Romancing SaGa 2, Part 2 - Liberation of Avalon

 Our heroes return to Avalon to find the place sacked by monsters, who have defeated Victor. Towns look REALLY nice in this HD port, I gotta say.

Specifically, Victor was defeated by their boss, one of the Seven Heroes...

::checks notes:: ...Kzinssie. The guy we've been hearing about. He's set up shop in the neighboring town of Somon and is using it as a staging ground to take over Avalon.

After Gerard picks himself up, it's time to take the fight to... that Kzin guy.

Here's an example of the game's heaving chests.

After fighting through Somon, we have the first real boss fight...but still, it isn't really much of a boss fight.

After taking off about a quarter of his HP, Kzin uses some sort of soul-steal attack on Emperor Leon, instantly killing him. Our heroes retreat, with his body in tow. Damn, I haven't seen a humiliation like this since the Colonial Marines arrived on LV-426.

With that, Leon dies and tasks Gerard with being the new Emperor. Welp, we're all screwed. Gerard can barely cast a Light Ball spell, much less lead an empire!

This is such a curveball after playing the other (later) SaGa games. Not only do you not get to choose one of seven characters, the seven "heroes" are all fiends.

Gerard gets the Quickening of Leon since no one is around. Seriously, all of Leon's powers just transfer over, and Gerard goes from pitifully weak to suddenly your best character. This power transfer continues throughout the game: Every time an Emperor goes kaput, the next Emperor inherits their skill levels and abilities.

Avalon has suffered crushing losses in this attack by Kz...Kzin....that guy. And worse still, the people don't have much faith in Gerard to lead:

This NAYSAYER questions the Emperor! Well, at least they still have free speech, so he doesn't go to jail under hate speech laws or whatever.

Gerard will have to prove him wrong the old-fashioned way, by doing a good job.

Next part has your party clearing Avalon of enemy monsters. Gerard is now a killing machine, thanks to...

...the now-strengthened Light Ball, as his light magic levels continue to rocket up. Whenever possible, I'm gonna put Light Ball on a whole team of casters and annihilate everything (once the Light element levels up enough on everyone). Unfortunately, not a lot of spell customization can be done yet. We're still basically on chapter 1, even though we're on the 2nd Emperor.

What follows is another cave which is apparently the source of the attacking goblin hordes. There are SO MANY battles in here. You can see enemies on the map as opposed to getting into random battles. However, when enemies swarm like THIS, you might as well just have random battles. That's one thing I don't like so far, the maps are blanketed with enemies.

Here's the big boss of the goblins. It's a "boss", AOEs deal with it, moving on.

After that it's back to Somon for a rematch with K-Dog, and the enemies are getting a little tougher. Also...they're starting to use Sleep.

Sleep is THE MOST ANNOYING STATUS IN THE GAME. Enemies love to AOE it, starting at this early point. Damage will break it, but usually it takes a while for the enemies to wake everyone up this way. I'm hoping to spark some sleep-dodging abilities if possible. It isn't uncommon to have 3-4 characters asleep for multiple turns while one character gets wailed on.

"ANOTHA ONE" says K-Dog as we arrive. If he thinks this Emperor will keel over like the last, he's mistaken. One of the abilities Leon passed on was a resistance to the insta-kill attack, which he developed after being hit with it.

Thanks to that resistance, the hero can't be insta-killed and the fight continues. This is the first real, true, big boss fight of the game, as well it should be given that it's one of the Seven Heroes.

Once that guy is defeated, Gerard has avenged his family. This fight can take some grinding (need to at least spark a few decent attacks). Some of the bosses, especially later in the game, are notoriously rough.

With Kzin....Knesset....Kzinzky...out of the way, everyone in Avalon is magically getting along again. Beloved Children's Bear Gerard is thrilled at this news!

"I don't just resolve the internal conflicts, I complete 'em!"

Sadly, Gerard has probably also completed his career.

Now that chapter 1 is over, I can finally do some customization. Sitting on the throne triggers various building opportunities (provided you've advanced enough in the story). First and foremost, building a magic research facility. This lets you swap out magic spells and learn new ones, making it invaluable for a caster team (which is now actually viable). This is like, completely crucial, and probably should have been available from the start.

Oh yeah, hope you have 1,000,000 crowns at this point. Getting all the chests leading up to this (especially the ones in Somon) leaves you with 670k. The rest has to come from grinding fights. Or you can buy weapons/armor from the shops (which won't charge their Emperor) and sell them back. Yeah, that somehow works.

And really, you want 1,300,000 crowns so that you can also build the Orchard, which increases profit from battles by like 30%. Don't want to grind too much though, and being thorough with chests for the next couple areas is probably enough to get both these things built.

The innkeeper is ashamed that The Emperor is going to see the squalid conditions of... ::looks around:: ...this immaculate inn?

The only really crucial item to buy from the Avalon shops is the Great Shield, which offers a big defense boost when characters successfully block attacks. I put one of these on all five characters. The Greatsword is also pretty solid for melee characters.

Next up, our heroes have to liberate another land from monsters. I won't just liberate the land, I'll complete it!

The adventure begins for real here, which means it's time to get lost a lot. Good game here, very deep and encouraging of micromanaging. One of those RPGs where the hours disappear. So far, so good.