Laura is honestly a pretty great character, and I think in terms of protag variety demonstrates one of SaGa's bigger strengths: They're not afraid to bring different ideas to the table in terms of backstory, age ranges, race, etc so long as they can ultimately make a compelling story out of it. I honestly can't think of many scenarios they've developed that were ever true misses so to speak, even with USaGa's status as a black sheep of the franchise.

As for the combat system and it's general strategy, it's one of those things you can theoretically figure out if you're looking in the right places, but that also requires intuiting some basic RPG logic with mechanics that run on anything but. It really sucks too because on paper I actually really like what USaGa actually has to offer, but it's just a big mess in practice, even if you know what you're doing (sort of).

USaGa's battle system isn't actually too terribly different from most other SaGa games, but some of the finer points are...a bit trying to wrap one's head around. Which scenario did you start with btw?

That's true! Actually never occurred to me that I don't think anyone has been insane enough to try to actually brute force a game like USaGa...or at the very least document an attempt in some capacity. Very curious as to which scenario you'll start with since they're...wildly different in difficulty levels (won't say unless you ask obv).