Game 4 - Romancing SaGa Part 4

I've been busy this week so I haven't been able to make as much progress as I had hoped. But I did manage to complete a few more quests and I feel like I am moving forward.

My current party is Katarina, Grey, and Shif. I've been trying to outfit them with the best stuff I can find -- generally the best buyable armor and weapons are "Garral", with one additional more powerful type you get by some other means. One really annoying facet of this game is the way money works. 9999 money is the maximum you can hold. The only way to go beyond that is to sell something that puts your money over 9999, and then you'll get a Jewel worth 10,000. I don't understand why they did this at all. It surely is not a technical limitation, but I don't see what they wanted to accomplish by setting that limit. I'm now at the point where the enemies are giving me more money, so I'm usually at 9999 by the time I finish a dungeon.

I did two major quests this time. The first involved curing a sick Emperor. We find out that he can be healed by the Moonstone, but this requires getting several symbols. Annoyingly you need Hawk to start this quest so you have to go around until you find him in a pub. But from there it's smooth sailing. One of the symbols is back at Katarina's forest, where a mystical stag appears:

Mononoke?

Now that we have the symbols we can go to an ancient temple in the jungle. I actually had a tough time with this dungeon. This was my situation when I finished it:

9999 money, of course.

Fortunately the dungeons usually give you exits at the end so you don't have to climb all the way back through the dungeon.

The second quest I started was finding a dragon in the lake to save a maiden. This dungeon took me a couple of attempts. The problem is that most enemies are weak, but every so often a really strong enemy appears. The easiest way to deal with enemies is usually to find some passage where you can't be attacked from the side or back, and deal with the enemies as they come:

Add caption

Initially I had a lot of trouble with this fight:

Wind and fire "fandams"

The enemies can cast spells that hurt all your guys. I had to go back and upgrade my armor; after that they only did 1 a piece. You can also use several weapon techniques that hit multiple enemies -- the second Iron Sword technique hits a whole row, which is useful.

Eventually you reach some guys who are trying to sacrifice a maiden to the dragon. They go down very easily, and then the Dragon sends you on a quest to find a Storm Bracelet to exchange for the maiden (you can fight him, but that probably is not advisable.)

I think I have more time this week so hopefully I can make more progress.