Thursday, August 22, 2013

The 7th Saga, Part 2 - Bargaining

Our heroes battle the bastardly Red Pison as 7th Saga grinds onward. Will I avenge my loss from 1995? We're about to find out.






Melenam Cave is home to the first of the runes in the game.

This one functions as a return/warp spell when used on the overworld. This is -extremely- useful.

From the school of bizarre enemy designs, we have... what the hell is that?

"Bzzzzz" says Lux while vibrating wildly.

This is why I like the radar. I'm dodging through a group of enemies, collecting a sizable group of pursuers.

Look at them go!

The good doctor blows up some boulders that block the way here, and we find...

...the lost city of Melenam. It's an ancient technological marvel, not unlike Zeboim in Xenogears. Or Oerba in FFXIII. Or...

It's a semi-interesting place visually, but unfortunately past that it has a lot of nothing going on. Much like many of the girls at my college. HEY!

A long-since expired robot. It still emits a faint "bzz" while vibrating a tiny bit. I'm wondering what the hell these robots were made for!

Time to head back through the cave. Who the hell is this guy? Get outta my way!

::holds up a cross and backs away::

NO! NOOOOO!

NOOOOOO!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

It's Pison... but now he is RED!

He proceeds to beat the complete crap out of our heroes. Wow. It's 1995 all over again.

Back in town, Esuna rethinks her commitment to the frail Valsu when she meets the studly young Kamil. Ultimately, though...

Olvan: "Have you... been working out?"

Olvan: "You know, like, if you aren't doing anything else. Like, maybe we can hang out. I mean, if you aren't too busy or anything."

I decide to completely re-work my strategy for the game and dump Valsu for Olvan. I hope I made the right decision. Valsu may make you invincible later on, but at this point he wasn't cutting it. Heals aren't going to take down Red Pison, nor is the survivability-void of having the two casters of the game in one party.

Besides that, the comedic possibilities of a lady and a gruff dwarf are endless. Olvan is a tough character who can both take damage and dish it out. This game is about winning battles quickly, not drawn-out, heal-filled wars.

Time to get some levels. I like the way Olvan's hair looks vaguely DBZ-ish when he casts.

He has fire spells, so I can see some of what I'm missing. Good balance for Esuna's ice spells. Plus, he can equip some of the armor and weapons that were previously going to waste.

Only problem is, without Valsu, I don't have any revives. So when Esuna gets taken out, Olvan has to carry her twitching corpse all the way back to the church.

Moments after being revived, Esuna furiously grinds on Lux. "Whirr" he says while shaking uncontrollably.

The robots are called Tetujin, and they're very rare.

I envy them for being vibrating sex robots.

Of course, the greatest sex robot? Still KOS-MOS.

Get outta here, Richie!

After a relatively small amount of exp grinding, Olvan learns Fire 2. Wonder if this is his strongest attack, like Esuna. Since he seems to be very melee-oriented, I'm guessing his physical attacks will outpace his spells eventually.

Esuna also learns Vacuum, an instant-death spell that targets all enemies.

"Suck! Suck! Suck!" say the villains of Spaceballs when informed of this news.

Unfortunately, Vacuum never works, despite costing a massive 30 MP. It isn't instant-death, it's an instant MP waste.

As I continue to train for the Red Pison rematch, here's Fire 2 in action. This game isn't much for large, explosive spell effects.

Petrify is a good spell. It's the equivalent of Stop in an FF game. You can beat up the enemy with impunity until it wears off.

RED PISON REMATCH TIME~!

I return a couple of levels higher than last time, and with a different sidekick character. Now it takes 1.1 hits for him to kill each character instead of 1. Well, 1.5 for Olvan. Do the math... this gives me an entire extra round to go on the offense. The barrage of Ice 2 and Fire 2 somehow does him in before he can finish off our heroes.

Won. Wow, I'm amazed at how little those level-ups helped against his attacks. Seems like this fight is all about how much damage you can output and how fast. Healing isn't very helpful, so either you kill him in a couple rounds or he kills you.

It was epic... and a short battle. He had even less HP than Romus, the first boss. This gives me the impression that perhaps you're meant to use the Whistle, an item from a brief sidequest, to one-shot Romus.

With that, my unavenged loss is finally avenged. Sorta. The boss that ended my trek is beaten. But can I get through the rest of the game?

I wonder if it's possible to revive Leo.

I like this town. Towns that exist on wood planks out in the middle of the water tend to be pretty cool. Duck Village in Suikoden 3 is a great example of this. What do they do if there's a monsoon, though?

Looks like the Water Rune is coming up next. The seven runes are within sight.

The Vegeta of the game has some fightin' words for Esuna.

"...Bitch."

The Water Rune involves only a fetch quest, which is nice. No dungeons or bosses this time.

Restoring water to this town results in our heroes being gifted with the rune. This reminds me of Kakkara in Secret of Mana. You know you've played a lot of games when everything that happens in one reminds you of other games.

That's two down, five to go. This one heals, and is usable in battles. It's only as strong as Heal 1, but since it's infinitely usable and doesn't cost MP, it's pretty great. Softens the blow of losing Valsu, in a way. I'm liking these runes, and looking forward to finding out what the other five will do.

The next part is rough. It's a loooooooong trek to the next town, and along the way you're assaulted by giant stone phalluses.

I barely get to the next town, Patrof, in one piece. And something's up when I get here. Can't our heroes catch a break?

Seems the castle here has been taken over by one of the other heroes. Probably Lejes, that scoundrel. Are we one step closer to finding out who hired M. Pison to run down Esuna?

Pushing a gravestone reveals a secret passage into the castle. Zelda has taught me well.

Inside the castle is... Wilme? He's the monk-like alien. Surprise, surprise. At this point, he asks you to join him. If you refuse, a very difficult battle takes place. So instead... I agree.

With that, the gates to the castle are opened and I can come and go as I please. I hit the inn and get healed up. No need to repeat the dungeon if Wilme defeats me now. Considering how much grief this fight gives to players, this is a good "trick" to keep in mind.

Besides that, now that we've joined Wilme, we have it all. Esuna is getting ready to stab him in the back, but Olvan is enjoying things too much. The fame. The power. The money. Fast cars and faster women. An epic tale of rock n' roll Babylon...a story of the evil men do... as told by the men themselves. Armed with eyeliners, guitars, and hypodermic needles, Olvan and Wilme got everything they ever wanted and then threw it all away.

Esuna is back from the inn, rested and thoroughly pleasured. Let's do this.

TOMORROW... I battle the nefarious Wilme, one-on-one. Who will emerge victorious? And what the hell is Wilme, exactly?






6 comments:

  1. The fight at the end here had me stuck forever as Lejes. I fought the dwarf and had the Kamil as my partner. So damn hard.

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  2. The game seems pretty determined to save you time, which I really like. Giving you the radar and teleport right away, then a heal rune after that..those are great skills! And they help make up for how small your parties are in numbers a lot.
    The color scheme of this game is clearly different from the usual. More blue, I think. And it has tall, thin designs which are unlike the usual super-deformed look. I can see why this has a number of fans.
    Lux is very funny. Tetsujin (spelled Tetujin for this romanization) means "Iron Person."

    One big thing: as a young and innocent boy, the idea of having 7 mercs all vying against each other and sometimes fighting in order to get runes of power scared me a little. It's an adult idea.

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  3. I know I'm a bit late to the party here, and maybe you touch upon it in one of the future posts (which I'll be checking out once I'm done with this comment), but you know the leveling system is broken, right?

    Apparently, when Enix ported this thing stateside, some genius made the mistake of programming the enemies to gain TWO levels for every one you gain. So when you were on level 8, the enemies were on level 16..... that's why all those levels you gained did so little to help beat Red Pison. As a matter of fact, they probably hurt your chances!

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    Replies
    1. Are you sure? I remember reading in Nintendo Power that the enemy apprentices are always two levels ahead of you. So when you're level 8, they're level 10. It only applies to the apprentices, not other bosses... or so I thought. Now you've got me wondering if it's all of them. Regardless, it's +2. Which is still pretty dumb of the designers, and results in some potentially impossible, game-ending fights if you pick the wrong character and have bad luck.

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    2. It's even worse. The elnard stats bonuses that the apprentices get applies to them. Which means at level 20 they have the stats you have at maybe lvl 30-35 ? Basically you had OP stats gain in Elnard but they cut them off for ONLY your protagonist in 7th Saga so no matter what you do your protagonist will always be weaker. Plus the level you gain with your apprentices are bad levels too so if you want to go on a grinding session you are better off grinding THEN going back to recruit the apprentice you dismissed, suddenly he'll have higher level and better stats then if you grinded with him.

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    3. Wow, I wish I'd known all of this before I played the game.

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