History VideoGame / SaGaFrontier2

** In Wil's first scenario, inside the Ruins of Hahn, you can fight Land Urchins. Compared to other monsters in the area, they are not too strong nor too weak, and you can easily spark good weapon arts against them. You can also fight them in a duel for an easier time unlocking arts and spells.

* PeninsulaOfPowerLeveling: Weissland. Your party can easily train against decently leveled monsters, there is an inn nearby, access to common tools, and you can choose to fight the Megalith Beast whenever you want in order to try to spark new weapon arts. Once you have access to Ginny's party, a quick trip to Weissland is highly recommended to level-up everyone before going after the final boss.

* BlackMage: Some characters with high anima mastery (and often no weapon mastery) can be considered as such. This is the case of Narcisse (an experienced adventurer who even comes with the "Mage" battle style), Eleanor (who comes with an insanely high Fire anima mastery and the Fire Storm spell) and Roberto (who is the master of every anima except for stone). Once he reaches his eighties, Wil Knights, should you use him, will have little choice but to be played as a mage, as his old age prevents him from regenerating his weapon points easily. Overall, Wil is best played as a mage, joining with several anima types already leveled and only being proeficient with staves.

* BlackMage: Some characters with high anima mastery (and often no weapon mastery) can be considered as such. This is the case of Narcisse (an experienced adventurer who even comes with the "Mage" battle style), Eleanor (who comes with an insanely high Fire anima mastery and the Fire Storm spell) and Roberto (who is the master of every anima except for stone).

** Also, [[spoiler:Johan the Assassin's]] last stand. He plants himself in front of the room [[spoiler:Gustave]] is in and singlehandedly holds off an entire army, racking up a kill count in the hundreds before succumbing to the deadly poison he was infected with.

** It's almost impossible to unlock the Hybrid Arts without a guide, since it requires you to use both weapon and spell commands in the right order in a duel: it's the only way to unlock them, and players won't mix up these commands in duels, since they will prefer to use the right combinations of commands in order to unleash Arts, and absolutly no Arts beside the Hybrid ones require the player to mix both Weapon and Spell commands. Heck, you could do the entire game without ever knowing that they exist, if not for the "Tornado Blade" Art, gifted to you by Johan (which, ironically, is the ''only'' Hybrid Art which you can't unlock or use in duels).

* LamarckWasRight: Ginny inherited her grandfather's mastery of the wand and of the tree, water, rock and flame anima and her father's mastery of the sword. And she must thanks her mother for her impressiving Weapon Points regeneration of 4 (by the way, [[GameBreaker her mother had a regeneration of 5]]).

* FinalDeath: Happens when a character runs out of Life Points (though said points will recover if you manage to win the battle).

** [[spoiler:Will Knights is playable again once he reachs his 80th. Sure, he will lose a tons of [=HP=], but will keep his levels of mastery in weapons and anima, thus allowing him to not be completly overshadowed by the others party members, depending of how much you trained him of course.]]

* SinisterScimitar: Rich Knight's starting weapon is a Fossil Sword, whose in-game sprite is a scimitar. [[https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/romancingsaga/images/d/df/Rich_Knights.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20100825122858 Official artwork]] depicts him with one too.

* GameBreaker:
** Gustave's steel items have insane levels of both physical and magical defense (with the downside of never being able to cast magic when you're equipped with it, but you hardly need to) and can do more damage than anything else; having steel troops in a battle pretty much guarantees victory. (It's also an InUniverse game breaker, as Gustave's use of steel gives him dominance over the other kingdoms.)
** Some characters are very limited when it comes to weapon skills, since if they don't have an high enough Weapon Skill Regeneration (something which can't be enhanced in any way), they will quickly end up unable to perform more moves without [[CastFromHitPoints sacrifying Life Points]] (something which can lead to their death - and by death, we don't mean exhaustion which can be cured with a resurrection spell). Hence, characters with a high Weapon Skill Regeneration's score are the best weapon users, and are essential in a team, since weapon arts will outclass anima arts more often than not (unless you level-grind your animas masteries like crazy, or you use the [[GuideDangIt hidden Hybrid Arts]]), and are quite easy to combo with. Also, Weapon Skill Regeneration is closely tied to one's character age: the younger they are, the better their regeneration is. That's why characters like Gustave and Ginny are that powerful: they can deal damage like crazy and never get tired. And then, you have Diana, with a wooping regeneration score of 5 (the one and only character to possess such an high score), making her virtually the best fighter in the game. Too bad she's only usable in one occasion...
** Equipment adds SP. After battles, if your SP fell below the total sum of SP added by your equipment, then your SP returns to that value. Hybrid Arts are powerful, allow you to also train anima levels, and work off of SP instead of WP. Use of Hybrid Arts in dungeons makes warriors stronger ''and'' lets them save WP for bosses. And since spells grow stronger as current SP decreases, mages can and should use their absolute biggest spell in every random battle.

* PlayingWithFire: Every character (except Gustave) can use fire anima, but some of them stand out, thanks to their high fire affinity and spells they join with. Such characters are Narcisse and Eleanor. Eleanor stands out the most, thanks to her ''very'' high fire affinity (20, which is, by the game standarts, an insanely high score).

* BagOfSharing: An NPC in Wil's hometown will allow you to switch inventories between teams, even ones who's never met and are separated by decades. You can also shared learned abilities across teams (and this is how you pick up one that would otherwise be LostForever).

* OdaNobunaga: Gustave is basically a fantasy version of him with a much more tragic backstory. His life hits upon many of the same major beats as Nobunaga's.

* MarathonBoss: [[spoiler:The Egg]], full stop. See the entry about it under the trope page for more details.

* DieForOurShip:
** Oddly, an OfficialCouple can fall victim to a form of this ''[[InUniverse in-game]]'': [[spoiler: if Wil sends Cordelia to complete the 'Inflitrate! Alexei Gang' scenario, she winds up KilledOffForReal, and Wil ends up with Labelle instead.]] [[invoked]] AllThereInTheManual has this option as canon; the family trees in the Perfect Works book have Wil married to [[spoiler:Labelle/Lavelle]]. WordOfGod mentioned that [[spoiler:Labelle]] was originally intended to be Wil's canonical wife, but because she was given too little development throughout the game it was deemed unacceptable.

* ArtifactOfDoom: The Egg, which is equal parts this, SealedEvilInACan, and EldritchAbomination.

* {{BFS}}: Gustave's Sword, both in story and gameplay. A blacksmith considered the ''idea'' of such a weapon simply monstrous, and gameplay wise, it's one of the most powerful weapons in the game. Unfortunately, only Gustave and Gustaf get to use it.

* DeadGuyJunior: Given that Gustave was born of nobility, he's the thirteenth of his line, and a few other characters share his name.
** To clarify: [[spoiler:Gustave XIV was his younger half-brother and died without children. Gustaf is the son of Philippe III, who is the son of Kelvin and ''Marie'', after the latter divorced Cantal.]]

* DieForOurShip: Oddly, an OfficialCouple can fall victim to a form of this ''[[InUniverse in-game]]'': [[spoiler: if Wil sends Cordelia to complete the 'Inflitrate! Alexei Gang' scenario, she winds up KilledOffForReal, and Wil ends up with Labelle instead.]] [[invoked]]
** AllThereInTheManual has this option as canon; the family trees in the Perfect Works book have Wil married to [[spoiler:Labelle/Lavelle]]
*** Actually, the official word on this is that [[spoiler: Labelle]] was originally intended to be Wil's canonical wife, but because she was given too little development throughout the game it was deemed unacceptable.

* GameplayAndStorySegregation: Johan tells Gustave that "even in my weakened condition, I can still fight far better than you!" and Gustave agrees to leave the fight in his hands. Wait, what? Is he talking to [[AuthorityEqualsAsskicking the same Gustave?]] The most formidable user of Weapon Arts in the entire world? The king [[spoiler: who goes monster-hunting in the middle of a pirate-ridden ViceCity]] because he's ''bored''?
** Well, technically Johan is actually telling that to one of the others who is only really good at spell arts, it's just that Gustave decides to let him handle it anyway. Though it is rather annoying that we have to play as Johan, especially since he has low stats unless you play the scenario entitled 'Johan the Assassin' and visit several towns and do some grinding.
*** Johan IS dying, to be absolutely fair. In spite of that he does only a bit less damage than Gustave and far, far more than Ventarbre. What screws him over is low durability, but again, DYING. It'd be odd if he had awesome durability like Gustave given how he wears light armor AND is dead on his feet.
** Also, the fact that Gustave isn't allowed to take the field in this battle, because it's quite likely that a player-controlled Gustave would be able to wipe out an endless line of monsters singlehandedly [[spoiler: and he has to die to kick off the rest of the plot]].

* GrayAndGreyMorality: The wars between the aristocrats are fought for perfectly good political reasons.
** TheGoodTheBadAndTheEvil: [[spoiler: The Egg is an EldritchAbomination ArtifactOfDoom. When it gets involved in the wars, the other nobles form a worldwide alliance to defeat the Fake Gustave's army.]]

* InfinityMinusOneSword: Gustave's sword. Gustaf inherits Gustave's sword and Firebrand, an ''another'' InfinityMinusOneSword (though this sword is less powerful than Gustave's sword, so Firebrand is in fact utterly useless to Gustaf, except for providing Fire Anima and balancing the negative effects of having a steel weapon equiped, since Firebrand remains a very powerful Quell, the only weapon actually to provide a bonus of +2 to SP Regen, which cancels the -2 SP Regen Malus of Gustave's sword). Actually, with his two weapons slots occupied, Gustaf can't equip the InfinityPlusOneSword of the game, or any other weapons for that matter, which prevents him, an already powerful character in his own right, to achieve a GameBreaker status.
** Not necessarily, as Gustaf is still an insanely powerful character and can still be trained to be an absolute beast of Sword Arts and certain Anima Arts.

* MagicKnight: Most fighters are trained in using both Spell Arts and Weapon Arts, to a greater or lesser extent. The biggest exceptions are steel warriors, who go all-in on Weapon Arts (and completely overmatch magic users).
** Gustaf is pretty much guaranteed to be this, as the wielder of both Firebrand (the ultimate Fire Quell) and Gustave's Sword (the most powerful steel weapon). He also can use all 6 types or anima with ease (something only a few others characters could achieve: Rich Knights, Cielmer, Ventarbre and Johan).

* YouShallNotPass: The hardest battle in the game is surviving for eight turns against steel troops with an army full of RedShirts. (In Wil's scenario, you find out that Gustaf eventually showed up to [[BigDamnHeroes reinforce your side]], but you never get to use him as a unit in that particular battle.)

** Also, [[spoiler: Johan the Assassin's]] last stand. He plants himself in front of the room [[spoiler: Gustave]] is in and singlehandedly holds off an entire army, racking up a kill count in the hundreds before succumbing to the deadly poison he was infected with.

* AnAxeToGrind: Few are the characters to actually wield with efficiency this weapon. Among them are Tyler (generation 1), Patrick (generation 1 and 2), Primiera and Meythia (both generation 3).

* BadassFamily: The Knight family definitely deserves a mention, as they span three generations worth of adventurers and heroes.