Romancing SaGa 2, Finale - Live on in Song

 

This is it, the final episode of this very strange, but very good game. Unfortunately, the final boss is horrible.

Our heroes head over the snowdrifts to the final dungeon, gonna get this over with.

THIS IS IT.

The final dungeon is 50% blizzard wasteland....

...50% weird blood-filled? caverns.

This has a little bit of a "Final Fantasy last dungeon" vibe.

At the end is the 7th Hero, whoever is left. In my case it's Wagnas, who according to the game is male despite having breasts and long flowing hair. Maybe those are really large pecs?

Wagnas' big attack is a massive fire AOE that does like 1000 damage to everyone, which is not survivable. The good news is that using the Self-Immolation spell on everyone will block it for the entire fight. Problem is, you can't bring that spell if you bring water magic. Either way, this fight is doable.

That's just part one of the final battle, now we've gotta contend with the Seven Heroes combined.

The game inexplicably doesn't let you walk back off the bridge at this point, so I can't go rest and restock. I assume the game lets you save here, so in theory if a player with one save file saves their game after they defeat Wagnas, they're stuck. Hard-locked.

What were they thinking? Just let people backtrack! This also means you have to re-fight Wagnas every time you lose to the final boss, which is just annoying.

Why even bother asking, since the player can't leave either way? If anything this would make people think that they CAN leave and probably increase the odds that they say no and do a save.

The final boss is an amalgamation of all Seven Heroes.

At the beginning it's just Rocbouquet, then after a little damage it adds another. They're all part of the same single target boss. Each of the added Heroes can attack on any given round, which means, yes, up to 7 attacks once it reaches max power. Altogether this thing has 100k HP and it reaches max power after about 40k damage. So for the last 60k prepare to be mauled.

It has the powers of all of the heroes, and Rocbouquet's Temptation attack is the big glaring problem. Male characters are essentially rendered useless in this battle due to their vulnerability to her charm AOE. Which is why you want to spark resistance to it on the fight with her earlier, which didn't happen for me due to not knowing.

Our heroes put up a valiant fight, but it's to no avail. Took off maybe 30% of the boss' health overall, after all that preparation. Didn't even get it to its max strength much less hang in there once it did.

NOW WHAT?

Why, tons of grinding! That's right, it's MAN VS MANSHARK as our heroes power up!

The best grind spot I've found is by Bihara Town here. You have an inn right there, and just to the north is...

...Lake Wyringa, where you'll get attacked by like 5-6 enemy groups in a row very quickly by just going in and standing still. Since enemies scale, these are all endgame fights at this point.

Mostly these guys. Tons of exp pours in, especially with Potency Rings equipped.

Side Note: I wish Square would revive Einhander and make the obvious sequel Zweihander.

I drop one of my five melee fighters and recruit a caster to balance things out a bit. The idea here is to train up Water Magic with her to unlock the ultimate Water spell for everyone, in case I need it. Turns out it's a gimp-tastic win button, and after that drubbing I took...

Hella EXP with 5x Potency Rings. This is also mindless grinding, can be done easily while watching a couple of movies. That's right, I said a couple.

Eventually I unlock the ultimate Water spell: Hasten Time. This basically causes an enemy (even some bosses) to miss a turn, and I think it also speeds up your party on the following turn (making it very easy to chain it). How this completely-overpowered spell made it into the game is beyond me. The one thing slightly balancing it out is that it costs 36 MP, which means meleers can only cast it 2 or so times and dedicated casters can only cast it 5 or so times. Once it's unlocked, I can equip it on everyone.

There are no mid-battle MP restoration items in this game, so go in with full MP and make it count.

Red Dragon rematch! Now with more HP and a lot of Hasten Time.

I unleash the spell and it completely decimates the boss...for a few rounds.

I barely finished the fight with the Emperor, even with the ability to stop time. Looks like I really will need to put Hasten Time on everyone. Well, it was good to finally take this guy down, but what a gimp-fest this game has become in the final hour. Have to use an OP spell to lock down bosses and survive their onslaughts, even with my stats nearly maxed.

For winning, you get...what is this?

It does literally nothing, so it's just a token of your achievement. I expected to get some kind of great weapon/armor for that, after all the fuss.

After that, I beat a couple more dragons. None of these things had any equipment rewards and the whole thing felt thoroughly pointless.

Back to the final boss:

HASTEN TIME SPAM! AW YEAH!

I also replaced everyone with female characters so Temptation doesn't ruin the fight. Too bad I can't go back and choose a female Emperor. I did find a charm resistance ring in the inventory (Somon Ring) and put it on the Emperor, though. So I'm set.

Believe it or not, with these mid-tier attack techs...

...the fight is STILL hard.

Not for lack of trying, I spent actual hours trying to spark better attacks while grinding. I mostly just sparked defensives (like here) which seem much easier to spark.

Side-note: Wagnas is a way harder fight now since I had to trade Self-Immolation for Hasten Time (opposing elements). Nothing I can't handle though, with higher HP/stats than before.

Here's the final form of the boss...now, he has up to seven turns per round. It's brutal. And this is for the last 60% of the fight.

I fight gimpery with gimpery. Cheese with cheese. Many Hasten Times later...

...I eke out a win. I'm just glad the game's done.

I get a good recap of the major events of the game and when they happened / who I was playing as at the time.

The Emperor is forgotten and lives out the rest of his days drinking at a bar. So who's in charge now?

...

...

That's it for this one. Interesting game. Not sure where I'd rank it in the overall SaGa series because it's different.

Michael Cole: "So what's next?"

Tyson: "Woe-manthing ThaGa THREE Bay-Beee!"

Well, I already did that one...but I'd like to do more with SaGa. Very curious about RS1, and I've been looking forward to a FFL2 replay for ages.

As for this one, good game and it's a bit crazy that Romancing SaGa 2 is the face of the SaGa series in 2024.

Right about now I'm inclined to say that this (specifically the SNES/PS4 remaster) is my favorite SaGa game, but it's hard to say for sure. Final Fantasy Legend 2 and SaGa Frontier are both really good. This one is better than either of those in a lot of ways, but it also has some tedium lategame with the redundant having to move skills onto new parties every couple hours (and usually ending up just remaking your previous group). It also doesn't have the level of choice that those other two have. So it's hard to say. The overall quality level / choice in RS3 is also better than this, but I didn't find it as interesting or compelling.

Where I'm at now:

Final Fantasy Legend

Final Fantasy Legend 2

Final Fantasy Legend 3

Romancing SaGa

Romancing SaGa 2

Romancing SaGa 3

SaGa Frontier

Once I've played all the (classic) SaGa games I'll really think about it and rank them. Not too interested in anything the series brought after 2000 (or even SaGa Frontier 2, unless it gets that rumored remaster any time soon).