Romancing Saga 2: Always bet on Shirtless Giant.

Okay, so Torneko is done. For my next trick I'm moving on to something more tricky, namely Romancing Saga 2!
 

I only have the barest information about the game: I know the Saga series by reputation and by Saga Frontier for PS1 and that's it. The Saga series is kinda where they put Akitoshi Kawazu after he directed Final Fantasy II, so that the FF series could march on and he could expand and refine his combat system ideas (which in FFII involved gaining HP by sitting there and punching yourself in the face until you were more resilient) without derailing FF. Saga's gone on for a respectable number of games now and has seen remakes for the PS2 and DS. Romancing Saga 2 is smack-dab in the middle of the SNES Saga trilogy, and I see at least the germ of some of Saga Frontier's systems in the intro movie. That's all I know about it.

I started taking screengrabs of the intro, but know what? It goes on roughly FOREVER. So let's do this via YouTube:



So there you have it: once upon a time, seven knights stood in a volcano, and the world was at peace. Then a bunch of monsters ate some people, and a 10 foot-tall guy with no shirt killed a party of adventurers. Then a variety of monsters fly past the screen, like Octopus Man:

White-Haired Ninja:

Ghost-Wielding Stripper:

and Obscured Nipples Harpy:

So let's begin!

I have a choice between male and female characters. I'll go with the male, I guess- at this size I'm not entirely sure it matters.

As is custom, I name him Lance.

We open on a bar, where Lance is sitting alone with his back to the door. Lance is clearly not a smart adventurer. A bard starts, uh, barding, and talks about a place called Avalon.

Then we cut to a party of adventurers, who if I'm not mistaken are the same set walloped by the Shirtless Giant in the intro.

Before I can figure out where my menus are and what to do with them, we're accosted by bees.

Oh, jolly good. All the combat options are in Kanji. This will not end well. I pick the first one for each character because it's the most likely to be a basic attack.

It seems to work and I triumph over a pair of Bees. To be fair, they're Bees as big as the characters, so it's a noteworthy success.

And it seems Select is our menu. Okay, our names are (approximately) Leon, Gerarl, Bear, James, and Therese.

The first menu option shows us that we're using a weapon proficiency system, much as FFII does. I wonder if we should try hitting ourselves in the faces too. Only Leon has the final icon on the screen above, an attribute I will refer to as Shininess. From there down we have: Items, Equip, Magic, Techniques, Formation, Options, Save. Our current formation is "Imperial Cross," and I'm fine with that for the moment. Since it seems you can save anywhere, this seems like a good place to leave off for the day. Tomorrow: more Bees and confusion! Probably not in that order!