tell me the downsides of this game

[Raiden - In Flames 🎵]

i wanna know what i'm getting myself into before buying it.
i'm not a total stranger to the saga series but idk man.
is it forgiving, can you permanently lose characters etc?

[BoxingBud]

A lot of cogs work behind the scenes in this game and any manner of casual approach can end up softlocking if the player didn't manage their time and battles well. I felt it only deminished a players experience. It was a "gotcha! ha ha you played this game like you would any other rpg" and I promise no one wants that. Otherwise it's enterprising, the art direction is amazing, the game's story and character themselves is well well done, I love that in this game in particular anyone can be anything (saga frontier was like that too but many other saga games have characters pretty much shoehorned into like one of three possible roles or less. Still not bad since one of them has over a hundred characters.) I personally enjoyed the music.

[BoxingBud]

Characters in this game have their starting skills but that doesn't matter. Sif can be your uber magic user if you want.

[The Ultimate Despair]

I had this game on the PS2, and it was one of my most hated games back then. Maybe today I would be able to have a different approach, but I doubt it. This game is a downside.

[Raiden - In Flames 🎵]

Originally posted by RyuzakiMorgoth:

I had this game on the PS2, and it was one of my most hated games back then. Maybe today I would be able to have a different approach, but I doubt it. This game is a downside.

i thought saga unlimited was the most hated one. :o

[Windster]

You can't really lose characters permanently, they can be LP killed, but you can just recruit them again if that happens. Can't remember if there's any penalty associated with it, but getting LP killed is rare unless you're playing high risk.

As for downsides, I suppose that for some people the open world thing doesn't really work. Some have feelings of getting lost, not knowing what to do or where to go which leads to them just wandering around doing random battles, increasing enemy battle rank (their difficulty) without getting any quest rewards which in the end makes the game a bit harder.

There's not much of a main story, it's more a game of side quests, but it's not always apparent where they are, or where you are supposed to go.

Some combat mechanics are poorly explained as well.

Just know that bosses are mostly hard stats, which means that you can go breeze through a dungeon and then get roadblocked by a boss with higher stats than you can handle for now. Go do something else, power up, then return and take it down. For subsequent playthroughs you'll get more and more efficient with the know-how of where to go and when to go, which (for me atleast) makes every new run even more fun.

[immortalfrieza]

I played this on the PS2 and I can tell you, the ENTIRE "Event Rank" system is utterly horrible. It's an RPG with fighting, excellent battle music, interesting mechanics that... doesn't want you to actually do any fighting! You're supposed to avoid fighting as much as possible so you can get to the various quests and complete them, which is where most of the equipment, money, and rewards come from. In the case of one character, it's entirely possible to fight too much and get stuck on an island for most of the game fighting random battles for hours in order to get to the point you're able to leave. Event Rank is one of the worst mechanics I've ever seen in a video game.

[Frogge]

I disagree, there are plenty of quest with super lenient ER limits or no ER limits and you have to fight enemies to beat bosses. if you go around avoiding all combat you are going to get walled hard by the bosses. you really aren't supposed to do all quest on your first run its more about unlocking all the map locations and building the shop ranks so you can have better NG+ runs.

but even if you wanted to turbo grind the game is perfectly beatable by you going to a random dungeon with 5 characters and fighting until ER 22 with some breaks to go buy new equipment and spells.

[The Horse Situation]

you can't use the ingame music player ingame

[Zevedeos]

The PS2 version of the game was more unforgiving and even like that it was from my favorite RPG.

Consider that I don't like to struggle much in games. I dislike most if not all "souls like" if and when they overdo it with difficulty, mostly stemming from restrictive, cluncky and regid movement.

The remaster here is amazing. It pretty much removed or negated a lot of the downsides of the game, making it a lot more newbie friendly than it was.

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When you start simply choose the easiest difficulty, read carefully the tips/tutorials/guides that the game has.

People say to start with easier characters(due to kind of more linear and straightforward initial start)Albert, Sif, perhaps Aisha and Claudia.

Personally my first playthrough on PS2 was with Grey(most people will advise against).
Imo I feel like starting with Grey was good for me. First because he just looks and plays the best(again imo). I love a good swordsman(sort of Ronin-ish if you follow properly his first quest in the island and find his signature weapon, which will also introduce you to weapon/gear tempering). Playing with the character that you feel "most at home" and "cool" with, can help you maintain your motivation to see the story through.

Due to me starting with this character it became quite quickly very apparent to me that there are some enemies I should avoid(dynos), and then slowly learned that I should avoid most enemies(I haven't played the game in a while but I will give you an estimate from what I remember~ avoid around 70% of the monsters/fights in your way if you sort of know or feel on the right track about where you are going. If you are completely lost, confused and trying to figure the way, then avoid them like the plague/100%. First you need to become familiar with the world/maps). Chase after quests and try to complete them one by one.

The reason you avoid monsters is because each battle makes "time" in game pass. The world is "alive" in that sense. While you are occupied doing some quest you chose, if you fight too many enemies, you might miss some other quests. For example if you are chasing after the desert "jewel" you might miss the lake/aquamarine one, and find out that someone else got to it before you and took it.
With the easy difficulty choice this won't be as a "head ache" as it used to be on PS2.

The remastered game now also features a sort of "event clock" that displays to you at which point of the "event clock" you are. When all the points in that "clock" light up, it means it will be time for you to fight the "main story"* last boss. Make sure you have done as many quests as you possibly can before you proceed further on that clock by defeating monsters. Save as frequently as possible and if you have entered some dungeon and/or locked quest(that you need to finish before you do something else), save on 2nd/3rd slot-basically keep separate save files.

*"Main story" because most of the game will feel like doing side quests but most of these "side quests" are tied to the "main story/plot" and can/will effect the outcome(like fighting last boss with all the jewels and unlocking some additional characters and dungeons/bosses).

As people said, don't expect to find and do all the quests of the game from first playthrough unless you really want to and decide to use a guide/walkthrough from the internet.

Some people complain about lack of money in the game but personally I didn't have much problem with that. Because you get gear from treasure chests, quests and various other rewards, a lot of them don't have too much difference in numbers.
You won't be buying gear very frequently if you play right and pay attention to the stats the gear provide. Not every piece of gear is better than what you already found. And if you want balanced gear(more or less equal amount of physical and magical defense, if possible with the least amount of weight/stat loss), you will have to visit the stores of all the cities and compare the gear pieces you can buy, purchasing one or two gear pieces from different regions to mix and match. Some of the pieces will benefit from being tempered with a mineral, to become relatively better. You can dress your characteres quite well like this and just swap any let's say "special"/better gear you might find through some quests and boss drops.


I don't recall anything else to tell you right now. But in general you can ask.