Talk to Sigurd twice to go to Nisan, save. You may need to go back to the Yggdrasil to save—I don’t believe you can save on Nisan’s city map. Don’t go into the city.
EDIT: So, the game doesn’t let you go back to Ygg right away. For players on original hardware: you can either save and stop before talking to Sigurd, or watch the short scene inside the city, and find the save point in the shop, but avoid going too far north.
If you didn’t already get the key, talk to the old man on the east side of town near a sewer entrance
Note that the first section can change quite a bit depending on how Fei does in the tournament…so try to hold out as long as possible.
If you have stacked AP you can do multiple DBs in a row using the “Combo” command screen. Useful for finishing enemies in one go, especially if they counter or heal.
Unique Missables
If you don’t start out on the western sewer grate you may have a hard time collecting all items, but none are irreplaceable.
I suggest not clicking these spoilers until you’ve started the first match: Wedding Dress. In the tournament you must not land a single attack on Dan! Guard the entire time.
Remember that Spider you got on Lahan’s mountain path? You can give it to Chu-chu near the end of the week and exchange it for a Ether Veiler, which doubles elemental defense. If you didn’t get the spider the first time, you can technically go back to the path via the world map, though I’m not sure if it’s still there. Easiest way to grab it is to shake the tree near the end of the path until it comes down, move slightly away (it retracts when you approach) then sprint and click to grab it before it retreats. However you can get more of this equipment in game, so don’t stress about it.
Everybody should feel free to post and ask questions–it’s what makes book clubs fun! But please do not post until you are familiar with Spoiler Courtesy!
Spoiler Courtesy
Please follow these rules to avoid inadvertent ネタバレ. If you’re unsure whether something should have a spoiler tag, err on the side of using one.
Any potential spoiler for the current week’s reading need only be covered by a spoiler tag. Predictions and conjecture made by somebody who has not read ahead still falls into this category.
Any potential spoilers for external sources need to be covered by a spoiler tag and include a label (outside of the spoiler tag) of what might be spoiled. These include but are not limited to: other book club picks, other books, games, movies, anime, etc. I recommend also tagging the severity of the spoiler (for example, I may still look at minor spoilers for something that I don’t intend to read soon).
Avoid posting any information from later in the game than the current week’s reading. If it is necessary to doing so, it needs to be hidden by spoiler tags and labeled as coming from later sections.
Instructions for Spoiler Tags
Click the cog above the text box and use either the “Hide Details” or “Blur Spoiler” options. The text which says “This text will be hidden” should be replaced with what you are wishing to write. In the case of “Hide Details”, the section in the brackets that is labelled “Summary” can be replaced with whatever you like also (i.e, [details=”Chapter 1”]).
Discussion
Bart’s swimming stamina is insane….
How did you do in the tournament? Did you make it to the castle before the end of the tournament?
Did you kick Dan’s ass or let him have his moment?
Participation
Will you be playing with is this week?
I am playing along.
I’m still playing but I haven’t reached this part yet.
I am no longer playing.
I’m just here for the discussion
0voters
Don’t forget to set this thread to Watching in order to stay abreast of discussion!
One note: the schedule says this is a double week, but at only 135min and 11k characters, which is in line with single weeks later on, I think that was a mistaken holdover from when I messed up the chapter numbers and couldn’t find a good stopping point when fixing that prior to the schedule updates.
As such, unless someone has a strong objection, I will be holding this one as a single week and updating the home page accordingly.
The poll is missing the “I filthy preplayed” option :x
My parents are visiting next week, won’t be playing then so I just played this week’s assignment today instead.
Week 9
Wow, wasn’t expecting to run into so many familiar faces at the tournament.
Seeing Big Joe was super funny, but then Dan! Also, very dramatic that the music immediately stopped when we talk to him. (at the beginning I also didn’t understand why the music stopped, he was hidden behind the other NPCs and he is… not very tall)
Plus a mysterious man who also knows Lahan and Fei
I messed up the tournament. I read that you weren’t supposed to hit Dan after I had started hitting him to see how hard he hit back. Then I loaded my save state to not hit him but I might have messed up when I saved because I didn’t get the dress.
I did read the dialog that came with it from the script though. Because of that I also missed the encounter with the Wise Man but I read that script too. Interesting…
It was a fun chapter, going back and forth between “do this as slow as possible” and “do this as fast as possible”, though I don’t really like having time pressure in general so thankfully it’s not like that all the time. Also instructions were a bit unclear, didn’t know if you could mess up the saving of Maru by being too slow, so I was stressing a lot when there was dialog and pausing the emulator to have time to read. Happy to go back to “normal speed”.
Meeting Eri again was fun, and the escape with the Gear was great xD
I don’t have the spider, I was a bit confused at the beginning of the game so didn’t try hard to look for it. Good to know that I’m not missing out on too much!
I was more or less feeling better about this week until Ramsus might genuinely be the most tedious boss I’ve seen in a turn based RPG ever. After about 80 turns of healing myself, storing a couple AP, waiting for 3 whole turns for his mirror stance to end while he gets healed back up (not that there’s much to heal because all you do is one light hit), and all of that being constantly slowed by watching my “helper” miss a healing spell over and over I finally got to the stage where Fei shows up, but because I had been here for genuinely 20+ minutes I got slightly too impatient storing their AP and Fei died because one time I didn’t heal every other turn. I’m going to be considering if I even want to continue this game, goddamn. Remarkable design for the strategy to be spend ~7 turns waiting to build your meter to do anything, but those turns also have to be spread out across many dead turns where the boss doesn’t even allow you to do that, not counting turns where you’re forced to heal and etc. I realize now it will sometimes pretend to be a videogame but since they couldn’t actually come up with a combat system with decisions to be made I’m getting punished for not having just grinded it out.
Optimally pretty much everything about this combat system should be trashed and replaced, but at the least things like defending need to give you some kind of AP for this kind of fight to work at all. It turns out opting to do literally nothing for many turns is not the most enjoyable system.
I came back and finished that part. A part of me wants to at least attempt to see where this all goes and not totally drop it cause I want to know what this game is all about, but I expect to have little good to say for a while so I think it’ll be best to not have my running commentary, thus I’m leaning towards dropping and continuing this at my own rate when I feel like I can stomach more of it. Thanks for all your effort anyway, sorry to drop off so soon.
Well, oof. Sad to see you drop the game, especially for a boss fight with almost unique mechanics. I liked your commentary, and at least I don’t mind even harsh critique.
I know what getting into a negative headspace with a game feels like, most recently with Silksong. Since this club will be running for a long while there’s a decent chance you’ll get some distance and find a way to come back.
Curious to hear if others are struggling with the boss.
Here's a couple of pointers if someone needs a bit of help
Be sure to loot & equip the アイアンメイル and コブラ from the rooms alongside the courtyard. The defense increase from the armor is worth like five level ups, and the whip often causes poison, wasting ミァン’s turn cleaning that up rather than healing
You can equip アイアンメイル even for フェイ between the battles
Be sure to buff フェイ up with 剛気 (+25% Atk) when ラムサス is using the stance, apart from just healing
If you didn’t yet engage with the combo system, now’s the time. You can store up to 5 AP per turn at this point for both フェイ and バルト. You can unleash up to five deathblows at once, which at least for me just ended the battle right there.
Cool meeting some old friends… the way the music stopped when you talk to ダン was pretty ouchie. He has not forgiven us, to say the least. Another 謎の男 who knows フェイ by name.
We get a brief glimpse into how ミァン is not just a servant for ラムサス here. I feel like most everyone in this game has some agency of their own. 「ええ。楽しめそうです。」
Also, she immediately spotted フェイ among the combatants. Love the camera angle work here as well.
ダン having access to EP powers was a bit of a surprise. But yeah, just send me to the shadow realm. I’ve earned it.
I expected ワイズマン to be the last test here, but it ended up being a non-duel. Not the first time people are asking フェイ what he’s fighting for. I think that’s exactly what he is trying to figure out for himself at this stage – with the answer being “nothing” as of now.
Apart from your name, ワイズマン knew that you were wounded before arriving in ラハン all those years ago.
ラムサス recognizes フェイ’s fighting style and has some sort of traumatic war memories or some sort of crisis upon realizing this ”奴” who he is reminded of. You don’t often see 塵 in kanji!
エリィ got shoot on sight orders, but instead helps us escape… I loved the stereo panning sound of the footsteps while we were hiding in her room – something I didn’t yet realize this game utilized! I don’t think it was very common for this era? Yet another cinematic technique that works really well in these in-game cutscenes.
Understandably バルト is quite puzzled at why the hell would フェイ even know someone from 神聖ソラリス帝屋特設外務庁.
I agree that it’s sad to see @Daisoujou go, but I didn’t know how to put it nicely into words like you did @eagleflo
No struggle here, but I did spend some time “grinding” (was really just practicing combat and saving up money, but the result is the same, I’m probably overleveled)
Combat strat
And even though I have spent time practicing, I haven’t figured out how to store AP and do several deathblows at once writing it down as my homework to do for next week.
The quickest way to do this is to just do one light attack and then cancel out with the X button. The rest of your AP are saved for a future turn. It’s not usually necessary, but helps in cases like this where burst damage is called upon…
It kind of feels like in a fight where you’re throwing light jabs to gauge the enemy and then once you find weakness you go full force. In general the combat system is trying something unique… not always with great success, but the 格闘ゲーム combos are at least a unique mechanic for a JRPG!
Yeah I’ve simply played the required fights as they came and probably moved relatively efficiently through things so I’m at about the minimal expected power you could arrive at. I’ve changed equipment I found, though didn’t get any in this place which is maybe partly my fault for taking the game at its word that I should hurry. Otherwise I’ve not gone out of my way for it given how free most of the combat had been until this moment. I definitely used the deathblow combo system because I frankly don’t think the fight would have been possible at all if I didn’t. I’m hitting for like ~60 damage on Bart’s only deathblow (though interestingly he was leveling AP for me and getting another in the transition to phase 2) which is barely above what gets healed off with a single use. Maybe I could do it if I also spammed the accuracy down to keep her from using the heal, if I didn’t totally run out of… MP or SP or whatever it is here. But no real reason to compared to waiting a long time and saving the AP, which did eventually one shot him when it’s full. But about 3 hits from him kills Bart or Fei so it’s a ton of sitting and healing too.
See I fled to this casual “SaGa” series that’s more my speed because of all the quality of life features, like how when your teammates die they just stay dead forever so you don’t have to spend resources reviving them!
In JRPGs I’ve had maybe five to ten fights in my life where I’ve had to put the controller down. Most recent was in 真・女神転生III, just need to get back to it… Diablos in FFVIII gets a special mention as well. I think leveling up just made that fight worse.
With SRPGs it’s like five fights per game, or more. Even the vanilla ones like Final Fantasy Tactics make it super easy to soft lock yourself, never mind something like Tactics Ogre. I’ve yet to play Langrisser 2 which is according to hearsay much harder than either.
That soft-locking is IMHO a big issue in certain older games, especially with physical memory cards and very limited space. Even in this game you can overwrite your only save in マルー’s room just before the battle and too fucking bad if it was your only save, no backtracking allowed. Thank goodness emulators feature unlimited save slots, I’m close to filling my second virtual memory card already with just Xenogears…
I’ve never played the SaGa series, but I can see from Steam that two buddies of mine abandoned SaGa Scarlet Grace… either due to difficulty or getting bored? Probably not the game to start your SaGa journey with.
Fire Emblem also does the permanent death mode, but these days the games come with easy modes that disable that… it’s honestly pretty amazing that any narrative can survive the loss of multiple characters that are supposed to play a part in it.
Edit: lol, according to PSN Profiles the trophy you unlock after seeing a Game Over screen in SMTIII is unlocked by 65% of the players. Maybe the rest didn’t get that far? Although I’m playing on hard mode, so that’s a factor.
So I bet, or at least hope, it was because of the former
Haven’t gotten to Scarlet Grace but I do hear it’s very hard. A lot of SaGa games sound like they have some traps beginners tend to fall into as well. If you look up just about any of them there are always people saying DO NOT START WITH X CHARACTER or something of the sort, heh.
Revenge of the Seven on its highest difficulty available for first playthrough had a couple bosses I had to remake the team and strategy for and do again once. The final boss, though, was probably 4 or so hours of retooling and retrying the fight like 10 times. Otherwise not too rough. Just finished the very first SaGa and it went fine, no big walls though I definitely died on occasion. It’s much more about the equipment preparation than in fight strategy though. We’ll see when I get to the harder ones eventually.
Yeah the sewer gameplay of holding forward constantly so you’re not washed back is absolutely riveting, great stuff /s
I feel like the sewers could have been more interesting if there was more to explore down there. Basically all there was was the restaurant aquarium and a couple of short branches that give you an item. The way you get Fei’s battles interspersed into the sewer and castle exploration was kind of interesting - helps to give you a sense of urgency. But then I missed the items in the castle because I didn’t go into those rooms. Tbh I was a little low on healing items so wanted to save them for the boss. But it wasn’t too bad. I made the mistake of attacking while he was in the reflect stance on my first go where you’re fighting with just Bart, but after that it was fine as long as I built up my AP store and unleashed a flurry of deathblows. Same with the battle with Fei but even easier since I had Fei to deal with building up AP and use his damage-boosting skill while Bart lowered accuracy etc. Fei’s defense was high enough that the attacks didn’t really bother him and he usually got healed enough by the passive heals.
I did have to take a break after getting back to the Yggdrasil because I was super tired (and had started to feel unwell) but after getting back to it today there really wasn’t much left. I left ChuChu’s name as is because I don’t want to touch that thing with a ten foot pole. The speech quirk isn’t too hard to understand at least, I’ve dealt with more cursed ones (Spamton from Deltarune).
Ok, I see the issue. What the hell. How am I supposed to hoard AP if he counter attacks immediately even if I do a simple attack? EDIT: oh ok, I see, I just need to be patient.
Yeah once you’ve figured it out it’s not that HARD if you have enough heals on hand, there are just so, so many turns spent doing literally nothing and this is with me counting press light attack and then cancel as doing something by comparison.
Yeah the combat felt really hard until I figured out the strat (loading on AP when he wasn’t defending, then waiting when he was) and it became trivial.
I kinda like that there’s a puzzle aspect to the combat… but the problem is that the game does a fairly bad job of introducing those concepts since until now mashing normal attacks was perfectly adequate.
I guess I should have remembered this forum comment that I read all the way back in Week 2 when investigating the combo system (I only connected the dots after the fight):
There’s very, very little use to storing up AP for deathblow combos. The only time I think it’s good for is the first Ramsus fight… And even then, it’s not necessary.
Still don’t really care about the overarching plot. I just have zero patience for that stuff at this point. I know that Japanese writers really love this lazy foreshadowing but I can’t stand it anymore. Oh wow, there’s a 奴 with the same skillset as Fei. Wow. Wowowow. Wowowowowowow. How exciting. Oh and there’s a mysterious guy who know Fei’s name and then leaves in the middle of the tournament. Wowowowowowowowow. Incredible. Add it to the pile of mysteries to solve, alongside the other 50 mysterious things that have been set up so far. It’s probably a plot by the Patriots, lalilulelo.
Talking about the tournament, the ending was very strange I thought since Fei just teleports from there to the top of the tower. How? What happened? What did we win? A bit underwhelming. I also wonder what changes if you lose halfway through? I noticed that the encounters seemed to trigger on a timer while I was scouring the waterways which gave me a sense of urgency but apparently it didn’t really matter? Weird.
I missed that one! Since I thought I was on a timer I didn’t backtrack to explore everything. The current dragging you backwards was also very annoying and made the exploration more tedious than it needed to be. I also don’t understand why the water gate just randomly opened when I got close. Why? And how did the water go through before that? Weird.
Not with this reading, but 塵 is semi-common I think.
The PS1 supports stereo on all SPU voices + main mix, so technically the hardware is fully stereo-ready. Mono was used a lot for soundtracks because it let you halve the amount of data to store however. For SFX I guess it depends on whether the devs wanted to make the effort.
Did you know that even the GameBoy had stereo sound? It only has one speaker but you can notice it with headphones (or emulators). It’s not widely used of course but for instance some of the music in Super Mario Land 2 makes use of it, with the percussions alternating sides.
I did read them but I thought it was like that fight in the tournament where you were punished for using special attacks but not normal ones, so I kept queuing a single hit to store APs but then Ramses would counter-attack with huge damage, except that it took me 2 deaths before I realized that it was a counter-attack and not a normal attack. I also wanted to inflict poison (which works even if the attack misses apparently) so that he wouldn’t get healed, which seemed like a smart strategy at the time… I did manage to defeat him with Balto this way, but then I ran out of healing items during the 2nd phase.
It’s only when I understood that I needed to store AP but only when he wasn’t defending that it became trivial.
At least the game is kind enough to give you a save point just before…
I’m just teasing. Tho it does seem like this week’s content is the game’s do-you-know-the-combat-system-to-the-level-we-want-you-to skill check with these battles…
if only it bothered to explain any of it well first
writing it down as my homework to do for next week.
