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Legend of Legacy -- The SaGa returns October 13th
KiTA
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Legend of Legacy
Music by Masashi Hamauzu -- the guy behind Final Fantasy 13's soundtrack
Story by Masato Kato -- the guy behind Xenogears and Chrono Trigger / Chrono Cross's stories
Designed by Kyoji Koizumi -- the SaGa guy
Art by Tomomi Kobayashi -- the other SaGa guy!
So yeah, this is coming up in a month, and there's not near enough hype about it.
There's a SaGa game coming out in the US in a month. The first one since the PS2 era, although they don't have the name because Square Enix likes to horde IPs and not do anything with them, ever. Or worse, sometimes they do.
Regardless, this is a classic JRPG, based on the golden 90s era of RPGs -- back when people suggesting Final Fantasy 7's remake should be an action RPG, "like dark soulz" would be given the wedgies they deserve. Turn based combat, extremely high difficulty, no hand holding, and a ton of replayability.
40-50 hours a playthrough, requires 7-8 playthroughs to 100%. You pick one character out of 7 and get the others as party members that you can switch out.
Combat
Combat is Turn Based like all true RPGs, and is essentially straight out of SaGa Frontier. No traditional character level, and no classes -- each character has proficiencies in a given weapon or element and will spark (called "awakening" in this) new skills, gain stats, et cetera, based on what they do in combat. Want to be a mage? Toss some elemental magic on the character and use it. Want to master a sword on that spindly alchemist? Ok -- it'll just take longer than the knight.
But that doesn't matter because you can play the Prince of All Frogs, who is the best character. Not just in this, in RPG history.
Frog. Prince.
It does not have the LP system that later SaGa games had, instead if you faint in battle you temporarily lose max HP until you stay at an in. So brute forcing your way through an out of level area will not work, although you will not lose characters for dying in combat.
Cartography system
Map system similar to an automatic EO system, sorta. You can sell your map to NPCs. If you sell it early you get less resources for selling it, but NPCs will move into the area supporting you. If you sell it later you'll get much more resources (with a huge boost if you do the entire area without selling the map) but the NPCs won't be there to help you out.
NG+
Sorta? The difficulty goes up, but details on that are scarce.
DLC?
NO. The director has specifically said he doesn't believe in splitting developer resources to DLC instead of the actual, you know, game.
Limited Edition?
Launch day copies come with a art book, soundtrack, and huge box.
Censorship?
No clue. They made "changes based on fan feedback" but are not giving details as of yet.
Developer E3 Playthrough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Cym5NtqUTQLocalization team Twitch Stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDbJ7VxXm84 KiTA on
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Not only does this game look absolutely beautiful, it's hitting me right in the nostalgia. This is literally a brand new classic style SaGa game. I never thought I'd see one of these again.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Steam: TheArcadeBear
No idea. We'll see. It's entirely possible that subsiquent playthroughs will be quicker, or you'll be able to skip sidequests or do them in the most efficient way. The director is claiming to be aiming for the golden age of 90 JRPGs so it's anyone's guess how hard / repeitive it will be.
Did anyone play any of the 3 Romancing SaGa games for the SNES? They had a similar setup, I believe -- 40-50 hour RPG, one of X main characters, play through it X times to get the full story...
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
I read somewhere that you find legends and plot points about the island in random order, which is an interesting way to go about it. If you play through the game with other people, everyone will theoretically have a slightly different understanding of what's happening.
I hope not as this is a game I planned on playing on my off times and it was not a grindy mess that I would play once and say f it
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
There's a lot you can do with a story that goes on for three generations of characters.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
There's SaGa I-III on Gameboy (localized as Final Fantasy Legend).
Romancing SaGa I-III. I got a PS2 remake in Romancing SaGa: Minstrel's Song.
SaGa Frontier I & II.
Unlimited SaGa.
The Last Remnant (renamed, but made by SaGa people and contains all the SaGa tropes and so many SaGa skills/etc.).
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
I don't understand what this "golden age of 90s JRPGs" has to do with playing a lengthy game 8 times to get 100%. The only games that do this have been previous SaGa games. Even a NG+ thing was pretty rare back then, much less multiple exclusive paths that keep you from doing it all in one playthrough.
3DSFF: 5026-4429-6577
I'm really sad the game had an absurd amount of cut content and was rushed out the door early. Fuze was supposed to be tue 8th main character as well.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Final Fantasy 2 was weird.
In order to placate the guy who made Final Fantasy 2 and let him keep being weird, Squaresoft gave him his own series. SaGa. We got the first 3 as "Final Fantasy Legend" in the US, you might remember FFL2 for it's opening theme if nothing else:
They then went on to make Romancing SaGa 1 - 3 for the SNES, which are considered by many to be the best JRPGs in history -- especially Romancing SaGa 2. (IIRC there's a fan localization of RSaGa2 but not RSaGa3?) There was also some PSX era ones -- SaGa Frontier 1 and SaGa Frontier 2, as well as Unlimited SaGa (which was a little TOO experimental), a remake of RSaGa1, and finally SaGa Frontier 3, which was renamed late in development to "The Last Remnant" because Square Enix JP loves to screw with people who aren't named Toriyama, Kitase, or Nomura.
Basically they take some of the gameplay tropes that Dragon Quest pioneered and tosses them out in lieu of really oddball stuff. No levels, instead you raise your stats and skills directly. No classes, you specialize in what you equip and actually use. You can play as a monster and shapeshift based on what monster carcasses you eat. Completely open world. Multiple main characters and you have to pick one of them at the start of the game (and you only see the game from their POV afterwards).
They're amazingly great games and one of my life goals remains to make a SaGa Roguelike.
Fun fact: They remade SaGa 2 and 3 in Japan for the DS. There's a fan translation of both. Upon remaking SaGa 3 they dropped the Final Fantasy Mystic Quest style stuff that was in it and based it off of SaGa 2's mechanics.
And it has the best music ever for the new 3rd form of the final boss:
I could have forgiven everything that game did, except for the damned slot machine style combat mechanics. Holy christ I hated that.
What I find interesting is just how differently the game was received in Japan, considering it had fairly OK ratings and sold well enough there.
That's how I first got introduced to as yet unfinished translation patch of Romancing Saga 3 and I fell in love with the whole system. The lightbulbs when learning new skills always gave me such a euphoric rush, only to find out it was a 2 skill point piece of crap. :P
When I bought my Playstation 1, the first 3 games I got with it were Final Fantasy 7, Rival Schools and SaGa Frontiers, and I think I played SaGa Frontiers first to completion before I even really got invested in FF7.
I also got Romancing Saga: Minstrel's Song on PS2, which was great, although I wasn't as much a fan of it due to it being really difficult to "beat" the game properly with any character just due to the event lock out system. Even with a strategy guide, you had to be lucky and fast and get things right in one shot or forever miss out on important quest McGuffin #10 and therefore couldn't challenge the real final boss.
I hope Legend of Legacy doesn't have that kind of quest lock out system. It really bugs the "completionist in one file" in me.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
I remember being terrified of the scary dungeon in SaGa2, and being terrified of even trying to enter it. There was more stuff in there than you could literally carry, heh. And in SaGa1 having some guide from Nintendo Power or something that I "laminated" with scotch tape back in the day.
SaGa3 was weird though, I remember it had an interesting elemental system (where what monster or robot you were was based on your hidden elemental affinity, which changed based on parts/meat you eat) and the like. The storyline was pretty amazing, though -- time travel, paradoxes, something out of Lovecraft...
It wasn't until I got online and read guides to the mechanics and stuff (like AWJ's guides) that I understand a lot of how the games worked.
I really wish that Square Enix hadn't mothballed and sabotaged the SaGa franchise. So glad to see this spiritual reboot.
Really need to learn Libgdx and make that SaGa roguelike. RoGu?
Mystics were also similarly easy to get super strong super fast.
Or doing silly shit and leveling Blue Physical and then abusing Dream Super Combo with Overdrive. What? The game expected me to only go magic with him? Pfffft.
Too bad the only half the characters had complete stories. So much was left on the cutting room floor.
Also props to Asellus's story, even though it has an absurd amount of cut content, for having a legit homosexual main character in an rpg who was also freaking awesome and the second most powerful character in the game outside of Blue's endgame Time Magic abuse.
The SaGa series has actually been really good with LGBT characters compared to many Japanese JRPG series. The Last Remnant is another good example, because it's literally the main characters of Rush and David, though they heavily censored the dialog in the English release sadly (but not the actions), unlike SaGa Frontier.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
How about some HORN?
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
You would not believe how many of the Japanese version of AMVs use that song (and other songs from RS) / remixes of that song. It's completely absurd. The one I'm remembering right now is Mikamoto / RSF's take on it, but I can't seem to find it offhand.
I always wanted to get into The Last Remnant but it was a bit obtuse for me... I vaguely remember entering the first dungeon area and just dying horribly and not even realizing why. Was there anything specific to know about TLR going in? Like, don't grind or it will lock you out of some of the story, or plan out your skills to avoid the monsters overleveling or something?
http://nichegamer.com/2015/09/saga-2015-now-known-as-saga-scarlet-grace-launching-in-2016/
Welp. Apparently all it takes for SE to stop sitting on their horded IP is for the development staff to quit, move to a new studio, and release the games Square Enix isn't releasing as a different name.
Legend of Legacy demo on Tuesday:
http://nichegamer.com/2015/09/the-legend-of-legacy-demo-coming-september-22-new-character-trailer-revealed/
TLR was a bit strange. You weren't supposed to grind because every time your battle rank went up, the bosses got stronger. But you did kinda need to do lots of sidequests, because the bosses would steamroll you if you were underleveled. There was kind of a range that you wanted to stay in, if I understand it correctly. When I played it, I had a big checklist of missable sidequests that needed to be completed before each milestone in the story.
It also wasn't just battle rank that mattered; putting the right units in the right formations made a big difference.
This reboot of an old beloved franchise will be awesome. Please fund our Kickstarter.
In the actual PC release it was totally okay to level and fight as little or as much as you want. The only downside of over levelling is potentially outleveling fantastic and powerful (with unique skills) later game recruits. And boy are there some badass recruits in the PC version later game locked behind challenging sidequest boss battles and other sidequests.
The PC version totally redid all the battle and leveling mechanics. Play it with the Wiki open though, should you play it.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Its live now, but you won't see it on the front page. Search for Legend of Legacy, choose the game and the Demo is there for download. I was just playing it for a bit.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
EDIT: Nevermind, found it.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
I heard that the demo would only have three characters, but the character select screen seems to have the full crew? I went with the frog anyway. He has the most entertaining dialog so far.
Battles are interesting. The results screen doesn't show any XP gained, but individual skills seem to upgrade after enough uses sometimes? How does this work?
Edit: Also, demo completed in about two hours. It contains two exploration zones and... kind of a lot of grinding? Battles with weak enemies every other thing, and no auto-battle button. Seems like a good game to play while watching TV.
The second boss wiped my party with one attack the first time I fought it. The second time I fought it, it didn't use that attack. Not sure if it just only uses it if party member HP falls below a certain level or what.
Forest Ruins has 5 areas, I think the other two are "hidden" but the entrance is pretty obvious.
Otherwise yeah, lots of battles, luckily they go quick. I like it. I also feel like they explain pretty much nothing which has made figuring some stuff out kinda odd.
Explaining very little is a trademark of SaGa games, and this definitely feels like one through and through. I couldn't find the other two areas in the forest ruins and already sold my map