Part 3

A quick morning update for y'all.

The Cygnus heads to Shrike this time, which is a pretty simple town featuring not one, but TWO ancient tombs!

A quick photoshop composite of all the important areas in Shrike. The Street is our destination, but we won't be going there yet. Red needs some training, and we have three good options to choose from here. Normal battles in SaGa Frontier more or less scale to your level, but some areas will spawn slightly tougher enemies, and some will spawn weaker or equal ones. The Bio Research Lab is one of the tougher places, and while it makes for a good late game training area, we'd get killed there right now. Mu's Tomb is primarily used for one of the Magic side quests, so we'll head to Sei's Tomb. It's got better treasure anyway.

Enemies in SaGa are visible on the map (usually), which is what that lil' fairy down there is.

You can eventually recruit up to fifteen people, and thus have three fighting parties (though you'll usually want to stick with the main team). Red is alone right now, though, so it's all up to him.

We gain some WP after the fight. Fighting as Alkaiser is nifty, but we won't gain stats if we transform, hence why I wanted to let Red do some fighting here.

Red sparks StunSlash here, which isn't too useful, but getting new attacks is always good.

A few battles later an enemy drops a SteelAmulet. Only one point of defense seems weak, but...

It boosts our Vitality by 5 as well. Stat boosting items are great in SaGa, due to the somewhat random nature of character growth.

There are three special items hidden in Sei's Tomb, each of which is guarded by a pair of DeadKnights. They're entirely too strong for someone like Red right now, but as Alkaiser, I have a shot. They can still one-shot me, even while transformed though, so much saving was done here.

I get lucky and learn Sparkling Roll, which can kill the DeadKnights in one shot. Things will be slightly easier now.

My prize, the Magatama, isn't too powerful, but...

It does give me access to a new attack in battle. I forget exactly what SacredSong does, I think it's a strong attack that hits all opponents. I didn't have the WP to test it out here (I needed the rest to Sparkling Roll the other Dead Knights), but I'll check it out later.

Red gets DoubleSlash soon after. This is actually one of the most useful sword attacks in the game, for a reason I'll soon mention.

Red picks up WheelSlash against one of the other DeadKnights. Not only is this a pretty strong sword attack, but it gives me something else, too.

Now that I have six physical techniques, Red gets Combat Mastery, as indicated by that little crown up there. As long as I keep six physical techniques equipped (and not any magic ones), all my WP costs are reduced by 1. This is why DoubleSlash is so good: since it costs 1WP normally, I can use it for free now. It's hands-down better than my regular attack, unless I want to try to spark something (the basic attack tends to be the best at getting new techs, but there are exceptions).

Red picks up the Murakumo sword from the second set of DeadKnights, which is a pretty tough weapon.

33 attack power will be enough for the first half or so of Red's quest.

The final DeadKnights yield the Mizukagami shield, which is also immensely useful. Now Red's pretty solidly equipped.

This room is part of the side quest here in Sei's Tomb. We're supposed to put our three new items in those circles, but right now they're too useful to give up (plus we'd get killed in the following boss fight).

With his training done for now, Red heads off to do what he's actually supposed to do.

Which appears to be asking children about the place he just went to.

Suddenly, BlackX shows up. Yes, they're starting to look kinda like Power Rangers.

Red can't change to Alkaiser in public, but we're more than strong enough for these guys now.

BlackX grabs the child after the fight. Surely this is some sort of nefarious scheme?

No, they just don't know how to get inside. BlackX, the interregional criminal syndicate, dependant on children for information. The door's right over there, morons!

Red strikes a heroic pose.

Red performs the required hero-villain banter, and we're off to battle.

We start off this battle in Magisphere, but we're much tougher this time. Plus...

Red manages to learn two more attacks in the fight. HardSlash is a normal sword attack (kinda useless since we have WheelSlash), and KaiserSmash is another Alkaiser tech, and the first one we've gotten that uses swords.

As usual, civilain duty gets in the way of pursuing BlackX, and Red returns to the Cygnus.

I'm going to try to get two more updates in today (there's a specific part I want to get to before the end of the day), so expect more later.

Next time - Red makes some friends, and a hijacking!