Just going back and reviewing this because I decided to do a "platinum" run on RetroAchievements and it's been a hot minute since I got to plow through this game.
It definitely shows its age in how important grinding can be for some characters, especially if you aren't familiar with the fact that promoting some characters immediately at Level 10 is a death knell for their growth after promotion (and a harder time because you start at Level 1 in the new class with reduced stats from what you had previously).
It's still appealing visually, as far as Genesis games go, but the soundtrack gets pretty old, given how few tracks there are for the thirty battles you're going to have to endure. The cutscene fights are always fun to look at, but like some older games that share this style (I'm looking at you, Brigandine), the music for fight scenes can get REALLY OLD, REALLY FAST.
I still appreciate the numerous optional characters that you can find, especially since they largely encourage you to really just look around a bit before and after each fight (although you can hilariously miss characters that aren't supposed to be optional, like in the case of Diane). Some of the optional characters are siege tanks against your opponents, like in the case of Musashi or Hanzou near the endgame -- and it's so very easy to miss them.
Healers are awful to level up and make grinding even more tedious until they learn Aura and you're suddenly incentivized to take damage and bunch up in poor formations so you can maximize the experience earned by an Aura.
There are two overwhelmingly large problems with the game that are worth noting.
The first is relative to the grind -- knowing when it's a good time to actually grind out some levels is important and it's easy to just be on a good clip and think you'll be fine, only to run into a true wall that punishes you perpetually because you didn't take advantage of a good grind point earlier. The first and second stages of the Ramladu fight are the perfect example of this, as they're prime real estate for grinding -- but if you have even a couple decent characters, the actual fights are so easy that you might just rush through them without getting the myriad free levels available to you by just knocking out all enemies except the last one for each area (probably a Dark Priest in the first area) and Egressing. The second fight in the Ramladu section screams, "PLEASE GRIND YOUR CHARACTERS HERE."
But also worth noting, if you come in late with low levels and you're suddenly only doing 1 point of damage with most characters, getting those levels -- even in an area made for it -- is going to be an even worse chore than you're normally accustomed to. As an example, trying to get Luke to 20 before promoting him to GLDR means he couldn't use upgraded weapons, so he's running around with a Middle Sword from near the beginning of the game and doing about 5 damage to enemies when his actual damage output is probably one of the highest in the game post-promotion. It's a balancing act, and one that players aren't warned about.
The second issue worth noting is just one of statistics -- for whatever reason, some enemies in this game have god-tier evasion (bosses included) and you will just lose characters or entire fights because RNG said NO today. The biggest culprit of this are the Chimera at the very end of the game. I was keeping count on multiple whiffs during grinding of the Ramladu fight (there's six chimera in the first area) and my AVERAGE miss count was around SEVEN times when attacking just Chimera. I peaked at SIXTEEN in one particular grind run. SIXTEEN MISSES IN A ROW. That's an entire party's turn and another one-third of the next turn if they all could strike said Chimera! Yeah, sometimes you roll the bad RNG, but there are definitely enemies in this game where it's obviously noticeable that the numbers aren't right.
All that negativity aside, I still really adore this game. Pop on a soundtrack for a better JRPG or SRPG, try out some different character combinations, and ignore the fairly generic story and the bare bones is actually a solid time for your average SRPG fan. No reason not to give this a go if you like turn-based strategy games, and SEGA is really good at discounting it for their Mega Collection stuffs if you're getting it on Steam, so you can always just wait on a sale.
It definitely shows its age in how important grinding can be for some characters, especially if you aren't familiar with the fact that promoting some characters immediately at Level 10 is a death knell for their growth after promotion (and a harder time because you start at Level 1 in the new class with reduced stats from what you had previously).
It's still appealing visually, as far as Genesis games go, but the soundtrack gets pretty old, given how few tracks there are for the thirty battles you're going to have to endure. The cutscene fights are always fun to look at, but like some older games that share this style (I'm looking at you, Brigandine), the music for fight scenes can get REALLY OLD, REALLY FAST.
I still appreciate the numerous optional characters that you can find, especially since they largely encourage you to really just look around a bit before and after each fight (although you can hilariously miss characters that aren't supposed to be optional, like in the case of Diane). Some of the optional characters are siege tanks against your opponents, like in the case of Musashi or Hanzou near the endgame -- and it's so very easy to miss them.
Healers are awful to level up and make grinding even more tedious until they learn Aura and you're suddenly incentivized to take damage and bunch up in poor formations so you can maximize the experience earned by an Aura.
There are two overwhelmingly large problems with the game that are worth noting.
The first is relative to the grind -- knowing when it's a good time to actually grind out some levels is important and it's easy to just be on a good clip and think you'll be fine, only to run into a true wall that punishes you perpetually because you didn't take advantage of a good grind point earlier. The first and second stages of the Ramladu fight are the perfect example of this, as they're prime real estate for grinding -- but if you have even a couple decent characters, the actual fights are so easy that you might just rush through them without getting the myriad free levels available to you by just knocking out all enemies except the last one for each area (probably a Dark Priest in the first area) and Egressing. The second fight in the Ramladu section screams, "PLEASE GRIND YOUR CHARACTERS HERE."
But also worth noting, if you come in late with low levels and you're suddenly only doing 1 point of damage with most characters, getting those levels -- even in an area made for it -- is going to be an even worse chore than you're normally accustomed to. As an example, trying to get Luke to 20 before promoting him to GLDR means he couldn't use upgraded weapons, so he's running around with a Middle Sword from near the beginning of the game and doing about 5 damage to enemies when his actual damage output is probably one of the highest in the game post-promotion. It's a balancing act, and one that players aren't warned about.
The second issue worth noting is just one of statistics -- for whatever reason, some enemies in this game have god-tier evasion (bosses included) and you will just lose characters or entire fights because RNG said NO today. The biggest culprit of this are the Chimera at the very end of the game. I was keeping count on multiple whiffs during grinding of the Ramladu fight (there's six chimera in the first area) and my AVERAGE miss count was around SEVEN times when attacking just Chimera. I peaked at SIXTEEN in one particular grind run. SIXTEEN MISSES IN A ROW. That's an entire party's turn and another one-third of the next turn if they all could strike said Chimera! Yeah, sometimes you roll the bad RNG, but there are definitely enemies in this game where it's obviously noticeable that the numbers aren't right.
All that negativity aside, I still really adore this game. Pop on a soundtrack for a better JRPG or SRPG, try out some different character combinations, and ignore the fairly generic story and the bare bones is actually a solid time for your average SRPG fan. No reason not to give this a go if you like turn-based strategy games, and SEGA is really good at discounting it for their Mega Collection stuffs if you're getting it on Steam, so you can always just wait on a sale.
7 Comments
I waited until level 20 funnily enough and found it worth but promoted a bit earlier in SF2
been a while tho
been a while tho
@Angel_Arle -- As I mentioned, there were some characters where I just couldn't be bothered to wait it out long enough to promote them, but I will say that only on this last run was it that I actually messed around with late promotions and decided to Google it to learn more. There's some stat lists floating around on some ancient sites that show the differences between progression at Level 10 vs. Level 20 when promoting, and it's kind of absurd how good waiting until 20 is for some particular characters!
It's night and day for difficulty if you wait to promote as long as possible -- but even then, you could just get away with promoting early and then grinding the Ramladu second fight until the characters you want to run with are in the high-20s post-promotion and it would make the final fight bearable still. If nothing else, it's a testament to the potential for variety, since you can choose to promote early and struggle your way through to the end. SF2 feels like it's leagues better about this, but I honestly haven't looked up early/late promotion in that game to compare.
@C_F -- For me in SF2, I think I promoted immediately in every case in the two runs I've ever done of the game. If I ever do get around to playing it again, I do want to see if there's a difference like in SF1 for waiting.
It's night and day for difficulty if you wait to promote as long as possible -- but even then, you could just get away with promoting early and then grinding the Ramladu second fight until the characters you want to run with are in the high-20s post-promotion and it would make the final fight bearable still. If nothing else, it's a testament to the potential for variety, since you can choose to promote early and struggle your way through to the end. SF2 feels like it's leagues better about this, but I honestly haven't looked up early/late promotion in that game to compare.
@C_F -- For me in SF2, I think I promoted immediately in every case in the two runs I've ever done of the game. If I ever do get around to playing it again, I do want to see if there's a difference like in SF1 for waiting.
Strangely, I've always found that it's better to wait to promote in SF2 than SF1. The issue of when to promote is a question of what shape do you want the difficulty curve to be in; as the difficulty goes up steadily, goes down when you promote, and then steadily rises again all the way to the endgame.
The thing about SF1 is that the endgame is easy enough even with level 10 promotes that it doesn't make sense to hamstring yourself so much in the midgame. In contrast, SF2's endgame is tricky enough that you will always want to give yourself a buffer of at least 5 levels in the midgame. Also, you don't lose stats upon promotion in SF2 (and level-up gains are generally more consistent across the board) so every extra level nets you guaranteed stats that you will take into the final act.
The thing about SF1 is that the endgame is easy enough even with level 10 promotes that it doesn't make sense to hamstring yourself so much in the midgame. In contrast, SF2's endgame is tricky enough that you will always want to give yourself a buffer of at least 5 levels in the midgame. Also, you don't lose stats upon promotion in SF2 (and level-up gains are generally more consistent across the board) so every extra level nets you guaranteed stats that you will take into the final act.
@iyellatcloud -- I didn't realize that you don't lose stats in promotion in SF2, so that makes a lot of sense when you talk about the difficulty curve. If you promote in SF1, it's what...a 30% drop in stats immediately on the reset to Level 1? That kind of stuff feels like a nightmare at certain points in the game, especially if the ATK drop is enough to set you back to dealing 1 point of damage per strike. Spellcasters are probably the only ones that don't get too adversely affected by these kinds of stat drops.
Now that you've mentioned retention of current stats for promoting, I feel more inclined to want to wait on that promote. Do you know if spells are restricted to a particular level for a character like they were in SF1? I know that one of the other reasons for waiting for promotion in SF1 is that you could get access to spells that were at levels 13, 15, or 20 as examples for certain characters before promoting, that you'd otherwise have to grind all the way back to from your promotion point to said levels to learn.
Now that you've mentioned retention of current stats for promoting, I feel more inclined to want to wait on that promote. Do you know if spells are restricted to a particular level for a character like they were in SF1? I know that one of the other reasons for waiting for promotion in SF1 is that you could get access to spells that were at levels 13, 15, or 20 as examples for certain characters before promoting, that you'd otherwise have to grind all the way back to from your promotion point to said levels to learn.
@NegFactor: off the top of my head, I think both SF1 and SF2 keep track of when you promote and you learn spells at a 'total' level. So if your character learns a spell at level 25 you could promote at 10 and learn it at level 15, or promote at 15 and learn it at level 10 (I can't be 100% sure of this though, sorry!)
Strangely, the RotDD remake of SF1 handles it worse by always assuming you promoted at level 10 for the purpose of learning spells!
Strangely, the RotDD remake of SF1 handles it worse by always assuming you promoted at level 10 for the purpose of learning spells!
That's funny that you say that about levels and spells in SF1, because the whole reason I waited to promote this last time around is that I was reading about characters like Alef or Pyra who get certain spells at 20 or 13 (I think those are the right ones) having to go all the way from the promoted first level back to that specific level if you didn't go straight there, which was why I was motivated to delay the promotions in the first place (I care more about being denied spells than I do extra stats, so I wanted to see how awesome the major spells were, especially if you delayed your promoting). Anri becomes a nightmare if you delay her long enough, and I loved it. Never seen Dark Dragon get ruined so hard as I did on this last run.
Angel_Arle
1 year ago