Update 1: “Are you okay?” “No, but I’ve never been better.”
We’re actually making Mall, our monster, before any of our other heroes - this is because our first character gets a better selection of initial Monster forms than any of our others, and I want to start with a Redbull.
Once Mall is chosen and named, he actually spawns into the first town all alone. We need to visit this fellow (identical to whoever leads our party) to access the Guild, where we can “recruit” our other party members.
And with that, our brave heroes are assembled. Let’s take a look at their stats and loadouts, shall we?
Let’s start with the panel on the left. 40/40 is Paul’s current HP out of maximum HP - pretty straightforward. Paul has 7 Strength, which governs the damage done with Strength-based weapons such as the Hammer he’s currently wielding. He also has 0 Defense, which works exactly like Defense in every RPG ever made, so he’s gonna be absorbing the brunt of most attacks. He has 3 Agility, which is generally considered something of a god stat - it affects priority in battle, accuracy, and damage with Agility-based weapons such as bows and rapiers. The main downside to just putting all your potion money towards Agility boosts is that most of the best weapons in the game are Strength-based. I won’t be hyper-specializing like that. Paul also has 0 Mana, which is almost like the reverse of the Special stat from Pokemon Generation 1 - the higher your mana the more damage you deal and take from magical attacks. Paul won’t be using any magic, so I won’t be increasing this stat at all (though healing magic is also considered “taking damage”, so low Mana means those won’t be too effective - but I’ll be relying on potions for the most part).
On the right panel we see his only weapon, a Hammer. The 50 next to it is its uses - like in Fire Emblem, all weapons have a limited number of uses which cannot be restored, somewhat limiting the effectiveness of grinding. Armor has no such limitation, thankfully, and aside from one-of-a-kind weapons it’s usually not too much to worry about. As I mentioned earlier, the Hammer is strength-based.
You can see a bit of the gender divide here - Blart, as a female character, starts with more Agility and less Strength. As you may have gathered from my stat explanations, this actually puts female characters at a pretty significant advantage in the early game. Because Blart is a Mutant, she only has 20 HP to Paul’s 40. She also starts with 5 Mana, which segues nicely into my explanation of her inventory. She starts with a Rapier, an Agility-based weapon, instead of a Hammer, but more notable are the four - slots. These will eventually be filled with her Mutant abilities, which as I mentioned in the introduction are gained and lost at random. There’s no way to control which slot new abilities will fill into, or what abilities you’ll get (though, in general, fighting more powerful enemies will lead to better abilities).
Next is Mall, and as you may have noticed his stats are bonkers high compared to his allies. This is why I wanted him to be a Redbull - these stats are incredibly good for this point in the game! The main downside, of course, is that his Horn only has 10 uses - and Monsters can’t use any equipment - but as it’s an ability instead of a weapon these will be restored by resting at an inn. (The same also applies to Blart and Cop’s Mutant abilities). The XIce isn’t actually an ability - it simply indicates that Mall is weak to Ice attacks while in this form. If it were OIce instead, that would mean he resists the element. Infuriatingly, both of these things can also be popped by Mutants. Losing an awesome endgame Flare spell in favor of a weakness to Fire or something is the absolute worst, and I guarantee something like that will happen before the end of this LP - likely multiple times, especially since we’re using two Mutants.
On that note, here’s Cop. His stats and inventory are pretty straightforward, but comparing him to Paul and Blart should give you an idea of what’s a gender difference and what’s a racial difference. (Also fucking hell is the male Mutant sprite in this game boring, I much prefer the one in FFL2)
Well the title screen says that this game is all about climbing this tower, so let’s head on in!
Oh.
Well, may as well talk to the townsfolk! No screenshots here, because the way text displays in this game is really weird and hard to screencap.
Guard in front of tower: This tower leads to Paradise.
Slime: There is another town in the southeast.
Male Human: Once you leave town, it’s a savage land.
Guard wandering town: If you want to advance, choose members at the Guild.
Other Slime: If you lose your last heart, you can’t be brought back to life.
This guy is talking about a mechanic I’ll get into later this update.
Well worth screenshotting is this dapper fellow at the Inn. Remember this sprite.
Top Hat Guy: Gen-Bu has hidden the key to the door in the Statue of Hero.
Finally, useful information! Thanks, mysterious top hat man. Now we just need to find that Statue.
As an aside, I really like this town’s map. The way most of the town is on a raised platform around the central tower gives it a really unique look.
Let’s be off! The town here appears simply as the tower on the world map, which is a nice touch. We head to the southwest to the other town one of the townspeople mentioned, but before long…
A battle! These Lizards are pretty much junk opponents, as are most of the other enemies this early in the game. No surprises there, most likely.
Still, even against these weak enemies you can see how much of a liability those 20 hit points can be. Since this was so close to town, it’s actually worth it to go back and visit an inn for this!
This is because inns are actually priced on a per-HP basis! This early, it only costs 1 gold for each lost HP, but as you might imagine that price increases pretty quickly. Inns also fully restore any Mutant and Monster abilities for no additional charge. It’s a nice system.
We continue to fight Lizards and the occasional Albatross on the way to the next town, but eventually I get careless and disaster strikes!
Paul is dead!
Character death is actually a pretty big deal in this game, and I’m kicking myself for having it happen this early. You can revive dead characters with a VERY expensive Revive item, or at a House of Life (I’m guessing a church in the Japanese version) in each town for 100 gold.
Thankfully we have the Gold to cover it, but…
…not the Inn. This should be interesting.
There’s another catch to character death in this game - as you may have seen in the initial screenshot of my full party, every character starts with three Hearts. Every time a character is revived, a Heart is lost, and if a character loses their last Heart they’re gone - permanently. (This will later be refined into SaGa’s iconic LP system starting in Romancing SaGa 2.) You can buy Hearts as consumable items to give a character one back, but…
Yeah, that’s not really an option right now.
(As an aside, I really like the town music in this game - it’s probably Uematsu’s best 8-bit town theme.)
I need to rearrange my party to deal with Paul’s 1 HP until I save up enough for an inn stay, since enemies prefer to target characters higher in the order (just like the original Final Fantasy). I also want Mall to tank a little so Blart and Cop’s 20 HP won’t bite me in the ass, so…
Perfect.
NEXT TIME: Cold-blooded murder and regicide!
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