Monday, January 20, 2014

Romancing SaGa III #5 - Dissolved Girl

 
Behold... the impossibly hot female version of Ezio. And God Willing, just as horny.

She has nothing to do with this game. I just want to note that I would play the living hell out of an AC game with a protagonist who looks like this.


At this point, I have to make room for Muse to join... so I kick out Thomas. He may be a Gentleman, but Candy refuses to leave. And my other four characters are invaluable. So Thomas, YOU'RE...FIRED!

"Who made you candy king" mumbles Thomas as he makes it rain on the town out of spite.

A Bleach-type scene ensues as Sharl gets knocked out of his own body and crosses over into the Dream World. This could be like Final Fantasy Legend 2 (also of the SaGa lineage) where you have to shrink down and battle tiny monsters in the recesses of Isis' squishy vagina, except it involves the paranormal.

Too bad, because I'm guessing Muse's vagina is a magical wonderland with a fresh spring scent.

Inside the dream world, we find ourselves in a Hot Nunnery. It's crawling with hot nuns, in a dream sequence straight out of Californication.

...except they're all grotesque monsters! Well, that's a disappointment.

::the first few seconds of "Hypnotize" by Notorious BIG are heard::

This is the best mid-game place to build up. Considering I completely missed the best early-game buildup area (I'll talk about that later), I grind quite a bit in this place.

Here's an awesome relic that gives you a 100% (or so) boost to a character's magic defense when equipped. Unfortunately it poofs when you leave the dream world, unless you do a trick. ...I know the trick.

There's the beautiful Muse. For a Super NES sprite, she's gorgeous. Time for us to pull a Cyan Garamonde and help her defeat her demons. Yet another FFVI similarity in a game full of them.

She joins the party at this point and I get her equipped. Excellent. She'll be a mainstay for the whole game just on cuteness alone.

She's adorable.

"GO GET LAID, NERD" yells someone in the back.

Here's the trick for retaining the awesome relic from this area. Usually when a character loses all of their LP (typically they lose 1 of their 10 LP every time their HP hits 0, but you can get them all back from an inn) they're gone, kaput, dead. Sharl, however, comes back good as new after the dream regardless, because plot. Muse doesn't; if she dies in here the dream world crashes and the sidequest ends. However, you can put the dream-only items on Sharl, then get him killed in battles until he's dead and gone. Yet, after the dream, Sharl is outside, intact, and rejoins you... with the same equipment. Since he was gone from the party when the dream ended, all of the items on him missed the programming flag that strips them from your inventory.

Muse encounters her father. He's all "STAY WITH ME"

...then turns into a monster. She's got some father issues, that much is clear.

He has a devastating FFVI style air-slash (is that blood?) that tears our heroes up. This is the most difficult boss yet.

Got obliterated on that go. And this is after quite a bit of grinding in here...

Not giving up yet, though. Did a significant amount of further grinding until I could really damage him.

MUSE~!

This time he never gets his super murder attack off, and dissolves back into Muse's dad before keeling over.

Our heroes warp back into their normal bodies, and Sharl is revived. Because plot.

Muse joins, permanently. As long as I don't let her die off, that is.

I change the formation up to make Harid stronger. Desert Lance emphasizes the leader, putting them front and center with a significant attack increase. He's got a pretty good team backing him up; Nora and Muse are two of the best characters, while Ellen and Sharl are quite decent. Since I can't boot Candy (the hell, game?), I put her in the inactive sixth-man spot where she won't get in my way.

They should have listened to Al Gore! THEY DOOMED US ALL!

Harid doesn't like the Church of Maximus very much.

I give Zweig Tournament another try and lose again. Mermaids that attack with... lightning? That makes little sense from an elemental standpoint.

...The top half of that mermaid looks like she's enjoying herself.

The part I can't win... is when the dragons start showing up. These are lesser dragons, too. The game has some exponentially stronger Elder Dragons as it goes on. I'll get back to this.

Right outside the town, I get run over by a PSYCHO CAR FROM HELL. Here's another quest I can't even do yet. The car's creator builds us Car From Hell 2 to ride in while we battle the first.

With this new psycho car, our heroes try to stop the rogue prototype. Of course, this fight is unwinnable at my current strength level. Still, it's a pretty unique fight, attacking from one car to another while we speed down a road.

That's a shame, because the Party of Harid was the party of fiscal responsibility, clean air, and mandatory morning-sex.

Next up, I hit the town of Yamas, which is under the control of a seedy corporation. No doubt the leader is a rotund Japanese businessman in a dark, smoky room.

Some goons are extorting money from the elderly until a superhero leaps down from the ceiling and takes them out. What the hell is this?

The sketchy corporation has been making a killing off of this place.

Mainly by selling drugs, among other things. Remember kids, drugs are the path to financial security.

And here's the superhero, Robin, again.

Yeah! You tell those Halli-bastards! Suck it, Dick Cheney!

The townspeople rally around the superhero, since everyone wants the ungodly corporation out.

Damn them all to hell! Leave Lime alone! ...who's Lime?

Our heroes oddly stand by and do nothing while the thugs beat Lime up... until Robin appears! He seems to have put on some weight. Not sure what's going on.

The bad guys capture him, and hold him trial in a kangaroo court. NO! NOT THIS WAY!

But wait! Who goes there?

Another Robin? It's the one from before!

"God Damnit!" say the villains as Robin 2 cheers.

Alright, so there are two Robins fighting crime here. Now everything is explained. Crazy way to debut two new characters.

Harid decides to even things up, since the superheroes are still outnumbered.

Several battles ensue, which the team wins easily. About time I won something!

The corporation is humbled, and vacates the town. But there's no sign of either Robin. They only join the party if it has room. Mine doesn't, so they just poof into the night. This game REALLY needed some kind of Suikoden-esque bar to store characters. As it is, you can get rid of people (aside from the useless Candy), but you usually can't get them back. If there were a bar, I could have dropped two characters there and had room for the Robins, or otherwise saved them for later so this sidequest wouldn't have been completely pointless. Point is, it could have been done better. This game has like 20 characters, but the party size is 5 (and one reserve). It isn't like I can get all of the characters without gimping myself by walking around with a non-full party all of the time, and that's a little bit ridiculous.

At this point, I bumbled around. I bumbled around a lot. I couldn't find the town of Lance, and I may or may not have shelved the game for about two and a half years. I don't tap out easily, but this is the kind of thing that'll make me do it. It's funny, because Lance is the first place Harid says he should go after the intro. Not just that, but everyone tells you to go to Lance... without telling you where the hell it is. Since the game has a bizarre map system, you can't just traverse land to find new places. There's usually only one way to get to any given new area. In this case... I couldn't find it. A place you're supposed to go to after the character intro, not even an hour into the game... I didn't find until the ninth hour.

But I found it. Most of the early game quests are tied to Lance. they're the ones that supply you with money and lots of it. Since I never did any of them, I never saw more than 1000 G up to now. Was barely able to pay boat expenses to travel around, and wasted some money on that before I discovered you can use the world map to warp to places you've been to already.

Point is, I had a rough go of things. An instruction booklet would have been super-helpful for this game. If I restarted the game, knowing what I do now, it'd be smooth sailing, but I'm not going to do that.

One of the first towns I did have access to was Zweig. The only way to reach Lance, all along, was to hop on a canoe from Zweig to Justerm, the snowy town, then from Justerm go outside and west a little through a snowfield. Lance was just a couple degrees of separation from where I started, but there were so many paths to take that I took the other fifteen first. Well, now I don't have to tap out.

More Romancing Saga III Posts


And now... BONUS POST-CREDITS SCENE!

More screenshots from the debaucherous den of evil that is Suikoden IV!

 Launch the ass!

This guy is a real...jerk.

 That's right, lady. Give it up.


6 comments:

  1. So here's where the giant break is. I agree with everything you say here. Excellent protip on getting great items out of the dream sequence, btw.
    Hail Robin!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love when you can get around the game mechanics like that. Kinda worried about you grinding Candy in the happy dream world though.

    ReplyDelete
  3. i've been playing this game for a few days now, and really enjoying it, but that robin thing frustrates me. i circled back to that town so many times wondering what that side quest was about and why i didn't get to recruit robin! ...i did find lance pretty easily and figure out the map thing, though.

    i don't know why, but i didn't even get a shot at recruiting nora - she just ran off during the argument with her brother and i never saw her again.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There are a lot of things about this game that frustrate me. It gives you almost no clue of where to go or what to do, and things just seem to happen randomly all the time. I missed a lot of characters, as a result.

      Delete
    2. you were fortunate to have missed the elderly pirate who opens up the church mission. for one thing, he has the lowest life point count of the entire game at 4!!! secondly, he refuses to leave my party even after helping me find the dolphin. there are just way too many character that refuse to leave your party with little or no explanation why; in many cases. they're not even required to trigger the events or dungeons they're connected to. every time i go in the treasure cave, the scenario with the old pirate activates and--AGARHARHFJFHFGJFGGFJ!!!!

      despite the lack of explanation for character recruitment, and the lack of explanation for how the battle system works (you're never even given an in-game explanation about anything as far as battle goes), i'm actually really enjoying the exploration and open-ended approach. i have legit ocd, so i usually end up talking to every single character in every single town in rpgs before i leave, and that's probably what kept me from being stuck so far. harid is my main, and i've kept ellen so far, because...the lack of character interaction has given me the freedom to write my own scenarios and there's definitely a strong bond of companionship and a burgeoning romance going on between those two at this point..in my imagination as i'm playing through the game, at least!

      the graphics and battle system are quite good, and i'm enjoying having to investigate areas to find out what to do, as well as being able to tackle a group of events at my own pace. so there's still more to love than there is to hate for me. the graphics reminded me of a chrono trigger-ized version of ffvi so much that i really think square enix should've done a re-release of the game in this style, maybe even with a similar battle system. the 'choose your own adventure' style is an acquired taste for sure, but i think pretty much everyone can appreciate the high quality sprite animations and fast-paced, dense battle mechanics. regardless, your blog's really entertaining, and i'm excited to see how the game turned out for you.

      Delete
    3. I also had Harid and Ellen in a burgeoning romance! ...sort of. In my mind, they were just banging because Ellen wanted to rebel against her father by letting a black man have his way with her. For his part, Harid had no respect for Ellen and thought she was a racist, and his anger towards her made him want to bang ever more ferociously.

      Hell Yeah. I put the "romance" in Romancing Saga III with ferocious interracial banging.

      Delete