Thursday, February 13, 2014

Romancing SaGa III #9 - Vanguard

 Harid: "Do as I say, harem girl!"

Some enemies run in and die. The Vanguard rape demons won't have such an easy time with our heroes.

These things look... water-elemental. The Abyss Gate must be near.

The townspeople decide that the only way to stave off the Abyss Gate demons is to... make the town move. Yes, the town is mobile.

The captain sends me on a wild goose chase to find the entrance to the control room of the town. I looked around for a few minutes, got stumped, and talked to the captain again... and then Harid notices that there's a door under the captain's feet, and the captain is all "oh! ha ha ha!"

F this game for wasting my time like that

Shut the hell up!

The control room is below sea level, and it's quite pretty to look at.

Remember the Dolphin Statue that I found? It's needed to get this control room working. Sweet, I already have it.

Unfortunately, since I got it early, the game can't send me on the quest to get it now... a quest that results in a really important character joining, which results in a huge late-game quest opening up where I take on the ruler of the evil church that people kept mentioning for the whole first part of the game. Remember that storyline? Yeah, no conclusion to it for me.

Nothing like being screwed out of a huge part of the storyline because I picked up a statue a little early. I am not fond of this game right now...

Here's the important character in question. I try to recruit him, but no go. He looks like Edge from FFIV.

The other thing needed to get the town moving? Mages. The town of Moses has a ton of them, but they're at war with each other, divided by fire and water elements. So I have to help one side or the other win, then bring the winners to Vanguard to make the place hop.

Harid storms into the water mage base and KICKS ASS FOR THE LORD!

There's the water mage leader, Undine. She thinks Harid's skills in bed are wonderful, and asks us to side with her to destroy Volcano (the fire mage leader).

Our hero storms into the fire mage base and KICKS ASS FOR THE LORD!

Volcano, the fire mage leader, also thinks Harid's skills in bed are wonderful, and asks him to join the fire mages.

I side with Volcano...just like I sided with Undine. Yep, playing both sides is the most beneficial path.

...it's the only way to get these two to move from this dungeon entrance. Wait, why are they co-existing here when they're at war in the rest of the town?

Oh, whatever. This game stopped being logical a long time ago.

Yet another cave dungeon follows...

At the end is a boss fight with Death Master. It's an easy fight, and nets you the Devil King Shield. Damn good shield, nullifies a lot of elements.

Upon leaving the well, it seems Volcano and Undine both know that Harid deceived them.

Harid has succeeded in ending this war... because both sides are now teaming up to kick HIS ass for the lord.

This is sorta like the Ifrit/Shiva battle in FFVI. Volcano attacks with fire, obviously...

...while Undine, in addition to being pretty sexy, attacks with water. Not a difficult battle, definitely on the "regular boss" tier.

Both sides surrender, and I keep the shield. Most importantly, now the water mages are going to make Vanguard fly.

Unexpectedly, Undine can be recruited now. Nice. I'll definitely make room for her, because she has rockin' legs and a 50's hairdo.

She's quite powerful and a master of water spells, but this means someone else has to get the boot.

Harid and his harem check into the inn, where they initiate Undine with a night of passion... while Snowman looks on creepily, unable to participate.

Ellen gets the boot. She and Snowman have both been on thin ice (heh) for a while, but Snowman is too charming to get rid of just yet. Even though Undine is basically a more powerful Snowman in a lot of ways.

Ellen runs away crying as a drunken Harid curses her family and tells her to go to the toilet. The hell is his problem?

At this point I got totally stuck and had to resort to scouring the internets for a solution. You're supposed to use the Dolphin Statue to get Vanguard moving. I figured since I had it, things would go smoothly. No, of course not. Nothing worked in the control room. So I tried equipping the statue. Still nothing. Finally, I found out from the internets that you have to place the statue in the north part of the room, despite it being nowhere near the controls, then go to the controls. Well, that's vague.

And we're off. This game has officially become a bit of a pain. Luckily, it's almost over.

It's a shame, because this plays very well. It could have been another 1995-era RPG classic. However, the vagueness of the open world and the lack of a solid story take a LOT away from it. You spend more time wandering lost than actually accomplishing anything. Open world or not, there are a zillion limitations in place. It isn't like, say, Fallout 3 where wandering lost almost inevitably leads you into some new dungeon to explore or story-based quest to start.

Nope, in this game, I continuously run into stupid little roadblocks that I have to figure out in order to make anything happen.

Vanguard breaks off of the mainland and sets sail while super-heroic music plays.

There it goes. Great, I guess. This would probably be a moment of triumph if the game had made me care more.


3 comments:

  1. "You should go to toilet before sleeping!" <-Words to live by! Judging from Snowman's expression, he should be the one saying this, though.
    "and then Harid notices that there's a door under the captain's feet" <-this is how these things work in real life, too. But if you look closely the floor -is- darker there.
    " F this game for wasting my time like that" <-Bro, it was the 90s; there was more time to waste.
    "Wait, why are they co-existing here when they're at war in the rest of the town?" <-it's the one thing they can agree on.
    I love that translation of "S..shit" though, and the underwater room was lovely. Sorry you missed the church quest though. Your frustration is indeed evident. Sounds like there was a lot of trouble with event triggers being too finicky in this game, and if Square wants to rerelease it they should patch the programming first.

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  2. S..shit

    From what I've seen, if I play this game I'll probably try to follow a guide just to make it a little more linear.

    Atlus just announced the first Shin Megami Tensei for SNES for iOS over here. First official translation ever. I wonder if Square will ever follow suit.

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  3. Too bad the church quest was one if not the best quest of the game, the maximum chase was cool.

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