241
>>3480242
Guess I retract my statement then, seems like this game is a really bad one for anecdotal evidence';

'>>3480235
I'm on my Tsuna 3 run and I got yet another different prologue and world selection, Wikis say he has a shitton of possible endings so I don't think you'll see 100% of what he has until four or so cycles';

'>>3480235
>saga went woke
sagasisters...';

'>>3480165
I have yet to remove dolores from my tsuna playthrough.
Anyone else is training fodder but Dolores is essential to my enjoyment.';

'>>3480262
I just got Delta Wave with my Dolores. Why would I ever remove her? I find her as soon as I can so far.';

'>>3480255
SaGa went woke when Romancing SaGa 2 allowed lizard “people” and literal moles to be the emperor. It is so SaGover…';

'>>3480262
>>3480264
My only interaction with Dolores so far was her cameo during Siugnas’ final world, but she seems pretty likeable. I’ll try and get her quickly next playthrough.';

'>>3480235
>>3480255
Pretty sure the game is meta-commentary against square's homogeneous game/world design for jrpgs.';

'>>3480285
I thought SaGa went woke when you selected Albert as your protagonist in Romancing SaGa and his older sister Diana was stronger than him.';

'The ultimate boss is getting another round';

'>>3480306
it's a shame market man and qu magis aren't recruitable';

'>>3480321
He is too strong';

'Boh might be a dumb Tanuki but goddamn he comes through when you need him the most';

'Questions after finishing my first playthrough (Tsunanori) and about 5 hours into Bonmina's

How "Brutal" are the Brutal fights? I skipped them all after getting filtered by one. Can they just be straight up impossible if you were bad with learning specific techs and glimmers (such as not mimicking enough with your puppet to get a decent spread of techs)?

If I can handle this game, can I go back to pre-Scarlet Grace games? I know things like BP and Glimmers are still there, but they don't use a timeline system. Is the battle system and encounter design still as well-done as SG/EB? Is it at least better than other mediocre turn-based combat systems (DQ)?

Any reason not to just stick with one/two weapon types for a retinue member throughout the whole game and glimmer through all of those techs? If Formina has been using two-handed guns and a 1-H sword for the majority of a playthrough is there ever a reason for her to ever switch to a different weapon type?

There were a lot of times when I just did 0 BP action full defense turns, especially on later, high BP rounds, when the boss queues up a big attack, or when there were a lot of enemies on the timelime queueing up conditionals. I don't know the exact damage cutdown on a defense, but it seems worthwhile. Am I just retarded and you should never do this? Your only options in some cases are to go for a stun/counter, but that's not always available (especially if a member goes down).

I got a lot of Mr. S tutoring spots despite not having a lot of party members on my first playthrough. I just had the puppets + Dolores + Lita on my first playthrough. Did I just miss a bunch of optional recruits? I feel like giving you 3 tutoring spots would mean so.

What should I general prioritize when upgrading armaments? I assume Weapon > Main Armor > Auxiliary in terms of priority.

What's the benefit of reattempting with the LP loss instead of loading a prior save before the batle? I read something about Unite % increase.';

'>>3480366
>How "Brutal" are the Brutal fights
The names says it all, they're fucking brutal and you need flawless execution to pull them off.
>If I can handle this game, can I go back to pre-Scarlet Grace games?
Sure, outside of SSG they're fairly different though, and even SSG is still pretty different outside of the battle system and world navigation.
The only ones you should skip are RS1 SNES (play Minstrel Song) and maybe GB SaGa 3 since it's not a real SaGa game, play the DS remake.
>Is the battle system and encounter design still as well-done as SG/EB?
Relative to their times, sure, there's some weaker entries here and there but they're still all fairly enjoyable, due to personal tastes your opinion might vary though, personally I'm not fond of how SaGa Frontier 2 plays but I know people who like it a lot, and as much as I like the current systems I do have my gripes with them.
>Any reason not to just stick with one/two weapon types for a retinue member throughout the whole game and glimmer through all of those techs?
It's up to you, EB behaves in a very different way from previous entries and stat growth ends up being very homogeneous due to the focus on NG+ and carryovers, usually you wouldn't do it in other SaGa games, but this game is an exception, especially since you do get Role benefits for learning more techs.
>Am I just retarded and you should never do this?
No, you're doing the right thing.
>Did I just miss a bunch of optional recruits?
Probably, Tsunanori doesn't run around too much though, Siugnas or Diva can recruit a lot of people unlike most of the other MCs.
>What should I general prioritize when upgrading armaments?
Weapons for sure, then it's main armors and after that auxiliary, unless you need status defense, in that case it's the opposite.
>What's the benefit of reattempting with the LP loss instead of loading a prior save before the batle?
You read that right, you get a minor Combo % increase.';

'>>3480366
>How "Brutal" are the Brutal fights?
I think it depends on your BR. They are hard, but aren't too bad if you start your BR from scratch.
>If I can handle this game, can I go back to pre-Scarlet Grace games
The biggest hurdle will be progression. Sometimes the games will nudge you in a direction, but you frequently need to work in finding how to progress, especially in Minstrel Song. After that it's variable to the game.
>Is it at least better than other mediocre turn-based combat systems (DQ)?
The Gameboy games you can equip many items to humans/mutants that have durability, monsters/mutants have charges for their skills so there's plenty of reason to go all out during battles using group and full party attacks. In RS2 and 3 WP/JP starts off low, but later on you get more, but the enemies in RS2 let the battles shine with wanting to use status effects unlike in RS3 where standard encounters will always be easy and the challenge comes from the bosses. In SaGa Frontier trying to combo is just fun, and it has an improved crown system from RS3 to reduce WP/JP cost from skills. Unlimited Saga is far from standard, it seeps in most aspects of the game. That includes the battle system. Minstrel Song is great, it's an evolution of SaGa Frontier 2 with the characters able to generate BP per turn so combat is focused around using more of the skills you've learned. You can see the changes from SF2, US, and RS:MS and it's influence upon Scarlet Grace.
>What's the benefit of reattempting with the LP loss instead of loading a prior save before the batle?
There is little reason to reload a save unless you have an ephemeral that died. LP isn't a big deal unlike early game SSG. The games with the biggest toll for death would be RS2 > FFLI > SSG:A. Otherwise LP isn't as big of a factor outside of certain things like in Riki's route.';

'>Clutch Millionaire spark during Divine Wood Spirit bossfight
Kino
And goddamn I love this game's dual wielding';

'>>3480404
>The bullet propelling the other bullet forward
Holy fucking kino';

'this time i'm gonna do it';

'where can i get a mech as Siggy';

'>>3480483
Warrior's darkness door goes to crowsrealm where you can get one.';

'>>3480495
Also, Philosophers goes to Delta Base for another mech';

'>>3480495
>>3480497
excellent';

'This almost makes this world enjoyable';

'holy fuck i finally fucking did it, fuck you diverse heaven';

'>>3480241
>>3480252
7 endings sounds like it just includes his first and second playthroughs endings, the bad ending where you lose to the boss in playthrough 2, the bad ending where you lose to the boss on playthrough 3+ and then his 3 standard endings on 3+(break awa no iwato, diverse heaven, one world)';

'>>3480288
or maybe its just a cool game and doesn't deserve to be used as a weapon for your personal gripes against square';

'ok, this time the junction just has 1 blue door that's a special door that let's me select where to go that isn't already up as a green door, also the door to delta base has three exclamation points on it instead of just one, i wonder what that means';

'>>3480540
There's a tutorial mentioning the three exclamation points when you first go to the junction if I remember right, they're basically the "developer recommendation" world at that point.';

'>>3480545
Mido's story has him mention the phenomenon in-character, then Lita goes 'well that's stupid, let's just go to the one fate wants to visit least right now'.';

'>>3480550
based lita cervix';

'Which witch?';

'what the shit? this time romain materialized a hand axe out of nowhere to hold during his monologue about his dream, lmao';

'this time alexandre went evil and tries to sacrifice diva for his resurrection ritual and i fight final emperor himself instead of a horse or a diablo demon';

'>>3480555
Yellow > Red > Blue > Black >White

Yellow has a bit of a clown thing going so';

'Cam anyone verify the meeding 150 cumulative stats for tier 5 spells? Im never going to be able to get off midos wild ride at this rate';

'>>3480663
what even are the 5th spells?';

'>>3480520
Congrats, anon';

'>>3480373
>Siugnas or Diva can recruit a lot of people unlike most of the other MCs
Moreso if you time your playthrough count for an even-numbered Mare Nostrum run for the actual recruitment since odd-numbered cycles of that world don't get you anyone apparently. Or if you've done Kamala twice beforehand so you can get Nana and Kina and not just Kina.';

'>>3480663
Always thought it was based off of the element level since I was able to learn most of them on Ameya after pumping those up with roles.

I guess I could see if my monster can learn them on my next playthrough.
Also having gone through a substantial amount of monster abilities, if they have roles tied to monster abilities, I can find them.';

'3 Obsidian suddenly seems a lot more doable. That Hyperion Bazooka +2'll be ready soon enough.';

'>>3480745
I believe it's weapons in the 20 power range that can be traded into magic stones. Or was that Iron Stones? Ah well you'll figure it out.';

'>>3480743
that's how scarlet grace was, couldn't possibly glimmer the spell unless your magic of that element was high enough';

'>>3480745
cyclops offers obsidians for 2 magic stones too, not sure what the sparklebox is supposed to signify, i guess that the trade gives you more exp?';

'>>3480747
I've been mostly trading Spirit Stones and I think Ironstones off the Bid menu at this point. Think I'm at Trade Rank 6 at the moment, so I might ship a mid-tier weapon and see if I can get some magic stones out of it. Actually a bit starved for basic Beast mats now that the trade screen has started to get flooded with Great Beast variants.
Honestly I've just been spinning my wheels at the 30-40 attack range for a while grinding Trade Rank so eventually I might need to upgrade my stuff before I choke myself out of all my Magical Beast mats and the like.';

'>>3480534
Nah, the Metal Max and Valkyrie Profile worlds make it a bit too obvious.';

'Make up your damn mind, game';

'>use washing machine for trades
>get bonus item
>forgot something and went back in to trade again
>get another bonus item

You mean to tell me I could have been bonus maxxing this whole time if I traded one at a time through the washing machine?!';

'>>3480760
At some point It's faster to simply carry BR and complete quests, there's weapons like the Excalibur or Yunchang's glaive that do not need a lot of Obsidian pieces to fully upgrade and can somewhat carry you on high BR NG+, at that point the game will stop giving you Iron/Magic stones on quest completion and will shower you in Obsidian, trading is way too slow and RNG dependant for you to bother.
>>3480792
Yeah, for some reason washing machine rewards aren't cumulative so it's best to do one trade at a time to Tidemaxx your tickets';

'>>3480779
nta but
Metal Max isn't Square and VP1 would be hard pressed to say it's world is homogenous with anything in Squares Roster.

Claims of homogeny would would require an extreme reductionist view of the worlds (which would then include things like SF2, Romsa 1,2, and 3, etc) and also require a lot of squinting to make games like The Bouncer, Parasite Eve, Cross and trigger seem parallel with like Final Fantasy 1 and 2, etc.

If you mean recently I still struggle to agree. Certain titles lend themselves to indiscriminate fantasy world like Elysium but you can hardly fault Mana and Dragon Quest for maintaining world consistency while they've developed or published more standout worlds via Dungeon Encounters, Voice of the Cards, SoP, SO6, and even WoFF.

And dogshit though they may be, somebody couldn't look at Left Alive, Babylon's Fall, Harvestella (bleh), or even fucking Forspoken and say their worlds have any in common with the one game that actually is just generic fantasy world called Diofield.';

'ok, so i finally learned a tier 5 spell, chaos disaster, wood spell, single target 55 power 1 chant time 50% chance for poison, darkness, AND confusion, 4 bp cost at rank 1';

'>this thread
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FG1NrQYXjLU';

'>>3480810
forgot, the caster who got it was 50 magic skill and 6 wood...level, or whatever it is, even though you can raise them via roles and equipment, seems more like a power augmenting value for spells of that type to me, but';

'RS3 was fucking amazing';

'>>3480821
I liked RS2 better';

'>>3480785
That's actually a mechanic though';

'>>3480834
The mechanic of hovering over an already selected action causing turn order to change? It just feels so inconsistent. Sometimes you can lock in a couple moves and depending on the order you put them in you'll get completely different results, which is pretty annoying to finagle with if you're like me and constantly second-guess yourself.';

'>>3480855
i actually like it because it gives me more options for timeline manipulation';

'>>3480821
Yeah, it's pretty great. Top of the SNES RPG wise.';

'>>3480856
I like the extra potential control over placement in theory, but it is annoying when you're trying to put the pieces together and you need to remember which exact set of inputs gets ABCDE instead of ABED C or some other mess, and now I learn that merely observing the result can change it.';

'Do monsters gain new roles from ranking up monster skills?';

'>>3481006
As far as I can tell? No.
And I've leveled up a sizable amount of monster skills to max.';

'>>3481014
That sucks. Monsters as a whole seem pretty subpar, which is a shame because I want to roll w/ Gourmand.';

'>>3481024
>>3481014
Better teach them spells so they can fill out their role slots, then.';

'>>3481024
Having finally had a bunch of runs on all sorts of flavors of monster teams for a few runs they're in a bit of a rough state.
Some monster skills are good, and you have a decent amount of ailments but most of the debuffs that are there are cripplingly expensive and you've only got two slots for defending while attacking and ailments are in a bit of a poor state against non fodder fights. Not being able to pick up schemer (ailment chance increases based on combo rate) certainly doesn't help.

Very few monster skills BP reduces at max rank so that certainly doesn't help considering a lot of the good abilities are viciously BP expensive. Unless you actively train them as mages you'll end up in a situation where you've unlocked 4 role slots with nothing to put in them. Which is what I ended up doing, but monster base elemental spread is rather low and only the blobs are really tuned for magic to begin with (and also get either -1 monster skill BP cost or spell cost to boot). So you need to use a monster as a more limited human for awhile just to get roles and that's a product of however long it takes to learn the spells that have the actual useful roles that aren't just looping into magic.

But what's more of an issue are the various final boss flavors. Monsters need spells for ailment immunity due to having to give up entire skills if they were to equipment accessories for immunity. But their resistances are tied to late sensei trial magic tools, so... I mean you can do it, I've done it multiple times. It's just not exactly a good time.
Honestly, though I've done a bunch of runs with various numbers of monsters in the team they (can) hit about as hard as a two handed weapon user. But, they are far more limited in their ability to adapt.

I'm sure I'm missing something. But as is right now, they seem to be the weaker of the races.';

'>>3481024
gourmand is op for his support slot bonus';

'>>3481056
Monsters are some sort of super generalist option that doesn't need to worry about spending too much stuff on equipment or fishing for techs since they get whatever an enemy monster has.
The drawback is that they lack focus compared to other races, much like non-humans can't access Custom Techs or how Mechs are the complete opposite in that they're entirely dependant on what equipment you get.
Balance wise I wouldn't say they're the weaker of the races, but they still have the fundamental disadvantage of being somewhat weaker than other options in the long run, I think mechs are a much bigger mixed bag in this game considering they only truly get good after several NG+ cycles worth of equipment so they can be something else than a cover tank with the occasional combo glue function, and even there Mechs are much less versatile than monsters.';

'I've been removing monsters from my party as soon as possible because the animations are lame and slow, I know there are technical/budgetary reasons but it's so underwhelming';

'>>3481079
I'd say mech versatility is initially much more limited yeah but mechs get access to the entire monster roster of skills whilst also being immune to every ailment. And that'd normally be a big whatever but starting at Sensei trial V those monster equipment's (beginning with red urn) are no joke and come with decent strong (equivalent to some items final tier upgrades) resistance and stat growths as well as unique mech skills if you choose to unleash.
My last Diverse Heaven I just did was me loading up Sarab with an entire monsters library to cheer lead Ameya on turn 1 via Elemental Salvo and then absolutely spamming strong skills from that point after whilst still having access to a cover.

Though I'd say you only need 1 NG cycle for a mech to be decently strong provided you're only using one. Monsters are partially in that same boat but have it substantially worse come late game. The best monster accessories are limited per playthrough and don't carry over being tied to sensei and you can only kit out 1 monster with the full suite. The plus side is that monster then gets god tier resists to every element. The negative is that other monsters don't get to eat that good and you're still open to status ailments.

In a way, it's like Siugnas in that spreading blood gear out is great but consolidating that into one super Siugnas gives a power fantasy not like anything else where you just bully One World and Diverse Heaven.

But none of that matters. Diva in her body gets to do the fist pump summon which makes her the best monster skill user in the game next to Wednesday.';

'>>3481079
Mechs feel overtuned for their SaGa Frontier sins of being completely rad. Humans really get it good. Robots suffer from the limited kinds of equipment, monsters suffer from the small pool of monsters with a small pool of moves compared to previous games. Monsters made a lot more sense before since if you were running out of charges you could eat meat and transform. Or have the potential to easily out perform the other races in the early mid to mid game with good transformations. Humans simply have access to a lot of skills which is more fun.';

'>>3481092
good, good

make sure you replace them with scarecrow.';

'>>3481114
The last party exchange I did was replacing Imakoo with Scarecrow lol';

'>>3481108
i love the way the virginia body prances into battle and prances into actions in battle';

'>>3481092
Yeah, it kinda sucks, mechs not having that problem shows it's clearly a cut corner because they didn't have enough money to either make them change forms or get more varied animations, same with Custom Techs and the various special Soul Techs/Sanguine Techs being the same animation as basic techs.
It's a big step up coming from Scarlet Grace, but it's still very frustrating that we can't have nice things because the suits are retarded.';

'>>3481154
>Custom Techs and the various special Soul Techs/Sanguine Techs being the same animation as basic techs.
That stuff I don't mind. I imagine the monster system is set up the way it is so that the monster characters keep more identity/characterization. Could be fixed really easily if enemies rarely/randomly dropped skill items that you could slot into monster-equips in the menu or something.';

'was that axe always there';

'>>3481157
Everyone in Grelon has different dreams, you got the one where Romain dreams about being one of the people who plundered the church, hence the axe, in the other dream he doesn't have it.';

'>>3481154
Which arts do you need for sword + gun?';

'>>3481168
Kaleidoscope III and Mightier than the Sword III';

'>>3481170
Thanks bro.
And yeah unfortunately SaGa is very low budget and you can really tell. I worry about the franchise’s future a lot since Square has been extra retarded lately.';

'so when you guys say do avalon without losing LP, do you mean I can't have anyone go down in fights either?';

'>>3481173
The gacha is square's most successful somehow. If Kawazu wants more games he'll get them.';

'>>3481176
If you're in the Spear route you need full LP to access the graveyard in the last lap, and this means your entire retinue including the benched characters must be at full LP.
If you're not at full LP then the vampire nurse will heal your entire retinue when you go there, so you can simply do that and repeat the lap when you get to the end to restart at full LP.
>>3481178
It's not their most successful, DQW is much bigger, but it's still in a solid second to third place depending on the month and it still prints money almost six years later.
The games are funded through gacha money too according to Ichikawa, so while Squenix suits might not directly oppose them they sure as hell aren't supporting them either, which is not a good situation.
Kawazu's going to retire in a decade or so anyway so it's pointless to bitch about it, the series doesn't really have much time left so even if the suits magically decide to give them actual budgets it's far too late.';

'>>3481157
that's exactly what i was talking about here >>3480567
first he doesn't have the axe when you thaw him, then he just has it suddenly
also did anyone else unthaw morgane? and not beat her minigame and make her storm off?';

'>>3481191
>first he doesn't have the axe when you thaw him, then he just has it suddenly
Anon, it's a dreamscape, he has the axe because he's dreaming about being one of the people who sacked and destroyed the church centuries ago.
If you get the bad dream for Morgane she'll wield an SMG in the vignette because she's dreaming about being a spec ops soldier.';

'>>3481173
honestly, the series being always low budget is the only reason it exists, if they tried to go high budget on them they would just be throwing money away, i think the low budget nature helps keep the team grounded and never take themselves too seriously and neither do the games';

'>>3481215
It had fairly decent budget in the SNES years, low budget hell only started with the PS2 years.
I don't care about AAA budgets, but it would be nice to return to the years where they didn't have to cut corners everywhere.';

'>>3481268
>low budget hell only started with the PS2 years.
Minstrel Song had a decent budget. Unlimited as well - sprites that big are not cheap.';

'Is there a complete list of (non-mech) roles yet?';

'>>3481173
I'd worry about a lot of other franchise instead
The new guy is cleaning house. Or maybe he's trying to correct course and turn Square back into a company that still tries to earn money by making quality games.
Either or. It's crazy to think there's another reality where Wada never happened, Sakaguchi still worked at Square and Matsuno didn't burn out from having his magnum opus fucked on. This timeline is fucking cursed.';

'>>3481268
i don't know what you mean, the game boy games were low budget, so were the super famicom games, if anything minstrel song and unlimited were high budget compared to what had come before them, and i don't think money = quality, and low budget low "quality" things have their own charm and place, even if it isn't for everyone, does every game and every thing need to be for everyone? it seems like what they call a nitpick, to me';

'>>3481268
None of Squares early SNES RPGs were lookers.';

'>>3481310';

'>>3481157
>81 FPS';

'>>3481322
>recheck the date
Huh. Nevermind. Goodness getting old fucking sucks.';

'>>3481310
>>3481322
Bahamut Lagoon is not early SNES. It came out in 1996. The SFC/SNES was released in 1991. FF4 was 1991 and FF5 was 1992, as was Romancing SaGa 1.
To contrast, FF6 was 1994 and Rudra no Hinou was 1996.';

'awaken rank 2 role, awakened, "all powers +1"
not really sure what that means';

'>>3481337
my guess would be the elemental attributes, but I have really no idea';

'>>3481351
yeah that's my guess too, i'm using it, but i'm also grinding a single element on that caster right now for glimmers while i farm free shit in cordycep';

'Vermiglio is not nearly as annoying once you know the trick.';

'>>3480534
>for your personal gripes against square
...a shit.';

'>>3481430
is the trick avoiding going to Vermiglio';

'4/5 first runs done. Diva left, but I've fought One World twice now so I'm not worried.';

'>>3481468
No, just to totally ignore random encounters and trap them in triangles. Anti-Fred loves triangles.';

'Some of Sensei's trials are pretty damn bullshit, but Boh's got my back, meteorites and superalloys WILL be mine';

'>>3481430
same for cordycep
speaking of, i was digging around for worms in cordycep and one of the rocks gave me a dull longsword which has spellbind on it';

'In Minstrel Song, do bosses get stronger with Event Rank? Just can't seem to beat Silver Dragon no matter what I do.';

'more digging in cordycep, after beating a haniwa and 2 indestructible stones and 2 other jobbers fight, i was granted a magatama, resist all 25% accessory, takes 3 jewels pollen and gelatin to upgrade, mech tech is gliding program
>gliding program, crowned at rank 1, 5 bp cost, black combo square
(self) nullify damage once, but suffer mech paralysis afterwards';

'>>3481588
Not that I'm aware of. There are some bosses you can miss because they're only avaliable at certain event ranks.';

'can you not stack bp cost -1 after x turns items/weapons? I have mido with a a silver watch and a blaster gun but millionaire won't go below 5 bp';

'damn why is albion so juiced on optional loot? I got masquerade, cemetary greatsword ( which i think is excalibur?) and dreadblade malystrix in one run';

'dude fuck these haniwa root fights in cordycep';

'>>3481588
No. If damage is your problem just get field plates and put your party's weapons into defense mode';

'>>3481663
and use rosalian officer? nta, but that's what i did, but i also put my martial arts into defense mode since that's what i mostly use';

'I literally cried when Erytheia sacrificed herself into a pool of lava to cleanse the worlds of the last traces of Canker';

'>just getting free random jewels from the stones in cordycep';

'>>3481710
What are Jewels for, anyway? I've been getting a few bids for Demon's Blood and the like, but I'm not yet at the point where Jewels are a thing because I've been slumming around in Mido and Ameya's bite-sized campaigns recently after clearing Diva's story so my BR is still pretty low.';

'>>3481722
demon's blood are like just below jewels i think, and they're for upgrading equipment, like these 4 magatamas i got from the haniwas in cordycep, a large magatama does 50% resist all, slap two of those on someone and they're immune to all status spam';

'It really is a political commentary isn't it';

'>>3481784
well, lita cervix is a journoscum after all, so of course she's going to say the line';

'>>3481784
>>3481785
qtards be like';

'>>3481784
It all feels like a space alien tried their hand at writing not-American politics. I dunno, maybe Japanese news media is boring.';

'has anyone found a legendary/unique longsword yet on the level of excalibur or that 80 power polearm someone posted last thread?';

'>>3481834
Most fully upgraded uniques are more or less on the same tier as the Excalibur, longswords for instance have the Dragonscale Blade which is fairly easy to get but kind of a pain to upgrade, the better longswords are locked behind Sensei's trials though, other than those there's the Dragonscale Blade and weaker uniques like the Drifwhale Blade, which caps at 47 ATK and the Rune Sword, which caps at 57ATK.
On that matter I'm kinda surprised that the Blue Saber is super weak in this game.';

'Is there any downside to making a character a Thrall?';

'>>3481897
They lose 1 LP in exchange for Siugnas gaining 1 LP, so not really, no';

'>>3481834
the best i can do for you is a grimhorn pistol +2 at 72 weapon power or a behemoth "rifle" +1 at 70 weapon power
both take a superalloy to make though, unlike +1ing a qinglong yanyuedao which only takes a dragon scale and some great beast claws';

'>>3481897
Their eyes look like they've been playing DOTA nonstop for three days, that's about it.';

'>here have roles that increase overdrive rate
>have some that up showstopper BP
>here's some gear for overdrive and showstopper BP
>now here's unbreakable rocks, crates, and immortal elementals that will eat up your showstopper and overdrive attacks
Man come on. I can accept losing access to showstoppers. But, at least let the attacks go onto the things you're targeting before the overdrive. Legitimately aggravating.

Anyways have any of you guys done the empowered final boss yet?';

'>>3481972
>now here's unbreakable rocks, crates
"Projectile" type techs/spells and things like One for One which ignore defense can destroy them easily.
Immortal Elementals are there to avoid excessive Showstopper/OD cheese on specific bosses, which is also good, it prevents the major issues SSG had with that.
>any of you guys done the empowered final boss yet?
Quite a few times already, enjoy your immortal elementals that come with that.';

'>>3481975
>"Projectile" type techs/spells and things like One for One which ignore defense can destroy them easily.
That's odd. Because I used one for one and the rocks in that last brutal well fight I did, did not crack. Legitimately thought that maybe it's just outright immune to pierce damage.

>Quite a few times already, enjoy your immortal elementals that come with that.
I'm coming off the back of one. It was "great". Honestly would be legitimately controller crushingly frustrating if you were allowed access to nonsensical bullshit and virtual full ailment immunity.

>OD cheese
I can get showstoppers but...
What's the cheese in OD? It's a literal core mechanic of the game that every single enemy and player has access to. Except enemies don't target those stupid ass inert elementals. But you sure do.
They give you literal multiple items from start to finish all tied to it. To just arbitrarily take that away is rubbish. If the mechanic is somehow so awedropping overpowered that it has to be reduced to RNG with 1/4 odds just to balance it then it shouldn't exist as it is to begin with.';

'>>3481980
By "projectile" techs I mean those techs that have a dot in their icon, it's not really about pierce damage.
Things like Cosmic Rave, spores or Spellbind will ignore defenses and do true damage, that applies to any Sturdy Rock/Crate.
>What's the cheese in OD
You'll see once you're able to crank up your combo % to 300% and get multiple ones in a row, getting a full five man combo and two ODs leads to ridiculous damage, especially when endgame equipment applies.';

'>>3481983
I don't know.
Getting to 300% requires you killing an enemy every single OD
Even with every party member applied and full spell loops it's kinda hard to OD more than twice without kills.

And kill chaining isn't exactly a thing with immortal elementals given that they're literally unkillable. What this did was turn the boss into a """"basic""" tank and spank where the biggest deciding factor is nuking it's offensive stats and buffing the tank in rearguard... I mean you sure have to adjust your strategy. But that's boring and OD's are uncontrollable to the point that I stripped out all of my OD roles and gear for sheer damage instead.

Waste of a perfectly fine mechanic.';

'>>3481986
>Getting to 300% requires you killing an enemy every single OD
That's not particularly hard to do and there's plenty of stuff that can crank your combo bar through weapons and roles.
The game rolls for OD the moment you pass 150%, with guaranteed OD at 200%, getting multiple ODs is not particularly difficult at some point after your second NG+, in fact it's the most efficient general strategy you can have, which is also why there's a specific difference in how weapons build up your Combo %, with one handed being better for combos and two handed being better for Showstoppers, it's also why certain specific monster techs are also very valuable for their really high Combo % buildup.
>And kill chaining isn't exactly a thing with immortal elementals given that they're literally unkillable
That's the entire purpose of immortal elementals, to power gate the strongest strategy in the game that isn't Churning Earth/Airswell spam.';

'>>3481972
>unbreakable rocks, crates
Can be destroyed by def-0 or non elemental attacks. Cosmic rave blows them out.';

'Hmmm, so you don't get to keep your relics but you do get to keep what you absorbed on them when you get them back.
What an odd decision, I guess it's because the various Djinn stuff is tied to Sensei's Trials, which was an already odd decision.';

'why did the eagle decide to attack me after i unpretrified all the animals? and what was constantine talking about when he said that's how petrification works?';

'>>3482179
Seems Great Tree has some kind of magic that petrifies the big animals there if they lose some kind of ritual fight against each other, and this goes on as a cycle.
The gimmick of Great Tree is that after you restore the animals something different happens.
The outcomes I've seen are:
>Eagle thanks you and you fuck off
>Eagle attacks you and gets petrified after losing
>Every single animal you restore attacks you and they all get petrified as a result
I have no clue how the gimmick actually works though, but it's probably a progression cycle like most of the other worlds.';

'just got a bonus reward from final trial 8, star king, an electric 2hand gun, 86 power, shock resist 30, bit is the mech skill, no upgrades, crackling brilliance is the concept on it';

'>>3482230
I think I did that trial but didn't get the gun, was it the one with the three mechs?';

'>>3482230
What do the concepts on weapons even mean?';

'>>3482233
Glorified upgrade lines, you can't upgrade a weapon line if you lack the related Concept.';

'>>3482232
yes, the one and the same, i had already done it previously on my last run-through and didn't get it, it was a bonus reward';

'>>3482268
Hmmm, guess I'll repeat the trial then, it was kind of cancer though, I hate Ballistic Missile spam';

'>>3482281
it's ironically only one of like two i've been able to beat so far, i've come close on the others, but in typical saga fashion disaster struck
also i'm noticing that at least at my br, the ai is not dumb, all their fuckers will target whoever is the weakest and or is doing whatever will be the most impactful that round of whatever benefits them most in the battle especially as far as the timeline is concerned when it comes to moves that push people on the timeline or if they're casting they'll just all dogpile on the caster';

'thank you so much to the stop chanting feature which allowed me to be able to get 3x magical combo done';

'>>3482287
I took four so far, 2, 3, 5 and 8 and beat all of them, but a couple required two tries.
I don't know about AI but trial fights do have bosses use different logic compared to normal ones, the one with the flying squirrel boss for instance immediately resummoned ads instead of waiting one round like the rest of them do.
As far as loot goes, I did get one Joyeuse, rapier with 70 ATK and Divine Might for mechs, and one Invincible East, a Katana that also has 70 ATK when fully upgraded.
Didn't expect a Smiling Proud Wanderer reference in a SaGa game.';

'>>3482298
>Didn't expect a Smiling Proud Wanderer reference in a SaGa game.
kawazu seems to like eastern lore a lot, him and zun would be good friends, i would imagine';

'>>3482303
don't try to shoehorn 2hu into your garbage please';

'>stray enemy Magnetic Smash hits for 800HP through my tank Admin Gold
I'm really starting to think max BR is overtuned, even with maxed out equipment the battle pacing is hellish';

'>>3482390
Was he in the defense spot of something like rearguard?';

'>>3482303
Kawazu's a wrestling fan. I know he probably didn't mean it that way, but I think of Bret Hart when I see the Sharpshooter Gloves, and "The Showstopper" is one of Shawn Michaels' nicknames.';

'>>3482390
Probably went a little too far in the other direction as what happened in SSG. I overgrinded in my first Urpina playthrough because I wanted to farm out roles on some characters I knew I was going to be picking up over multiple protagonists, so I think I was around BR40 by the end of it. I didn't even have Dragonscale Armor on everyone yet (I think I had Lordly/Astral Mail on everyone but Urpina) and I still wasn't take more than about 150 damage from most normal-sized enemies.';

'>>3482442
First slot of Imperial Cross.
It's max BR so high damage is expected in some ways but 800 damage is way too much.
The fight with the four Retropod bots in Crowrealm is more brutal than a lot of things I've seen, this is my first run with full BR from the very start and this is my second world, I haven't seen damage that high anywhere outside of some Sensei trials.';

'Found this about beating a Paradox body mech in Crowrealm at max BR, got some serious RoF vibes from this';

'huh, lita cervix is in pulchra this time, and she's a real pill compared to how she was in capitol city';

'Can Kugutsu learn spells like humans or do they have to mimic some random spellcaster?';

'High BR item rolls are really something, reminder that you can reset what you get from map events like scarecrow digging around or the well lottery in Yomi by rewinding to event before the item pull.
>>3482535
They learn spells like humans, no need to mimic them off enemy spellcasters';

'>>3481453
Aren't you supposed to be dead?';

'so uh
why isn't pedro recruitable?';

'>>3482657
he's a parrot, not a monster';

'>>3482657
Kina got the RS2 recruitable monster spot.
You can absorb all of his "unique" skills though so you can spam GET BENT CHUMP all day long.';

'>>3482658
GET BENT, CHUMP!';

'FUCK YES I GOT IVAR RECRUITMENT, GET FUCKED AZURE';

'ahh so ivar is who gives dragon stance formation, seems not at good as speculation to me though';

'What would the Dismal King decide?';

'>>3482696
He would totally lie and say he'd protect Alexandre just to get that sweet darkness';

'>>3482698
Since saying no doesn't get me Emps recruitment it was definitely the wrong decision';

'We"re running out of stuff to talk about quickly huh?';

'Any idea what this patch is about?';

'>>3482864
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2085000/view/4201372769978419175';

'How do you get the passport achievement for capitol city?';

'>>3482869
>Animations during some main menu operations have been shortened and response speed increased.
sweet, that was fast';

'>>3482872
hmm, i didn't get a passport stamp either, and both miyako and capitol cities were locked out for me from the direct warp after i had done the great tree, for some reason';

'>chup is being a chud and doesn't want to get turned into a gigantic flower
kamala is amazing';

'>meh, who cares? if we die, all the clerics in the city will just say, "this, too, is fate!" or whatever
based chup';

'I just realized what Diva's singing for her final boss. God I'm dumb and uncultured, but also the whole finale is such a great fuck you to Constantine.';

'>>3482908
>in true romancing saga 2 fashion, the termites are the real badguys of kamala, forcing the plant people to become eupykes just so they can feast on their pollen';

'>>3482910
it seems to me like constantine and his sameface brethren aren't even people, for the most part, they seem to be biorobot clones of maybe what was some guy once, grown in a lab (in probably delta base) and unleashed to fulfill various purposes throughout the conjoined worlds, constantine's job just happens to be restarting "it" (literally: the game itself) for reasons that vary depending on which boss it is you're facing';

'call it confirmation bias since i have a sample size of two, but I think once you hit either x number of completed playthroughs or a certain BR you will always be offered ticket for the beyond right before your final boss';

'>>3482917
i don't think it's br, or i would have gotten it on my 2nd run, i'll be able to corroborate your 3rd run theory soon though';

'i still don't really like the delta base/general sci-fantasy theme playing all the time, especially in places like kamala that have such a good track and the general overworld theme really just does not fit at all in the setting and shouldn't ever play in places like kamala, the great tree, yomi, probably kosmos, really i wouldn't ever have it play anywhere but delta base, the only place the theme really fits in, but that's me';

'>>3482926
Are you playing as Siugnas? That's the reason why.';

'>>3482930
diva';

'>>3482915
I do wonder what their deal is; I've only cleared Diva's tale and the first versions of Ameya's and Tsuna's stories so I'm not all that far into things relatively speaking. But I know I had a "Aha!" moment when I went from Diva's story to Ameya's and noticed that the guy who seals Ameya's magic looks exactly like the guy you can unseal from Delta Base, armor and all. And then there's that yellow researcher who wanted the Necronomicon page who keeps popping up throughout.';

'>>3482937
the yellow division researcher pops up a lot, one time he was drowning in a lake in miyako over some frogs, and twice i've seen him in mare nostrum, both alive and dead, looking for his lost research notes on monsters in mare nostrum';

'>>3482937
In typical SaGa fashion there's a lot of things you really won't get without playing through everyone's stories, multiple times too since this game has cyclical progression.
The researcher from the Yellow Division pops up in several worlds like Miyako, Capitol City or Mare Nostrum, you won't understand part of Crowrealm's lore if you don't play as Siugnas, conversely certain parts of Lifetaker's story can be found in Ameya's story, Siugnas' scenario doesn't tell everything about him.';

'>>3482964
same for boudica, you really don't learn anything about her backstory if you just play as diva, and imakoo, and blath seems to have been a maiden of kamala, she has the markings that the other maidens have that the non-maiden plant people don't, but i don't know if her story is ever explained anywhere but i'm guessing she was from a failed eupyke scenario in kamala, probably from constantine himself fucking around in the conjoined worlds, or any other of the sameface quistassium or whatever they're called';

'>>3482911
Fucking crackhead bastards.

>>3482906
As who, Mido? Mido's omnidoor is different in that any area that gives you a certain elemental spirit means you can't visit any other areas that give the same one.';

'damn, poor chup, she's all interested in diva's world and how she was born and shit and diva has no idea and i'm gonna eupyke her and she wanted diva to tell her crying sister about otherworld shit, if i could recruit her i would sabotage her trials';

'>>3482985
as diva, the door only appeared for me on my 2nd replay';

'lmfao chup ran off to try to escape the responsibility of being eupyke'd, and now they're gonna graft her sister instead, the priests talking about how they've dealt with shit like this before in the previous ten thousand times they've done it, fucking hell this game is amazing';

'Oh cool, the update adds an indicator if a piece of equipment can be upgraded w/ mats you have in stock.';

'holy fuck, chup immediately bloomed into a devil flower and it led to a boss spider fight where chup is crying out diva's name from the corrupted eupyke mid-fight, what the shit';

'What are some early skills that give Provoke? Blath's ass refuses to fucking die.';

'>>3482869
>>3482889
FASTER';

'>>3483076
Boasting Slash with 2h melee does it. 2h guns have an early provoke';

'>>3482872
Do more jessica nodes probably';

'>>3482907
>>3482908
>>3482987
>>3482994
>>3483014
when i said we were running out of things to talk about, i didn't mean someone needed to start weirdly blog posting their playthrough';

'>>3482985
i literally have 5 playthroughs as mido and I've never seen an omnidoor. Whats the conditions for it?';

'>>3482972
There's promotional shots of Blath being in Bonnie and Formina's party in a battle in Kamala, but nobody found out whether it's a hint that Diva can get Bonnie and Formina or those two can somehow get Blath in Kamala.
There's still a lot of mysteries in the game.
>>3483120
You need to visit all the 17 worlds.';

'>>3483124
The likely answer is that it's just a Developer Mode screenshot where they made parties of characters the person taking screenshots liked, but at the same time, this being a SaGa game and Kawazu being Kawazu it could just as well mean that it's possible.';

'>>3483124
as mido or as anyone? I know i'm missing mare nostrum as mido but I think thats it';

'>>3483152
As Mido, if you want to unlock direct warp as an option for an MC you need to visit all the 17 worlds as said MC.
It's harder to so for Tsunanori and Ameya since their progression is short and cyclical, everyone else has a much easier time';

'Why is this game so fucking UGLY?
jesus christ the overworld looks terrible';

'New patch makes the UI less slow
...But it's still way slower than it needs to be
Multiple cursor locks still exist where they don't need to and deleting saves still takes forever.

Might end up taking measures to get a mod made that speeds that shit up.';

'How do you get Emily Bryant? Every time I do AMERICA I get told the concert is too full.';

'>>3483198
Siugnas can mindrape her into joining him if you do both of the nodes, Bonnie and Formina can find her as an abducted prisoner in Delta Base, not sure about the rest.';

'>>3483200
Once I beat Diva I'll probably roll Siugnas again, he's my favorite character thus far, although Bonnie is pretty funny too.';

'Remember to praise your muslim overlords, because that's what this series is all about.';

'>>3483237
And yet Formina voted for Trump twice.';

'Wednesday is cool and all but her starting weapons kind of suck.';

'>>3483291
i only ever used them on mechs until i got enough better equipment for my mechs';

'Is there a way to make the retards in Cinq stop being retarded? Maybe get each outcome then go back? Cuz each time a team wins, they're removed from the roll.';

'>>3483387
During one run in Cinq I ended up with them miraculously realizing how retarded they were and they all got together to rebuild the Soul Temple, not sure how I ended up with that ending though since I only did two full elemental routes in there, I guess it's something exclusive to Bonnie and Formina?';

'>>3483415
reject the final gift';

'>>3483416
Yeah, in hindsight it's probably what I did, been a while since I went to Cinq.';

'>>3483415
>I guess it's something exclusive to Bonnie and Formina?
Yeah, I just got that as Diva, got the choice of all the stupid animal people (and whatever the fuck the Forest tribe are supposed to be)';

'Diva final boss difficulty is overstated';

'>>3483507
As a first playthrough? I believe it's both stated and rated accurately.';

'>>3483416
can confirm, they got together and started rebuilding the soul temple only when i rejected the final gift';

'Hey you! Yes you! Anon who seethes about MMOs and cries themselves to sleep!';

'>>3483532
What the HECK';

'The United Attack system really opens up once you learn how to reliably combo in Interrupts and other conditionals. I didn't understand what the little overlapping square icon meant when I first saw it, so I always treated Interrupts as standalone moves until the One World fight, but you even get a bonus for linking them in.';

'so in the post-ending vignette where emily bryant sings with diva, it plays the japanese version of the final boss song, not sure how i feel about the fact i can more readily discern what's being said in the japanese version of the song yet liking the english or whatever language the other version of the song is in';

'>>3483545
comboing interrupts and pursuits is a bit tricky, but i think chains make it somewhat easier? haven't tried to chain off an interrupt or pursuit yet to see if it even works like that, or if chains don't activate off of them';

'>>3483545
Yep you have to pay attention to the combo range and direction even if your characters are directly next to each other on the timeline, because any chains, interrupts, pursuits etc can either break or extend the combo depending on this';

'>>3483549
Chains activate from interrupts and pursuits, but not from other chains';

'>>3483548
>english or whatever language the other version of the song is in
The forbidden song, the song Diva sings for the final boss and ending, is just Auld Lang Syne. The full Scottish version but with "jo" in the chorus switched out with "dear".';

'>>3480114
Is it me or is the level scaling scizophrenic?
Two bosses I kicked the asses of, but the second and fourth bosses fucked my ass hard.';

'>>3483588
yeah it can go from pretty easy to ball busting in an instant';

'>>3483588
Change your armor. A few points in the relevant resistance can be the difference between 120 and 40 damage.';

'>>3483606
I think the Brighthome Earth Dragon fight is the roughest spike I've seen thus far, but you're supposed to be able to lose that one. I know people had a lot of trouble with the Necronomicon fight in the demo, but I came into that with 2 mechs that don't care about ID and it's a Brutal fight so you know what you're getting into.';

'its nuts how many basic QOL features Emerald Beyond is missing';

'>>3483637
The new update helps but considering you spend 99% of the game in battles or menuing yeah it's not great';

'>>3483637
Is there an option to return to the Title Screen without getting a Game Over? I cannot find it.';

'>>3483648
Exit game option in the normal menu screen';

'>>3483659
That closes the whole game though';

'>>3483648
There isn't
I thought there might be a hidden button combo but that doesn't exist either.';

'>>3483617
Speaking of which, does the game seem to use the SaGa Frontier-style of defense calculation where it's the only the lowest targeted defense that matters? So a Heat/Cold move against 100 Heat and 10 Cold defense is treated as if the target has 10 defense? Or is it something different.
The game doesn't seem to have items that tank a specific defense super hard like Frontier's Life Chalices, so I haven't really noticed one way or another.';

'is there some way to finish vermiglio that ends with it being not fully controlled by the triangle engine shit and polluted? it seems like the tree hippie man should be able to lead to such but i can't seem to figure out how to get it to work';

'>>3483722
>it seems like the tree hippie man should be able to lead to such but i can't seem to figure out how to get it to work
Tree hippy just wastes your time until you tell him to fuck off.';

'>>3483588
Difference in moveset means not every boss is equally-difficult.';

'>>3483729
That's not really what I'm asking for, I guess.
Like when I played one person's route, boss 2 was more challenging than boss 3, and Boss 4 was leagues above boss 3 to the point that it could have been a hypothetical boss 7.';

'>>3483922
different bosses have different techs and different races and different resistances and have differing adds, and depending on those factors and what techs and weapons and armor YOU have, you will have wildly varying experiences fighting in any fight in this game
it's almost like a strategy rpg, you want to have as many options for approaching a fight as you can at any given time, so that when what you try the first time works, and after you've gotten some data onnthe fight, you can adjust to cover what it is you're missing that you need in order to win';

'>>3483932
>when what you try the first time works
rather, i meant when it DOESN'T work, which will be fairly often';

'>>3483922
I understand what you mean. I think it's more of a product of what worlds you can get. But if you go through something like raw damage there's certainly massive leaps, where even the final boss of a long campaign likely hits only about as half as hard as the final boss.

I think it's more pronounced in the random encounters, however. Places like Vermigilo have enemies that (can) hit substantially harder than their equivalent BR brethren elsewhere due to the tri attacks. Enemies in Crow-realm (can) are a more exaggerated version of this where they can just casually one shot you with their one strong attack if you're not guarding on a defense maxed character at medium high BR.

In comparison to that, I find the scaling to human bosses to be the more noteworthy thing. To the point that at the BR I play at, I find Constantine harder than the final boss.';

'Is Sa•Ga 4 the current GOTY for you guys? Do you think it will remain that way?';

'>>3484051
Definitely my favorite game of the year so far
There's not much else coming out that could compete though honestly';

'Fuck this fight, pure SaGa 2 PTSD
>>3484051
So far it's definitely the best thing that came out this year';

'thank you 10hp scarecrow';

'Do I have to do everything in Providence perfectly (e.g. get Darkblayde Nobunaga and fight the boss while inside the monster with the child robot) for the trophy?';

'>>3484256
Whatever Darkblayde you get doesn't matter as long as you beat up the blacksmith, you need to save every other NPC though, which includes fighting the whale boss in that one possible quest with the "child" robot';

'Well well, look what I've found in Providence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0fZ-x55Jb4&list=OLAK5uy_kxiw9BmQn65pA7VRGkGI5tVWorfpGPN8w&index=54';

'>>3484295
now you just have to gather the other fatestones and kill saruin';

'>>3484051
Not up to Rebirth's or P3R's level, I'd give it a 6.5/10';

'>recruit Ameya
>she knows no spells
wat
how the HECK do I learn magic';

'>>3484336
You must get items with built in spells and use those spells to start learning something, the game checks your INT and spell levels to roll for new spells.
Ameya is a special case since she can temporarily learn spells by collecting cats.';

'>>3484336
>equip an item that has a spell w/lightbulb icon attached to it
>equip spell
>cast spell 40,000 times until you learn an actual spell from that element
>remove equipment
>cast your newly learned spell an additional 40,000 times until you learn the other spells from that element';

'>>3484337
>>3484340
I'm like 7 worlds in and have yet to find one of these things AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE';

'>>3484344
I think I got one once by putting 5 dress shirts up for trade';

'>>3484344
You can get some by exchanging things or fucking around in certain worlds, always trade shit because you can get very good stuff';

'>>3484344
If you ever go to Cinq, assist only a single clan to the end.';

'guys I turned Tsunanori into a wastrel';

'>>3484344
i got a blazing sword from doing kamala a second time and getting the cursed eupyke bloom, it has sunlight on it, also certain weapons upgrade into weapons with spells on them, like the old blunderbuss that upgrades into queen's address which has gravity bind on it, the plumed hairpin also can upgrade into one of four different accessories with different spells on them, the plumed hairpin comes from a 1 time per playthrough mr s trials, also the spear from fighting deus maris in mare nostrum has a spell on it, also you can trade for things like coats and masks which can either be traded for magic items, or one of their upgrades can be traded for magic items, always check the bids that are put up, also dumbbells can sometimes be traded for magic items but i wouldn't recommend it because dumbbells are too rare and too useful to give away for a simple magic item which are honestly really common
for example right now i have
>2 pocket mirrors (mirrorshade)
>3 hand fans (wall of air)
>6 tumblers (holy water)
>4 acrylic charms (delay order)
>1 band of forest (delay order, cinq reward)
>1 band of forest (wall of air, cinq reward)
>1 red hairclip (sunlight)
>1 blue hairclip (gravity bind)
>2 plumed hairpins that i haven't upgraded yet
>2 queen's addresses (gravity bind)
>2 silver lily's (sharp pain) also a 1h gun like queen's address
>1 qinglong yanyuedao (hasten time) mare nostrum reward
>2 dull longswords (spellbind)
>1 blazing sword (sunlight) kamala reward
>and 1 queen of swords (aqua sphere) don't really remember where i got this
still have yet to find a metal/white magic item though, i suspect wherever they may be found, avalon is where since it's the one place i can't go as diva';

'Anyone uploaded the soundtrack yet?';

'>>3484417
even right now, star of the spar is offering a tumbler for a magicked shawl (upgrade from a doublet -> reinforced clothes -> budo gi/enchanter's tunic -> magicked shawl)
should i do it even though i already have 6 of them? yes, because i can make a magicked shawl easily from a dropped budo gi, and tumblers also have 50% poison resist on them, and if worst comes to worst i can just ship them and maybe get something decent for them';

'Who is best girl and why is it Nero of Trigon?';

'beast axes for this???';

'>>3484475
beast's axes, spirit greatswords, stuff like that yea';

'Do negative BP formation bonuses stack? For example, with the default combo one, even if I do multiple combos in a single turn as a result of United Attacks+Overdrive will I get -1BP or -1x(# of combos) off tech cost the next turn?';

'Imakoo confirmed for werewolf butt pirate
>>3484526
BP gains are cumulative, Overdrives do not count as combos so you won't get cumulative discounts';

'>>3484530
bp cost reductions from formation are cumulative as well';

'>>3484051
Yeah.
The only competition it has is Dawntrail & SMT V: Vengeance. One is a re-release/port banking on a 2nd campaign but they could end up tied.
If XVI is released this year, I'm fairly sure it's not hitting it and it's falling under the re-release/port category too, but with no extra content so its gameplay is going to have to top the others so yeah...it's got a big gap to cover.';

'>>3484336
She'll get some spells from the cats and she can learn the rest by casting magic. Her level in the 5 elements are very high which I'm sure when combined with her outrageously high intelligence (at the end of her campaign) contributes to the lightning fast pace she learns magic

>>3484627
The features they're adding to Vengeance seems like they're going to be extremely unbalanced. Weak spell crits would need to be weighed against some serious utility to not just be the right option 100% of the time.

At least that dogshit level scaling is gone so I imagine they actually balance the game this time?
I'm the retarded that posted that level 82 party v Shiva fight like a few days into release.

Anyways
>>3484051
I like it a lot.
But who knows what the future holds. They recently released a new difficulty and NG+ mode for Star Ocean 2 and if they rebalance one of the bad characters it'll probably be my perpetual GOAT

>>3484417
I feel like metal might not even BE findable. I've yet to do Ameya's final boss. But I imagine there's probably a story reason why she and like the final boss (and some stupid ass chipmunks) are all that seems to be capable of casting that school.';

'>>3484530
Dance of feathers is such a good move and a good counter. But it's scary using that if it's not on a claw
>if it lands you're safe
>if it misses you'll eat half your health in damage
>if it lands enemies that attack afterwards will eat you alive';

'Is magic even worth it in this game? It is really hard to resist short-sword spam.';

'>>3484667
i use it but i'm also very low iq';

'>>3484667
Kind of? Outside of it's dedicated formations and an elemental salvo cheerleader? Probably not.

For it to be worth it you need to be given a combo where you couldn't have gotten one using it and do 2 (or 3) turns worth of damage in the time it takes you to cast.
This is while also being very unpredictable OR strict on where the caster ends up on the timeline on the subsequent turn.
But there's other things like if alpha striking, the most preferred strategy, isn't possible, and if you can ensure the caster can make it unobstructed. Though on that second front you should be able to. There's a reason why a bunch of the spell centric formations have a spot specifically designed to do conditionals.

I use them a lot, but it's mostly for spamming aoe paralysis and unblockable spells with Ameya and utility everywhere else.';

'Holy shit Diva is fucking grooving in her OG body';

'>Diva kills one world at 1 hit left w/ a showstopper
Oh fuckin yeah
Is her final boss theme uploaded anywhere?';

'>>3484692
>This is while also being very unpredictable OR strict on where the caster ends up on the timeline on the subsequent turn.
there are items and roles that make that pretty mych not the case';

'>>3484732
i'm this close to just recording my next final boss fight with just the music on';

'>>3484739
that's why I used one "or" the other anon';

'First time playing a Saga game (I don't like JRPGs very much but for some weird reason I liked the demo a lot so I pulled the trigger) and I'm starting to get filtered.
My people do jack shit for damage while the enemies can easily take out 50% of the total HP on a single attack.';

'>>3484755
>he picked diva first
lol you fucked up';

'>>3484755
>My people do jack shit for damage while the enemies can easily take out 50% of the total HP on a single attack.
Set one of your peeps as a tank with Sword/Hammer/Spear Attractors so enemies will more likely attack them. Leave them to defend or use parry (1h sword skill).

Protect skills like Parry above and Deflect are very important to mitigate aoe damage from 5 people to 2.

Upgrade your gear and swap shit around for the attack type the enmeies are going to spam against you.';

'>>3484295';

'>>3484785
She was the demo character and I didn't finished her route there; I wanted to wait for the full game. Is something wrong with her.

>>3484799
Thanks.
Is there any way to heal or it's all about damage mitigation?';

'>>3484826
She has the hardest first playthrough final boss. If youre getting filtered now then hoo boy.

>>3484295
>>3484814
Oops that was weird. How did you get the obsidian sword from providence?';

'Can Tsuna roll the standard version of Pulchra? I botched one of the routes my first time playing as Diva and so I need to do three whole runs of Pulchra (to clear every color's route) before I can even begin to think about getting Ameya's true ending.';

'>>3484826
>Is there any way to heal
unless you are a monster or a relic bearer with absorb hp, if that's even absorbable, then i don't think so, maybe hatman can
>or it's all about damage mitigation?
for diva, it's all about strategy, damage mitigation is just one of them, or parts of broader strategies';

'>>3484838
yeah I rolled it on my 2nd run. I did yellow route and it ended with lita getting crystalized';

'https://streamable.com/vdzwrd
my team got sent into a time vortex';

'So im 6 playthroughs in (granted 5 of those are tsuna) and im still missing concepts that are barring uniques like malystrix from upgrading. Am i supposed to be equipping lesser equipment with concepts i dont have until it acquires or what?';

'How are you people on like playthrough 8 and 9 when my first playthrough took me 20 hours and I'm almost 6 hours into my second one and still don't even feel like I'm at the mid-point there?

Am I doing too many optional battles on a severe level?';

'>>3485024
You can get through without zero optional battles even on a first playthrough, not that you shouldn't grind if you enjoy it but the game does a pristine job at scaling to your level so if you have experience it doesn't take long to beat (obviously depends on character choice)';

'>>3485038
So, should I only be doing optional battles in the case that certain techs get really behind on ranks or if I really need to glimmer some new ones because of bad planning?';

'>>3485039
Yes, and also for materials or to beat Mr S trials for its rewards
Grinding normal or easy battles is usually not worth it, you will raise the BR but you're unlikely to glimmer anything from them';

'>>3485024
Tsunanoris playthroughs take like 6-8 hours a piece';

'>>3485038
The game also just throws a ton of mandatory battles at you in most worlds, I don't get why you'd go for optional ones, outside of the hard/brutal doors Tsunanori gets between worlds';

'I really, really don't like these trials, I have no idea why they thought it would be fun to have bosses that are almost completely immune to ailments and also hit for four digits on top of having beefy ads that force you to sacrifice defense for status prevention.
Most of them are 60% RNG even with the intended solution in mind, what the fuck am I even supposed to do when this is the opening round?
>>3484667
It's good, much better than SSG where it was actually fairly middling outside of water spells, makes a lot of max BR fights way easier because spells land statuses much more reliably than techs or monster skill, AoEs also hit really hard when you get your mage going, Churning Earth especially is pretty busted.
>>3484755
Upgrade your shit, gear is very important in these games, formations are also very important, a good formation can completely change how your team works.
Use your status effects and learn how enmity works, conditionals like counters, interrupts, chases etc. are all invaluable, this game wants you to use all of your tools to their fullest, a deflect tank is a massive boost in terms of survival if you're struggling with damage control, so is a dedicated provoker with counters in the scenarios it can apply.
And of course, at a certain BR threshold the game will do everything in its power to kill you and you need flawless comps and strategies to stand a chance, a single mistake will be punished really hard.
>>3484828
Got the monster hunter event with the guy who wants to capture a Carbonia/Lizard Fortress, chose to save the guy and got this as a battle drop, I suppose it's a specific Carbonia drop since I saw that thing at high BR in other fights that have Lizard Fortresses/Drifting Lizard.
>>3485013
You probably missed some of the worlds or specific bossfights, it's okay, this game has tons of secrets and weird subroutes/events, I'm 150 hours in and still finding new stuff.';

'>>3485160
>what the fuck am I even supposed to do when this is the opening round?
skanda shoes on your humans and blitz bolts';

'>>3485160
So you cant spark concepts off weapons?';

'>>3485186
Even with Skanda Shoes I can totally end up in the lower end of the timeline if I get a bad roll.
Blitz Bolt spam also doesn't help me defending against enemies that can chunk me for 300 damage per hit.
The trial fight against Zephyros was incredibly painful because the motherfucker hits for 1K with a single Trample even if you have something like 80 defense, Sacred Song hits for 500+ unless you're defending and the only way to actually damage the fucker is to have a gun user stacked with 2-3BP techs get a showstopper, had to completely rebuild Wednesday for this fight alone and it still took me like 7-9 retries because I simply could get the RNG for proper showstopper positioning.
It's also not fun to have your characters ultimately become generic clones and have them swap around shit like it's FF5 instead of having proper builds, this isn't what SaGa's about and I'm really noticing this bad trend of puzzle superbosses since Frontier Remastered came out, previous games didn't force you to work like that to beat these optional fights, you could still have actual builds.
And getting Zephyros in the first place is also RNG because you could get all of the other horses instead, not to mention weapons drops being also RNG, it's not really fun, if I wanted that shit I'd play Re:UniverSe, I don't want to see this crap in mainline games.
>>3485196
No, they're locked to worlds and specific bosses that can be found in certain worlds.';

'>>3485209
>It's also not fun to have your characters ultimately become generic clones and have them swap around shit like it's FF5 instead of having proper builds,
I blame the tech list being a lot shallower this time for this. Sure you get 16 techs as a human per weapon with custom techs but not enough of them have different functionality to actually warrant taking up a tech slot.';

'>>3485227
I disagree, custom techs have a lot of different functions, it's way better than old games where finer balance just wasn't there in many cases and you'd merely use your hardest hitters at some point, this game definitely isn't like that but it has the opposite issue of feeling too much of a strategy game rather than an RPG.
It doesn't feel like I'm building characters or a team anymore but more like I'm trying to find and answer to a set of abstract questions, SSG was also like that.

The other issue this game has is that it's way too focused on the NG+ cycling and has content that is locked to max BR, it's a novel idea and is executed well for the most part but this leads to characters becoming a very homogenous blob of stats and skills, at which point you're just swapping functions to solve an abstract crossword puzzle.
And they were clearly aware of this since Trial bosses are built around specific solutions you can never possibly get by playing naturally, like they did in SSG or the recent remasters.
I understand that all of this is optional tryhard stuu that addresses the more hardcore side of the fanbase, I appreciate the more strategic battle design, but losing the commitment to character building and forcing Atlus style puzzle bosses isn't good RPG design imo, and doesn't really fit these games to begin with.
I know there's a lot to like in how deep the systems are but I feel like the actual roleplaying part of it all suffers from this, I really don't like Wizardry 4 style game design.';

'Idiots paid $50 for this.';

'>>3485237
The trials dont feel all that optional considering theyre gating major materials needed to breakthrough to the final tiers of gear';

'>>3485237
>I understand that all of this is optional tryhard stuu that addresses the more hardcore side of the fanbase, I appreciate the more strategic battle design, but losing the commitment to character building and forcing Atlus style puzzle bosses isn't good RPG design imo, and doesn't really fit these games to begin with.
I don't entirely get why they have all this tryhard stuff if they're not gonna let you eventually play with a handpicked squad of NG++++ badasses that you've trained up over a bunch of runs. Some characters just have garbage availability or are gated off between runs and will fall behind as a matter of course, and there's always gonna be one or two recruits that are just unlucky enough to get recruited right before the endgame due to player choice. I get that they want you to roll with what you get, but the novelty of using human #24879 as opposed to human #3427 only lasts so long.';

'>>3485261
You're sort of right because it's really hard to get things like Meteorite or Super Alloy reliably without them or exploits like item event rerolls, max rank trading still gives you access to that but it's much more unreliable and acts as power gating for "normal" playthroughs.
On the other hand a normal playthrough doesn't particularly need that either, you can simply not carry BR over and have a fairly okay playthrough since getting Obsidian will still be really hard without maxed trading and the basic One World/Diverse Heaven fight will still end up being more or less balanced due to the new BR mechanics.
On the other hand tons of good weapon are locked behind these trial fights and mechs benefit immensely from these so again, I'm not happy about it, they need to tune them down a bit so strategy isn't so strict, even SSG's scarlet fiends weren't this ruthless.
>>3485262
Yeah, this is another thing I have to question as well and a very good point, if you wanna do the super hard stuff you're basically forced to use your starting retinue because even getting Ameya, Siugnas or Tsunanori is not particularly reliable depending on which cycle you're in.
And depending on the retinue the experience also varies, Siugnas, Tsunanori and Ameya have an easier time than Diva and B&F because their retinues are all good and they have access to specific gimmicks that make that content easier, Diva herself is unusable in her own story due to having her limiter gimmick and B&F are too standard and with a messy starting retinue so they have a much harder time than the rest.
I know some people could spin this as another internal difficulty setting of sorts and they might be right about it, but I still don't like it.';

'>>3485227
>tech list shallower
than what? I'd say it's very on par with Scarlet Grace, and since you can even wield two weapons at the same time you have more options anyway
I agree that humans can feel pretty samey, since all characters end up with similar stats and could theoretically learn all weapons, but it's either this or the Scarlet Grace/RS3 style where characters stats determine what they're good at
I don't mind either, but at least in terms of weapon techs I don't see how any other SaGa game offers more variety than Scarlet Grace and Emerald Beyond, especially because cost is much less of a factor in them so you usually just end up spamming your strongest move';

'>>3485291
Minstrel Song technically gave you more stuff to play with, especially with spells, but in there the battle format was different and most techs were largely about having specific combo links rather than full blown functions like SSG/EB, so at the end of the day you'd still end up using a select set of "meta" techs and combo sequences.
I think the current format has something real good going when it comes to avoiding bloat, EB is way less deterministic than SSG too but it's still sacrificing too much on the roleplaying aspects of fights to get that, and arguably it's still cutting out some stuff that ends up giving RPGs more flavour, even it leads to what you might consider worse balance.
There's also the endgame being weird, as another anon said SSG's max BR had enemies being a bit too weak to compete with you outside of the Scarlet Fiends and Firebringer Prime, a common issue with these games to be fair, but EB's max BR is the opposite and in some fights it feels actually overtuned, enemies that can do four digits damage and break the damage cap with a single low cost attack on round 1-2 while also having tremendous defenses and access to 400-600HP AoE with added statuses shouldn't be a thing in a game with zero healing.';

'What's the point of General in support? "Parameters and skill levels raised by General" sounds a bit vague. On my 5th playthrough with Siugnas and either the encounters are still too weak to get any stat/proficiency up or this kid is doing something';

'>>3485160
>>3484857
Thanks for your replies. I think I'm focusing too much on interrupting enemy combos or doing combos rather than exploring the rest of my toolset.';

'>>3485348
Nobody knows for sure yet, I think it's a global stat boost but I can't really say, it's just some observation based on battle performance.
>>3485364
A common mistake is to always force your combos through standard routes and always try to go for five people combos by simply readjusting your positioning.
This game has more nuance than that, you ought to learn how to use different combo starters like creating your own combos by intruding into an enemy's combo and build up from that, or simply learn when it's time to combo and when it's time to disrupt enemy combos, some times you'll also simply need to just defend for a whole round, there's no clear cut strategy you can apply indiscriminately.
The game is about constantly adapting and reassessing every round rather than creating a general use case strategy and going for incremental gains on that, in here it's all about reading and going with the flow.';

'>>3485364
in my experience, unless the combo you can set up will guarantee eliminate an enemy from 100% health to 0 and stop an enemy combo that way, then you should just disrupt the enemy combos instead as much as you can, because you can't afford the damage bonus from the combo meter that the enemies will get, and you REALLY can't risk them getting an overdrive which the game is all too eager to do whenever it gets the chance to
>>3485344
i've had the opposite experience, in scarlet grace once the battle rank got high enough i was locked into using my most developed parts of my party and even then it was a struggle to clear normal fights, whereas here in emerald beyond at a br where my blath has hit 999hp, i'm perfectly able to take two developing jobbers along with my 3 primary killers even into hard fights and breeze them, and even do brutals with some effort
>>3485209
>not to mention weapons drops being also RNG, it's not really fun, if I wanted that shit I'd play Re:UniverSe
i like it, but i like re;universe';

'>>3485413
>and even then it was a struggle to clear normal fights
What armor were you using and what was your playstyle? I rarely used Interrupts and Counters and I only used Rampart/Deflect/Block a couple times a fight, if that. I think I just gamed the system a little too hard, honestly.

>>3485348
I almost think putting him as support makes it easier to slingshot anyone whose proficiency/HP is lower than his.';

'>>3485467
>armor were you using
grand astral armor and commemorative medals and cyclone shoes/jester's shoes
>and what was your playstyle?
4 martial artists and 1 staff user, and spam mostly thunder kicks and submissions unless raksha and jolt count/retribution spam, also lots of rising suns to just delete things and get united attacks off, black belt formation, leonard scenario, the mage is just kind of there to cover the damage types that martial arts alone can't provide for in scarlet grace';

'>>3485344
>Minstrel Song technically gave you more stuff to play with, especially with spells, but in there the battle format was different and most techs were largely about having specific combo links rather than full blown functions like SSG/EB, so at the end of the day you'd still end up using a select set of "meta" techs and combo sequences.
From what i remember from MS remaster, the only time I outright needed to combo shit was saruin. Otherwise I more than fine just spamming my favorite flashy techs individually. Granted I didnt do the new superbosses or fs10 saruin, but I did do normal Death and the other goddess';

'>>3485600
Oh, I was using characters with weapons, 1H Sword users + Mage with the Defender Role for block rate up, and then the 2H Sword and Spear characters had Weapon Block Rate Up. And my aux armor was the Lordly Doublet because I dislike how there was no aux armor to give all 3 physical resists at once except for the clothes that are there more for the elemental resist. Grand Astral isn't high-enough resist for me, so I tried to get Lordly Mail (39 in all physical, 39/28 for various elemental) or Dragonscale Mail (40 in everything) so I could have about 40-43 physical resist and 50-52 elemental resist.';

'i suspect that warden in brighthome is one of yomi's 3 fallen wardens
according to simon's account, brighthome summoning can follow the death of warriors, and the warden of greed is out walking around and we know da low rez's master was the warden of pride and got beheaded by the 4 wardens
i can't seem to get any more interaction with him, but warden seems pretty boastful and eager to talk so he can boast and is all upset when diva leaves to go settle shit elsewhere in brighthome because he wasn't done boasting about how great he is
if so, that leaves only the warden of envy that there's nothing about';

'>>3485209
i just did zephyrus version of final trial 2 and i disagree with your sentiment, once i realized i needed to use aqua sphere to remove his tech power buff (and bring in diva to guardmech blath/whoever) it was honestly a breeze, i think there are more ways to approach these final trials than you assume
anyways, beating it gave me a bonus reward in the form of a samurai sword called invincible east, 30 weapon power, shock sword mech skill, terminating slash special skill on it, protective shield as a concept, takes an obsidian a demon blood and 20 fire crystals to +1 it';

'>>3485160
i literally just did and won this fight, and all 3 of my skanda shoes users (blathe, boudica, wednesday) were able to get ahead of all of the enemies in the timeline in the first round with blitz bolts and thunder kick';

'just did final trial 4 after doing final trial 5, and it gave me a 1h gun, peach blossom spring, as a reward, this thing looks like a cartoon martian raygun, 60 weapon power, logic bomb mech skill, magical esoterica concept, gale blast spell, no upgrades';

'>>3484755
Getting chunked away by powerful attacks is part of Scarlet Grace and Emerald Beyond. Try to obtain stun skills. Long swords have knee split, guns have stunning shot, and if you use monsters there's some low BP cost skills to stun. Just be mindful of any flying enemies with stunshot, while knee split doesn't have that downside.';

'Tsunanori really is just Rush from The Last Remnant. Even one of his final boss fights takes place in the same final boss room';

'>>3486000
Brighthome has a lot of things. But also I feel like there's a lot of characters that pass through there.
There's not one but two chosen maidens outside of . The one in Brighthome and Blath, she's got the tattoos and everything so either they failed to become a giant flower, succeeded, fled, or died.
Also I feel that Boudica likely was the chief of the Soul tribe in Cinq given that it's the only world where anybody has armor resembling hers.';

'>>3486166
the only thing is, i have da low rez literally in my retinue and he doesn't react to her and she doesn't react to him, so maybe he's the warden of envy instead, not really too sure, but he does stand watch over the graveyard which suggests a yomi connection, and king din named him warden so he most likely was a warden of some kind';

'>>3486051
How does that contradict what I said? No shit you'd want Aqua Sphere to remove the Awaken buffs, what if you do not have it? What if you do not want to use a spellcaster?
I can also destroy the Trial 2 fight with Ameya and one other caster spamming Churning Earth/Vermilion Sands while three meatshields guard them, I can beat Trial 6 in the same way and completely ignore the Haniwa's gimmicks because Churning Earth is busted, that doesn't make it less of a puzzle fight where you have to rebuild your party to beat the puzzle where you have a clearly intended solution with added RNG or abuse some broken shit.
>>3486166
Boudica's armor is just an asset flip from SSG that is generously reused in a lot of worlds in EB, there's no deeper meaning to it and it's just a stand-in to represent the ingame Squire Armor.
Squires from Pulchra use it, the wardens' guards in Yomi use it, the king's soldiers in Avalon use it including Guv in Brighthome who's clearly from Avalon, then there's the fire tribe in Cinq.
There are some clues to the setting but most of the costume design is related to a character's starting equipment more than anything, and largely a way cut corners for models, the only people who have unique designs that aren't reused somewhere outside of the protagonists are Lita and Azure, even Macha's costume is the generic goth maid design Emily, Dolores and tons of other NPCs reuse but with a couple of minor details that are different.';

'>>3486341
>what if you do not have it?
i very nearly beat the fire horse without it
>What if you do not want to use a spellcaster?
since this isn't scarlet grace where spellcasting is relegsted to someone wielding a staff in their one weapon slot, there's literally no reason for everyone to not also have magic
>that doesn't make it less of a puzzle fight
actually, it does';

'>>3486351
I beat Zephyros without Aqua Sphere too, it wasn't fun, I also beat the kraken in trial 2 without Blitz Bolt, it wasn't fun, the vast majority of these trials aren't fun much like Scarlet Fiends weren't fun.
>there's literally no reason for everyone to not also have magic
There is, there are many reasons in fact, magic is no longer tied to staves but is still tied to equipment in this game.
Best case scenario: you fought enough squids that you got yourself a Queen of Swords which comes with Aqua Sphere, you still need to know where you can find squids and then reset over and over until you get the drop, but at least you can just equip that dagger in a slot, equip the spell on a humanoid and call it a day.
Worst case scenario, you're playing as Diva and nobody in your starting retinue has access to magic at all, you have no idea that squids drop a dagger that comes with Aqua sphere, your best option is going to Crowrealm AND Pulchra if you're lucky to have access to it so you can get Scarecrow and Willma to complete the Sensei trial for the hairpin, upgrade the hairpin to get Sharp Pain and then grind until the RNG gives you Aqua Sphere, or you can get Byaku if you're in the parasite loop of Kosmos, I guess? Still a lot of metaknowledge involved.
Both are terrible and effectively you get fucked hard for no good reason because the game wants you to do some glorified crosswords in what is supposed to be an RPG.
>actually, it does
It doesn't, it's not as terrible as something like P3 Elizabeth but it's still bad.';

'>>3486360
>P3 Elizabeth but it's still bad.
Reminder that there is a bigger bullshit puzzle boss - DDS1 Demifiend.';

'>>3486364
I can't even consider DDS1 Demifiend as a true puzzle boss because of the RNG in that fight, at least P3 Elizabeth uses clear patterns, DDS1 Demifiend is very luck based even if there are strategies you can sorta use.';

'>Frog familiar is french
Sacre bleu...
Anyway, I come bearing the usual gifts for ye minnows
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nRh1ggzOb1VipIWbdqNfpAh_eDr48UEq/view?usp=sharing';

'>>3486518
>not dolphin porn
disappointed';

'>>3482910
>>3484732
For anyone looking for it, Diva's final boss theme is "Beyond the Doors"
>>3486518';

'I'm assuming Mido's bad end also updates the play data.
Can you see it on playthrough 3? I didn't really get anything from the final boss when I won. But, I still don't exactly want the playthrough to go out on that so I alt F4'd when they gave control back.

Also party member Siugnas is in a fucking weird place man. Blood techs are great so there's that and casually killing things through their stance/block is terrific... But, 7 LP with only 1 LP per battle sucks. So you only really get 1 per regular encounter before letting you go nuts on a boss (assuming you first try it)
Well... Time for another Siggy playthrough. Gotta collect 'em all.

>>3486375
>because of the RNG in that fight
nta but you know what? Totally fair.';

'>>3486544
>Dolphin porn
Gar, I bring ye Carolina's finest shanties and this be what ye ask of me?';

'How is this fight "normal" difficulty';

'>>3486570
Looks normal to me.';

'>>3486570
*teleports behind u*
DEATH
nothin personnel, kid';

'>>3486570
You're supposed to use the rocks to kickstart combos and snowball the fight from there, the parasites aren't particularly tough unless you don't want to do the Cognitheon minigame, or fail multiple times, you get a super beefed up version of the parasites that is actually kinda tough in that case.
Just be careful when it comes to those broken Backstab pursuits, whenever one of them has a ??? they're going for a backstab so quell that immediately.';

'>>3486518
Bless you anon, I'll put this on while finally working on my thesis
Feels appropriate since this game delayed me by another week or so...';

'>play the game at 1.5x speed
>Create a macro on my mouse to auto delete saves at 40x speed
>create a button combo that auto spams O and shift the speed to 20x speed whilst doing it
>create a toggle of 5x to make trade menuing faster

Not exactly a graceful solution. But it'll keep while they finish pummeling their UI guy/gal.';

'>>3486570
that fight got me the first time around because i wasn't using +1 harmonium earrings and +1 cerberus rings on my non-mechs, the parasites themselves aren't that bad compared to their disintegrator cousins, at least not if you don't fail the minigame too many times';

'>>3486360
>Best case scenario: you fought enough squids that you got yourself a Queen of Swords which comes with Aqua Sphere
nah nah nah nah, starting at (at least) trade rank 6 you can trade 4 of any non-spirit crystal and be offered a dress shirt, you can then ship single dress shirts for a chance at a tumbler, or they can show up on the bids for a dress shirt or two, you're more likely to learn aqua sphere off using a tumbler than to spam aqua sphere with a queen of swords until you get any other black/water spell and then spamming that until you learn aqua sphere';

'>>3486714
Is aqua sphere the last water spell you can learn? I've been spamming it with lv21 water hoping to learn another spell.';

'>>3486731
Snowstorm is the last Water spell';

'>>3486731
it's the t3 water spell so it probably requires 30 spellcasting to be able to learn
t1 is sharp pain, t2 is holy water, t4 is hasten time';

'and honestly if you're trying to take on final trials at all, you should have at least 30 spellcasting on everyone who's a non-mech anyway, by the time you get to the point where you get offered challenge tickets you should have already figured out how to get spell items';

'>>3486714
apologies, it's up to 5 dress shirts for a tumbler from star of the spar via bids section, still it's super easy to gather up 5 dress shirts';

'>>3486731
Water goes
Sharp pain
Holy Water
Aqua Sphere
Hasten Time
Snowstorm

If you can beat the divine level water spirit on mido's route you can get SUPER early access to snowstorm and it slaps pretty hard';

'Who has the biggest divergences on subsequent playthroughs? Mido?';

'Start Suignas2
>on second thought, let us not go to brighthome, it is a silly place';

'>>3485268
Not that I don't agree with a large amount of your points, because I do agree with them but,

>even getting Ameya, Siugnas or Tsunanori is not particularly reliable depending on which cycle you're in.
Technically at enough runs (or at least visiting all 17) you can guarantee basically the full squad with B&F, which is basically what their real super power is. Even before that, they can cycle pretty efficiently to get you nearly all of the cast. From there how good that cast is, depends on your work on other campaigns. Although Mido is just a regular ass human so you could reasonably replace him with the girl from Kamala and be just as well off for every other playthrough and actually be able to use her with everybody including Ameya and Mido to boot. (Although both of them have a substantially harder time at getting the correct worlds to roll)

B&F's roster sucks for sure; 3 cats with bad element spread, poor resistances, and a finite amount of high tier relics. But, if you consider their campaign skill the ability to recruit every other hero somewhat consistently, they're alright.
I don't even consider Diva's starting to be that bad unless you carry over BR. Though if you do Diva herself becomes unusably terrible as you already well know. No amount of roll carry over can suddenly give you the stats you don't have.

Although like I said I understand the points about gated availability. By design, unless you do all of this autistic bullshit, multiple characters WILL fall behind the starting retinue and be a pain in the dick to even train up. Fine for NG+3, less so for NG+9. Mostly due to several of them not being even consistent in availability. The two blobs alternate. Lancelot and Guinevere alternate for everybody (besides technically B&F). You have to choose between Ameya, Squire, and fucking Wilma; A decision between the literal best mage in the game... and Wilma isn't actually compelling.
The (lack of) desirability mostly a result of homogenization.';

'>>3486971
Tsunanori gets a lot of possible prologues and endings on top of the differences in which worlds you get to visit, but his runs are super short.
Bonnie and Formina don't get as many endings and their prologue is always the same, but they have slightly longer runs with the same structure as Tsunanori.
Ameya also has her weird progression gimmick but for the most part you're just unlocking more steps of her quest, so I wouldn't put her on the same level as Tsunanori or B&F.

That leaves us with Siugnas and Diva, who are somewhat similar in the sense that both have fixed green doors with some specific route options and then you have a lot of blue doors, although Siugnas has a slightly more methodical progression compared to Diva, which is more chaotic, Siugnas also has a bit more variety for his main quest options.

I'd put Tsunanori slightly above B&F in terms of how much your playthroughs will be different, his entire story can lead to pretty weird twists and there's a lot of them, his campaign structure is short but still leads to a lot of variety.';

'>>3487005
>and Wilma isn't actually compelling
actually she is, has ANYONE gotten golem willma yet? and what are the differences between golem and human willmas? also speculation is better than ameya';

'who's next fellas';

'>>3487063
>Speculation
Honestly? In a vacuum? Pretty compelling reason.
In reality, on the assumption that we're talking about your very first playthrough, I can't think of a single person whose semi-scripted first run has Ameya that doesn't ALSO have the four element squad:

Mido can't recruit her
Ameya can't recruit herself
Diva gets both Ameya and Cinq, as does Siugnas and B&F

Anyways in the context of the aforementioned point where you're playing B&F and are able to recruit Diva, et all. You've done enough loops to already have speculation
Out of context, it's potentially a decision you make once for completion sake.';

'Is a Human/Robot/Robot/Robot team viable in SaGa II? What about an Esper/Robot/Robot/Robot team?';

'>>3487138
my perspective is going through first playthrough as diva, i'm not sure how i would have cleared it if i didn't get speculation in that run, i don't think ameya would have been able to make up for it
anyway, for some reason, on a 3rd playthrough with diva, i wasn't able to recruit willma this time around in pulchra, i guess either because i was interfering in all the fights this time or because i got the red mage sisters feud edition of pulchra, maybe both
but anyways so i went and got ameya this time and i'm teaching her all the spells i can, and getting all the martial arts on her that i can, before i go do much of the same for ivar, nahoj, and scarecrow
probably should spellgrind gourmand, kina, and white gel blob too while i have them
but yeah ameya seems to learn spells pretty quickly, provided you have the items to give spells to her since she comes with none if you never played with her before, another reason why as a first playthrough with diva it's hard to recommend ameya over willma, you're not likely to have figured out how to easily get spell items from trading (or have the trading rank to do so) or anywhere by that point, maybe you get a plumed hairpin or an old blunderbuss by then, but maybe you just don't have the materials to upgrade them into spell items
i think (human) willma even came with a couple spells too, so';

'>>3487111
Ameya for 2 hour playthrough so you can have her cat gear in other playthroughs';

'What did he mean by this?';

'what's everyone's "one thing" in this game?
for example, in scarlet grace whenever you cast a spell on an ally, the camera pans to their face and they turn their head and do a little nod, even when they're asleep or paralyzed, and in minstrel song when you cast holy water on an ally it pans to them and they do a soijak open mouth face, those shits always crack me up
for me, in this game, it's either the way that everyone in the fight who isn't the two characters involved in the current tech animation are placed randomly in the background, but it's really only funny during long combos or long showstoppers
either it's that, or the way the gels are like "humina humina humina" in their spell chanting animation';

'>>3487337
when you use Stronger than the Sword with Wednesday and it shows her "smirking" before she shoots even though she's wearing a full helmet';

'>>3487337
For me it is the sarcastic looking applause when a character's stats go up.';

'>>3487345
diva's retro pod applause is pretty spastic, some people (like dolores) also sometimes do the little semi-crouched hopping bouncing thing kinda like tom cruise in that one meme, ocelot in pic related';

'>>3487337
>>3487345
>>3487341
I'm glad to see that victory dance from Scarlet Grace come back even if it's only on Wilma now.';

'>>3487204
Three Robots sounds like cancer to grind the gear for, I'd limit myself to two';

'Anyone had any luck in making Sarab kinda usable at max BR?
Little thing dies so fast, I swear ZEKE is more durable than him, even Mech Sonata stops being good.
>>3487111
Tsuna's pretty fun and short
>>3487320
Butt combos have been my newest guilty pleasure';

'>>3487381
ironically in this game it's actually really easy to get decent gear for mechs once you're maxed trading rank, quite high level weapons get put up on the bids asking only for a mere couple of obsidians, like eagle gun sp3s or naginata +2s
at least for me, obsidians are no longer unobtanium and i'm usually sitting on around 20 of them despite spending them quite a bit, i'm even up to 8 meteorites and almost as many superalloys
dragon scales, squid fins, and disc florets are still relatively rare and pricey for me though, and jewels remain elusive outside of digging infinitely around cordycep after having complete the stone collecting and worm collecting quests which causes both the stone and the mound nodes to just give straight up high tier materials like magic stones, great beast parts, obsidians, and jewels';

'>>3487389
i've used sarab as a guard mech, he's actually quite great for it since he has flying status which means certain things will just always miss him outside of combos/showstoppers, i have yet to really use a mech as a damage dealer';

'>>3487389
>>3487320
Best I've seen is TearSonicToShreds';

'>>3487400
Monster combo names in this are too fucking fun, it kinda sucks that you really need to drop by Mare Nostrum to get Pedro if you want to make the most fun combos';

'>start new run
>BR carryover on for first time
>Avalon first world
>first fight is a rape dragon that utterly demolishes me
I guess I'm supposed to catapult combos off the rocks?';

'>>3487412
BR carryover isn't a good idea unless you're like five or six runs in and you have enough gear and techs to survive.
The damage gets out of control and the game starts spawning more cancerous stuff like Melodic Bats, midbosses/bosses become extremely meaty too so you actually need to know what you're doing, Avalon has some pretty tough fights even outside of the kuhrayzee market man so I generally just avoid going there at the start of a run.';

'>>3487416
I've beaten each character once, I figured Siugnas would be busted enough to overcome any initial difficulty. Maybe I'll restart but go for a weaker world in general.';

'>>3487401
the white haired sameface in miyako is interesting, tsunanori banishes him and it's like just another day to tsuna, he even mentions how even if he were to kill the sameface, another one would just take his place, so tsunanori seems to be somewhat familiar with the sameface squad and has dealt with them in the past
...but it also has me scratching my head when you do it as diva, because constantine is right there, him and the whitehair sameface don't interact, and tsuna doesn't make any mention how constantine is literally one of the sameface aliens he's been expelling from miyako, i feel like there's a bit of a missed opportunity there';

'>>3487421
Only Bonnie and Formina seem to recognize the Quisstatium, but even there it's kind of a stretch, Diva herself doesn't bat an eye if you free the Progenitor from Delta Base who looks exactly like Constantine.
The game having its own specific cyclical continuities doesn't help, depending on the loop the Quisstatium themselves either want to unite or keep the conjoined worlds separated, hence One World VS Diverse Heaven as bosses.
If you're not playing as Tsunanori he never goes to the conjoined worlds but still has to chase the Man of the Heavens around Miyako, and the whole scion of Terra plotline is never brought up either.';

'>>3487425
>If you're not playing as Tsunanori he never goes to the conjoined worlds
actually on my 1st replay of diva my first world was miyako and i was able to recruit tsuna out of it, couldn't tell you how i managed it, i thought it was normal';

'>>3487435
You can recruit Tsunanori with everyone but Ameya, he still doesn't go to the conjoined world until you deal with the Man of the Heavens, which is the opposite of what happens in his own scenario, the first thing he does there is go to the conjoined worlds and after he's done looking for the elemental spirits he comes back and the whole Man of the Heavens affair starts as the finale of his story.
If you're playing as other MCs the entire storyline is reversed and you solve the final stretch of his story with him as a guest, without all the stuff he has to go through in his story cycles, he potentially never gets out of Miyako either since you can also refuse to take him with you.';

'>>3487420
Siugnas/Dva/B&F would be the only ones likely to be fine to carry over after one run each because they all have similarly lengthy campaigns, but if you grinded a lot more on one of them that BR will be carried over
And Diva's campaign is just generally terrible for BR carry over because she's so heavily gimped until you clear her green doors';

'>>3487441
i just throw diva in the support slot until i get gourmand and do a couple of green doors so she can have a somewhat decent hp pool and defenses, which is one reason why raising up constantine isn't really a waste in the end, just have to drop him in favor of someone reliably recruitable as soon as you can, for me that's generally dolores or scarecrow, or a green door mech to sub in for diva as a guard';

'What happens if you just let the cannibals eat the other tribes in Cordyceps anyway';

'>>3487458
i'm guessing once they take someone to become the mushroom food, that's it, also it's not always the bashar doing it, in my last run through cordycep it was the antmen that were going around trying to abduct people to turn into 'seedbeds'';

'>>3487458
The glowniggers? Haven't tried letting them do that yet, but if you let the kaiser ants do it the other tribes will simply hate you and tell you to fuck off when you go to ask them about the Lord of the Earth, not much actually changes outside of some dialogues being different, I think the biggest factor in what ending you get is whether you save all the colonies from being destroyed by the Lord of the Earth, which is hard to do if you aren't playing as Diva since unlike everyone else she can scan the colonies and tell you which one is the most likely to get attacked.
Also if you want to get Gourmand you need a certain amount of points from worms you find around, but I have no idea how the game gauges that.';

'>>3487466
i'm pretty sure gourmand recruitment hinges on saving all 4 colonies, that or supplying coste with worms until she stops and worms stop dropping out of mounds, or both, or both of those AND doing the stone collector quest to completion
all i know is when i didn't save all colonies i didn't get gourmand, and when i did save all colonies i always got gourmand';

'>>3487466
>>3487471
It is just stopping the Lord of Earth from destroying all the colonies. I got him on B/F and only gave stone guy/Coste 1 set of stones/worms each.';

'>>3487472
his support slot bonus is so good';

'So what's the best way to get the Kugutsu up to snuff on subsequent playthroughs, train Mido as a generalist/swap weapon every recruitment?
Noticed they learn magic normally which is nice.';

'>>3487505
Either that or focusing on specific recruits. Mido is the most consistent to train on playthrough 1 until you get to playthrough 3 which is substantially more open.

It's feasibly possible to end playthrough 2 with the only recruits you get being 2 mechs and a monster. You can pull a decent amount of techs off of the wardens in Yomi, another handful from the beast king, and the rest will end up coming from you. Can you pull Airwave from the Valkyrie's? Never tried.';

'>>3487505
haven't run him yet, but i intend to glimmer everything on tsuna before i do, have to do it next playthrough though now that i know i can arbitrarily be locked out of miyako (and capitol city) after doing either a certain world or a certain number of worlds';

'>>3487477
Nana, Gourmand and Sarab are the kings of support slots
>>3487505
Getting Tsunanori to grind everything is insane, if you're not coming from NG+ where you can carry over certain humans from specific worlds
it's much better to grind specific human bosses instead so your bros can steal techs from them, provided you want to keep them as is, if you want to shuffle things around it's much harder because there's hardly any human boss that uses heavy guns outside of the Warden of Wrath and the Quisstatium in Capitol City.
Imo the best thing is to beeline for these bosses in particular according to each one of your bros
>Musashi
Beast King in Delta Base if you can get his Katana version
Boudica in Avalon if you want an alternative to Beast King for katana movesets
The crazy blacksmith in Providence for Katana, but it's hard to get and a tough fight in general
Warden of Wrath in Yomi for standard Greatsword moveset
The miner in Brighthome for more greatsword stuff
GS Final Emperor in Grelon for GS, but this is hard to get if you don't know what you're doing
>Sukune
MA Final Emperor in Grelon, relatively easy to get
MA Beast King in Delta Base
One of the female pirate bounties in Mare Nostrum
You're kinda fucked if you want endgame stuff like Windwhistle ir Air Raid though as I haven't found any enemy with that
>Komachi
Pretty much just Azure in the normal Mare Nostrum route, there's not many dagger users, but chances are Komachi is just there for spells
>Boh
Warden of Lust in Yomi
Fell Demon hunter in Yomi if you choose the Save Siugnas route
The Assassin in Providence';

'>>3487526
>standard Greatsword moveset
Bull Block is Warden exclusive IIRC.
Death Rattle is too.

I'm not sure if the wiki has the copy unique skills. If not I should probably compile a list, if for no reason other than to help me when I inevitably forget everything in a year or two and want to start from semi-scratch.';

'>>3487527
Yeah, those are custom techs only he can use, but he still has Vertical Smash and Absetzen.';

'>>3487527
>wiki
any known white magic spell items? or is white magic only ameya's MC unique trait?';

'>>3487531
Ameya only';

'After fucking a round a bit as Suignas and Mido I've rerestarted w/ BR carry over as B+F so I can roll a full MC party and get a bit of a power boost for the other campaigns that way. Gonna try to get Formina dual wielding guns, Siugnas using Gun/Sword and Mido dual swording.
How do you get Diva's arm cannon attack I saw posted up thread?';

'>>3487619
I don't know how that anon got it but I get mine from a Djinn yellow urn. Undoubtedly one of the end-game items comes with it attached.

7BP though. Tied with Scattered Petals but gets to Quell. But does less damage. Very pretty overdrives with it, though.';

'>>3487619
Oh wait but I forgot to mention. You have to do Diva's campaign to have B&F recruit her. If you don't, you don't get her.';

'>>3487619
>Gonna try to get Formina dual wielding guns, Siugnas using Gun/Sword and Mido dual swording.
Good luck grinding all that shit
>How do you get Diva's arm cannon attack I saw posted up thread?
Beam of Destruction? You need a Photon Shooter or an empty Djinn Yellow Urn.
It's cool but it's not particularly strong unless you use Safety Removal II beforehand, and you need a Concert Ticket to access that, mechs are kinda gimped power wise if they don't buff themselves with Safety Removal, but in turn that makes all the BP hungry shit like Tiger Rampage, Beam of Destruction or Moonscraper even more BP hungry, so you need to mitigate that by grinding roles and using specific formations.';

'>>3487655
Yeah I already got her. I've done a run with all the characters.';

'So Mikado is in the same world as the Union States? Formina says she's been there before. I wonder what other worlds are the same place.';

'>>3487677
Yeah, Miyako and Capitol City are in the same world, which is Terra.';

'BONNIE INTO FAT OLD MEN CONFIRMED';

'>>3487692
Bonnie's into a lot of things including shotas, she doesn't discriminate';

'>>3487699
Immediately confirms that neither she nor Formina are into Mido, though.';

'>>3487706
Tsunanori is born to suffer, he can still have Dolores at least.';

'>>3487709
I figured he was with that unseducable Shrine Maiden that freaks Suignas out.';

'>>3487732
The only woman he explicitly shows affection for is his little sister Tomoko, whether he has a thing for anyone is up to your own headcanon, Tsuna can be shipped with whoever you want, in this game there's no canon relationships like Mythe and Silver Girl or Khalid and Fatima, the best you get is Azure and Ivar in some continuities, and Guivere and Lancelot are very vaguely implied to be a couple.';

'>>3487661
>but in turn that makes all the BP hungry shit like Tiger Rampage, Beam of Destruction or Moonscraper even more BP hungry, so you need to mitigate that by grinding roles and using specific formations.
there's always the wristwatch too, though i haven't really checked to see how a wristwatch does on a mech stat-wise';

'>>3487533
blah, lame, guess she's the unremastered minstrel song red mage of the game
oh well, good thing i'm not too into magic in this game, but it's gonna be a while then until i get around to ameya and see what the white magic spells are like';

'>>3487764
Metal Spells aren't particularly good so you're not really missing much.
Blood Curdle/Freeze is alright, but nothing you can't replicate with Gravity Bind, only major difference is that Blood Curdle is Cold instead of Blunt+Lightning, which can be an advantage depending on the fight.
Magical Harmony is pointless because spells already have huge combo ranges, increasing combo range further does nothing.
Vermilion Sands is okay, but you can still do the same exact thing minus the blind effect with Gale Blast.
Magic Bless is actually good outside of being limited to self, -2BP discount is big, but not for spellcasters hilariously enough, so you'd be better off with a gunslinger/dual wield Ameya having that as buff to use on the first round so you can spam Bound Shots/Anti-Material Bullets/Dual Whirlwind over and over with impunity.
Tower...it could have been a decent spell but in this system and without any changes to attributes coming from SSG it's bound to be shit because there's no real point to spells that can be interrupted, especially if they're dual attribute and both of those trigger so many different interrupts, the -20% debuff for magic isn't particularly useful either since enemy spellcasters hit like a truck anyway and the few cases like One World/Diverse Heaven where it could apply don't matter because instacasts have severely gimped damage multipliers anyway so that -20% doesn't do much, SF1 Tower remains the only good version of the spell.';

'>>3487751
>Mythe and Silver Girl
Doesn't Silver Girl hate Mythe's guts even into the ending? He'd have a better chance with any of the other 6 or so women that join his party rather than the one he's fixating on.';

'>>3487775
>-2BP discount
interesting, could always pair that with a wristwatch and maybe speculation or some other bp cost-reducing formation for some meaty showstoppers on her, if you're willing to both wait for round 5 and chant the spell for however many turns ahead of time';

'Do all mech skills have attached roles?';

'>>3487778
Silver Girl doesn't hate Mythe, but she's sort of indifferent to him throughout the game even if he simps for her really hard, it's mostly a one sided crush on Mythe's part and she sorts of goes along with it.
Unlimited doesn't really have much in terms of certain character interactions though and Silver Girl is one of those characters who barely emote or even talk since she's Arcanian and only shows up when most of the game is over in the first place, Ruby and Hiro would have been a better example now that I think about it since their romance is more explicit.
>>3487784
Yeah, you can also stack it with wrist/silver watches to get -3BP from round 4 onwards.
>>3487788
No, only the main ones related to the chassis.
So Saw, Mech Sonata, Cosmic Rave, Quad Missile and Ice Pillar, for each rank you get a different role all the way to Rank 5.';

'>>3487789
>No, only the main ones related to the chassis.
That seems to unfairly gimp the generic mech units. If they ever do an ambitions style rerelease/rebalance, I hope they make it so mechs and monsters have more roles available by using their primary mechanics.';

'>>3487789
huh, how do you get silver watches? the broken/old pocketwatch i got could only upgrade to a wristwatch iirc, and that can't be upgraded further';

'>>3487789
asellus and white rose? katarina and mikhail? noel and orieve? rocbouquet and wagnas (though that's apparently pretty one-sided on rocbouquet's part)? leonard and elizabeth? granted, those two seem to be more like they're both in denial or leonard is just aloof and only cares about them scarlet shards
honestly i'm glad saga doesn't ever go headlong into romance shit and end up becoming a glorified dating sim with an rpg tacked on';

'>>3487793
Most human roles are kinda pointless bloat you'll never use, mechs have only a few but they're all pretty good, having monsters learn roles by ranking monster skills would be pretty chaotic and since everyone in this game can use monster skills it would only make the role disparity worse.
Gonna be completely honest about it though, I don't like roles as a mechanic and I hope they'll drop it entirely after this game, I don't like tech/spell ranking either, I really hope the next entry will shake things up and move away from the current format as Kawazu's implying.
>>3487826
Exchange only, I think, I never saw it anywhere else other than the Exchange bidding, it's the same as the other watches except the BP discount comes at round 4 instead of round 5 like the pocket watch.
>>3487831
I don't think we ever risked threading into dating sim territory since Kawazu seem to fundamentally dislike it and much prefers the romance style of 70's/80's YA fantasy.
He's an avid Tanith Lee reader especially so that sort of stuff probably isn't what he considers good romance elements for his games.';

'>>3487843
>since Kawazu seem to fundamentally dislike it
based as fuck kawazu';

'>>3487843
I wouldn't mind roles if a lot of them weren't that kind of garbage 1-3% more damage shit you'd see in random loot-oriented games. I just hate tiny, insignificant numbers.';

'For use elsewhere';

'>>3487848
When you look at his games none of them had any dating sim elements.
Even Crystal Bearers, where Layle was a suave motherfucker that made all the girls swoon he didn't put a dating minigame for you to ship him with Althea, Belle or whoever else, he just had Layle fuck off Cyrion style at the end to do his own thing.
>>3487857
Yeah, they're really bad in this game where you only start to see the gains where you stack a lot of them, but I also dislike how things like dual wield are locked behind them.
I really don't like the mechanic at all, I'd much prefer to go back to panels if he wants to keep some sort of slot system for passives, no idea why he exhumed roles from SF2 all of a sudden with SSG/EB.';

'The game doesn't really give you a lot of characters that start off with 2 handed guns, does it? I've done a few runs and the only character that I've seen so far with one is Scarecrow. It feels like a bit of an oversight considering that most players will tend to default with the weapons a character starts with.
It would be a funny joke if the devs did saddle one of Tsunanori's kagutsu with a rocket launcher. Just imagine all the people selecting his story for the first time, going into the tutorial battle, then throwing up their hands in exasperation and saying "what the hell am I supposed to do with this shit" when Boh or whoever's basic attack uses 3/4 of your BP turn 1 in the default formation.';

'>>3487903
There's a few, Scarecrow, Formina, Hero and Emily all start with heavy guns, Emily in fact comes with two heavy guns.';

'ok i think i have tickets down pat
4 cleaning tickets -> 1 street stall ticket
4 street stall tickets -> 1 art gallery ticket
4 art gallery tickets -> what i must assume must be concert ticket, i'll find out soon
and then 3 concert tickets can be traded on bid for black market tickets, iirc
>>3487903
>considering that most players will tend to default with the weapons a character starts with.
i don't really know how true that is for saga veterans, i'm anecdotally biased but i tend to NOT use whatever anyone comes with and forge characters entirely in my own mold, which is always martial arts focus with a side of magic, everything else comes tertiarily, it's worked for me in every saga game so far, aside from things like mechs and monsters of course, but one of the most satisfying things to do in saga frontier 1 is to get DSC unlocked on blue and get time magic and just unload DSCs into rouge in stopped time and completely obliterate him with nothing but ridiculous throws and he can't do shit about it';

'>>3487926
In this I think it's slightly detrimental to deviate from a characters base loadout since their automatic BR scaling will level their preset weapons
Less important if you grind them to max anyway and also get spells etc., but for characters you can only pick up every so often that's a chore';

'>>3487926
Well, I liked to do weird stuff like Martial Arts Annie or making Aisha a bruiser with the biggest weapons I could find. But most people will assume that characters are setup a certain way for a reason and not a horrible prank by the devs - e.g. Annie's entire Glimmer list being moves with names written in Katakana, which renders her almost completely incompetent at sparking sword techs. Or most techs in general between that and her 1 Int growth.';

'>>3487775
Magical Harmony isn't for Ameya casting spells. It's for other people and slams 2 squares into them in both directions for a range extension of 4. Notably this gives things like pursuits and chains a combo range. Completely useless if you don't strategize around it, and outright opens up new strategies previously inaccessible if you do. Long fight exclusive. Potentially replaceable with a role.

Blood Curdle will never be interrupted which makes it the cheapest most reliable magical interrupts. (for whatever that's worth)
Vermilion Sands blinds, so there's that I guess. But Gale Blast has a larger combo range.

More importantly, Tower can't be interrupted:
It has the max range, nukes all magic fueled attacks (which includes things like blaster and probably more), and is an aoe unblockable. Ameya with a single spellcast or boosted in a combo can absolutely murder all Haniwa's starting at turn 2.
Elemental Salvo allows you to fire huge cheap AOEs of high power for a potential minimum of 4 BP, 2BP if you cast Magical Harmony on yourself, more in a mage centric stance, and Ameya comes with weapons that boost her own magic by her cat gear, so cheering her with Elemental Blessing isn't necessary.

I really fucking like Tower.
As for interrupts, you can make yourself immune to stun and Ameya can become immune to distractions. The only thing that stops her spells going off is death. The chanting aggro reduction stacks with all other sources, which can additionally make her virtually invisible if you bite the bullet and learn poet (just learn all the two handed gun combination roles while you're at it). So her dying first is rarely a scenario that can ever happen.';

'>>3487926
>4
Shit
I thought it was 5.
I've been tunneling avalon in all playthroughs for street stalls and art galleries.
I'd have my concert ticket by now.

Fuck.

>>3487793
>monster roles
They need roles from something. But I think I'd rather have more monster relics. More specifically, them not being reset when you cycle. I really dislike that particularly attribute and is probably the only thing I would say, with a clear head, that I legitimately dislike in general.
Monsters fight amongst each other to the death for the handful of good relics with good resistances from sensei. Fielding more than one of the things is a fools errand.';

'So how do you get Ameya to join in Pulcra? Last time she kind of died. I've beaten her story before.';

'>>3487992
Do the final fight yourself and don't accept the other two potential recruits. That's it.';

'>>3487970
I honestly didn't consider using Magical Harmony for things like Chains and Pursuits, that effectively opens up some possibilities in terms of approaches if it means bypassing the inherent weakness of chains, not sure how much mileage that would give you though since most chains are not particularly hard to set up, I should try it out myself.
>Tower can't be interrupted:
Fuck me, did I really misread the attributes and didn't realize in 100+ hours?
This is what happens when you lose too much sleep playing videogames, disregard what I said then, I suck cocks.
>>3487981
Monsters can still get roles from spellcasting, and while relics do not carry over whatever you did absorb in them does carry over, it still kinda sucks but not that much.';

'>>3487998
monster skills not having roles is another missed opportunity imo, it would have been a good way to supplant traditional monster transformation while also giving traditional monster transformation the qol of being selectable between fights';

'>>3488016
then again now that i think about it, the inherent problem becomes the relic bearers then effectively being able to access monster transformation via roles, so, i guess it actually makes sense';

'Isn't this literally the chalice from Crystal Chronicles';

'>>3487998
Yeah you're right you can absorb and unleash, and I do. But imagine a scenario where every playthrough is tunnel visioning those at the start of every playthrough. It wore out it's welcome 5 loops ago.

That said, from a purely mechanical point of view, I actually fully understand the decision. If you could stock monster abilities the meta would be to collect one of every one on one of every accessory. Then there's things like stacking, which is likely why every single relic has a different name, and, assuming they had a solution for stacking programmed in and it's not a limitation, there's inventory bloat.

Like I totally get it.

>>3488020
Yes';

'>>3488016
I do wonder why mechs get roles on their innate chassis skills but monster don't when it comes to their own innate stuff, but as you realized, if monsters did get roles for their unique skills it would only make the role disparity bigger in this game since everyone can use relics.
What bugs me more is how they only have one innate skill for some reason, why the fuck do Imakoo or Kina need to summon another werewolf/Kaiser ant for their skills instead of being able to develop them natively since they're the same species? Doesn't really make sense.
>>3488020
Yep, old man is being cheeky.
He did recently say he was saddened by not having enough time to work on CC, so I guess he included this cameo for the CC fans out there.';

'>>3488022
>He did recently say he was saddened by not having enough time to work on CC, so I guess he included this cameo for the CC fans out there.
He should have given Ameya crazy jiggle physics and a tennis racket while he was at it.';

'>>3488022
>everyone can use relics.
not really everyone? but plenty enough non-monsters to the point where it's a crapshoot, i guess monster uniqueness only boils down to having 3 innate relic equipment pieces as slots for potential aborbed monster skills baked in
...as opposed to relic bearers like wednesday who can wield two relic weapons and wear 3 relic accesories and have 5 monster skill slots avilable vs a monster's 6...and access to all of human techs...and the roles they entail';

'>>3488030
i prefer diva's virginia body dancing and prancing and grooving around';

'I assume the Grey Witch stuff gets resolved on a later Ameya loop?';

'the frogs are kicking my ass in my ameya run. i need to change formations or something.';

'>>3488077
No, that's just how they are. If you haven't taught her tier 5 spells and absorbed a salvo to your familiars chest you're in for some pain.';

'fuuuck me dude
4 art gallery tickets -> 1 museum ticket, spell & chanting action order -6, self defense program, 4 to int and acuity';

'this is going to take so many touchings of the washing mashine and collecting and exchanging of tickets from and to said washing machine, is kawazu trying to say something here? diva's enhanced movement speed through the junction really shines for this, as i zip back and forth between the red door and the washing machine';

'lol and cleaning tickets are literally free, you ship 1 spirit crystal and get 1 spirit crystal back and a cleaning ticket or a dress shirt as a bonus, you just have to have an infinite red door in the junction to farm it, plus bonus tickets and men's wearhouse inventory for any bids you decide to invest in, all at the cost of time, doing them one at a time, through the slow menus, i can see this turning off a lot of people';

'this shipping system sure reminds me of ff6's colosseum a whole lot, you place an item(s) up for offer, go fight a battle, and get a result, at least in this you get options and can hold off and cycle it through until you get what you want, or just eventually eating the loss on having overshipped an item, imo a major qol and gameification of the system over ff6's colosseum, but not without its caveat and pitfalls, no risk no reward, after all';

'Oh no~
Anything but that~!';

'>finally able to take down a noctus (hatman paletted horse-llama-man) and two sidegoons handily, even while nursing up an ameya in the retinue
>get a cloak of the north wind as a bonus reward
it's an accessory, attack-all resistance 10%, 2/2/2/0/6/0 resists, self defense program as mech skill, takes 2 magical beast pelts 1 lela's pollen and 10 wood crystal to +1, which makes it 4/4/4/0/10/0 and self defense program mk.II (no increase in attack-all resist)';

'Anyone figure out how to recruit final emperor yet?';

'I'm voting for this nigga';

'So, what's the logic, if any, to what you put into the trading post compared to what you get as bids? I've just been putting random stuff and accepting bids for what items I have the least of.';

'>>3488304
1 spirit stone = 1 spirit stone
4 spirit stones = up to 3 element crystals, or 1 beast parts/fiber/feather/insect carapace/alula/screamroot/shrub/etc
4 element crystals = up to 3? fiber/feather/insect carapace/screamroot, up to 2? beast parts, 1 dress shirt
4 dress shirts = trade-only accessories, like tissues/tumblers/acrylic charms/hand fans/uv-proof stoles/glowsticks/pocket mirrors
4 cleaning tickets = 1 street stall ticket
4 street stall tickets = 1 art gallery ticket
4 art gallery tickets = 1 museum ticket
4 museum tickets = haven't gotten that far yet
nothing else i have ever shipped has ever netted anything worth the material cost or different from just shipping 4 of an item, the offers on the bidding section seems to only loosely correlate with what you get from shipping the same exact items, and it certainly doesn't reflect the quantative values involved in shipping, shipping 10 of an item doesn't give you anything more than shipping 4 of it, same for 15, or 50, or 100, there's just no point in trying excessive quantities per shipment, you will just lose out and waste the materials when you could have shipped em off 4 at a time and gotten the same things that many more times
that's been my anecdotal experience';

'>>3488408
oh, these are all trading rank 8 values, not sure how different all of these values are at lower trading ranks, if at all
as far as i can tell, trading rank seems to just increase the amount of shipments you can make, how many offers you get for each shipment, how many offers are up on the bidding section, and what kinds of things are put up on the bidding section and how much they want for them';

'>>3488408
Is there an (L) equivalent of the Sportswear? I've seen the (M) one but didn't have enough dumbells. Fucking gymrats.';

'>>3488436
not that i recall, but i don't think those things are worth the dumbbells, characters stats go up at a perfectly fine rate without them and dumbbells are too valuable for timeline manipulation antics and also haniwas, they're the most valuable items next to maybe this concert ticket if i can manage to get it and test it out, but even then there are situations where overdrive is heavily mitigated (immortal elementals, sturdy rocks/crates), though a lot of, if not all of those times you're going to want to be on the opposite side of the timeline than where dumbbells can get you anyway and you're going to need other specialized accesories instead';

'ameya's starting retinue feels like it really sucks';

'>>3488472
It's kinda messy, Kato is just a normal human and Macha's an extra spellcaster but then you have LoLo and Boh who kinda drag things down unless you're using carryovers.
Luckily her first playthrough is even easier than Tsunanori so it's not like you need your retinue to be good.
At least Ameya herself is broken, it's a similar but also sort of opposite issue to Diva where Diva herself sucks especially with carryovers and her retinue is pretty messy.';

'>>3488472
Lolo sucks and Boh is only good if he's absorbed a bunch of techs.';

'How do you use Mr. S's challenges? I've gotten 7 and 8 at the trading post.';

'>>3488599
You can only get the tickets by exchange trades, and there's eight of them.
You can also get multiple copies of a ticket since some of the trials have different bosses that spawn randomly and also give different drops.';

'>>3488601
Yes but how do I actually do the fights?';

'>>3488602
You'll get new forks in the conjoined worlds that lead to a platform with Sensei in it, talking to Sensei will start the fights.';

'>>3488602
Also forgot to mention, Sensei's trials DO NOT autosave, so save manually before starting them.';

'>>3488581
honestly diva's starting team is good, being a regular human is strong and they can easily become spellcasters, blath is what makes up for diva's inherent starting weakness, spores and rises and incenses are fucking amazing in retrospect, low cost and no chant time poison/paralysis/self combo expansion/self tech power buff/self bp cost reduction/20% ally buffs/ally status cure/stench/confusion/provoke is honestly powerful, they're like instant minispells and all NEUTRAL damage type, so they will never trigger an interrupt, and they're ranged so they shouldn't trigger counters, so they're basically safe to use on conditionals if you're sure no pursuits are in the cards, it's so easy to just control the fight with paralysis spores and passively nuke down everything that's not immune with the poison from poison spores, and since they do little to no direct damage they generate little emnity and you can put her in the low target rate position in certain formations and put hazy silhouette on her and a tengu cloak and just let her sit there peppering everyone with spores and incenses while she's literally invisible to the enemy so you never have to guard her, also the elder ephemeral roles are just really fucking good, elder monk gives 9% evade, and i couple that with lookout role for an additional 3%, plus 10% from gourmand support bonus';

'>>3488599
when you are in the junction, sometimes there will be paths that don't lead to doors, instead they lead to mr.s's, each one corresponds to a difference final trial that you hold a ticket to, these are special super hard fights like scarlet fiends';

'>>3488607
Does Gourmand's support bonus for Block and Evade rate up work all the time or is it only when blinded? The word ordering makes it sound like it's the second case.';

'>>3488610
i don't think so, but i suppose that would why the blindfold item exists';

'>getting raped by Watcher
>completely forget Distract exists
I knew I was making this harder than it had to be';

'IT'S WEDNESDAY
>>3488607
Never had problems with the Watcher, but the Diphta actually made me fear Providence's s timeline gimmick';

'>>3488711
>>3488638
I'm still getting my ass handed to me. I'll try to give myself as much fire res as possible before trying again. Probably doesn't help that only one character has a Distract tech.';

'>>3488721
>>3488711
i've fought the watcher twice and only had to retry once the first time around because i wasn't expecting the spell damage, can't you paralyze her? i really need to get my hands on nana, i wanna have two invisible spores-chuckers, for cultivation reasons';

'>>3488727
Pretty sure she's immune to anything but Distract.';

'>>3488727
Ah, forgot to mention, but Nana's a human, she doesn't count as ephemeral even if the god of Kamala marked her.
Pretty busted support skill though.';