The Legend of Legacy
Jul. 6th, 2016 05:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroTen years ago, the lost continent of Avalon rose from the depths of the sea. Since then, explorers have flocked to it, searching for treasures and the truth of the legends: What is the Star Graal? Who are the God-People? Can the power of the elementals be harnessed? Seven heroes join your party to find out.
This is the most SaGa game I’ve ever played that wasn’t actually part of the SaGa series: Multiple options for starting characters (that nominally have an effect on the plot), randomly-raised attributes and “sparking” new abilities. Expect to die constantly; normal HP healing also revives you, but getting knocked out reduces your max HP until you hit the Inn. Monsters are visible on the map and you’re expected to dodge a lot of them, but to stretch out the battles you do fight so that you build up your stats.
The graphics are lovely and the map system (and the benefits you get from uncovering maps) are lovely. The music is also pretty good, though I doubt I’ll spend much time listening to the soundtrack disc that came with the game. For a game that’s primarily about exploration, they do make it interesting to explore.
What initially irritated me most was that there’s no in-dungeon saving, and boss monsters have a tendency to come out of nowhere—boss monsters you can’t actually flee. (Whereas you can flee any other battle with 100% success, but it returns you to the dungeon entrance.) So you can lose a lot of progress by making one wrong turn, and because stat gains and treasures are randomized, you can’t necessarily make that progress back up. Except…I learned later that the Quick Save option, which in pretty much every other game forces you to quit and is erased when you restart? Not here: You can quicksave anywhere and restart from that save if you die.
Also, SaGa games have lots of plot hidden away, mostly in the form of sidequests you wander into as you explore new areas. This game has ONE town, and plot…well, plot doesn’t seem to spring up all that much. (It’s all hidden as snippets of lore you collect from the various “singing stones”.) I often like to play SaGa games in what I call “tourist mode”, where I juice my stats with a cheat device to the point of being nearly invincible so that I can wander around and see everything there is to see. There doesn’t seem to be much point to that here. The tradeoff, though, is that SaGa games inevitably level your characters very slowly and have anti-grinding features so that enemies get stronger as you do. This game makes grinding a moderately useful and effective activity.
The fact that each of the characters has “proficiency” with certain types of weapons and magic, but the game never TELLS you that, is really annoying. The frog-man doesn’t actually have proficiency in shields, despite coming equipped with one and being assigned as your tank if you start as Bianca. (For the record, Bianca seems to have proficiency in almost everything, and I found bows to be the most useful weapon class, as they have multiple strong hit-all attacks.)
For that matter, characters have overall ratings in attack, guard and support, and also ratings on every one of their skills in those three categories—and all of those can level up. Am I better off using a 3 SP skill with an Attack rating of 25 that I’m level 5 in, or a 4 SP skill with an Attack rating of 10 that I’m level 10 in? I have no idea! Damage seems to randomly fluctuate, and if it weren’t for the general gradual increase in my survivability, I’d wonder if anything was changing at all.
The other big strategy gimmick (and the particularly unique one) is the “field elemental effect”. Every area has the four elements at various strengths, and which one is ascendant determines how strong physical and magical attacks (from you and the enemies) are. There’s also the need to establish "contracts" with each element in order to use spells of that element (which means no first-turn magic)—but that applies to you and the enemies. There are several bosses that you can actually lock down by just having one character steal their chosen element every turn while your other two characters attack.
The flavor of the game really changes if you survive long enough to retrieve the Singing Shard of Wind, because using Wind Contract makes your party regenerate SP for the rest of the battle (unless cancelled). That means you can throw out your high-power attacks with impunity and actually grind magic effectively. That also seems to be the first point where the shopkeeper gets new stock and you can actually upgrade your armor. (Before that, it’s all luck-based as to whether you get a random drop of better armor than you have.)
When you enter the Roaring Valley, you’ll have the problem of Archwings, giant birds whose shadows you can see moving—if you cross the shadow, you have to fight one, and they’re really powerful. (They also appear in other areas, and as inescapable battles when you check their nests. Somebody on the programming staff thought these things were a great gimmick.) The thing is, they’re also great for grinding once you know how to deal with them. You can enter battle, have your tank defend and your other characters get levels in their attack and support skills, then run away. And when you’re ready to actually take them down, they’re vulnerable to poison via the wind-elemental Bee Sting charm, which is insanely effective at chipping away at their massive HP total. The way to beat upgraded versions of Archwings is basically to poison them and then heal/defend until they die.
Later bosses are either immune to or very resistant to poison, so the shield art Retaliation became a mainstay of my strategy—it counters a physical attack, preventing all damage and doing a solid hit back. That allowed me to keep a guard up and still have a reasonable damage output, even if my other two characters were scrambling to heal.
I give them a lot of credit that the pacing of the game (and the advancement of your characters) is remarkably good for this style of game. Pretty much every time I started getting frustrated with grinding, I was able to actually make headway and unlock a new area, or the merchant would finally start offering upgrades, or I’d spark an ability that allowed me to use a new strategy.
Overall: It’s like a SaGa game where they’ve removed the best and worst elements, in that the plot is much more sparse but there is no anti-grinding / time limit nonsense. Which makes this decent as a pretty, atmospheric game, but it’s all just exploration and no character-building. If that sounds appealing to you, go for it.
This is the most SaGa game I’ve ever played that wasn’t actually part of the SaGa series: Multiple options for starting characters (that nominally have an effect on the plot), randomly-raised attributes and “sparking” new abilities. Expect to die constantly; normal HP healing also revives you, but getting knocked out reduces your max HP until you hit the Inn. Monsters are visible on the map and you’re expected to dodge a lot of them, but to stretch out the battles you do fight so that you build up your stats.
The graphics are lovely and the map system (and the benefits you get from uncovering maps) are lovely. The music is also pretty good, though I doubt I’ll spend much time listening to the soundtrack disc that came with the game. For a game that’s primarily about exploration, they do make it interesting to explore.
What initially irritated me most was that there’s no in-dungeon saving, and boss monsters have a tendency to come out of nowhere—boss monsters you can’t actually flee. (Whereas you can flee any other battle with 100% success, but it returns you to the dungeon entrance.) So you can lose a lot of progress by making one wrong turn, and because stat gains and treasures are randomized, you can’t necessarily make that progress back up. Except…I learned later that the Quick Save option, which in pretty much every other game forces you to quit and is erased when you restart? Not here: You can quicksave anywhere and restart from that save if you die.
Also, SaGa games have lots of plot hidden away, mostly in the form of sidequests you wander into as you explore new areas. This game has ONE town, and plot…well, plot doesn’t seem to spring up all that much. (It’s all hidden as snippets of lore you collect from the various “singing stones”.) I often like to play SaGa games in what I call “tourist mode”, where I juice my stats with a cheat device to the point of being nearly invincible so that I can wander around and see everything there is to see. There doesn’t seem to be much point to that here. The tradeoff, though, is that SaGa games inevitably level your characters very slowly and have anti-grinding features so that enemies get stronger as you do. This game makes grinding a moderately useful and effective activity.
The fact that each of the characters has “proficiency” with certain types of weapons and magic, but the game never TELLS you that, is really annoying. The frog-man doesn’t actually have proficiency in shields, despite coming equipped with one and being assigned as your tank if you start as Bianca. (For the record, Bianca seems to have proficiency in almost everything, and I found bows to be the most useful weapon class, as they have multiple strong hit-all attacks.)
For that matter, characters have overall ratings in attack, guard and support, and also ratings on every one of their skills in those three categories—and all of those can level up. Am I better off using a 3 SP skill with an Attack rating of 25 that I’m level 5 in, or a 4 SP skill with an Attack rating of 10 that I’m level 10 in? I have no idea! Damage seems to randomly fluctuate, and if it weren’t for the general gradual increase in my survivability, I’d wonder if anything was changing at all.
The other big strategy gimmick (and the particularly unique one) is the “field elemental effect”. Every area has the four elements at various strengths, and which one is ascendant determines how strong physical and magical attacks (from you and the enemies) are. There’s also the need to establish "contracts" with each element in order to use spells of that element (which means no first-turn magic)—but that applies to you and the enemies. There are several bosses that you can actually lock down by just having one character steal their chosen element every turn while your other two characters attack.
The flavor of the game really changes if you survive long enough to retrieve the Singing Shard of Wind, because using Wind Contract makes your party regenerate SP for the rest of the battle (unless cancelled). That means you can throw out your high-power attacks with impunity and actually grind magic effectively. That also seems to be the first point where the shopkeeper gets new stock and you can actually upgrade your armor. (Before that, it’s all luck-based as to whether you get a random drop of better armor than you have.)
When you enter the Roaring Valley, you’ll have the problem of Archwings, giant birds whose shadows you can see moving—if you cross the shadow, you have to fight one, and they’re really powerful. (They also appear in other areas, and as inescapable battles when you check their nests. Somebody on the programming staff thought these things were a great gimmick.) The thing is, they’re also great for grinding once you know how to deal with them. You can enter battle, have your tank defend and your other characters get levels in their attack and support skills, then run away. And when you’re ready to actually take them down, they’re vulnerable to poison via the wind-elemental Bee Sting charm, which is insanely effective at chipping away at their massive HP total. The way to beat upgraded versions of Archwings is basically to poison them and then heal/defend until they die.
Later bosses are either immune to or very resistant to poison, so the shield art Retaliation became a mainstay of my strategy—it counters a physical attack, preventing all damage and doing a solid hit back. That allowed me to keep a guard up and still have a reasonable damage output, even if my other two characters were scrambling to heal.
I give them a lot of credit that the pacing of the game (and the advancement of your characters) is remarkably good for this style of game. Pretty much every time I started getting frustrated with grinding, I was able to actually make headway and unlock a new area, or the merchant would finally start offering upgrades, or I’d spark an ability that allowed me to use a new strategy.
Overall: It’s like a SaGa game where they’ve removed the best and worst elements, in that the plot is much more sparse but there is no anti-grinding / time limit nonsense. Which makes this decent as a pretty, atmospheric game, but it’s all just exploration and no character-building. If that sounds appealing to you, go for it.
