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Final Fantasy Dimensions |OT| FFV's Job System returns! (Try before you buy!)

I'm not really following. I don't understand the point of using the job system, which lets you change jobs any time you want, but then require you to make permanent decisions that affect job growth for each individual character. It really, really does not jibe with the philosophy of the job system itself.

What PataHikari is getting at is a sort of episodic job leveling cap.
 

Bladenic

Member
I've died twice to this mid boss in the last sub chapter of chapter 2. Cool shout out but it's hard. Slow won't work on him and he frequently attacks three times in a row with a damn strong physical attack. Guess I'll try some other job combos.
 
Which is better, Ash 1 or 2?

eh... 2 gameplay wise. no reason not to play them in order. And they are trying to do a telltale 'episodic thing' with 2, which is kinda how FF Dimensions work.

So far they are only on chapter 2 of 5 or so.

Just pick up 1, it's a dollar, and 2 gold is $3 (Gold = future chapters are all free).
 

Aeana

Member
What PataHikari is getting at is a sort of episodic job leveling cap.
But that isn't how it works in practice, because you don't get enough JP for everybody to level every job to max. So you're making permanent decisions with limited resources as you go, which flies in the face of the philosophy of the job system in the first place.
 
Just finished the Bard chapter. FF1 and 3 references everywhere. Pretty cool.

JP stops being an issue after chapter 1. I agree that it's an unnecessary nuisance, but it's barely noticeable once you get into chapter 2. I constantly have 10 or so JP.

I wish this game had better special skills. So far it's just stat bonuses or using another class's nerfed techs/spells. In my experience, it seems more beneficial to just stay in the same class forever. I think I have a level 15 monk and he's only just learning Chakra.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
I'm at the beginning of the Knight chapter (halfway through Chapter 3) now. I have a lot to say about the job system at this point. I think it is vastly inferior to what was used in FFV. There are many small issues that combines to create one annoying mess.

Here are the issues I have with it :

-JP are restricted (see previous discussion in the thread)
-Jobs have 20 level to master but you don't get skill/ability at each level up. As such it takes forever to actually get useful skills and the really good one are usually past level 10
-Jobs get another ability slot at level 10 then another at level 19. When you switch from one job to another, you won't get to use your old command and passive skills together until you reach level 10 as each command takes up 2 ability slot
-With each Job level, you get a +1% stats bonus across the board for this job. When you switch from a level 20 Job to a new Job, you lose that 20% bonus and your character is much worse until you level the job back to 20
-Each jobs have a specific stat grow for your characters. For instance, a thief will give it's user speed bonus at an exp level up while a black mage will give an intelligence bonus. Coupled with the JP limited amount and the long time to level a job, this means you have to plan carefully ahead of the time who will use which jobs so he gets the most stat bonus for his role in the team
-New jobs are acquired slowly. You have to play an entire sub chapter to acquire a new job and when you finally acquire a new one, the story shifts to the other team so you can't even try it. Moreover, since leveling up job takes time and JP total is limited, it doesn't leave much room for experimentation with abilities and skills mix up. In FFV you have all of the jobs except the Mime (and the wacky new jobs of the gba version) early on so you can really experiment, here this is not the case.
-New jobs are restricted to the team that finds them. For example, only the light warriors can be dragoon and only the dark warriors can be dark knights.

To lighten up the atmosphere I offer you this "homage" to a classic version of a FFIV boss. I say homage because that plot points revolves around
getting a sand pearl to cure a desert fever

At least some monsters have much better art and are a better homage like this one.
 

Bladenic

Member
I'm at the beginning of the Knight chapter (halfway through Chapter 3) now. I have a lot to say about the job system at this point. I think it is vastly inferior to what was used in FFV. There are many small issues that combines to create one annoying mess.

Here are the issues I have with it :

-JP are restricted (see previous discussion in the thread)
-Jobs have 20 level to master but you don't get skill/ability at each level up. As such it takes forever to actually get useful skills and the really good one are usually past level 10
-Jobs get another ability slot at level 10 then another at level 19. When you switch from one job to another, you won't get to use your old command and passive skills together until you reach level 10 as each command takes up 2 ability slot
-With each Job level, you get a +1% stats bonus across the board for this job. When you switch from a level 20 Job to a new Job, you lose that 20% bonus and your character is much worse until you level the job back to 20
-Each jobs have a specific stat grow for your characters. For instance, a thief will give it's user speed bonus at an exp level up while a black mage will give an intelligence bonus. Coupled with the JP limited amount and the long time to level a job, this means you have to plan carefully ahead of the time who will use which jobs so he gets the most stat bonus for his role in the team
-New jobs are acquired slowly. You have to play an entire sub chapter to acquire a new job and when you finally acquire a new one, the story shifts to the other team so you can't even try it. Moreover, since leveling up job takes time and JP total is limited, it doesn't leave much room for experimentation with abilities and skills mix up. In FFV you have all of the jobs except the Mime (and the wacky new jobs of the gba version) early on so you can really experiment, here this is not the case.
-New jobs are restricted to the team that finds them. For example, only the light warriors can be dragoon and only the dark warriors can be dark knights.

To lighten up the atmosphere I offer you this "homage" to a classic version of a FFIV boss. I say homage because that plot points revolves around
getting a sand pearl to cure a desert fever

At least some monsters have much better art and are a better homage like this one.

Wow, you're further than me by quite a bit, I'm about to beat chapter 2 finally. I've already played 18 hours, what about you?

Oh, and the homage bosses are cool. The mid boss that was giving me trouble was
Hecatoncheir and while he didn't resemble the FFXIII version, he still used Quake and had 3 physical attacks in a row at times.
 
So is this purposely old-school or is there modern story telling with classic graphics? That's my only concern. I'd love a modern FF or JRPG with classic graphics like this. But if it's old-school in its storytelling and character development, than I'll probably pass on it especially with the crazy price.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
Wow, you're further than me by quite a bit, I'm about to beat chapter 2 finally. I've already played 18 hours, what about you?

Oh, and the homage bosses are cool. The mid boss that was giving me trouble was
Hecatoncheir and while he didn't resemble the FFXIII version, he still used Quake and had 3 physical attacks in a row at times.

I think my timer says around 25 hours but I don't think it's the real time as I carry my Ipod with me everywhere with the game turned on. My progression will slown down now. Yesterday was a holiday here so I played a lot :O .


So is this purposely old-school or is there modern story telling with classic graphics? That's my only concern. I'd love a modern FF or JRPG with classic graphics like this. But if it's old-school in its storytelling and character development, than I'll probably pass on it especially with the crazy price.

It's an old school story. It's basically the story of FFI-FFII-FFIII-FFIV and FFV all mixed together.

Didn't really progress today. I only want back to previous episodes to collect memories when I had time to play and I'm still at the beginning of the knights/paladin chapter. The stats of your memorist don't depends on levels but on the number of memories you found.

5GYqJ.png

Small memory = stats +3
Lovely memory = stats +5
Valuable memory = stats +10

I found all of the locations on the JP wiki.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
What is a memory, exactly? Is it just hitting trigger points and getting an item that will up your stats?

Well you must look for them in towns and dungeons and they are not acquired automatically in the story. You need to look for sparkle on the ground to find them while someone on your team is a memorist. Some memories are in random locations while others are where a significant plot event occured. You have to travel back to previous areas to find them.

You basically choose how you allocate the stats granted by the memories when you use them.


As I said the memorist doesn't get stats uprgrades at lvl up. All of his start are at 10 and you need to upgrade them with memories.
 

demonkaze

Member
So does anyone have any reccomendations on what Jobs are worth lvling up? For example, I hear Thief is pretty useless in the long run?
 
Oh, I think I found one of those. I found a 'rift' in chapter 2 that let me go back to a previous section of the map. Is that similar?

I thought it was permanent stat-ups for a character, not something class-specific. It seems like every innovation to this job system feels gimmicky at best. Even little things like physical class skills costing MP bugs me. I should not need to use 1 MP to Kick!
 

Bladenic

Member
So does anyone have any reccomendations on what Jobs are worth lvling up? For example, I hear Thief is pretty useless in the long run?

I've got Warrior, Monk, and Dragoon leveled very high, and they're all very powerful. Dragoon is particularly awesome since you can put it in the back row, Jump constantly, and it even gets a healing. White Mage and Red Mage are both imperative, and a BLM is useful too.

On the Dark side, Ranger is super good too.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
That kind of strikes me as pretty lame if that's the only way to progress that job.

Well there's one job i won't bother using.

It's the gimmicky job of this game. Moreover, you cannot equip any abilities or skills on the memorist. His battle command his "Memorandom" and when you select it it fills your battle commands for this turn with random commands you learned in another job. For instance, if you have learned red magic, battle arts, steal, white magic, summon and black magic it will shuffle all of them and give you 3 commands for this turn. You could get Steal, black magic and white magic or battle arts, white magic and summon and so on. If you get memorandom again, you get to shuffle again if you want. It's also good to note you cannot use your magic outside of battle with this job.

The main attraction here is to get the "recollect" passive ability and make your stats dependant on the memories instead. Apparently, you can create the most powerful character this way if you collect all the memories and spend them wisely.

So does anyone have any reccomendations on what Jobs are worth lvling up? For example, I hear Thief is pretty useless in the long run?

It's hard to tell right now as we don't have many jobs maxed out. So far I'm using the following skill/abilities a lot

-Counter (Warrior)
-Battle Arts : Double Attack (Warrior) / attack twice
-Battle Arts : War Cry / increase attack power of all allies
-Mental Discipline (White Mage) / Halve MP costs
-Magic Font (Black Mage) / Increase Magic Damage by 50%
-Steal (Thief)
-Item Finder (Thief) / Increase drop rates
-Flee (Thief) / 100% run form battle
-Backliner (Dark Knight) / Suffer no penalty to damage while attacking in the back row
-Quick Shot (Ranger) / Normal attack but ATB recharge twice as fast after using quick shot
-Dark Arts : Onyx Wave (Dark Knight) / Sacrifice 1/3 of HP to deals a good amount of damage to all enemies

All class have pros and cons. Thief isn't good at all to deal damage but according to the wiki it's the class that grants the most speed bonus at level up. My Ranger was a thief beforehand and with Quick Shot he can attack over and over again before the enemy does as long as he has MP.
 
My quick thoughts on classes, 15ish hours in:

Warrior - nothing unusual here. High HP, good attack, skills are okay for bosses and kinda useless otherwise. Just slightly increased damage to a single target.

Monk - Seems pretty good. Really high HP, Aurablast is a good special, Chakra is a decent heal, does good damage. It's basically similar to FF5's Monk except you hit once instead of twice. Probably better as a damage dealer than Warrior, but also lacks his equip options.

Red Mage - totally overpowered early on when you've go all the -ra spells at your disposal. Like every other class, loses its effectiveness early on. If you had a Red Mage Lv. 3 skillset and put it on a physical class, it could see some limited use. Not a ton though.

White Mage/Black Mage - Yep, you know what these guys are like. I usually run a White with !Black or a Black with !White just to cover the bases. Magic seems really important early on and there's a dungeon where you straight-up need an attacking mage to have any chance at killing enemies.

Summoner - summons aren't easy to come by but Sylph is great for simple damage + healing and Ramuh seems pretty good for multitarget stuff. Titan kinda sucks. It takes forever to get a passive Summoner skill above lv. 1 but they kinda function like a Red Mage with better late game prospects.

Thief - Fast, steal, not much else. Pretty mediocre in damage and it's tough to give them a spell set since they have limited MP and limited damage. I get the sense that you care about their skills for other classes more than anything else. Definitely seems like the worst of the starter classes.

Dragoon - like a Warrior, but give him Jump, all techs and some healing. Seems objectively better than a Warrior and kind of replaces him the second you get him.

Ranger - Seems a bit like a cross between FF5's Ranger and FFT's Archer. You can target body parts to inflict status effects and Aim for 100%. if they get SShot/XShot, all the better. Right now the damage isn't much better than a Thief but the skills sounds more useful later on.

Bard - Haven't gotten to use them yet outside of the tutorial character for the chapter. Sing is mostly for stat-ups and healing. Damage seems bad and HP isn't great either. I don't expect to use this class much.

Dark Knight - seems like a physical monster. Can draw physical attacks to self or sacrifice his HP to inflict big damage on enemies. I expect to use this class quite a bit when I unlock it.
 

RE lover

Member
well I finally finished it, man this game is long! Took me more than 40 hours!

Story gets much better as the game goes on. The characters definitely grow on you and there's a lot of cool secondary characters. Also tons of references to older games. The final part of the game and the ending itself are epic and amazing :) Obviously not better than games like FFVI but it's not that far from it either.

Job system is ok. I just wish there were more than 4 slots for the abilities :/ The job points aren't really an issue, you get enough of them through the game

I for one had fun searching for the memories to upgrade my memorist's stats. Your kinda know where you should be looking for them. Spent all the points in strenght and speed so by the end I had a pretty strong character :)
 

Vamphuntr

Member
I progressed a bit more. I'm at the part where
you get to unseal the ultimate black and white magic
. This game sure love to throw you in boss battles you can't win, there's probably as much as bosses as those mock battles.
 

Bladenic

Member
I progressed a bit more. I'm at the part where
you get to unseal the ultimate black and white magic
. This game sure love to throw you in boss battles you can't win, there's probably as much as bosses as those mock battles.

Those still exist later in the game? So annoying.

The last game I played with all these unwinnable battle was Star Ocean 2, and damn is it annoying as hell.
 

Mrbob

Member
Probably a dumb question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Is there any way to adjust and move the virtual dpad? It's waaaaaaaaaay too big playing on Ipad and you really have to stretch your thumb to use it. I even have longer fingers too. The game seems decent, but unless i can move in the over world without my left hand hurting I'm going to pass on this game.
 

HBroward

Member
Probably a dumb question, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Is there any way to adjust and move the virtual dpad? It's waaaaaaaaaay too big playing on Ipad and you really have to stretch your thumb to use it. I even have longer fingers too. The game seems decent, but unless i can move in the over world without my left hand hurting I'm going to pass on this game.

The default has the pad appear wherever you place a finger, so you should be fine.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
Finally! This happened way too late.


Your 8 characters are always together and you can swap them in and out of your lineup using the "row" command in the menu. It makes the game much more exciting to me since it's now less restrictive. It's just too bad that the jobs aren't shared, as such the warriors of light can't use the darkness jobs while the warrior of darkness can't use the light jobs. Both summons list merged too.

You also get to freely and manually explore the world with the airship! You also get a map you can bring up by touching the map icon while flying


:O :O :O I love moogles


You can also trade your tails and fangs for rare items in the same room.
 

RedAssedApe

Banned
Can you save games to iCloud (i.e. so I can play on my iPad and then when I'm on the go or on the can somewhere play on my iPhone) ?

According to reviews no iCloud saves. :(
 
did I really just get a weapon called Sonic Knuckles

I'm in the middle of some massive fetch quest for villagers. not so fun, but at least my guys are starting to really grow. I just hate how we're going back and forth between the parties so much. this game could have been a lot better if they threw out that idea and just stuck with one party. story, progression and job system is so scattered thanks to that.
 

Bladenic

Member
Okay so I'm stuck. Thinking it might be a glitch/bug but I'm hoping it's not.

At Burtgang castle, I went up and fought the miniboss and hit the switch. Got the cutscene. But when I go to the door, it still says it's firmly shut. I looked everywhere else, but I can't find any other way or switch. Am I missing something?

Edit: Nvm, missed the obvious lol
 
Am I the only one who finds the game really ugly to look at ? With the font, the character design, the blandness of the tiles... just ugh.
 

Krabboss

Member
Am I the only one who finds the game really ugly to look at ? With the font, the character design, the blandness of the tiles... just ugh.

No, all mobile Final Fantasy games look terrible. I don't know why they continue to put such crappy artists on these games.
 

Bladenic

Member
I think I must have slowed my pace or something, but I'm in Chapter 4 and already at nearly 37 hours. Or maybe I left the game on and the clock still runs, don't know. Regardless I'm gonna get a ton of game time by the end out of this game. Expensive? Yes. Worth it? Definitely.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
I beat the game.


The final challenge dungeon, the "hall of gladiators" is still in but you can access it only by beating the game. I might try later on but for now I'm a bit fed up with this game.


It has the ugliest final FF Boss ever. *Spoiler* Part 1, 2 and 3. Ugly final boss for an ugly game I guess :p

Random thoughts about the credits. Square Enix China is credited in there along side Square Enix Mobile and Matrix. The Chip tunes arranges are arranged by Noda. These guys were responsible for the localization:


There are a lot of small mistakes later on in the game. In text boxes the Paladin class is referred as a Knight while in menu it is as Paladin. The flame knight enemy is in fact a thunder knight. The game isn't consistent with Meteo/Meteor and you see both spellings all across the last part of the game. This skill is also wrongly presented :


Final completion time :


Game was running all the time on my Ipod though. Timer is also inflated because there is a random encounter every 3 steps in the last area and it's quite long.

Overall it was a very easy game. It doesn't have the complexity of FF5 and most bosses are actually a walk in the park. 95% of the bosses can be beat simply by having an healer while everyoneone else attack him, even the final boss.

Best jobs to master :

-Ranger for Aim:Spread Shot (attack 4 times)
-Ninja for Dual Wield (equip 2 weapons)
-Seer for White Magic: Araise and Holy
-Magus for Black Magic: Flare and Ultima
-Paladin for Mighty Guard and the F-Ability Mighty Wall (War Cry + Mighty Guard)
-Warrior for Battle Arts : Double Attack (attack twice)
-Black Mage for Magic Font (50% increase in Magic Damage)
-White Mage for Mental Concentration (Half MP costs in battle)
-Summoner for MP UP

Have characters master the ranger and ninja and put them in a class with lot of ATK power like Dark Knight then equip Dual Wield and Aim then spam Spread Shot. You can also have a Ninja Equip Battle Arts (Double Attack), Str Up 20% and Backliner. Have a Magus with Magic font spam flare and ultima and it will hit for 7500-9999 damage all the time.

Will post my detailed thoughts later on.
 
Any advice for the boss of the Dancer chapter? I can hang with him early on but towards the end he just starts blasting me for 1500 to all repeatedly.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
Any advice for the boss of the Dancer chapter? I can hang with him early on but towards the end he just starts blasting me for 1500 to all repeatedly.

I don't seem to remember having any problem in that chapter. Is the issue with the speed between the damages or that you cannot recover 1500 each turn? If you had someone as a White Mage since the beginning of the game for that team, he/she should have a high MND score since the white mage job gives a high MND bonus at level up. Coupled with MND up 20% that white mage should be able to heal at least close to 1000Hp each turn. Matoya can also use a Cure Waltz dance move that heals for 650-700 to everyone.

What job are you using? If you have a ranger, use quick shot as much as you can. You at least get an opportunity to use an item quickly between quick shot. If you have a warrior, try to use war cry to boost your damage output too. You could also try to have too characters using white magic but I never had to.
 
I don't seem to remember having any problem in that chapter. Is the issue with the speed between the damages or that you cannot recover 1500 each turn? If you had someone as a White Mage since the beginning of the game for that team, he/she should have a high MND score since the white mage job gives a high MND bonus at level up. Coupled with MND up 20% that white mage should be able to heal at least close to 1000Hp each turn. Matoya can also use a Cure Waltz dance move that heals for 650-700 to everyone.

What job are you using? If you have a ranger, use quick shot as much as you can. You at least get an opportunity to use an item quickly between quick shot. If you have a warrior, try to use war cry to boost your damage output too. You could also try to have too characters using white magic but I never had to.

Got him with a hail mary attack with only my Dark Knight left alive. My team was Dark Knight/Ranger/White Mage/Monk. I just wasn't fast enough to heal towards the end. He would get two turns to my white mage's one. My biggest problem was keeping Matoya alive since she only has like 1700 hp, and once she went down it was a constant battle of catchup that never went well.

Just mastered my first class (Monk) -- I want to get him over to Paladin but haven't finished the chapter yet, so I'm just stalling by putting him in Warrior for a bit. I have a hell of a time mixing classes in this game since the game pretty actively promotes growing high in one class vs. having a bunch of skills from multiples.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
I should probably have worded that differently. Basically I don't really want to read anymore about gameplay systems. I want to know if the story is decent and comparable to FFIV and FFVI.

It basically rips off part of the story of FFII, FFIV and FFV. Most chapters are self contained and deal with an issue affecting the part of the world you are stuck in. Overall, the story is all about fighting an evil empire and in each chapter you learn about their evil doings and the people fighting against them. All of the characters you meet are really cliché and generic anyway. You have the innocent princess, the jealous kinght, the care free and dumb leader, the guy obsessed with revenge and so on.

Personally, I don't think it has the charm of FFVI. I would put it on par with FFII/FFIV/FFV story wise.


Just mastered my first class (Monk) -- I want to get him over to Paladin but haven't finished the chapter yet, so I'm just stalling by putting him in Warrior for a bit. I have a hell of a time mixing classes in this game since the game pretty actively promotes growing high in one class vs. having a bunch of skills from multiples.

Indeed. This is what I was discussing about in another post of the this thread. The stats bonuses granted at an exp level up and the fact that the good job skills/abilities are learned at a quite high job level encourage you to master job one at a time and to allocate role to party members at the beginning. Making a white mage that casts black magic for instance isn't a good idea as white magic requires MND and black magic INT. By switching between both classes, you miss the INT or MND bonuses you could have gotten by staying in the same class and you make a less effective black mage or white mage. It also takes even more time to get to the good abilities of these classes at JLVL 20.
 
I should probably have worded that differently. Basically I don't really want to read anymore about gameplay systems. I want to know if the story is decent and comparable to FFIV and FFVI.

FFIV itself was flawed in that department. Not to mention the gameplay of FFV still puts it head and shoulders above most others in the series.
 

Vamphuntr

Member
Okay I beat the Gladiators' hall too.

Basically it's not a dungeon. You have a room with a save point, healing pot, an item store, an armor store, a moogle that trade mog coins for JP and 3 doors leading to 3 "super tough" monsters.

I beat all 3. If you want to know who are the "super though" monsters you can check the pics I linked *Spoilers*.

Door on the left : Boss
Door on the right : Boss
Door in the middle : Boss

As for the prizes :

Beating the door on the left grants you Adamantite you can use to make the armorer in the room craft different Adamantite armors.

Beating the door on the right grants Mog Coins you can trade to the moogle in the room to earn JP.

Beating the middle door bring you to a familiar room for FFV players. You get to unseal "an ultimate weapon or item" like you would in FFV with the stone tablets/lithographs.

Here's snaps from all of the possible item you can acquire :


You can defeat these bosses again and again if you want but they get more difficult each times. It will take you a while to acquire all the legendary items.Also, apparently they drop more adamantites and mog coins as they get harder.
 

Goli

Member
I've been slowly progressing through the game. VERY sonly mainly due to a lack of time lately, but yesterday I managed to complete the Ranger chapter and am now right at the beggining of the Bard one...
I love how this game has a lot of old enemies that aren't FF "staples" like bombs and flans and such, namely all these guys:
LhBHQ.png

9yRmo.png

E1WVc.png

from FFVI, IV and II respectively.
I was also surprised at how SE seemingly sabotaged its own game, since in this part:
99ada4d7e788dc569bef3b9sfd.png

the Yggdrassil does NOT actually look like that, like this rather:
L1luR.png

I like how this game doesn't take itself so seriously, I LOVED that scene where Nacht finds a bunch of dirty magazines and Alba wants to look at them. OR when you meet "Gramps" and he says his name is Cloud with Alba replying:
5NIVA.png

I ended up naming Gramps Cloud too :3 :
LHbuG.png

Anyway, so far I'm really enjoying this, and to my surprise the final boss of the Ranger chapter was actually kind of difficult, mainly because he can hit everyone and spams all sorts of status ailments. In fact it took me three tries to defeat him. I hope this keeps up throughout the whole game.
 
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