Save-a-holics Anonymous
 

Dear friends, my name is Spatula and I am a self confessed save-a-holic, especially when it comes to RPGs of any sort. For even the most minute of actions, such as curing my party just after I saved, I will save again.

I'm the type that if I'm at the long end of a tunnel or dungeon, and I'm afraid of what comes up at the next screen, I will run ALL the way back to the beginning JUST to save my game, even if it means I'm fighting the same battles again, twice in fact (running from point B to point A - Save, then from point A to point B), then RUN ALL the way back to where I'm supposed to continue onto the next screen.

I'm pretty sure if friends would see me play, they'd be going "OMG you just saved 30 seconds ago, and you're saving AGAIN?!".

Now I can see why I'm taking forever on FFXII, where most save crystals are far and few. You think FFXII is bad? With Vagrant Story I think I went over a few places more than 6 times just to get back to that save spot, making very very little progress as I go along.

Who's with me as being a save-a-holic? FESS UP!

I guess my problem isn't so anonymous anymore now, is it.

Dragon Warrior was my first RPG, and to save, you had to go all the way back to the first castle and talk to the king. Many times, I would lose an hour of level grinding or money saving to death. So, when RPGs allowed me to save anywhere, or even fairly often, I took advantage of it all the time. When I played Final Fantasy VII, I would save on the world map after every single battle. It definitely drives up my time in RPGs, along with my desire to level everyone up evenly.

*begins to pipe up about FF VIII, then sees he was specifically told to shut up... so closes his mouth and walks out*

I save every chance I get. Especially in FFXII. I would've died if I'd been leveling or doing whatever for 2+ hours and then lost all that time because I forgot to save and got killed by whatever.

Oh, haha, I am in the same boat you are. If I save, and then suddenly remembered I hadn't cured my party or equipped a character with a better weapon, etc, I make the changes and SAVE AGAIN :D

I save every chance I get. It's better to be safe and sorry. Even tiny things I do, I feel compelled to save. When playing FFXII, I'm trying hard to remember whar I have to do before saving. When I get to a save point, I suddenly remember to pause in front of the crystal and think to myself whether I did everything already, but sometimes I forget and have to save again.

I thought I was the only one who'd take the time to go all the way back to a save point in a dungeon too.

Don't worry Deni, it wasn't specifically pointed just at one person. There are more people on GFF with major hate boners against VIII, so thanks for keeping your cool :)

Freelance. If you think that's bad, even when I spend like 50 LP on some shit, I STILL save, if I'm nearby one.

I need help, in more ways than one.

In SRPG games, I am a real save-a-holic. I tend to save my game after every change of equipment, or any other alterations to my party, so that if I lose the battle, I won't have to do it again. I tend to save after each battle, and often even just after I've bought something cool. Or just before I buy something cool, just in case I made a mistake.

Yeah... the description I'm giving makes it sound OK, but really it is a compulsion, and a bad one.

Hi everybody, I'm Sousuke, and... I'm a save-a-holic.

Actually, not so much lately. It started with FFXII. I just... didn't save often. I don't know why, but... I realized it was a bad idea when I started wandering into areas that were way too strong for me. XD

Now, I'm playing through Twilight Princess, and it seems I only save when the game prompts [at the end of a dungeon] or when I'm shutting down the system. Zelda's better for stuff like that though--if you die, you just go back to the beginning of the dungeon/area you're currently in.

I was a victim of not being a save-a-holic recently... I was wandering the Estersand with Vaan solo in the beginning of FFXII, chaining wolves to get a bit of leveling in before anyone joined permanently. Nearing the riverside, I spotted a rare named creature tromping around... So, me being smart and all, attempted to fight it. Oh yeah, I'm not that far leveled yet. Oh yeah, I don't have a full party. Oh yeah, I just got eaten in two bites. Also the number of hours of progress I lost! ...So now, save-a-holic am I. Hello.

That is what I fear most, Cobalt Katze. I was spending close to 1 hour leveling up in FFX, just walking around.

Fucking Great Malboro. psssssshhhhhhhffffffffttttttttt BRAGGHHH!!

I save when necessary. That's all I can say ;P

If I cross one I definently save but I never back track or go out of my way to save unless I know I'm going out of my comfort zone ;D

When I don't think I am very powerful and could risk losing I save a lot more often. I also save a lot when I am leveling up. Last thing I need is to fight 25 or 30 battles and then die because I wasn't paying attention this one time. So, I save about every 3 or 4 battles when leveling up. Better to be safe than sorry.

I always save when a save block shows up as well, unless that game has a save anytime feature which in that case, I save before and after every boss battle.

I'm the exact same way, somtimes I'll even save multiple times, just in case. I always thought I was the only one >_>

Hi Spatula! Glad to know I'm not the only one.
Going back to the nearest save (despite them being far) all the time, saving right after a party member says anything, saving right after healing, saving all over the worldmap... you name it!

and...

Hahaha! I've had that pointed out to me before .__.
I wasn't quite conscious of it until that happened.

Of course, just like the KnightofNee, I began with Dragon Quest. Being able to save anywhere made me jump in joy! And I became quite obsessive and abusive with it and after all these years I remain uncured. Nuu.

I have to lose even 30 seconds of playtime, so I would rather save than risk losing grinding work or progress in an RPG. The same time, I manage as many multiple save points as I can so that I can go back to a "safe spot" and not get stuck in a dungeon. It's the worst, getting stuck where your only saves are inside some dungeon, and then you accidentally save when you're low on health right before a boss fight and there's no way to get out of the dungeon to get more health and no way to beat the boss.

I think all RPG's should have a last-ditch town warp sort of spell or something just to solve this. Of course, because I want to get everything on the first run through now I just use FAQ's, so I don't worry so much about save spots anymore.

I only saved ALOT in FFX. That behemot king and his stupid meteor. >.>

Except for that game, I only save when I see a save point (AKA before bosses) or after a few hours of XP grinding. I rarely backtrack just to get to a save.

Jesus Christ, sign me up as Save-a-holic. Especially in FFXII, as others mentioned. This game is horrible with its surprises. You could be exploring/grinding in the Westersand and waltz right into a fight with a boss monster (even though the map name should be enough to warn you).

It happened a few too many times early on, so now I save after nearly every action. Bought some licenses? Save. Equipment? Save. Ride the Chocobo 4-5 maps? Save.

I've had friends over who say the very same thing Spatula posted:

Not much of a Save-a-holic but damn, one time I saved 5 times on a final boss JUST TO MAKE SURE THE FILE WON'T ERASE.

Then it went kaput. Got so pissed off.

I guess I'm a save-a-holic as well - I've even went so far as to save multiple copies of various places (especially Disgaea 2) just incase I find/end up somewhere I wasn't expecting. The Item World is notorious for that. >:[

This thread also reminds me of two other instances. One was where I had been playing Grandia II for about four hours straight, and got hit with a power outage (never recovered from that one, SO MUCH ITEMS) and the other was when I had to play Zone of the Enders without a memory card. D:

I'm def not one, i love to face a boss without saving..i'm like "daamn i didn't save,this is!" But yeah saving at FFXII was useless as i've neve had a gameover at any boss :s..weak ass endboss

I save ALOT. Especially now that I'm playing FFXII: "Oh I changed a gambit! Time to hit the save point!".

Especially that one particular save point...

I do tend to save a lot in RPG's, but not half as much as some of you guys. I generally save after getting new equipment, and after having gone up a few levels. But I never go too far out my way to find a save point if I have to save, I just continue until I find the next save point.
That is, unless I know that a boss fight or a particularly difficult fight is coming up then I will go and save, even if it means trudging back through a cave or dungeon.

A couple of bad experiences have contributed to why I am a save-a-holic, despite it being more for my own personal peace of mind:

Exhibit 1: I remember this clear as day, playing FFVIII. Yay! I'm running around Obel Lake! Let's do this silly rock skipping thingie. Oh man, let's fight some monsters, the rock isn't skipping many times yet and it's been a while. BOOM!
Blackout! RL circumstances made me lose my efforts.

Exhibit 2: Oh my frickin' goodness Radiata Stories! The first time you go the Dwarf Valley, you have to enter a certain place at a certain time, otherwise everyone's sleeping. The time passes by 1 minute RL = 1 hour in-game. Oh man! I entered the town, am SEALED in by the gate, NO inn to advance time or recover (I talked to the inn owner over and over, but he wouldn't let me sleep!), and I have to wait in the neighbourhood of 23 minutes RL time, because I missed the entrance time. Ok let's go into this cave within the valley, I might as well level up. I go deeper and deeper and deeper, and then I die at the teeth of rabid packs of mice that attack you so many times, that you're stunlocked. The wide spacing between save points in RS only adds to the frustration.

Exhibit 3: After hours of powerlevelling I turn Disgaea: Hour of Darkness off. I am mortified when I reload to see that I hadn't remembered to save at all anytime during that period of power levelling.

Exhibit 4: Final Fantasy Tactics save, Deep Dark Dungeon (?) cleared, Zodiac obtained, all unique characters retained. One day I try to load.... NON-EXISTENT.


Plus I also save obsessively after: rearranging my characters, healing, sorting all skills, getting an item from a chest nearby, after any cutscene, major purchases, etc.

I was originally a save-a-holic, but then I used to have a memory card for the PSX that would screw up everytime you used it. I would, literally, have to save on five different files, just in case one of the save files would be corrupted.

However, growing up in the NES area (well, not really, but playing RPGs from a very young age) I know the feeling of 'limited saving', and I can't help but feel that people who don't use it correctly needs to know the beauty of being able to save near constantly.

The Chaos Temple in the original Final Fantasy? Yeah, with that quicksave feature now, all ominous feelings have been obliterated.

I never have had corrupt save data. Maybe that's why I've dedicated over 75 save slots on two seperate PS2 cards JUST for FFXII. Call me stupid and crazy, but shit man, no way in hell I can afford to lose 56 hours of hard work, which really isn't that much, but still.

75 slots for one game? That is a lot for just one game. Mind you I once dedicated at least four separate memory cards for FFVII, this was back in the days when I was playing for something crazy like 7-9 hours a day. These weren't me being a save-a-holic though. Each save was from a different part of the game, so if I only wanted to fight against one of the weapons, then I would load up the save file that I had made before beating them.

Unfortunately though I lost all of it when all 4 memory cards corrupted on me. Damn cheap ass memory cards, I had well over 150 hours done in that game, but I had it all taken away from me. I haven't been able to play that game again in fear of losing my save files.

Well, I have confidence in my ability to not die in RPGs so I do not save many times in a 1 hour period. If there is a save point before a boss or something, of course I will take it when I see it, but I don't purposely go back anywhere to save.

In fact, some friends of mine were trying to "scare me" over FFXII before I bought it. They said "Save often - this game is very hard". Since I have MMORPG experience, I have not seen the Game Over screen 20+ times like them, but have only seen it twice in the whole game. And those were because I was screwing around with enemies in 20 levels higher than me.

I grew up with RPGs. STarted with DW1, have beaten all 8 Dragon Warriors. Have beaten 10 Final Fantasies and plenty of other RPG series before.

Actually, I wish I had made more saves in DW VII, because I found myself missing one of those tablet things that make up the maps, and I had gone past the point where I could retrieve it, so I was literally "stuck" 10+ hours into the game. It was marginal at best, but that did the game in for me and I haven't played it since. It's going to Ebay someday...

I just remembered how much I saved in Might & Magic VI last time I played through. Let's just say a lot. In some dungeons, literally every 5 steps. The problem is that unless you cheat big time, you get into dungeons where the mobs hit you with effect after effect until you are incapacitated completely. For example, you can be turned to stone, poisoned, have your spellpoints taken away, feared, any number of things. In M&M the fights are truly massive, you can be fighting 30 mobs at one time and they're all hitting you. Yeah, M&M VI = savefest for sure...

Dragon Warrior 7 is just about the longest RPG in history. So many caves, towns, storyline happenings in each town, leveling up, and bosses.

You have to be precise in what you do when it comes to collecting Shards and advancing the game. I recommend using the gamefaq for DW7 done by "AIex".

Are you guys like me and forget that you saved?! I do it all the time!! When I save, I sometimes forget that I saved and instead of assuming that I did in fact save, I save AGAIN just to be on the safe side. Sometimes I'm so bad that I save three times in a row. YES! I AM SERIOUS!

I apparently have short term memory loss sometimes!

Hmm...I guess it really depends on the game.

In games like Breath of Fire V saving a lot would lower the rank you got at the end of the game, because when you finished it it graded your actions, and your rank would go down. It was vital because there were several scenes you could only see with a lower rank.

I gotta say it was pretty risky in that game. It is a pretty hard game, and the PAL version didn't get that special save option.

But otherwise I don't save that much to be honest. I can usually tell whether a save is in order. I mean in most games a save usually indicates a boss in coming when it's at the end, it's usually there that I save. It bites you in the ass sometimes when you got defeated by something unexpected. A while back in Valkyrie Profile 2 I lost like 3 hours work because my entire party got frozen. I knew the enemies were capable of that, but I didn't expect that to be game over. =/

When I first played Final Fantasy IX, I only used one save file. One day I decided to start a new game to check something I missed during the first few hours of the game. When I got to the very first save point again, I carelessly saved over my original save file (about 40 hours in). After that, I constantly saved for all other RPGs I played using multiple files.

Yup, that's one reason why I don't just do 1 save file. Most other RPGs I do about 10 different files, but for FFXII, sure 75 might be overkill, but whatever.

I don't think I'm necessarily a save-a-holic, but I will save my game after some unexpected and pleasant occurrence (finding a rare item, gaining a level, etc.)

Of course, I'd save a lot more often if game developers would wake up, realize that it's not 1989 anymore, and get rid of the COLOSSALLY FUCKING RETARDED concept of "save points." Save-on-the-fly is possible. You did it in SaGa Frontier and Lunar. Time to implement it industry-wide. Guys? You listening?

I liked how instead of taking your experance from you, you'd only lose non-important items and half your gold in Dragon Quest 8 (Now If I only knew how to store items and gold, it was possible in DQM and I will find it), it realy premoted going out and geting expeiance and throwing caution to the wind.

However there "might" be programing errors or loop errors, like saving in a spot of no return - so far Lunar hasn't had any problems, but instead of sparse save points, I want save points at almost every 2nd location, or something. Wow, a lot of save points. Of course this makes the intensity of the battles less hectic. SAVE TIME.

:SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE SAVE :

Actually, in an attempt to STOP my save-a-holic-ness, I was playing Twilight Princess... and well, I went from the end of Dungeon 7 to the end of the game without saving... Thinking partially that the end of the game would give you the option.

I was disappointed when I went to load up my save, and I was back outside the seventh dungeon... D:

I've done that before, but it was primarily when I was getting ready to turn the game off.

Honestly I don't really consider myself a save a holic except in one game. Resident Evil, I know it's not an rpg but I save like crazy in that. There are times in that where something unexpected and unlucky just happens. I go through ink ribbons really fast and what happened to my friend in Resident Evil Zero is a perfect example. He didn't save first thing when he got off the train, he went into a room got attacked by one of those crazy zombies with the whip arms and died.

In regular rpgs I just tend to save whenever I get to a save point or if you can save on the world map just before enterting a dungeon and stuff like that. If I'm sitting around an area trying specifically to level up though, I save it just about everytime a character levels up.

In games that use memory cards (or the like), I only make a new save if something epic/legendary/awesome/ridiculous happens after that last save, like a really cool FMV/plot twist/ending-deciding moment. For most PS2 games, I'd end up with about 10 saves by the end of it, as I decide later to go ahead and overwrite some old saves that I deemed no longer awesome enough.

For games with limited save slots (like GBA/DS games), I keep the one main one. If there's 3 total save slots, I'll use one more sometimes, but I like to keep one slot free to let other people play.

Yeah I'm one too. I also keep multiple save files just incase.
I've left an entire dungeon to go save in the case of the optional dungeon in Star Ocean 2. There is no saves inside. In regular dungeons cases I'll back track only if I got a rare drop or something important and can't find a save before the boss.

Urgh that happened to me too. After that I stuck right next to the save sphere and saved after every battle until I ended up with a staff weapon with anti-confusion/bezerk so I could just have Yuna run away after it cast all it's status crap on the party.

I do that pretty much all the time. I've even been known to save a third time if I get distracted. If I'm not watching the screen when it says "Save successful!" then I have to save again. The worst are games that simply go back to the screen showing all your saves after it finishes with no message. Couple that with my tendency to save after ANYTHING, even re-saving just because I went back into town to sleep at the inn, and I save a LOT.

I try to keep two slots per game usually, but since my PS2 memory cards started to get too full for that I sometimes just have to use one and live in perpetual fear. I'm far too cheap to simply go out and buy a third memory card. The two slot method doesn't usually have the best results for me anyway. Two problems always screw it up:

1) The secondary file is too far out of date to be of any use.
2) Both files were updated right after permanently missing something.

There was one time that it saved me though. While turning on Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando I accidentally picked new game and get selected my main save. BAM. Thanks to one moment of half-asleep stupidity I lose the file that was about 85% of the way through the game. My secondary slot was 15 hours behind, but it was better than starting over from the beginning at least.

Final Fantasy IX was the only RPG that's gotten more than two save slots for a single play-through. I think I had four or five during my first time through the game since I wanted to keep save files right before the coolest cutscenes. I forget where most of them were, but I know I had one right before the scene of Atomos swallowing Lindblum.

I used to save pretty much every chance I had over the same file, but recently I've started making many many copies, on that off chance I want to see that thirty second cutscene halfway through the game.

I remember dying right in front of a save point in Valkyrie Profile 2. And after three hours of levelling... ;_;

I save every time as I can, unless theres something about saving that'll affect the game (well, the only time I saw this was in RE :p but in RPGs, I dont think there is such a big effect :o ).

I do this especially in FF games where save points heal up my party. I'm so used to it that I expect every RPG I game would give me the same option...but sadly no... still, its a challenge.

Also, I try to make a backup save for my games, especially when I think that this certain action I did this last event would greatly affect the story or my stats, other than that, I keep backup just in case a blackout would occur during my saving (which has a chance of around 5/100 of happening).