Open ended gameplay! Engrishy translations! Spiky hair! Let's play SaGa Frontier!

There's probably kemonomimi fanart of them, at the very least. and you know you want to~~~

EDIT:

You rang? :D

Would it count as 'furry' if we drew them as birds?

...huh, you know what, you're right. I never really thought about it, but the guy is pretty much a furry, isn't he?

Hotaful SaGa? I...kinda want that.

Not Sure If Want...?

You know you want!

That first one is so pretty! It reminds me of my disappointment when I realized that Riki was not a girl. In my defense, the only Riki I knew at the time was a girl and I was just getting into anime and had yet to encounter that many bishonen.

To be fair, even for a bishie/shota, Riki is absurdly feminine. Hell, I had to stare at he first picture for a couple of seconds just to figure out if that was Riki or Asellus!

He also seem to have stolen a White Rose.

Headcanon: Riki is actually Asellus in a costume, living out her fantasy of being a monster boy.

Riki is so cute! I want more of him, less of weird horrible Asellus suitors. :D

You think Riki's feminine enough to ship Asellus x Riki? /crack

That
would
be
perfect.

That quote. That avatar.

You're welcome.

Teddy Phoenix: For all your wtf needs.

You know what's the tragic thing? Asellus is one of the very few characters who can't recruit Riki.

But holy shit, I would actually be totally down for Ase/Riki Pixiv searching powers, activate!

And that tells me is the game doesn't state they CAN'T fall in love.

Get your pencils, fanfic writers! xD

So after our daring escape, we land on the beautiful port town of Owmi!



Glorious 90s CG rendering!



Walking around the streets, Asellus spots flower petals bearing a messages of sidequesting.

Look at these flower petals on the river.

They’re forming letters.

Can you read it?

…water mystics are looking for their missing daughter.

Water mystics?

Mermaids, basically.

Those are mystics that live in bodies of water, like rivers, lakes or the ocean. They’re very timid, you can rarely see them. Some must be living in this lake.

A lost one. Just like me.

Yeah, Asellus, we get it. You're mopey.



Anyway, we do the sensible RPG thing and head to the nearest food and beverage joint to listen to townspeople gossip that will invariably point us towards our next quest!




As unimportant as the above seems, I'd like you guys to remember this character. I'll explain why later.



Oh ho! Could this be the missing daughter? You betcha!

Also, I'm not sure why she's referring to this guy as "Our Master." From what I can gather, he's just a local rich dude.



Alright, so we know some local bigshot has kidnapped a mystic and is holding her against her will. If it wasn't for the fact that this place is completely bereft of roses, I would have assumed it was Orlouge.





To be fair, it would be really cool to have mermaids living in the local lake.

Anyway, now that we know that someone in town is holding a mystic captive, we'll have to do the noble thing and save this damsel in distress and add her to Asellus's growing harem!

But first, remember that seemingly unimportant NPC I asked you guys to remember? You know, this one:



This is Captain Hamilton. One of my favourite things about this game is the fact that some major characters in some stories are also completely unimportant NPCs in others. Cpt. Hamilton for instance is the primary driver of Lute's story. However, in Asellus's tale, all she's nothing but a random townsperson who loves the food in Owmi.

But there's another reason why I wanted to talk about the good Captain, and that is the fact that I absolutely love her. Cpt.Hamilton is easily one of the best female characters I've seen in any game, period. Not only is she a strong woman in a leadership position whose authority is unquestioned, but her character design is perfect:



Just look at her! Strong and powerful women aren't all that rare in games anymore, but how many of them actually look it? Cpt. Hamilton's design is not compromised in the slightest to make her look slim or attractive or to otherwise pander to the audience. She is big and tough and would fuck up anyone in a fight!

I cannot emphasize how much I love Hamilton. She is the sole saving grace of Lute's campaign, and it's a damn tragedy Asellus can't recruit her.

Okay, now you HAVE to play Dragon Age II one day. I wouldn't say Aveline is Hamilton, but they sound like they're the same basic character type, and it's a type I find absolutely amazing.

Now I wish I'd voted for Lute....

Hopefully I'll get to soon. One of my friends has the PS3 version of both DAO and DA2, so I'm going to try borrow those off him next time he's in the country =D

Don't! Hamilton is literally the only good thing about Lute's quest! I mean, Lute is pretty cool as well, but literally everyone in the game can recruit him. So aside from Hamilton, there is nothing in his quest that is unique to him, not even himself!

Hamilton looks awesome. She totally hits the "I want to be her when I grow up!" parts of my brain, even though I'm...uh...not very military. That expression! That pose! That ability to pull off a little half-cape!

*swoons*

I realize Joie actually hit what makes Aveline great in the middle of my old thread so I went digging:

Why, why, why can't they use the archetype more often, why?

Take down the breasts and slight jowliness a bit, add glasses and long reddish brown hair, maybe a French flag sewn on her back, and that's roughly how I imagine my Landis in XCOM. Right down to a similar outfit, except her coat woudl lack a cape and be open to reveal pockets and overalls.

This is...an awesome and bizarre game, and I feel the urge to have it. I wonder if the PSN has gotten around to remaking it for PS3 or Vita? They've done that with a good number of weird, old JRPGs...

Unfortunately, characters like that tend not to be particularly popular with most gamers. Hell, just look at what Bioware did to Ashley in Mass Effect 3 (granted, Ash was never a great character, but did they really have to turn her into a supermodel??)

I have to admit, I literally laughed out loud at that XD

It was released on the Japanese PSN back in 2008. Unfortunately, due to the game's poor sales and reception in the West, it so far hasn't seen a release anywhere outside of Japan. Even the Asian PSN store, which gets a lot of Japanese games, doesn't have SaGa Frontier.

The only way most of us can play it these days is via emulator. For what it's worth, the game hasn't seen an English rerelease in like a decade, so I think most of us could download the rom with a pretty clean conscience :)
---
Anyway, did I hear someone say "fanart"? No? Well, too bad! You're getting some anyway!

It's cannon now. I used her in another continuity RP and the flags are still in her clothes. It endeared her to another French character.

Robot and cute blonde is particularly saccharine. The robot's real purpose is to be an WMD, right? It's got to be. Nothing that cute with 'conveiniantly lost memory' is anything less than tragic.

You do not know how pleased I am to know that XCOM managed to contribute even a little bit to Landis's canon =D Also, that RP sounds awesome! Link?

Bam!

So we know the Lord of Owmi is holding a water mystic, likely against her will. Well, time to go knock on Human-Orlouge's door!



How much do you wanna bet there's a dungeon in there, somewhere?



The Lord greeting us personally. For such a big house, it's weird to not see any butlers or maids...Oh god, they're probably all in coffins.



Yes and…?

The other water mystics are looking for her.

You must let her go.

!! I-Is what you just said true?

Really!? I thought women enjoyed being kidnapped!

Yes.

What should I do? I know she’d be better off in the lake. But I…I…

All things given, this guy is significantly less dickish than most the men Asellus has dealt with so far. Kidnapping a mystic and holding her against her will notwithstanding.

Calm down.

Let us speak to the mystic.

…all right. Follow me.



Following the Lord to his secret chambers...



This is the room. But she won’t talk to you. She hasn’t spoken a word since the first day she got here.

Gee, I wonder why!?

Please, we need to talk to her in private.

But…I guess it’s alright.



Seriously. What is it with the men of SaGa Frontier and keeping women in containers?

I'm starting to think that some sort of educational reform a few decades (centuries?) back went and convinced all the aristocratic male mystics in their childhood that keeping women in coffins was the Proper Gentlemanly Behavior expected of them, and Asellus is here to try to correct the results. It's like New Math all over again! But with kidnapping and imprisonment.

In this case, it's a male human who's holding a female mystic captive. For unclear reasons.

It looks to me that apparently he found her injured? So, he's probably think he's doing what every child thinks about doing whenever they see an injured baby ANYTHING; take it home and try to raise it back to health. Not sure if if that's better, but...

Right, which is what I was thinking as well. Except some accounts of the story keep differing on semantics, and he's acting furtive. The story you described wouldn't leave him with any reason to act like a child with his hands in the cookie jar, logically. And if she's in good health, why hasn't he re-released her, exactly? It's a person, not canary. Something's really weird here, and I'm looking forward to seeing what she says about what's happening.

Luuuuuuuute, come here and let me hug you! <3

Yay!

Oooooo is that mermaid who I think it is?

Edit: Whoops, missed a bunch of text there. Should be fixed now. :)

...oh.

Really...wide-spread educational reforms?

Anyway, I've got to go to work shortly, so there isn't enough time for an update this morning. So have some fanart instead:

I think that's the first time in ages where I've seen anyone called Rouge and actually been sure it wasn't a misspelling of Rogue. Color names ftw.

It actually makes for a sort of amusing scene where Blue refuses to join Red's party because Red's name reminds him of his brother =P

---

Anyway, back to the LP! So what's the story with this Mystic? Is the Lord just nursing her back to health, or are more insidious things afoot!? Let's find out!



Please ignore the dialogue above, I only remembered to screencap this when I was already halfway through the conversation >_<

The smell of a noble mystic…but you’re human. Did I offend you?

No, you’re right. I’m half human and half mystic.

May I ask your name, noble one?

Asellus.

Lady Asellus…sounds classy…

<3



Lord of all mystics, Orlouge!? Please forgive my insolence!

Orlouge's dickishness is known far and wide.

Why are you so scared?

I’d perish if I ever offended Lord Orlouge.

Fun Mystic fact! Mystics are a highly caste centric society, and our new mermaid friend is a lower class Mystic, who are kinda seen as pariahs by the higher class Mystics. I'll explain Mystic society in more detail in another post.

Don’t worry. I’m not him. We’re just here to help you.

My name is Mersarthim. I lived in the lake with my family. But, I was caught in a fisherman’s net.

You should be grateful. The master of this house saved your life.

Oh god, White Rose. No.

I know he’s been good to me. But I can’t stand the stench of humans. I can’t breathe…I want to go home.

Mersarthim seems to have a weird thing for sniffing people.

Let’s go! You don’t have to stay anywhere you don’t want to.

Woo! Asellus!

But he loves this water mys-

Christ. Guys, I'll leave it to you to make Princess Stockholm jokes. I can't even be bothered anymore.

No one should be forced to do something they don’t want to.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay

But he wouldn’t even let me out of the house.

There must be a way out.



I'm not even sure how they got her out of that aquarium (it's like three times Asellus's height!), she just kinda disappeared. I like to think Asellus put her in her pocket.

Anyway, now that we've got a new party member, it's official art time!



Unfortunately, I couldn't find a clearer picture of Mersarthim. For some reason, it's really hard to find high quality versions of her official pic.

Isn't the aquarium also empty? Wouldn't that be really bad?

No one ever said the Lord of Owmi was particularly knowledgeable on the care of mermaids. Or fish in general, apparently =P

I am now going to be imagining that Mersarthim is in a pokeball any time she's not given a sprite of her own on the screen.