Hobo Elf
Arcane
You mentioned that it wasn't fun for you because you didn't enjoy figuring how stuff works, which is what I commented on. I'm not questioning whether or not you can finish the game. Anyone can probably do it, if they just don't give up. I think understanding the mechanics is more like an optional thing you do for fun, especially so you can break the game in NG+ when you are drowning in more jewels. But if you just go with your gut feeling of getting stuff with higher stats and upgrade your weapon skill with jewels you're pretty much set on the path of winning the game. This game is no Romancing SaGa 2 or Scarlet Grace which are more demanding in the combat department.Fists and Bow are pretty much the 2 best weapons IMO. Especially fists when you don't have money for weapons, but saving up enough gold to buy that Kjar Bow and get some +DP modifier on it via crafting makes things go a lot smoother. 3 guys specced fists, 1 person on bow, and the 5th spot was a mage. I turned Barbara into a Mage. I sparked Millionaire on Bow pretty quickly, and that attack with a Kjar bow with a +3 DP mod on it just cleans up trash in a big way. So, it's not that I couldn't beat this game, it's just that the game wasn't fun. Mind blast on a mage is a pretty good AOE as well, so between Millionaire and Mind blast, I had AOEs covered, and my fist guys typically used jackhammer, or a similar mid-tier tech as their standard attacks. I had the fist guys on defensive so they took less damage, and that really helped a lot with damage mitigation. Fists also get a heal+regen, which helps a lot as well, and bow gets a phoenix arrow move that heals. So, all my characters had heals in one form or another. That zapper move on bow, the one that shoots a huge lightning bolt appears to ignore physical defenses, and it seems to combo well with fist techs.If finding out how stuff works is not your cup of tea then yeah that's just the way of it. I wouldn't say the mechanics are any obscurer than in previous SaGa games, but this game does punish experimentation quite a bit with how tight the resource economy is on your first play. You don't really have money and jewels to fuck around with, although this new release does help with the money part due to the fixed scaling rewards that I mentioned a few posts back. You get more good items which means you can sell them off for gold to buy spells and stuff a bit more liberally. Ironically Unlimited SaGa is pretty much just a more streamlined version of Minstrel Song, although with a real turkey of a combat system.
Still, I managed just fine. This was my first time playing Minstrel Song and each hour for the first few hours was a feeling of great joy and satisfaction as I understood what each system and mechanic did and how they come together to create a very elegant and cohesive game. Experience with previous SaGa games helps a bit, though mostly with just having the correct expectations of how things will pretty much go down.
Also from my understanding martial arts techs in Minstrel Song combo well with everything, which means that they can be utilized as a bridge between different weapon types that might not combo so well together.