Final Fantasy Legend 2 (Game Boy, 1991)

 

SaGa 2 as it is known in Japan is probably my favorite Game Boy RPG overall. This gorgeous box cover is essentially a color reverse of Final Fantasy IV's SNES box. It's simple, effective, and leaps off the shelf. I don't think I ever saw this in stores as a kid, and eventually had to emulate it circa 2000. Mostly during a move where I was staying in a motel for a week and played this alongside finishing Lufia.

I don't know if it's actually the best RPG on the Game Boy or if I've been overrating it all this time, but it's definitely one of the best SaGa games. It takes everything that made the previous game good and improves on it. Let's see if I like it less after playing it again... hopefully it doesn't show its age as much as the first one did. This is a prime candidate for "leaving the memories alone" but here we go, my second playthrough ever.

Solid back cover that sums up what the game is about. Collect Magi, find missing father. I definitely would have bought this as a kid if I ever actually saw it, but it wasn't available anywhere.

Have this on the Switch collection but I'm going emulator to get that clearer B&W image. This is true to how I played it in 2000. I'll likely play Final Fantasy Legend 3 on the Switch collection with the green filters so it's closer to how I played that one, on the actual Game Boy.

This one revolves around collecting Magi, basically crystal shards. There are 77 of 'em and they're scattered around a bunch of different worlds. There is again a central tower that goes between them, but instead of being a central tower that leads to Paradisio, it's more of a giant world tree that just connects everything.

The class selection is the same as the first FFL except that it adds Robot to the mix. This changes things up quite a bit. The three monster classes may as well all be the same class, since monster transforms constantly depending on what you're fighting and their starting forms will be short-lived.

Since the monsters are all in the same general pool, the three starting choices are basically just cosmetic, like the M/F versions of Human and Mutant. I think males might have more strength / HP and females might have more agility / mind, not sure, but again, the differences don't matter much because the stat differences are all going to blend together after an hour or so. For all intents and purposes there are four classes: Human/Mutant/Monster/Robot.

Robot: The new class, so everybody wants to try it when they get to this game (including me). Gains stats from equipping things. Can equip multiples of one thing, so you can stack a strong armor on one or give it four Uzis and so forth and it'll gain stats from all of them. Also, resting at an Inn recharges all of their weapons (so you're basically repairing, rather than having to replace them like other classes). The offset to this is that they have half as many charges of weapons (make sure not to equip the same thing on them multiple times because it'll keep cutting the max charges in half). This "half charges" penalty doesn't really matter when Inn refills completely offset it (outside of a couple of long dungeons late in the game, anyway). While they tend to fall behind substantially on HP if you do a lot of grinding, Robots are OP in the early-game and mid-game, and decent in the late-game.

Human: Now gains stats the same way the Mutant does, through random gains from battles, instead of having to buy stat-ups. Gains fighter-type stats a lot faster than Mutant and caster-type stats a lot slower. Can equip more weapons/armor than Mutant, but also doesn't automatically learn abilities (which can be good or bad). Kind of average over the whole game.

Mutant: Esper in the Japanese version, pretty cool. Automatically learns abilities/spells that refresh at an inn. Probably the most OP in the late-game and the weakest in the early-game. Can be a bit irritating because they frequently learn useless abilities that you're stuck with until they spark new ones. Can spark top-tier passive abilities later on that Humans need to equip rare armors to get, like elemental and status resistances.

Monster: Still super random, can be strong or weak depending on where your evolutions take you. Need to carry around a Meat Chart to actually know whether it's a good idea to consume something. Still not a fan, unfortunately, as much as I'd like to use this character type. In my experience it just never ends up worth it unless you really know what you're doing.

After spending weeks mulling over what party to go with (seriously) I finally settle on two Robots, a Human, and a Mutant.

Monsters probably deserve better, but in my experience they're so all over the place in these games that they aren't worth using unless you follow esoteric methods from a strategy guide in order to max things out. Most of the time the monsters are way lower stats than everyone else, and getting downgraded by accident is common. I think when it comes down to it, anything that doesn't have linear power growth is a bit of a bust.

Since the robots are going to function as tanks, I go with one as the main. "Whirrrr" says Lux while vibrating uncontrollably. It's good to have this guy back after 7th Saga (no relation).

Picking a Robot doesn't change the beginning at all, you still wake up in bed and talk to your parents. What. The hell.

Mom and Dad? It's a robot. A ROBOT!

Don't say it. Don't you fookin' say it!

Oh COME ON! Maybe the Robot is a human with bionic parts? I don't know, it looks like a full-on robot to me. What happens if you pick, say, Slime? Would the game expect us to believe this crazy woman give birth to a Slime?

Anyway, the hero's dad went out for cigarettes and never returned, so he/it sets out on a quest to find said dad and bring him back.

Looks like they wrote the game as if you picked the generic human lead and just didn't change it for any of the other weirdoes you can choose.

Before leaving town, noted squid-man "Mr. S" demands that I hire 3 compatriots, DQ3-style.

After picking out their classes, this is what I've got. Nail (the robot from Paladin's Quest, who helped me slay Zaygos) joins us as the second robot, along with Sailor Scouts Mina and Rei. I might be overdoing it with the robots, we'll see. I can pile a lot of gear onto them, at least.

They're basically Barf, carrying the Princess' luggage.

All of the robot's childhood friends see him off.

"Whirrr" he says while wobbling back and forth.

Nail bids farewell to his old friend, this...uh, wolf-man.

Noted squid-man and cyclopean monstrosity "Mr. S" joins the group, and proceeds to totally dominate all the battles with his OP spells. At least let me try out my party first!

Sabertooth tigers lurk immediately outside of town. What is this, 15000 BC?

Nobody here to eat the meat. I get it anyway after every fight which is a bit annoying. Maybe Mr. S wants to chow down on it, he seems seedy enough.

Also Mr. S almost always goes first and just nukes everything. Look, I like Mr. S and all but I really think they should have given me at least a couple minutes to try out my party before he joined.

After battles, Mutants sometimes gain new abilities. While they get overwritten by newer abilities like FFL1, in this one you have much more control over keeping good abilities. You can move static Mutant abilities around now and new ones will always replace the one in the fourth slot, so you can preserve 3 abilities indefinitely.

After a cave, it's the first boss. I use the term "boss" incredibly loosely here.

Once again, your party gets OP so fast in this game that the first bunch of bosses pose zero threat. This thing gets one-rounded and makes Gen Bu look like Lu Bu.

HP seems to go up frequently after fights for both the Human and Mutant. The robots on the other hand just gain HP from equipment and it stays where it is until I get access to stronger equipment. They'll definitely be a bit of a money sink.

Now supposedly this is the first SaGa game where HP goes up in response to the character taking damage. However I'm not so sure about that. It seems to go up sometimes regardless, but I could be wrong.

Noted squid-man and rubber nipple salesman "Mr. S" now takes off, which is great because it means my characters will now be able to fight some stuff themselves.

In the next town...

...well, that search was quick. 2 minutes after leaving home, here's my freakish cyborg-dad. He is looking for Sarah Connah.

.....nevermind it's just some similar-looking guy. So we're going to have a DQ3 thread here of following this dad guy through the world. Hopefully it doesn't culminate with a hydra fight that stunlocks me to death.

Something I remember liking as a kid: These phonographs in towns function as limited sound tests where you can play various tracks from the game. Yeah, I was easy to excite 25 years ago. We didn't have Youtube back then. Hard to imagine I know.

I try checking pots and barrels. Nope, nothing to find in any of these. We're still in the super-basic era where there's basically no interaction with the environment.

I find that loading a Robot up with the same equipment will still keep boosting their stats, so I stack the cheap Bronze Gauntlets. These give the same defense as several other more-expensive pieces of armor. Just duct tape them onto your robots like humvee armor and you're good to go.

The Temple of Isis is full of statues of Isis, one of the deities of this world. While the first game had a singular God, this one has a pantheon of deities that get involved.

Here's Ki, the closest thing the game has to sex appeal. She's the high priestess of the temple and heals people, while all the talking monsters in the temple talk about how cute she is.

NUDGE NUDGE, LUX?

"Beep. Whirrrrr" says Lux as our heroes find their first Magi crystals... and promptly lose them.

Most of the Magi in here have been stolen (for now) but we have a few left. So what do these do, you ask?

Each character can equip one Magi, and they confer various stats/abilities. The first 3 add to the stats in question for the wearer, while Prism is the one you start with and doesn't seem to do anything. Considering how many Magi there are, they should really let each character equip more than one of 'em at a time. This could be a really cool element of the game if there were more to it. It's like a proto version of the materia system from FFVII.

Note: Apparently, Prism tells you the amount of Magi remaining in your current world.

Ki talks like a Gen Z'er. "I must save this world fr" she says while joining the party.

She couldn't say no to TWO vibrating robots, fr.

Wait what. Dammit, Ashura's back. Unsure if it's supposed to be the same Ashura, considering none of these SaGa games seem to be connected to each other in any way world-wise. Looks like the next destination is one of Ashura's bases.

The overworld has the same maze-like design in some places as FFL1, and it's still a bit unnecessary. In any case, Ashura's Base here contains a good early game grind spot:

This stationary zombie triggers a battle, but doesn't disappear. So you can stand here and spam the A button and power up your group (at least, the ones that gain stats) to a higher level. If you really want to. This game is super easy for a while either way.

Ki doesn't just killsteal everything like noted squid-man and dead shark enthusiast "Mr. S", but she's very useful as a sage.

SMG is a particularly OP weapon to get at this point, giving large stat increases to Robots as well as a lot of attack power. Put a couple of these on each Robot and they'll keep being OP well into the game.

Warning is a good example of a passive "keeper" ability, preventing random enemies from getting surprise attacks. One character keeping this in their non-delete ability slots is a must and single-handedly makes the game a lot easier.

After going through Ashura's Base, here's the next boss! Will this one put up a fi-

-no, as I one-shot it. This thing makes The Whelk look like Isshin the Sword Saint.

This shuts down the leveling spot with the zombie, so using that as much as "needed" before this is a good idea. Your leveling doesn't scale off the enemies, so you can reach high power levels by fighting weak enemies the same as stronger ones. Later SaGa games would refine this, but not yet.

At this point Ki takes off, because she can't leave her world. She's like one of those anti-theft shopping carts.

No! KI! NOOOO!

That's it for World 1, and reaching the next world requires moving around on these glass platforms out in space. It's a little bit like the tower in the previous game.

This place is intriguing and I remember wanting to know more about it as a kid.

Momentum comes to a halt as I hit the next Magi threshold. This means detouring into the next world. Hopefully it doesn't let me proceed until I get all the magi in any given world, don't want any missable stuff I have to go back and figure out later.

World 2 seems to be the cloud world. With... cacti?

More bizarre groups of enemies here. What caused these three to become allies in their struggle to fight the power? Why do they all look so confused?

OP levels are reaching ridiculous proportions fast, as Rei's HP keeps skyrocketing. Mutant stat growth seems to be MUCH slower, and I'm now questioning if it's Humans that are the win button in this one.

Concerned about the robots being outpaced, given that they're limited by which world you're currently in / how much equipment you can afford, and the way things are going, they're just going to lag behind. The more I work on leveling the Mutant up, the more powerful the Human gets, while the Robots are stuck.

That's it for today. Next stop: Desert World. It's the paradise for scamps!

7/77 Magi. One-eleventh of the way there, but I suspect this game won't take that long. It'll be interesting to see how this party develops and if I like the game as much as I did 25 years ago.

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