Romancing SaGa 2, Part 5 - Dantarg and the Maze of Memory

 

Today on RS2! The third of the Seven Heroes, the fearsome Dantarg. Also the sprawling new side-dungeon added specifically for this remake.

Well, THAT happened.

This is like the most important thing in this entire game. Talk to this one guy and it unlocks the Maze of Memory on the overworld.

This is the only dungeon in the game where you don't raise the battle counter (level enemies up) and thus can grind away without worry. Absolutely crucial for powering up, and offsets the enemies outgrowing your party mid-game.

Fun Fact: The Maze of Memory is the only area in this port that wasn't in the original Super Famicom game. It's a good addition. Presumably they added it because mid-game grinding was an issue originally.

This place is split into four sections, each one behind a different orb. The most lucrative seems to be the blue orb dungeon:

This place is water-themed, basically ten or so floors that all kinda look the same, and chock-full of enemies. Also a few good items to get. Best of all, the items respawn if you leave the dungeon. It makes a lot of sense to run this dungeon a bunch of times, as boring as it gets after a bit.

Because of that damn 10k limit, you can only buy one of these...right now, anyway.

Potency Ring: Increases EXP gained from battles (meaning you get HP/MP/SP level ups faster). Can be stacked up to 5x, which I think doubles EXP (at the cost of losing an accessory slot on everyone).

Bejeweled Ring: Increases the odds of item drops from fights. Seems to make a substantial difference. Can be stacked up to 5x if you put one on every character. On rare occasions REALLY good equipment drops from enemies, so this might be a hot ticket item.

Lower the price: Don't do this. Messes up something later in the dungeon.

The cool thing is that when you come back through, the price is permanently lowered to 5k after this first run. So you can buy two rings each time through.

Defeat this boss late in the dungeon, and you get...

::drumroll::

This ore that can be used to make a super-powerful sword or armor. There's only one of these in the game and it's SO GOOD. If you want an ultra-OP party, get to this point, get the sword, then NG+ and do it again. Takes like 3 hours each time unless there's a quicker route I don't know about. I mean that'd be kind of silly but eventually you'd have five characters with this god-tier sword. As for the armor, apparently it isn't nearly as good.

Speaking of armor, some really good stuff can be found in chests late in this dungeon. These things pretty much double defense over storebought armor. Rarely you can also get Heavy Suits, which triple storebought armor.

I head out and bring the ore to the R&D division at Avalon. Unlike other researched/forged weapons, this is instant rather than taking a while.

This thing is SO GOOD, and wipes out anything else up to this point. Most weapons are around 20 ATK, the axe from the giant is around 50 and misses all the time, and the Seven Sword is 63 with great accuracy. This is a game-changing weapon right here, especially when combined with strong techs.

Time for a rematch. A little more HP, but mostly a lot more defense, and the Sevens Sword to rock his face.

Got a win, and best of all, it was with everyone still standing (so stat-ups for everybody).

That's 3 down, 4 to go. This game is really flying along.

Time jumps are exciting because your characters get a stat bump across the board, plus any new techs you learned in the previous generation are stored permanently in the skill-bank for other characters to access. In the previous gen, one character managed to get Mirage Slash which is a huge attack on all enemies, so now I can add that to every fighter I recruit. Makes the party completely OP for now.

Generation 5 begins with LIGHT THE FUSE

I end up going with Capricorn, the latest Court Mage, yet again. Sorta building around the Emperor being a caster with four melee fighters around him.

Know what this game needs? Some Roman-style Emperor Intrigue. I want to see the new Emperor assassinating the old Emperor after being adopted by them. Did Gerard get strangled in a bathtub by his wrestling coach Narcissus? Give us some drama.

Always recruit the tank from the bar. Always. Here's THE MAN BEAST! RHINO!

At this point you have to take a university quiz to get the building finalized. I was pretty sure there were two females in the Seven Heroes lineup during the intro sequence...but it turns out one of them is Wagnas, the extremely feminine leader of the group.

Not actually sure which one Wagnas is yet, presumably the one in the middle?

Why is this old guy in the class?

...it's an old guy in a Japanese game, he's here to scope chix. Well joke's on him because the classroom is a sausage-fest.

Back to the Maze of Memory. Next up is the Red section, which is basically this drawn-out, boring, bland prison.

The big "loot" of this dungeon is the Ninja class, which you can recruit one of every generation after unlocking them here. This involves chasing said ninja through the dungeon and having them play tricks on you, Yuffie-style.

Finally after saving the ninja from prison, she joins you. This is a great class and well worth a spot in the lineup. Now ninjas start showing up in Avalon.

At the end of these labyrinth dungeons is a dragon to fight. They're way out of my league. I don't think I even tried the Blue Dragon.

They also say super cryptic weird things that, as far as I can tell, mean nothing. Unless the idea here is that the Emperor has the souls of all his predecessors inside of him.

I try the Red Dragon. This thing is so strong, it could wipe the floor with Dantarg. I think we lasted two turns. I'll come back and take out these dragons during like, the endgame because this is clearly not happening.

Here's the ninja. I lost a party member in the maze, so I recruit her. She's pretty rad, easily hangs with the other fighter type classes.

NUMBA 3. This one is a step up from the other two. It's...

Basically a jungle. Very convoluted-looking and easy to get lost in, brimming with more loot.

The gimmick for this dungeon is that goblin squads keep attacking you, and you learn their formation by getting through the whole dungeon.

Not sure how good this formation is, but it seems to offer more offense than Imperial Cross. Also gives you two tanks instead of one.

And according to this guy, it also boosts speed. I'll stick with this for now.

And finally, the purple labyrinth. It's kind of cool that these didn't follow the four elements like I expected after the first was water. You could argue that the green labyrinth is earth-themed, but red and black don't seem to really have a theme.

This is the toughest one, with the toughest enemies and the most-crowded rooms.

If there is a slight theme, it's that it's kind of undead.

Boss fight! What the hell is with some of these boss names?

Defeat it and it turns into Seimei, this caster. Now you can recruit him. Which is cool because...

...he comes equipped with Dark magic, which is I think the first time I've even seen Dark magic. It isn't taught at the magic research facility.

So that's all four Maze of Memories labyrinths. For anyone keeping score:

Blue - Good armor, Potency/Bejeweled rings, 1x Sevens Sword

Red - Ninja class permanently recruitable

Green - Goblin Formation permanently usable

Purple - Dark Mage class permanently recruitable

If any of them are skippable it's probably Green, but really, they're all good.

The quality of weapon upgrades is starting to really spike now too, as long as I keep these guys doing research.

Four heroes and about 40% of the game left. Very enjoyable game.