it's an open world game, it's all about exploration. You can use the map to fast travel to any place you already unlocked on the map. Talk to people, every one of them, it's one of the main ways of unlocking new cities and dungeons, if you finished a couple of events/quests, go back and talk to them again. Seriously talk to everyone and anyone, especially if you don't know what to do. Sleeping at the Inn sometimes advances events or quests, sometimes it's really obvious, and sometimes it's subtle, but still you can tell. Save every time you finish something, or before finishing something, seriously just save before you make any choice. Speaking of choices, unlike most JRPGs, 99% of choices here actually do matter, they could range from having a character join you, to changing what quests/items/cities/dungeons/ect.. you get access to. Save a lot damn it!, there is a reason the game let's save anywhere and anytime with multiple slots and pages. When you have the party menu open, at the bottom left there will tool tip telling what button to press to open the "Adventure log". This thing is very important, not only does it record everything that happened in the game story wise, but it also remembers all the rumors and quests you heard about, and also will show you what area they were in. A lot of quests have more than one conclusion. If a quest or boss is too hard at the moment, you can always leave it till later, there is nothing that forces you to finish everything the moment you get it. ## Battles First thing's first, don't worry about "battling too much and screwing yourself", Unlike some SaGa games, the number of battles (Battle Rank for SaGa fans) you do here doesn't affect anything important, at best it would increase the strength of the normal mobs, but nothing that will make the game too hard. Also bosses are fixed, and aren't affected either by battle numbers. SaGa games don't have dedicated healer characters, everyone can heal, and there are no Heal ALL type of items or spells/skills. Tough fights in this game are won by good preparations and not by tanking and spanking like most JRPGs. Speaking of Tough fights, there is a reason you can save anywhere in this game, and why you can fast reset the game inside and outside of battle. That's because most boss fights are expected to destroy you. That's why you can even run away from most boss battles, or you can also reload after you get wrecked. So you can get the chance to change your gear/formations/skills/spells/items in order to beat those fights. There is no dedicated "Revive item/spell", any item/skill/spell that can heal a character will revive them if they go down in battle, as long as their LP doesn't reach 0. There is a special mode called Commander Mode, you can activate this mode if you have 6 characters, and you put your main character at the back, as in take him outside of the main 5 battle party, this way let's you access combos skills, fusion spells, ect..., it's an easy way to grind and just end battles faster. You still can access Commander Mode with 5/4/3/2 party members, all you have to do is press right in the formation screen, but only by having all 6 will you get the access to fusion spells and multi-techs. Running away from a battle is 100%, which is even true for most boss fights. ## Party & Characters In this game, **characters don't level up or get stats after battles, so whatever stats they have at the start, that's what they have at the end of the game**. the only thing that does go up through battles, are HP/SP/MP. Meaning the only way to upgrade your party power are through the following: 1. **Finding better gear**. 2. **Getting new formations**. 3. **Learning new spells/Skills**. 4. **Getting new characters and kicking others** - **The main character you choose at the start of the game matters**, depending on who you choose, you'll get different quests/characters/events/choices and so on. - **Don't settle on the first characters you get at the start**, you can do that if you want to, but just know that there are **More than 20+ characters** in this game that can join your party. - **You have 6 character slots in your party**, 5 are of course for the characters that will be in battles, and an extra slot for recruiting characters. Meaning that if all slots are full, and you meet a character that can join your party, he/she/it won't even give you the choice to join or start their quest until you free at least one slot. - **Swapping characters is done through the Formation screen after you choose a formation**, so if you want to swap a character, make sure you choose a formation, and then you'll get a choice of where to place characters, which then you can swap them as you like. - While you can make a character learn anything you want, **Each character has certain weapons and Spell categories that they are best at**, as in they will learn skills or advance faster in those ones, and you can easily tell what they are by checking the equipment they come with and their skill/spell levels. - **There is an annoying little kid that forces her self into your party and won't leave even if you ask the bar tender to kick her out, so if you want to get rid of her, just go to the town called Ryblov**. I really thought hard about not including this tip, but that kid is so annoying, that it could ruin the early game for some. ## Skills/Spells/Items/Gear/Formations ~ - Like any SaGa game, skills are learnt by Sparking them in battle. You can check the Skill Box for each character in the party menu under skills. **Skills in black are Mastered**, meaning they are stored in the skill list for the party, and you can forget and learn them again at anytime to any character you want. **Skills in red are not yet Mastered**. Meaning if you forget them then they will be gone, until one of your characters sparks them again. - **Skills are mastered when you keep using them**. - **You can't learn more skills if the character's skill box is full**, that's why you can forget skills in the box, to make room for new ones, just make sure the skills you forget are mastered, in case you want them back later, or that you don't really care about them if they are not mastered. - For new people to the SaGa series, using the normal "Attack" is the easiest way to spark (learn) new weapon moves (skills). - **Just because a Skill/Spell doesn't deal damage, doesn't mean it's useless**, make sure to read what the skill/spell does, because even most bosses will get stunned/blinded/confused/ect..., not to mention skills/spells that ward against certain things, or counter them. it doesn't mean every boss will be affected by them, as some bosses are immune to some, but for most bosses they do work. - **Gear in this game is very important**, it can literally mean the difference between a boss or even a normal fight destroying your whole party, or winning the battle with losing 1 HP. - It's better to not buy anything before opening up as much of the world as you can, because **each city will sell different items/weapons/spells/armors/ect..**, so don't waste any money before making sure you are getting the best upgrade you can. - **A lot of Gear has hidden effects**, so always keep an eye one your character's stats after changing your gear. - **Don't try to grind money through battles**, you'll get nowhere, most if not all of your money will come from finishing quests and chests, the amount of money battles give you isn't even worth mentioning. - **Weight slows characters down**, so the more weight the character has the slower he/she/it is, but if a character is slow to begin with... - **Formations are really important** (see the point about items). while you start with a few, you can get more by having characters you join you. The game won't tell you that you learned a new formation, but you can check to make sure. - You can hold 8 pages worth of items in your inventory, which is a lot really, but just in case, in some cities there is a warehouse manager that can store any extra items. In addition to managing your saves (I use Page 1 for "safe" saves in town, and pages 2/3/4 for field saves), the Auto Save function is very good. It is never the save that gets the arrow on it by default when you reload, though. If a character never gets Magic, they'll eventually get a -1 discount on Physical Skill costs, so there's an incentive to have ~2 of your people focus on Physical. There are 6 main schools of Magic. Each character can have one of the Celestial schools (Lunar or Solar), and one of the Elemental/Animal schools (Turtle, Dragon, Cat, and one other). It can be hard to remember what is what, but giving several people healing magic that costs 1 MP is fantastic, because healing dead characters revives them in SaGa. There is no separate revival magic, and HP is always restored to max after battle unless they're Dead Dead (LP is down to 0). Staying at an Inn restores LP to full, but if they go to 0 they are permanently dead (with some slight exceptions).