So I started playing through Romancing SaGa 3...

[Jasede]

Lute? Suzaku? Which version is this? My Romancing SaGa 3 has these characters to pick:

Julian, a bright, green haired swordsman.
Thomas, a merchant who will soon inherit his father's wealth.
Mikhail, the arrogant but skilled and loyal marquis of Loanne.
Harid, a dark mercenary, and a swordsman without parallel. His weapon of choice is a scimitar known as "Kamsheen."
Sarah, a quiet, shy archer. Ellen's sister. She is also one of the two destined children.
Ellen, an aggressive, powerful axe wielder.
Monica, Mikhail's sister, a regal and dedicated princess.
Katrina, Monica's bodyguard, who feels obliged to hunt and return the Masquerade, a relic of the Holy King.


Different game? New translation?

 

[Damned Registrations]

We were talking about SaGa Frontier, the PSX game.

 

[Jasede]

Oh, my bad! Never played that.
I played a lot of SaGa 3 and remember precisely nothing.

Take that as you will! It must have been entertaining, though. But not memorable.

 

[Genma:TheDestroyer]

First time I ever beat the Earth Dragon down in the Bio Lab was with T260G and an all Mec team. Slap almost anything on them and they become so damn tanky. Congratulations, your IronBall just did all of 25 HP damage. Eat Hyperion Bazooka, bitch!

Stupid giant turtle.

 

[TigerKnee]

Monsters niche are access to LifeRain as a race (only other character is Mesarthim) and they almost never run out of JP since they get a full heal through absorption.

Mystics have serious availability issues depending on who you're playing as IMO. Like, Time Lord is broken, sure, but he's almost a bragging rights rewards considering by the time you complete all the Magic quests to recruit him. The most common Mystic (Silence) is a lamer.

(An irony is that it's much easier to use Mystics in Emelia's quest than Asellus, e.g Zozma's almost unusable in Asellus considering when he joins)

 

[Damned Registrations]

The arcane quest is a lot faster to finish than the rune quest, if you're doing it then Timelord can be picked up pretty quickly. The hardest part is killing Suzaku, but even that isn't so tough if you just prepare for an anti fire/air fight (swallow swing is anti-air and self combos iirc, and it's a very easy to learn sword tech, and ranged so it bypasses the flame barrier). Saber and Grail can be done pretty much without a fight. Gold is pretty trivial too, if you know where stuff is. Other magic quests are non issues pretty much.

Though I'll agree mystics aren't terribly helpful to a new player. And a some characters (notably T260G and Lute) are pretty screwed in regards to accessing them. But Blue, Asseleus, Riki and Emelia can all get very powerful allies.

And Silence is indeed a totally useless shit.

 

[SwiftCrack]

RS3 is pretty highbrow, I'm replaying it now (I never finished it, I got up till the third abyss gate which I think was Air Gate in the way I did things). The translation is okay, but I keep open the RPG Shrine page for it now to ease out some of the kinks. The Red Coral thing is kind of a fluke btw, it only relates to the pirate character (Black?) and not to Nora/the blacksmith shop as far as I remember.

Also the game is getting remade and released with an English translation on Vita, Android and iOS:

http://www.siliconera.com/2017/04/12/romancing-saga-3-finally-getting-western-release/

https://twitter.com/SaGa25kawazu/status/851792210731204613

 

[SCO]

Actually, RS3 snes is getting fan-retranslated too.