Final Fantasy I-VI Pixel Remaster Series

Chris said:

FF3 gameplay is GOOD. I did not remember the 3D remake being like this.

It's linear but doesn't feel so due to the world design, difficulty is perfect, you have to do a little work to get through the game but not too much. Job system isn't as good as the FF5/Tactics version but it incentivises more switching with the enemy design.

Just got to Crystal Tower and because of how FF14 treated that place, I'm super hyped. Grinding in Eureka? No fucking problem lmao.

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I think FF3 2D is much better than the 3D version in general. Same goes for FF4. The 3D remakes just felt so...meh.

The last couple areas of FF3 are so tough, and ended a lot of playthroughs. I think they're awesome if one isn't in a rush to get to the end. Gotta have a lot of HP to survive the final boss' barrage.

What's your final class lineup? Most people seem to go Ninja/Ninja/Sage/Sage. Checked the emulator screenshot folder and it looks like last time I played the NES version I had 3 Ninjas and 1 Devout (Shaman in some versions).

I'm guessing Devout does some things better than Sage if I kept it around, or maybe I just wanted to change things up, unsure.

Chris said:

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Had to grind to lv50 and that got the job done.

Game was super balanced gameplay wise, dungeons had simple layouts with some secrets where I didn't feel like I needed a guide to preserve my sanity.

Final dungeon being 4 in 1 was really epic.

Story is a step backward compared to FF2 though.

This is clearly the best of the NES games.

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Yeah FF3 is upper-tier for the series now that it's brought in line with the others.

FF4 is super short, think I got to the end in 8 hours last time, and I assume it'll be even shorter with battle speedup in the PR version.

Tarisk said:

When I first played 4 when it came out, it didn't feel short at the time, but replaying it on PR it definitely did, even without the battle speedups. Despite that, I still feel its one of my favorites/most memorable in the series. I know that just because of how much I've been enjoying the references in Endwalker and the nostalgia/excitement hitting hard with the music.

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Everything seemed way longer back then. I remember FF4 taking weeks to get through and being a very long process.

Then a few years ago I played it again on SNES and was shocked at how short it was. Pretty much steamrolled everything up to the Giant of Babil in about 5 hours, then took another 3 or so to do the last three dungeons since they're actually tough and require some grinding. The US version on SNES was also easy-fied, however.

Anyone know if the PR version is based off the US easy-fied version or the harder Japanese FF4?

Started a new game of FF2 on the Playstation version, FF Origins. Just realized that it's the only pre-PR version of any of the early FFs that I haven't played.

Never really thought about this, but you can play FF1 through FF9 all on the PS1. Except FF3. I think that's probably the most of the series that has ever been playable on a single console, by far (unless you count PS2 or PS3's backwards compatibility). I wonder why they never did an FF3 port on the PS1 just to finish the set. I guess by that point the DS was out so they decided to do the 3D remake instead. But yeah, their aversion to doing any 2D remakes of FF3 until recently was baffling.

In any case, after reading this thread I kinda wanted to play FF2 again, but not necessarily the PR version yet, so it fell into place when I realized that was the only early FF port I had left. I'm excited about this, even though the FF1 port in FF Origins is pretty slow and plodding. It was also the dawn of a lot of the music remixes that got used in like every port since then though. As for FF2, I doubt this'll have the rad postgame content (think that was introduced with Dawn of Souls). Not sure why they released two FF1+FF2 remake compilations in the same year but hey. I usually grind to all hell at the outset and go into the game with like thousands of HP and stuff, so this time I'll try just playing normally without having my party attack itself and whatnot. See how different of a game it is. It'll be very much a background thing for me though since I'm playing a couple other things, and I'll probably finish the FFT Geomancer Run first.

At the very least I can say already that this is bringing me back and giving me a ton of PS1 nostalgia, even though FF Origins didn't come out until 2003.

Chris said:

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Wow Zeromus was fucking hard.

Cloud of Darkness had the terrifying Particle Beam spam but once you can survive it, it's easy.

Zeromus has you intentionally trigger counter flares to weaken it's big bang attack - it was much more interactive.

Story is the best so far and there were a few more things that FF14 took than I realised. Battle system was way too simple and characters felt too weak until the end, I had no ownership of the characters so didn't really care about the battles which is a shame.

The only choice in the whole game is if you give Rydia/Rosa bows or rod/staff. Bows seems like the right choice other than maybe on bosses.

On to the good games! I now have 13/15 Final Fantasies complete and I have a horrible feeling that this is all leading to me subbing to FF11 and playing FF15...

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Yeah the lack of customization is why I take FF4 down a few notches in the modern era.

How do you weaken Zeromus' big bang? I didn't know there was any way to affect it. Far as I know the counter flares and BB itself do the same damage regardless.

One of the FF4 remakes, can't remember which one, lets you actually customize your endgame party (all the characters that left your party and didn't die over the course of the game show up again towards the end and can be recruited). Might have even been a hack, IDK.

In any case, I replaced Edge with Yang in the endgame party and it made a massive difference. FF4's endgame party is so weak compared to most of the games in the series. Only Rydia and Kain really have good DPS and the rest are just sort of there supporting. Cecil with the Excalibur and Rosa with Holy are at least somewhat respectable DPS, but Edge was never good in my game.

Started FF2 (PS1 Origins version) and already slightly regretting it. Doing a normal non-grindy play and the stat upgrades / money intake aren't cutting it, so I'll have to grind. The game kinda F's new players by putting Maria in the back row where she won't get hit, so she won't gain HP. Easy enough to fix if you know about it. Firion is probably gonna have to be my white mage, despite being the hero. Most of all I dislike how the game throws uber-strong enemies everywhere so you have to follow the story very precisely to avoid getting mopped up because you crossed a bridge you weren't supposed to yet.

Chris said:

I looked at the wiki for the boss because it curbstomped me on the first try and:
1) The boss shakes before Big Bang.
2) Casting a spell triggering Counter Flare will lower the intelligence of Zeromus, weakening Big Bang.
3) The boss will shake again when it's intelligence goes back to normal.

The best way to do it is to throw one of those useless "casts spell" items since there is no casting time and anyone can do it.

It about halves the damage of Big Bang and makes it worth it even with someone havihg less health from Flare or even dying from being hit twice.

Not sure I could have killed it without doing this. I bet you could cast Reflect on everyone too and just spam crappy items to trigget loads of reflected Counter Flares.

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Wow, I had no idea about all that Zeromus stuff. I thought the shaking was just sort of a random emote to intimidate you that he was powering up for something.

FF2 update, got to the Dreadnought last night which is the first real difficult part of the game. Had to bite the bullet and beat my characters up a bit for levels. Letting them just level off of enemy fights was insanely slow.

Seems like shields are a whole thing in this game. They reduce your magic attack power while equipped, but also increase your evasion after battles, and equipping two of them at once gives you twice the evasion boosts. A character that boosts up to 99% like this is essentially invincible for the rest of the game. Also bare fists are way better than weapons after gaining a few levels. So giving your characters unarmed/shield (and not bothering with spells/weapons) will turn them into completely OP monk characters fairly early on.

I'm just doing more of a basic Red Mage group and have everyone using a weapon and shield plus an elemental spell.

I remember the final boss of FF2 being fairly tough, except the Blood Sword kills him in like two hits so I always used that. This time around I'm gonna do it without that and see how it compares to other final bosses. The endgame of FF2 is sort of like a junior version of FF3's endgame, four tough bosses with the final boss in the center.

IIRC there's some borderline-cheating trick to beating almost every boss in FF5. There are so many classes and potential strategies, so every boss can be trounced with the right ability or Blue Mage spell, etc.

I think the Blue Mage class is one of the biggest things that gives FF5 an edge over FF3. Though when it comes down to it I like FF3 PR more because it's such a huge improvement over the original. FF5 was already great.

Chris said:

Sheilds on everyone is how I broke FF2 and the Monk I made just ended up OP.

If I played again I would have 4 Monks but have them all take care of a different buff spell. So 1 cure, 1 berzerk, 1 haste, 1 protect/shell/blink.

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Yeah, using Unarmed + a shield offhand seems to be the way to go in FF2. My characters attacks outpaced the strongest weapons in any given part of the game. That also levels their evasion and speed which are crucial for lategame. Take the shields off for boss fights and they punch like 3x harder. I made the mistake of leaving shields off for like half the game and in later areas my speed was so bad that enemies would always get two turns before I did. Now I'm doing shields up until I get Leon and grind him up, then I'll go shields off for the last two dungeons and obliterate everything with punches. I'll probably beat the game in my next session. I both like and strongly dislike FF2 and it's still my least-favorite in the series, but it was cool to play it again. I think I might try a 4x White Mage FF1 challenge next because that's the only thing I have left to do in early FF games now that I've (almost) finished the Origins collection.

Which one are you on now? FF5?

I did a couple posts on FF2 in the JRPG thread if you want to read more about how it went: