December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

pharmakos said:

And then after the class change they get to learn White Mage spells!

Are you playing the NES version man? Think you're the only one if so.

And have you played this game before? I can't actually tell from the way you write about it.

Glad to have you playing along with us tho, your write-ups are always top notch dude.

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I actually said fuck it and restarted on the nes classic I got on my birthday a couple days ago. So I'm farming levels outside of where you get the boat. Lol team is 5 now (war bl belt theif and w. Mage). Haven't played it on nes since I rented it at blockbuster as a kid.

Szlia said:

You have to question the balance of this game though...

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The game is over 30 years old and pioneered a genre. Pretty sure Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest 2 were some of the very first to feature a party of characters instead of a single protagonist.

Gavinmad said:

The game is over 30 years old and pioneered a genre. Pretty sure Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest 2 were some of the very first to feature a party of characters instead of a single protagonist.

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Objection! Final Fantasy was released in December of 1987. The three main video game influences for it where Dragon Quest and transitively Ultima and Wizardry. As you mentioned, Dragon Quest II featured a party of characters and was also released in 87 (January). BUT Ultima 3, the first of the serie to have a 4 character party was released in 1983 and the first Wizardry already had a party back in 1981!

On a side note, for me what differentiate japanese RPGs from western ones is characters that are blank slates or not. This differentiation still does not exist in Final Fantasy I and Dragon Quest I, but is definitely there by Final Fantasy IV and Dragon Quest III. Quid of FF II and III and of DQ II?

pharmakos I am playing the WonderSwan Color version. To bring the video game hipster factor to 11, I don't have any WonderSwan Color, I have the special Final Fantasy branded edition! To be fair, the thing was extremely cheap at the time. I want to say it was something like $100 for the pack with the console and FFI. There are some minor quality of life improvements compared to the NES version, but I also get 16-bit pixel art, backgrounds in battles, shops you can walk in, and some cut scenes, both of the "digital puppetry" kind we know and love with the standard game view and the characters that move around and react and, more surprisingly, some full screen cinematic ones (notably for the explosion that opens the passage between the sea and the ocean).

EDIT: Oh and that's a second attempt at a first play through (the first attempt being the 6 hours I played in 2000), but I am not very patient with this type of games, so I am using external resources as soon as I am somewhat stuck or confused about what something does, etc...

Szlia said:

Objection! Final Fantasy was released in December of 1987.

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For fucks sake I really didn't think I needed to clarify that it didn't single-handedly pioneer the RPG genre itself.

You did not painted the game as a pioneer of the genre, but as a pioneer of party system, using this as a reason why the balance between the classes is a bit iffy. I am just pointing out that a party system was not such a new thing in 87. To be fair though, it's very likely the balance between the classes was also out of whack in the games that came before it, considering their main inspiration was Dungeons & Dragons which was also all kind of fubared in that regard.

Rainy Sunday. Planned to go to the movies, but the rain made me stay home and grind through more of FF.... so... I have all 4 Crystals now!

I am glad I did not try to play this game back in the days. Going through it blind must be extremely annoying considering how disjointed the progression pointers and items are. You really have to comb everything to not miss a clue given by some random character in some unrelated place (my favorite being the mermaid in the underwater temple who mentions seeing people using a chime to enter a tower that is on the other side of the world in the middle of a desert), to not miss a key item you might not even know is key in a place no one said it would be (several people mention the floating stone in the ice cave, but what about the Rosetta's stone in the sunken temple?) or simply to realize there is that one spot you can land your airship 200 miles away from the village you want to visit....

I have a couple spells to buy for my white mage and then I'll have a go at the final dungeon. I guess I don't have to grind as the previous dungeon went very smoothly, but I always feel like I am an unlucky encounter away from a catastrophe. I mean, as soon as you have a big group of enemies than can do high damage group spells, use death spells, petrify or simply crit' for 100+ dmg, it feels like an unlucky round or two can result in a wipe or in a dead white mage. To be fair, you need a lot of things to go wrong for a catastrophe to happen, and it happened to me only twice in the 18 hours I played.

I beat this game when I was like... 9? I've even documented my rage-inducing story of getting one-shot by Chaos using Nuke and my breaking a NES controller on my shin, resulting in a great scar story.

I could honestly probably play through it (on some speed setting; original was balls-slow) in a weekend from start to finish. The mystique is definitely out for me, even if I do the GBA versions with the extra dungeons. A full white mage party just means you grind more and run from non-undead/harmable mobs a lot more. In the end, you basically just grind past the point it is difficult and your HP can cope with the RNG of abilities.

This is my second favorite NES rpg from the late 80s; DW1 was the best because I love Terrific Blows.

Jesus I forgot how punishingly annoying this shit can be on nes. I somehow still haven't mastered combat yet so either I miss the final attack on a Mob, or I put too many dudes on that mob wasting a hit. Also always feel like I just can't spend magic unless I'm deep into a dungeon sucks.

Xadion said:

Playing the PSP version it felt...easy, the main game that is-- I havent gone to the bonuses yet.

I remeber on NES having to be at least ~60ish to tackle the final castle - I think I was 45ish and attack attack thor zeus'ed my way to Chaos.

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You remember having to be at least 10 or more levels higher than the level cap huh?