Romancing Saga 2 FINAL: Not a Bang or a Whimper, but Many, Many Bad Words

So we cross the bridge. Hey, it's Ursula! She's lost some weight since The Little Mermaid.

It's actual name is Subie. I almost wonder if it's related to Jimmy the Narwhal Sparklepire. The sprite doesn't really accurately portray the fact that he has tentacle dreadlocks, though. We fight a while, Renya loses 2 LP and Lance one, and then...

We get flashes of all the dead Heroes we've fought.

Subie retreats, and I get a yes/no question. We'll go with the traditional first answer! ...which equates, again, to "Ikuzo!"

The spirits of the heroes whirl and whirl, coalescing into...

MONSTER VOLTRON. They seem to have stuck with Rocbouquet as their avatar, at least for the upper body. Understandable, since the rest of them were fuck-all ugly.

As we hit it, more parts pop out of the Galactic Meatball that makes up the center of the beast. I don't think I particularly want to know how this sausage is made. It TPKs us once because it has Rocbouquet's charm attack- I guess I should've installed the countermove on everyone. So we'll try again!

And again!

And again!

And come the fuck ON I'm SO close to being finished with this game

Okay, so here's my plan. I'm using a team of physical bruisers, so Sword Barrier should be sufficient to protect me from MY OWN PEOPLE. I'm having everybody defend in round one, and then once Lance is secured we go to town on the damn thing with anybody who's still in control of their faculties.

Okay, so that didn't work either. So what I do next is load my last Avalon save and re-equip everyone with the countermove for Temptation, Rocbouquet's annoying-ass charm attack. While I'm at it, I pick up that dealie that curses the party to lose LP when you stay at an inn. I'm not staying at anymore inns, and its magic resistance is apparently the best in the entire game.

20 minutes of very focused running and a short bout with Subie later, I'm back. And as I fight I realize that it's sprouting the special abilities of each Hero in turn as I bludgeon the Meatball until their faces pop out of it. It can use one each of their powers for every face it has a ROUND. Shit. This last time I was up to six faces on the Meatball before it killed me. (...I LOVE video games. I am absolutely certain that no sane person has EVER typed that last sentence before in the history of the world- and that is exciting.)

And here, just for you, is the fully revealed Galactic Meatball. It has some pretty spectacular attacks- a giant face swallows Renya and spits him back out next turn, and that's probably not the worst of its newfound power. I can't beat it- the walkthrough says it has 65,000 hit points once it reaches this form and I'm barely surviving two, three rounds. Its recommendation? Spells I don't know and it's too late to get.

I even tried the previous owner's save file, a Final Emperor named Yutaka. He's got some interesting spells but none of the ones the walkthrough recommends. There are no cheats for this game anywhere- no Game Genie codes at ALL. So I'm going to give this one more try, and if that doesn't work, I'm going with Plan B.

...okay, we actually tried FIVE more times. In our current condition, this is unwinnable. And studying lists of spells and techniques leads me to believe I'm too late in the game to learn the best magic- generations have to pass for that to happen.

I can't do it. This is absurd.

I have no choice in the matter. I declare this Flailthrough a FAILURE.

Fortunately, through the magic of Youtube we can see what the ending would look like if I was actually good enough to beat the game.





The bulk of the end credits are essentially a tech-demo, showing all the best attacks and formations that you- definitely I -never got. After that, a rundown of all the quests your various Rulers succeeded in, and then an epilogue where the Bard from the beginning of the game finishes telling the story of your exploits to the children of Avalon, and then as the pub clears out has a long conversation with you. He leaves, and the Emperor sits at the bar alone, contemplating and seeing visions of all the people he and his ancestors met during the game, down to Leon, Gerarl and Victor. Then his current party comes to get him, aaaand... cut to logo in front of some shooting stars.

And there we go. Thank you SO much to YouTube user crisseyeat for doing what I could not and posting it for all the world to see.

So what have we learned, Charlie Brown? First off we've learned that if Akitoshi Kawazu never gets to make another Saga game... maybe this isn't as bad a thing as previously thought. Second, we've learned that the natural enemy of the Martial Arts Master is the humble doorman. And lastly, we've learned that allowing the player to strand himself near the end of the game with a party configuration that renders the game essentially unwinnable is one hell of a dick move.

I'm really sorry to end it like this, but tomorrow would've been Post Number 120 of Romancing Saga. That's One Hundred Twenty. Four times longer than our next-longest Flailthrough. That's a lot to read, and a lot to play. We have all suffered enough.

So tomorrow, something new- the long-awaited Dragon Quest VI! And I'll be back on the weekend with something SHORT. A one-post deal (or two- two one-post deals, not a two-post thing). This I swear!