SHarris78 said:

ok, deep breath............

I've NEVER played ANY FF game. EVER. I can't help but think i'm missing out on something pretty big, and as a result am thinking of 'getting into it', starting right at the beginning. I don't own a PS3 so i know later down the line i may need one to complete my 'quest', but for the early games my Vita should suffice. As an older gamer with only really pick up and play games for my handhelds, can these games fill a gap I have for a story driven 'big world' game?

Click to expand...

Hmmmm... if you don't own PS3 and have VITA, then this is your answer:



But you really should get the PS3 and start with the PS1 FF games ( VII - VIII - IX ) because they are the best in the series.

Finished up FF1 this afternoon. It's the first time I played FF1 and it was fun! I went with the PSOne version (on normal difficulty). Once you get items with spells in them things really open up.

Time to look at FF2. Another of the FF games I haven't played or beaten (it's down to ff2,3 and 5)

Last time on Final Fantasy IV, Batman and Tommy made a town go kaput, and then they were beat up by a little girl.

Today, Batman needs to find a place for him and the girl to rest.

Where did we leave off… ah, here.



Batman’s all alone and he has to fend for himself while carrying an unconscious little girl around. He also doesn't seem to know about the secret Dragoon path that you traverse in FFIV: The After Years which jaxword was referring to.



Sand Men and Centipedes aren’t difficult in this version. Imps also inhabit the desert, but they’re merely cannon fodder at this point. Centipedes can cast Quake, but we’re not going to let them.

We’re going to level Batman up a little because he’s the sole member of the party at the moment, and he’ll get more EXP to himself. Note that when you have more party members, the EXP is divided according to how many members you’ve got onhand. Plus he can oneshot everyone. This will be helpful. We don’t have Level Lust here, so we have to make do with whatever we have.



Batman comes upon a desert town. This is convenient!



Best innkeeper!



The little girl obviously hates Batman. Of course she does. He had a hand in killing her mother. Though to be fair to Batman, he didn’t exactly know that the Mist Dragon was a summoned beast.

You see, and this version doesn’t really cover it explicitly, summoned beasts and their summoners are linked. Should a summoned beast be killed in battle, the summoner will die too. It’s different from the likes of Final Fantasy VIII where the Guardian Force has its own set of HP which you can use as a shield for your HP; or Final Fantasy X, where the Aeon is generally considered another party member and if it dies, then Yuna is unharmed and the battle proceeds with the three party members again.

But the little girl has a reason to loathe Batman’s existence, even if he’s trying to repent for crap he’s done in the past. This is also one of the few deaths in Final Fantasy IV which matter.

Night falls and…



Someone is knocking at the door, yo.



Oh man, Harvey Bullock and his lackeys broke into the inn or something. They must’ve taken the Dragoon-only shortcut to Kaipo or they more than likely took Airships here. Man, I want an Airship.

Well, screw ‘em. We’re not handing over anyone.



Final Fantasy III – Battle 2

Today, we have some grunts and their general. The General will order the Soldiers to attack at once, which kind of adds up if you aren’t taking them down fast enough.

Kill the General off as soon as you can. We want that EXP. If we kill everyone else before killing him, he’ll run away without giving you precious EXP. Kill two soldiers, kill the General, and kill the last soldier. You’ll be fine.

After the battle…



Rydia



Well, not for long anyway.

There’s another difference in the dialogue here. In the GBA/DS versions, Rydia’s sort of cold towards Cecil, merely asking him if he’s alright rather than apologizing to him, then asking him if he promises to protect her. I suppose they wanted to make her sound more innocent in this version, but really, after what happened to her, she doesn’t seem like she should be so naïve.



So in the morning, Rydia wakes us up and we’re ready to go! I’ve always been fond of Rydia’s sprite so I usually use her onscreen.

Welcome to Our Town!



Something interesting about Rydia, though. She’s basically the party member you’d play as in any other RPG in terms of being the protagonist. She’s the rookie. She’s the orphaned kid who needs to adjust to her power. She even starts at level 1. Final Fantasy IV, on the other hand, has you playing as the experienced captain who starts the game at level 10.



She doesn’t have any magic other than the Chocobo summon. You can guess that her summoning Titan was basically powered by emotions and a one-time deal for now.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m quite fond of her in general. If there are any characters from Final Fantasy IV whom I genuinely like, it’s her and Kain. Which means I get to make fun of all the other characters from here on out.



Oh yeah, Final Fantasy IV’s row formation is kind of different from other games in the series. In other games, you can pick whichever row you want a character to be in. Here, you can only have two characters in one row and three characters in another row (so 3 in front and 2 in back, or 3 in back and 2 in front). You can change this sort of thing in-battle too. In a way, it’s kind of limiting when you get five people in a party because maybe you want to go through the game with everyone physically attacking the enemy with their full strength or something.

Right, that’s another thing. When you’re in the back and are using a short-range weapon like a sword, you’ll deal less damage. Bows, boomerangs, and whips will do full damage no matter which row you’re in. There is no Reach augment in this version so we can’t do anything about this. Back row allies will get hit less harder too.



And my settings if you want to see them. You’ll notice that “Active/Wait” are not in this version. The window colour is blue because, well, that’s what I grew up with and I stuck with it.



I bought a few things just because. You’ll notice that they’re unsorted. Well, there’s a sort command at the bottom of the menu next to the trashcan! Yes, you have a limited inventory in the SNES version of Final Fantasy IV. This is why the Big Chocobo was conceived. In the Japanese version, you had way more items in terms of stuff to heal status effects, or things to use offensively. That stuff was taken out for this version, so it’s much easier on the player to have a cleaner Items page given that they’ve only got access to Remedies and equipment.

Time to talk to people.



The town is abuzz with a fellow named Tellah and a woman named Anna. Well, they’re named characters so they’ll affect the story somehow. This obviously means Parents Just Don’t Understand.



Dude, if your throat is perched, I think it’s time to see a doctor!



Abe Simpson getting in the way again. Probably yelling at clouds. Also, why does every single location so far have a “-y” suffix? You don’t really need to make part of the name a descriptor.



I shall file this stuff away somewhere. Batman and Tommy were talking about gathering allies to keep Baron at bay. We should try to strike a deal with Damcyan as soon as possible.



I thought the old man was blocking the way! Make up your damned minds, people! Unless the old man turned into Ultros or something.



Kaipo has one of these but everyone says the same thing as they did in Baron. You know, just in case you forgot everything. We’re really here to request a name change for Rydia.

Now I like Rydia, and I like her name, but we need to be consistent for this playthrough. I was thinking of a pun like Blaze (because she hates fire) or a Pokémon trainer’s name. I settled on Erika (because she’s kind of quiet at the moment, and in Pokémon Adventures, Erika struck me as being rather cunning) or Clair (as I generally associate Rydia with Bahamut and dragons in general, plus she’s one of the most noteworthy summoners in the game; also in the Pokémon Adventure manga, Clair does battle with Suicune who blinds her with Mist, so&#8230.

So after much thought, I ended up settling on:





Why a Pokémon trainer? Because summons are like Pokémon, aren’t they?

Moving on. Kaipo’s weapon and armour shops are open. They only have gear for Clair at the moment. We’re not going to buy any of it, though.



Clair’s fine right now. We could buy the Bow and Arrow set for her, but I think she’s much better off with the Rod equipped. You’ll see why later on. Plus she doesn’t have an Aim command for perfect accuracy like another character will have.



I think this guy is trying to tell me something, but I cannot decipher his crazy code.

Maybe his code means “Someone picked a girl up from falling down in Baron”? Well, good for the person who picked the girl up. Maybe it’s really big news and it travelled to Kaipo because of some ridiculous circumstances.

Meanwhile, I rescued a little girl from being burned to death in her village , so I don’t think what you’ve told me is news!




You should go to the Olympics for Synchronized Diving instead.

Let’s go make a level 1 kid fight for us now.

Lufia II – Battle #1



As you can see, Clair has five skills: Fight, Item, White (allows her to use support or healing magic), Black (allows her to use offensive magic), and Call (allows her to Summon). Well at the moment, they’re kind of useless because she doesn’t know any spells outside of Chocobo. In a way, that sort of plays into the story. Maybe her mother never taught her any spells prior to her death. She somehow learned to summon Chocobo, but maybe all kids know how to do that. So really, the situation is kind of unfortunate for her.

If you make Clair fight with her currently-equipped weapon, she’ll either miss or do really poor damage because the Rod’s hit % is pretty low (30%). Thus it’s better to go into Item, and use the Rod as an Item so she can use an attack which will do more damage. You’ll see this in a bit.

Along the way she learns Sight, which is one of the most useless spells in the world.



All it does is zoom out and let you see more of the map.



So this is why row formation might be important. I stuck Clair in the back row because in normal battles, she won’t get hit as hard. Sometimes you’ll be stuck in back-attacks, which will lock your back row in the front row. It’s best to switch rows immediately to avoid a slaughter.



But overall, Clair’s a pretty decent character to use in-battle. If her HP were higher, I’d kill off Cecil and make her get more EXP. Levelling Cecil up isn’t very crucial for now, but you should do it because he’ll one-shot stuff and make your life easier. Oh, and the second pic is of her one-shotting an Imp. Because they’re cannon fodder.



Let’s go to the grotto now. We should try to gain more allies to overthrow Baron!

Into the Darkness



This is Chocobo. It’ll appear, and nibble on an enemy or tackle it or kick it or something for heavy damage.

Oh, right, the reason I used Chocobo in that battle was to kill off the enemy there. It behaves like the General – get it alone or not finish it off fast enough and it’ll run away. The shells are weak against Lightning, but we can just one-shot those with Batman now.



What’s his problem? What a jerk! People have things to do, you know! Well, we can’t get past him, so we need to see if we can get more leads in Kaipo.

I also think his sight's going because he asked us what we are. He can't tell that we're people?



Well, I was sort of hoping I didn’t run into these guys on the first screen, but they demonstrate why using Cure offensively isn’t always a good idea. See, you can screw around with it in Mystic Quest because you have a points system and a ton of seeds, but you kind of need to manage your resources more here.

Also, note that Cecil only does 1 damage to them because he wields the sword of darkness or some garbage.

So what we’re going to do is use Clair’s rod as an item.



Neat, huh? She does a bit of magic damage and it’s enough to deal damage to the undead. Clair is pretty damn awesome.

End of entry stats:



Man, Clair’s Will certainly isn’t has high as Tommy’s was… Maybe her lack of a Will stat will come into play later on in the game. Batman’s just fine.

So, what do we do now? We’ll go back to Kaipo. Maybe we should find the old man a TV so he can watch Matlock!

Next time: Batman employs the elderly to fight for him.

It costs 2 MP to zoom out the map!?

I'mma finally break ahead of Dark Schala in this thang! I'm almost to the end of FF4DS, now. Freaked out temporarily because I thought I'd mucked up and couldn't get the ever-lovin' Sylph summon. Something that bugs me about FF4 is that they've never been entirely clear on what happens to Kain and Golbez. Like, when I was a kid, I thought they'd been mind controlled, but in the DS version they only ever say "manipulated" and it makes a lot more sense, because Golbez remembers vividly every aspect of that time, even seventeen years later, and Kain say he was conscious of his actions in the Tower of Zot. Both of them seem to feel guilty about what they've done. So is it more like Zemus' Will amplifies their hate and removes their inhibitions or what? Because they barely seem forced at all. And Golbez has been hearing Zemus since he was a KID.

Finished the first mission of Disc2 in FFT-0. These things are, of course, jokes to me, because my characters range from level 90 to 70. Still scared to do the Tower of Agito, though. Went in there one time, and there were level 120 Tonberries. And the Super Boss is level 200.

Professor Beef said:

It costs 2 MP to zoom out the map!?

Click to expand...

It almost costs as much as a Cure spell, so it must matter somehow!

It costs as much as a Poison spell, more than a Piggy spell, more than Osmose, more than Scan, and more than summoning an Imp.

It must be the game's way of telling you that Imps suck.

This reminds me that I still need to finish up my FF7 walkthrough where I had all the party members named after GAF members.

...I'm near the end, I swear!

Dark Schala said:

Click to expand...

I need to continue my FF8 playthrough, last time I played I'm sitting in Fisherman Horizon, and FFIV (psp).

Sorry, I'm a bit late with the summary. Didn't have much time to post in the last days.

Final Fantasy

Aeana PSP: Part 1A, 1B, 2, 3, 4
Scythian PSP: Part 1, 2, 3
perfect free iOS: Part 1, 2, 3
Cyan NES: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
catchan PSP: Part 1, 2
BreakyBoy PSX: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Jucksalbe PSP: Part 1, 2, 3, 4
kswiston PSP: Part 1, 2, 3, 4
Heropon PSP: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
IdreamofHIME : Part 1
Entropia GBA: Part 1, 2, 3
Ourobolus GBA: Part 1, 2
ATF487 PSP: Part 1
ninjatrigg PSP: Part 1
upandaway PSP: Part 1
honorless PSP: Part 1
ActStriker PSP: Part 1, 2, 3

Final Fantasy II

Aeana PSP: Part 1, 2, 3, 4
Goli PSP: Part 1
Heropon PSP: Part 1, 2, 3
charlequin : Part 1, 2
Johnas : Part 1, 2
Ultratech GBA: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Ourobolus iOS: Part 1, 2, 3, 4
Entropia : Part 1, 2, 3
Chris25 iOS: Part 1, 2
IdreamofHIME : Part 1
Scythian PSP: Part 1
ninjatrigg PSP: Part 1
CorvoSol : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Psxphile PSP: Part 1

Final Fantasy III

Aeana Famicom: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Jucksalbe Famicom; Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 , 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14
stupei DS: Part 1, 2, 3
Heropon DS: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
TranceKuja Famicom: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
Entropia DS: Part 1, 2, 3
Ourobolus Famicom: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Psxphile DS: Part 1, 2
Kaori's Babydaddy Famicom: Part 1, 2, 3
ninjatrigg DS: Part 1
CorvoSol DS: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
PixyJunket DS: Part 1

Final Fantasy IV

Absoludacrous PSP: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Jucksalbe PSP: Part 1, 2
itzknickknac PSP: Part 1
Goli PSP: Part 1, 2, 3
Aeana PSP: Part 1, 2, 3
Zing SNES: Part 1
Heropon PSP: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12
Kalnos DS: Part 1
Zerokku PSP: Part 1
Paches-EJ- SNES: Part 1, 2
Ourobolus PSP: Part 1, 2, 3
Red Scarlet SNES: Part 1, 2
CorvoSol DS: Part 1, 2, 33, 4
DarkSchala SNES: Part 1, 2, 3
Nocturnowl PSP: Part 1

Final Fantasy IV - The After Years

Electivirus PSP: Part 1, 2, 3

Final Fantasy V

HiddenWings GBA: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32
Labadal : Part 1, 2, 3, 4
Aeana SFC: Part 1, 2
Schnei871 : Part 1
Entropia : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Heropon GBA: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
coopolon : Part 1
JCV : Part 1, 2


Final Fantasy VI

Vamphuntr PSX: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
FrontalMonk : Part 1
Aeana : Part 1, 2, 3, 4
Entropia : Part 1, 2
Natetan : Part 1, 2, 3
Heropon SNES: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
FGMPR PSX: Part 1
Rei_Toei : Part 1, 2, 3
Ourobolus GBA: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Nocturnowl : Part 1
Scythian Empire : Part 1

Final Fantasy VII

Gravijah : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7
Lindsay : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, Bonus
StuBurns : Part 1
Entropia : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Aeana : Part 1
Heropon : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15
Ourobolous : Part 1
Boogiepop : Part 1, 2, 3, 4
TxdoHawk : Part 1
led4lyfe : Part 1, 2, 3
Forceatowolf : Part 1, 2
GrumpyAlien : Part 1, 2, 3
Kagari : Part 1

Final Fantasy VIII

SFGamer : Part 1
chris-013 : Part 1
Wildesy : Part 1
xist : Part 1
TranceKuja : Part 1, 2
Heropon : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18
Boogiepop : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Entropia : Part 1, 2
APZonerunner : Part 1

Final Fantasy IX

Billychu : Part 1, 2, 3
Lactose_Intolerant : Part 1
TranceKuja : Part 1, 2, 3
pikablu : Part 1, 2
Boogiepop : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
DarkKyo : Part 1
Entropia : Part 1, 2

Final Fantasy X

led4lyfe : Part 1
Boogiepop : Part 1, 2, 3, 4

Final Fantasy X-2

Jucksalbe : Part 1

Final Fantasy XI

Xaekid PC: Part 1, 2, 3

Final Fantasy XII

chris-013 Zodiac: Part 1, 2, 3, 4
RDreamer Zodiac: Part 1, 2

Final Fantasy XIII

Rahxephon91 : Part 1, 2
Seda: Part 1
Ourobolus: Part 1
TheSeks : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17
Roubjon : Part 1, 2
CorvoSol : Part 1, 2, 3
Boogiepop : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Mxrz : Part 1, 2, 3, 4

Final Fantasy XIII-2

DR2K : Part 1
CorvoSol : Part 1, 2, 3, 4
linko9 : Part 1

Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light

Aeana : Part 1

Final Fantasy Tactics

chris-013 PSP: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Final Fantasy Tactics A2

Labadal : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Final Fantasy Type-0

CorvoSol : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core

Locke_211: Part 1, 2

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers

Goli : Part 1
Anslon : Part 1, 2

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time

CorvoSol : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon

Jucksalbe: Part 1, 2

Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (Legend) aka This game...!

Jucksalbe SNES: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18
Dark Schala SNES: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19
CorvoSol : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Seiken Densetsu / Final Fantasy Adventure / Mystic Quest

Jucksalbe SGB: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

Chocobo Racing

Jucksalbe: Part 1
HiddenWings: Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

Final Fantasy Legend 2

CorvoSol : Part 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Bonus: If you want to take screenshots on your PSP, follow Stumpokapow's instructions here and here.
Bonus 2: Need to get rid of black borders in your pictures? Look here.

If you find a mistake or something I missed, feel free to contact me.

After playing Theatrhythm I want to play the earlier games. Sooo starting with FF1, what's the best version available to me? I have a 3DS, PSP and PS3...

I'd suggest downloading the PSN version of Origins (includes II as well) and play on normal difficulty. The PSP version is okay, too. There's no version that plays on 3DS.

I kinda forgot about this topic. Whoops.

In more "not resuming FF3", we have FF2. Hey, Green Souls! I like these guys.



...But not enough to spare them.

It's an old photo (I'm looking for the Jade Passage, now) but the massively overleveled status remains. Again. Am I not running from enough battles or something? The only concerted self-targeting I did was thwacking Maria during random battles on the world map because I thought it'd be funny if she had more HP than Guy. Ugh.

I will say I was surprised when your final party member joins you. I figured And you're just like "Water under the bridge!"
Did I miss something? Does that part come off differently in the original Japanese?

...There was actually a lot of "haha wtf" under the surface of this plot, but I have to hand it to the writers for their ambition. This is a much more complex game than FF1.

Do you have shields and thief gauntlets on every one? Just use the swap spell on low hp/mp enemies to level your characters. No need to hit yourself ever. Don't dual wield weapons either, it will slow you down.

So I'm pretty sure that Geryon and CPU are the most bullcrap bosses in FF4DS. Like, DUDE, how is spamming Maelstrom and Tsunami fair? And for the record, I will be playing the Wii version of After Years.

Still blown away by this games beauty. I thought I was going to reject the art style since I've never really played that many 2D games. But wow...



The story is really picking up now too. Just cleared Narshe Pt.2 and I'm assembling my team to Any suggestions on who I should bring along? I actually made it all the way to Zozo, but my team got wiped out by some fucking witch that cast Thundara on everyone. Killed Celes, and I tried to run away but it just immediately cast again and It was game over. So maybe now would be a good time to re-think my party? (My last save was all the way back in Narshe... doh) I'm currently using Celes, Edgar, Cyan and Locke.



A couple more questions. Do all bosses/enemies only have one item you can steal from them? This isn't like other FF's where you can steal multiple items from bosses is it? I thought Kefka MUST have something else hiding up his sleeve, but I was wrong



Also, is there any way to display my HP like 150/350 during battle instead of just my parties current HP? I never know whether it's worth casting cure or not because I always forget my characters max HP.

Just finished XIII-2 last night, platinum'd. Had a very good time with it. I think the character/battle system is a good improvement over XIII, though obviously it's largely unchanged. Visually, it's pretty amazing, though the fact that it's much more open means it can't look quite as good as XIII. Not a fan of most of the new music tracks, but luckily pretty much all of the music from XIII returns, so it's still great. The story I actually liked, and I thought the ending was very good, much better than XIII's, which was just nonsense. . Characters were pretty bad, IMO, a bit worse than XIII. Serah and Noel are just boring.

Overall I think the game's pretty damn good, probably better than XIII, which I liked quite a bit. But I'm certainly ready for the series to move on to 15.

I'd love to help answer but it's been a very long time since I touched FF6 GBA, so I have no idea

I started my Final Fantasy PSP run yesterday. Don't know if I'll do running commentary with screenshots (I took a few in-game) because I tend to stink when it comes to choosing moments when a game's moment is for the best for talking about/showing. I'm more of a music man who attaches themselves to those segments. But I'll think about it.

Natetan said:

Do you have shields and thief gauntlets on every one? Just use the swap spell on low hp/mp enemies to level your characters. No need to hit yourself ever. Don't dual wield weapons either, it will slow you down.

Click to expand...

Haha, agility isn't really a problem...anymore. I figured out that dual wielding wasn't the greatest strategy after eight sorcerers stunlocked everyone to death.
My current beef is that no one but Maria has a acceptable amount of MP, but it's way too late to reorganize spells and make anyone else into a half-decent mage without spamming Osmose and overdosing on Ethers. Oh well; next playthrough.

Using Swap is pretty clever. I really should have thought of that before—see, while wandering around where I shouldn't have been a few Brains cast it on my almost-dead party and I won the fight as a result. Was pretty neat.

Swap is a pretty useless spell other than for leveling your characters. It's frustrating until you grind the spell to lv 3 or 4 because it misses so much.

Didn't realize I never updated for FF2 (PSP). I'm in the Snow Cavern right now and I think I'm on the last floor.

Found out about the Concentration game and got a lot of gil from it. Should be all set for a while

the Dreadnought works quick.

Oh and Jucksalbe, I played the PSP version of FF1

It's been 6 years since I last played Final Fantasy VIII, so I figured I'd run through it again. I'm like 7 hours in, partway through the second disc, and goddamn... this game is good. One of the things I love about it is that the smarter you get about your approach to the junction system, the more retardedly powerful you can make your characters, even early on in the game. It's a lot of fun. And I've always liked VIII's visual style and music, so yeah, that hasn't changed.

Playing through this game again also confirms another thing for me: modern RPGs take too damn long to get going. There's really no slog at the beginning here, apart from some two minute tutorials... but you need those to know what the hell you're doing, anyway.

They really don't make 'em like this anymore

Thanks for compiling the links as usual, Jucksalbe.

Last time on Final Fantasy IV, an old man yelled at a cloud.

Today, Batman and Clair are going to get to the bottom behind the old man’s madness and look for other leads in Kaipo.

There was one house we didn’t go into in Kaipo, so I suppose that would hold the solution to our puzzle.



Oh, is that what the guy from before was talking about? “Was kept from falling down”? What the hell kind of dialogue is this? In the GBA version, it at least says that they found a girl lying unconscious outside of town. I’ll rant a little more about this in a minute cuz we have a small scene to get through. Let’s move into the house a little bit.

If the girl was uttering the name Batman, then that means…

Theme of Love



oh no the girl whose name really isn’t going to be rosa in the end is bedridden or on her deathbed or something let’s get out of here fast

(I don’t like Rosa very much, no.) Well, we have to cure her anyway, because both Batman and Tommy see something in her, so she’s going to act as a catalyst for Plot for a few things.

You're also apparently not supposed to allude to the fact that a character has an illness that is life-threatening in this version, so they used the words "kept from falling down". But when I was little and first played this game, I had made the supposition that someone from Baron was kept from falling down or got sick so they brought her to Kaipo for a doctor to take care of her. But that would be rather silly, I think, because why would she have desert fever when she's in Baron unless she trekked through that small desert near Baron you know what this is stupid. Why the crap would they take her to a small oasis town far the heck away from Baron which probably has some of the best doctors ever considering Rosa's rank within the castle as a White Wizard?

*sigh* Basically what I'm getting at is that the phrasing in the "falling down" bit is dumb and misleading.



The older fellow next to the bookcase tells me that the only solution to the issue is to get the SandRuby, but that’s only found in the Antlion’s Den. Other people in the town have told us that the only way to get the SandRuby is to ally ourselves with the Damcyan royalty since they’re the only ones allowed in that cave.

Well, I guess we have two reasons to go to Damcyan now. Even though I don’t like one of the reasons. Damn, Batman. You can do better, bro. Both he and Tommy can do much better. :|

By the way, how did Rosa even get here? How did she get here before Clair and Batman did? Did she chase after him on his mission? Even if she did, how did she get here so fast? Either she left Baron before Batman and Tommy did (ie: when we were mucking around in Baron and asking for girls to dance for us, or she left right after meeting Batman at night), the earthquake kept Batman and Clair unconscious for days and days, making Rosa get to Kaipo before them, or she got to Kaipo in some other fashion (airship or by sea).

Either way, apparently we have to cure what she has.

Everyone’s just repeating their NPC dialogue, so I guess we’ve found our lead? How does this even work? This is illogical. If he didn’t let us through before, he’s not going to let us through now.



What. Well, shit. Now he has different dialogue. Final Fantasy IV, you confuse me. He clearly could have seen Batman wielding the Dark Sword before, so I don’t know why this even makes a damn difference. By the way, even if we don’t talk to any of the NPCs in town, Batman will somehow know who the old fellow is.



Right. You sense “evil”. You just don’t want your daughter and the bard to do the sort of things that couples do. They’re adults. Let them do whatever they want.



That silly old man. I think he forgot his real name. We’ll fix that in a minute.

And he’s blocking everyone else from going to Damcyan just because of that?! Give me a break. Surely Kaipo or Damcyan have the resources to get rid of a monster that’s blocking a crucial route.



Right. A little kid who can summon a chocobo and barely knows her Tier-1 spells and an ex-military captain are going to help you, a guy who can’t remember his spells for shit, defeat an octopus. Ok.

So… uh, Tellah is the worst character in the entire game. The worst.



Don’t let that Level 20 fool you. Look at his stats. And this is before I took his equipment off. His stats aren’t that much better than Clair’s near starters. He also levels up really really slowly, so that’s why I think him getting EXP isn’t worth it.

The game also makes an effort to make sure you know how old he is with his lack of spells, the Recall command (not in this version), and the fact that he came in here armed only with leather armour and a freaking cane. Dude. Preparation. But then again, it’s not even worth it because when you select Fight with him, the damage he deals is pitiful (if he even deals damage at all).

Tellah doesn’t learn new spells as he levels up either. He’s a red mage, and a crappy red mage at that. His MP never ever increases. It always stays capped at 90. This is a bad thing, particularly later on in the game when spell cost increases (so tier three spells would cost 30 MP each; Tellah can only cast three of those in one dungeon, so you can see how useless he’ll become).

Oh, and Tellah’s stats go down when he levels up.

This version of Final Fantasy IV omits the Recall command, where Tellah can recall any spell to use. This can either be useful, or useless. It’s usually useless because he might recall a spell he already knows, or recall a spell that you don’t need like something the enemy is strong against. Really, I do not miss the Recall command at all.

Suckiest Sage that ever sucked.

Let’s change his name.



Well, I was making Simpsons references in the previous post. I must reiterate that Abe sucks, so we’re not going to use him in battle. He’ll take up our precious EXP. So…



Yup. Let’s move on now.

Into the Darkness



Some people may not remember that this place is here. You can get an Elixir, a Cure 2 and something else (probably cash) in here.

This dungeon’s pretty short. I know the first time through might feel long, but I think it feels short now…but after so many playthroughs of so many different versions, you kind of feel the time flying by.

Eventually we come to a Save Point. The very first Save Point of the series, in fact. It looks different in the SNES version, but you can't see it here. I'll capture a better one later.



Tutorial Joe enlightens us on what Save Points are. I guess they have monster repellent or something surrounding them because you never hear anything about monsters attacking people while they’re in a tent or cabin at a save point, right? And you get a nifty ‘sleeping in tent/cabin’ scene in this game, unlike later games where it’s just a cheap cure-all item. Tents/Cabins used to be special, dammit.

That night, Abe and Batman have a little heart-to-heart after Clair falls asleep. Might I add that the only soundtrack to this is drip-drops, which I found pretty cool when I was younger.



So I guess Batman just forgot about the stories that the NPCs told him in Kaipo. Abe is mad overprotective. And "just like Anna's childhood"? Oh, man I hope Abe didn't drag Anna along on his crazy quests through the Watery Pass.



Judging by Abe’s age (60) and the fact that he raised her on his own, I’m going to guess that Anna’s an adult by now. Dude. Let her do what she wants.

Abe asks Batman what he wanted to go to Damcyan for, and Batman replies:



Aha, so she’s just a friend, eh? He says this in the GBA version too, so it isn’t some sort of censorship or anything. I guess Batman didn’t want to be teased about it. So he asks Abe outright about the monster.



So it’s Ultros. Don’t worry about it. He’s probably joking around and laughing it up. They say it’s snakes. I say it’s an octopus.



In the morning, we find an IceRod for Clair. This lets us cast a free Ice spell if we use it as an item. We’re going to equip this now. I believe this causes extra damage against insect-types.



Final Fantasy IV also allows you to travel through hidden passageways in the walls. The first shot is of the character travelling through the wall even though you can’t see her. This is the only way to get the chest in the second pic without some sort of walk through walls code.



I’ve always liked this background.



Batman also gets the Darkness Blade. It gives us +20 attack and 30% accuracy (I think). It’s also still a dark elemental, so you’re not going to be able to kill Zombies unless you score a crit on them. We also find some Darkness equipment for him in the next cave.

As we approach the end of this section, Abe tells us that the monster is in the cave up ahead and that we should rest outside. Will do.



Next we come to the waterfalls.



We should have died, but this is Final Fantasy. There is no logic in Final Fantasy.



Here, we begin to encounter WaterHags and TinyMages. The WaterHags aren’t difficult, but the TinyMages are assholes. Thank goodness Batman has a new sword so we can kill them in one blow, but the Mages have higher HP than everyone else, have higher Phys/Mag DEF, can cast Hold, and can cast Lit. They suck even more because they counter a lot! They counter magic with Psych (Osmose), and counter physicals with Hold. Booo!



Oh shit, it’s the snakes!

The game does something cool where the snake sprite comes out at you and surrounds you from every direction. When I first played this game as a kid, I thought it was really neat in terms of animation and scene direction.

Awright, let’s show Ultros what we’re made of!



Octomom?



Final Fantasy VI - Grand Finale

Octomom is certainly not Ultros. It attacks pretty often. I ended up using Chocobo + Lit + Batman’s physicals for an easy time. As you keep hitting it, it loses tentacles, and its physical attacks get weaker as you go along. It’s weak against Lightning and Darkness.

He has multiple versions of that enemy sprite but I’m not going to show all of them off.

Also, I don’t know how Abe is delivering that battle pep talk considering he’s face-planted in the water. It must sound like gurgling in-game.



Yay. Let’s get the heck outta here.



Also, I didn’t mention this before, but I like how all of the spell animations are different. Black Magic circles the caster in some green glowing thing. White Magic circles the caster with white tin cans. Summon magic circles the caster with flames and turns them into Super Saiyans.



Hey guys it’s the Red Wings! They’re probably here to back us up!



What the… D:

Run!

Next time: Abe beats up a spoony prince.

Dark Schala said:

Also, I didn’t mention this before, but I like how all of the spell animations are different. Black Magic circles the caster in some green glowing thing. White Magic circles the caster with white tin cans. Summon magic circles the caster with flames and turns them into Super Saiyans.

Click to expand...

This is one of the things I like about FF5 as well.

Dark Schala said:

Suckiest Sage that ever sucked.

Click to expand...

Schala, watch your mouth!

Professor Beef said:

Schala, watch your mouth!

Click to expand...

But she's talkin' 'bout Tellah Abe! I can dig it.

Finished both FFIVDS and FFCCEoT today! I gotta say, freakin' Proto-Babil is as unfair a boss fight as they come, though. Freakin' Light of Babil was obscene, and then "Counter Object 190" was just plain wrong. It figures he'd have the stupid CPU's best moves. Also of note: Alexander of FFVI and Babil of FFIV look a lot alike, and both have a "Divine Judgement" move.

The one thing I DON'T like about the additions to FFIVDS' story centers on the blatant lies that Fusoya tells Cecil.
I'll be starting the Wii version of TAY next, and hoping to God that I can RNG that sucker to death. Otherwise the final dungeon is brutal.

Echoes of Time has a pretty good ending, though, I thought. The villain of the game is, however, far more heroic and likeable than Sherlotta will ever be. His theme is great, and his motives understandable. It's strange to see a hero in FF for once insist that destiny cannot and should not be changed. This game has made me wonder how many other evil scientists are in the series. I mean, there's Dr. Lugae and Cid Bunansa, but who else?

In Legends II I defeated the Magistrate and am finishing up on the world of Edo. I liked the character of Echigoya, and enjoyed the ridiculous banana smuggling story for that world. The next world up is a lot harder, though, and I'm beginning to wish I had more even odds.

In 7NES I have the Tiny Bronco, and am trying to figure out where the hell I'm supposed to go with that.

Final Stats FFIV:

Cecil: Lv.90, HP5611/MP375, STR99, SPD73, STM99, INT68, SPR85, ATK180, ACC140, DEF132, EVA30, MDF115, MEV39
Attack/Darkness/Focus/Items/LimitBreak
Rosa: Lv.89, HP3256/MP661, STR70, SPD69, STM72, INT85, SPR99, ATK110, ACC95, DEF119, EVA57, MDF124, MEV52
Dualcast/Cry/Items/FastTalker/Omnicasting
Kain: Lv.88, HP4665/MP104, STR99, SPD76, STM99, INT30, SPR78, ATK176, ACC138, DEF128, EVA30, MDF113, MEV37
Jump/Darkness/Focus/Items/LimitBreak
Rydia: Lv.89, HP3387/MP802, STR79, SPD68, STM82, INT99, SPR99, ATK90, ACC85, DEF119, EVA57, MDF124, MEV52
Summon/Dualcast/Items/FastTalker/LimitBreak
Edge: Lv.87, HP3947/MP310, STR99, SPD99, STM63, INT64, SPR39, ATK115, ACC120, DEF120, EVA30, MDF106, MEV42
Attack/Salve/Throw/Ninjutsu/Items

Final Stats FFCCEoT:
Bryn Star: Selkie, Lv.60, HP329/MP393, ATK563, DEF418, MATK132, MDF227 OnionArmor/Layle'sShades/LegendarySword
Kain: Clavat, Lv.59, HP348/MP346, ATK575, DEF511, MATK184, MDF206 Layle'sJacket/Layle'sShades/Ragnarok
Erica: Lilty, Lv.59, HP376/MP260, ATK609, DEF495, MATK123, MDF202 BlackKnightArmor/BlackKnightHelm/DragonTusk
Veronica: Yuke, Lv.59, HP281/MP365, ATK184, DEF322, MATK574, DEF208 MysticBeastArmor/MysticBeastHelm/KittyStaff

Professor Beef said:

Schala, watch your mouth!

Click to expand...

There are no damn wiener kids listening... yet...

HiddenWings said:

This is one of the things I like about FF5 as well.

Click to expand...

Agree. FFV has really awesome and diverse spell/casting animations.

CorvoSol said:

The one thing I DON'T like about the additions to FFIVDS' story centers on the blatant lies that Fusoya tells Cecil.

Click to expand...

I always thought ffv spell animations were terrible. VI and IV are better.

The Amano art of the Giant of Bab-Il and the art for Alexander are very similar, but only certain versions of the giant.

I suspect Amano recycled the design, and then the enemy designers retroactively recognized that with ProtoBabil.

FF2 PSP update

Finished Kashuan Keep and got the Sunfire, only to see Cid's airship get taken by that Dreadnought. Thing is massive.

Although, I didn't expect the game to throw me lots of spell tomes and mythril equipment in Kashuan Keep, especially given that drops up to this point have been pretty meager.

ActStriker said:

FF2 PSP update

Finished Kashuan Keep and got the Sunfire, only to see Cid's airship get taken by that Dreadnought. Thing is massive.

Although, I didn't expect the game to throw me lots of spell tomes and mythril equipment in Kashuan Keep, especially given that drops up to this point have been pretty meager.

Click to expand...

Remember there is a chocobo forest just south of kaushon. Head south from there through the desert to reach the dreadnought

Previously on Final Fantasy IV, Batman allowed Abe Simpson to tag along in order to get through a passage littered with waterfalls. Then the Red Wings tried to kill us all!

Today, we’re going to see what happened to Damcyan.



Run!

I like how the map icon for Damcyan changed from an intact prosperous castle to a crappy beat-down castle. Lots of attention to detail in this game sometimes.

If Anna really ran off with a bard to Damcyan, we have to get to the castle quickly!



Castle Damcyan

Welcome to Damcyan, I guess. This place looks messed up. I imagine that there would be guards standing around here. The walls are demolished, and you’ll see soon that everyone is either dead or minutes away to death. If everyone on the outskirts of the castle is like this, man, I’d hate to think of what happened if any of the soldiers decided to take on a ground assault into the castle to take the crystal. We need to find Anna and any of the royals, fast.

I have to add that I really loved this Castle BGM when I was younger. Short as heck loop? Yes, but it has really nice employment of synth strings, hi-hats, and a bass. Read any music thread and you know I specify the bass as one of my favourite instruments. The tempo and tone are also very good in this one.

Before we go into the castle, though…



We should probably take some of Damcyan’s treasures for safekeeping. We’re not being mean. We’re being… cooperative.



This is some horrible stuff. Either this guy crawled in here from the outside and used his body as a barrier against the Red Wings to prevent them from getting the treasures, or this guy was in here already, some of the Red Wings came in to look for something important, gutted this guy and blinded him, and left him here to die when they didn’t find stuff they wanted.

I like to imagine that it’s the latter because that seems like some real Suikoden stuff. *sigh* Now I feel all disappointed inside. :/



We get a lot of stuff. Things like a bow, some rings, arrows, Cures, money, and Ethers. Note whenever you find arrows, you’ll find ten of them in a bundle. We find a couple of Ruby Rings here too, which increase magic defense. A lot of the monsters at this point don’t really use magical attacks, so we’ll stick with the Iron Ring on Clair. Remember that Abe hasn’t had equipment on since we got him.



Back outside and in the castle, we try to check on some soldiers. The ones who are saying nothing have unfortunately passed on. Considering we just got here and some of the soldiers are still talking means that they probably died instantly during the event. The ones who are struggling to talk probably really shouldn’t to conserve their strength.

Here we learn that the Red Wings were indeed searching for Damcyan’s crystal and killed everyone and anyone in order to take it!



I suppose the temperature was high enough for the stone to catch fire. Must be CaC2 or coal. The interior of the castle contains chests are already looted and the walls and stuff are bombarded.

Let’s go to the third floor now.



That isn’t who I think it is, is it?



Oh shit, that must be the bard. Knowing Abe, he’s gonna…



Yeah.



Ha ha. The bard’s running away from an elderly gentleman? C’mon, son. We need to find fitting music for this.

Final Fantasy VIII – Slide Show Part 2



Abe is pissed the heck off, so he decides to beat the bard up. Please do note that I unequipped Abe, so he ends up resorting to ze fisticuffs like Doc Odine and it ends up being a somewhat funny animation. I imagine that it looks like grappling if we had better graphics. Why doesn’t he just use his magic instead? It would be more effective.

Next, we have one of the most recognizable quotes in all of Final Fantasy. Well, in English, I guess.



“You Spoony Bard!”

What in the world does “spoony” mean? Well, if I look it up in my etymology dictionary, it’s a lexical item from (earliest use) 1812 where it meant being foolish, or 1836 where it meant something like sentimental or enamoured with someone in a foolish/silly manner (lovey-dovey, sappy, etc). It likely comes from the slang meaning of “spoon” where you would use it to describe someone who was being a complete simpleton or foolish person. Why did the noun “spoon” become a slang term? I assume that it’s due to what a spoon was back then and also having to do with the word itself (ex: OE spon, P-Germanic *spaenuz, PIE: *spe – meaning long, flat piece of wood). Basically, it means that someone’s shallow or flat. Foolish, basically.

Anyway, what I’m trying to get at is that the word is old, and no one uses it anymore. Abe is as old as the dinosaurs, of course he’s going to use some outdated stuff. This phrase is rather apt when you consider what it means and Abe’s age: the bard is hopelessly enamoured with Anna, so much so that he, in Abe’s eyes, convinced Anna to elope with him. Though it’s pretty funny because you’d think that he’d say something harsher due to how effing pissed off he is right now.

So that’s why the phrase is popular. It’s something that sounded silly, it was old (and thus I suppose that some people didn’t really recognize what it was at first), and you’d think that Tellah would throw better insults out at people. It has been retained in all English versions of Final Fantasy IV, and was even used in an instance in Final Fantasy IV: The After Years. It was used in Final Fantasy X (NPC talk), Final Fantasy XII (Rabanastre NPC), FFT, and Dissidia Duodecim.

It’s also been used in other works such as (well, from my experience, anyway) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (I think the judge says it or something, but it’s a phrase that Alexander O Smith seems to really like), and Trinity Universe.

Let’s get back to the fight!



Hahaha. He’s probably punching his face.



And Anna stops the fight; guess she isn’t as dead as we thought she was. The bard should’ve probably made more of an effort to stick up for himself, but whatever. I also think this battle has the two other characters dummied out.



That’s probably the Prince’s stage name at concerts.



“…arrows.”

So we learn that someone else is in charge of the Red Wings and he’s going around crushing everyone who gets in his way because he wants to get the crystals. Seems as though he’s taking more of an aggressive approach than Batman did when he took the Crystal of Water from Mysidia.

We also learn that Edward’s the type of guy who’s too afraid to take a bullet for anyone so he has his girlfriend do it instead. If we were playing other versions, we’d learn that Anna, Edward’s mom, and Edward’s father all protected him. To be fair, though, Edward's the last of the Damcyan royalty, so he had to be protected to save the bloodline.



Cry in Sorrow

Anna uses her last words to beg her father for forgiveness after disobeying him and passes away without getting a chance to hear her father say that he wasn’t angry with her or her actions.

This is the second death in Final Fantasy IV which matters. You’ll see why later on. Do bear in mind that it’s all downhill from here.

Abe says her name twice so he clearly loves her more. Then, in grief and anger, he asks around: “Who is Golbez?”



Pull yourself together, man! This is a crisis. The world is going to shit right now and we need your help.



Yeah, what he said. This sort of starts Abe’s miniarc of revenge, which essentially becomes a defining part of his character (well, you got shades of it when you recruited him because he wanted to go after Edward at first, whom he’d felt had wronged him). Abe is a guy who likes to blame people, I guess, and likes to resort to the ‘less talk, more fight’ approach.



Despite Batman trying to talk some sense into Abe, he’ll have none of it. He slaps Batman out of the way and leaves. This is why we ended up unequipping him in the first place.



Melody of Lute

Still with this, huh? Let’s just go. He’s not gonna be up for this.



What are you doing, Clair? -_-

This is the first line she’s uttered since we recruited her, by the way. She hasn’t said a word since. And she’s the one telling Edward to quit crying? Understandable that you were forced to grow up quickly , but I think she’d done her share of mourning too. You’ll see later on that she has some issues of her own.



Someone tell this kid that anyone can cry, regardless of age or gender. The guy just saw his lover get fired upon with arrows and she’s telling him that he needs to get over it seconds after it happened? Give him a little time first. To be fair to her, she’s, like, seven. Something something preoperational stage egocentrism something something.

It could be logical, but let’s take a step back and consider the fact that she ended up summoning a monster to kill us all and shift plate tectonics due to her intense emotions when her mother died.



And what the heck would you do here? Bury her in the sand and cry over her grave for the rest of your life? Give me a break. I’m sure Anna wouldn’t want that for you.



Batman knows what’s up. Life’s gotta keep moving.



Why do we need his help again? I forgot.



Oh yeah. That quest. I want to skip doing that quest. -_-

Really, though, this quest to prevent someone from taking over the world and slaughtering everyone on the world map is much more interesting than curing some character I don’t care about.



A book told us that. But I don’t think Batman loves Rosa all that much considering he keeps referring to her as merely a friend. >.>



Best party member.



With that, Edward bids his final farewell to Anna (without music, and I think this is some good scene direction here), and she blinks away like all those sprites do when they die.



Main Theme of Final Fantasy IV

And now we get a sweet hovercraft! When I first played Final Fantasy IV on the SNES, I remember thinking how awesome getting the hovercraft was. The hovercraft starting up just as the world map music started to roll with the synth strings? Man, that is some good synch!

The Hovercraft can travel across rocky shallows so we can go to Kaipo, Mt Hobs, and the Antlion’s Lair very easily. It can also travel across deserts and fields, but it can’t go through forests or over mountains.

So. Let’s check out our 24-year-old bard. His original name was Gordon from Final Fantasy II Gilbart Chris von Muir, but that won’t fit in the character limit, would it? Instead, he was renamed Edward Chris von Muir. We’ll revisit this bit way later on. His renaming was pretty convenient, actually.



We’re going to keep him in the back row for various reasons. Well, you can see the various reasons here. Edward’s stats are pretty poor. He’s also locked into a Bard role where we can’t take advantage of a lot of what we can do with him, so that’s kind of unfortunate. He has low HP, low defense (we’ll fix that a little by replacing his Ruby Ring with an Iron Ring), he has low vitality, and low strength. Since we aren’t playing the GBA or PSP versions of the game, Edward does not have a chance to redeem himself through stats, what he equips, or the damage he inflicts on bosses.

Edward has a harp equipped. Yes, contrary to his official art where he holds a lute, he really wields a harp. These harps have different status effects attached to them as you’ll see in a bit.

Let’s check him out in battle.

Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 – Beginning of a Battle



These are Edward’s base commands, and if you’ve played other versions, you’ll notice that he’s missing the Salve command (which allows him to use potions on the entire party).

He has four commands: Fight, Sing, Hide, and Item.

First of all, let’s talk about Hide. If you select Hide in-battle, Edward will use the round to run from the fight for a while. In this round, he will take no damage. To get him to show up again, select “Show” when his round is over. If Edward is in Critical, he will automatically hide anyway, and sometimes this gets a bit annoying because you might not have a chance to heal him as he’s probably going to go back into hiding quickly if you choose to make him Show himself.

In the GBA version, there’s a pretty neat exploit called the Psycho Edward Bug, where you’ll cast Berserk on him, and he’ll attack. When he gets into critical and hides, he’ll still come back and deal out damage. But he’s still in “hide status” so he’s invincible against all attacks. Just don’t let everyone else die or else he’ll show himself and come out of hiding.

His Fight command allows him to use his harp to inflict damage and, rarely, the status effect associated with the Harp. In this case, his Dreamer Harp, as you can tell by the name, has a 30% chance of inflicting Sleep on an enemy.



This is the Sing command. You may know this as Bardsong. What you’ll notice is that you aren’t able to pick whatever Edward will sing and inflict on the enemy. Edward has a 25% chance of inflicting Sleep, Silence, Charm, or nothing on an enemy. When Edward is a Toad, he will, 100% of the time, sing the Song of Toad for an enemy.

The most unfortunate thing, however, is the fact that we’re not playing either the GBA or DS versions of the game. In the GBA/PSP version, you can take advantage of Edward’s later stat boosts to make him a better fighter. In the DS version, Bardsong becomes a very useful ability, as buffs and debuffs matter a little more in that version.

So… in this version, Edward’s kind of sucky and acts as dead weight sometimes. In other versions, though, he’s a little better.

By the way, his name isn’t Edward anymore. That’s his stage name as a bard. From now on, he’ll be known as:



Named after this guy, obviously.

And to close off, you know, Final Fantasy IV starts off pretty decently, I think. Damcyan is at least handled alright in terms of atmosphere and mood, especially what occurred prior to you getting there. Perhaps I’m giving this section more credit than I should.

It’s only until we get into the Tower of Zot business/Dark Crystals nonsense that my attention for the game begins to wane. Don’t be surprised that at around the point when I have to go to Troia, I begin to slog my way through the game as if it were a chore because, really, that’s the point when I begin feeling bored and annoyed with FFIV and its narrative.

Next time: Gilbert Gilbart Edward Michael Bolton almost gets eaten.

So Anna was on #TeamEdward, eh?

Professor Beef said:

So Anna was on #TeamEdward, eh?

Click to expand...

Oh man, that sorta makes sense too, considering the Edward in those books plays the piano and composes a song for the girl for reasons I forgot.

I read the book because it was released when I was in my senior year of high school and a lot of my friends were talking about it and figured I should read it. -_-

Dark Schala said:

There are no damn wiener kids listening... yet...


Agree. FFV has really awesome and diverse spell/casting animations.

Spoiler

Maybe in terms of build and being a Paladin given that Kluya was busy bestowing light and whatever to people like Kain and Cecil. I don't know. :lol

Click to expand...

I was thinking about this today, and really,
Speaking of, I know Stumpo's brought this up, but it IS funny how there are never any other nations in the world of FF4 seen with Airships, but the game makes a BIG deal about how Baron's airship fleet is the finest in the world. Interestingly enough, their navy is apparently pretty crummy. I suppose Baron needed to use the airships to compete with the other nations, since they all had crystals and it did not.

Another interesting point that FF4DS brings up is

jaxword said:

The Amano art of the Giant of Bab-Il and the art for Alexander are very similar, but only certain versions of the giant.

I suspect Amano recycled the design, and then the enemy designers retroactively recognized that with ProtoBabil.

Click to expand...

In fairness, the Babil only resembles Alexander in the Amano art. Everywhere else he looks rather different.

Professor Beef said:

So Anna was on #TeamEdward, eh?

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BAD PUN.


In other news, I've finished FF7NES. I'll post final stats for that later. I feel like the game skips pretty much the last disc. You visit the Temple of the Ancients, Sephiroth commits massive spoilers, Cloud explains about the REAL Nibelheim incident while Sephiroth tries to throw him off, Rufus kinda wusses out, Hojo talks about a bunch of things the player never sees, then the party dives right into the final dungeon and battle.

All in all, the game does a pretty good job of being faithful to its source, but it often leaves out things that the player only understands because of their having played the original. For instance For an NES game, though, the story manages to be surprisingly good. Cloud's lines during the massive spoiler are still as emotional as anything said in FF7 could ever be. No "Let's Mosey!" though. No Yuffie or Vincent, either. And you never receive an airship (just the Tiny Bronco and the Buggy), and no . I've heard there's a patch out there to make the game more like FF7 still, but whether this will prevent the abrupt ending I dunno.

I also started 4TAY again, but I'm apprehensive. The game is obscenely hard at points (I had to redo the Mist Cliff three times because I got petrified repeatedly without hope of resistance.) I don't know if I have it in me to bow before the RNG Gods once more for this game, and I only have a month before school starts, which would leave me without my Wii. I kinda want to just cheat and get the Debug Gear, but I don't know where to begin going about that for the Wii. So yeah, apprehensive on that.

I've been debating on playing FF4 again. It's been quite a while since I've done so.

May pick up the PSP version since I haven't messed with any of the After Years stuff.

But for now, I'm playing 012 Dissidia which is...interesting to say the least. Still, it's kinda of a downer learning that .

I actually have 012 Dissidia whatever its called because my friend figured it would make a good multiplayer game and it was going cheap at the time.
Attempted to go back to the single player after finishing FF6 and I just can't do it, the game confuses the hell out of me and the difficulty level shoots all over the place making it an exercise in frustration for me.
But I guess the multiplayer was fun, though I lose most of the time, unless I wheel out the mighty Golbez.
Coming to think of it it Kefka's parading around in this game is probably what set me onto wanting to play FF6 so there you go.

So I owned two FF fan service titles before actually owning a main entry....yep.

Nocturnowl said:

I actually have 012 Dissidia whatever its called because my friend figured it would make a good multiplayer game and it was going cheap at the time.
Attempted to go back to the single player after finishing FF6 and I just can't do it, the game confuses the hell out of me and the difficulty level shoots all over the place making it an exercise in frustration for me.
But I guess the multiplayer was fun, though I lose most of the time, unless I wheel out the mighty Golbez.
Coming to think of it it Kefka's parading around in this game is probably what set me onto wanting to play FF6 so there you go.

So I owned two FF fan service titles before actually owning a main entry....yep.

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I had a lot of fun with Dissidia 012. The backstory is admittedly better than the main story .


Anyway, I just beat Final Fantasy Legends II. It's a fun game, but MAN does the difficulty spike toward the end of the game. How am I supposed to tank 4 tornadoes in a row? It's absurd. Thank God for Robots, too, because Zero was the only one who lasted the full final battle. Freaking Isis up and abandoned me!

All in all, it wasn't a bad game, and for a GB game, the story was pretty neat. I still think Dad is a horrible dad, though, and I'm not at all sold on the idea of Mask being someone other than him. I'm pretty sure Dad just puts the Mask on so he can have his second wife and daughter in an entirely different world from his first wife and son. Dad is a pretty messed up guy, really.

Watching melt was terrifying, though. Also, what kind of a lame MAGI is Heart, anyway?

Anyway, I'll post my final stats for that and FF7NES later.

CorvoSol said:

Anyway, I just beat Final Fantasy Legends II. It's a fun game, but MAN does the difficulty spike toward the end of the game. How am I supposed to tank 4 tornadoes in a row? It's absurd. Thank God for Robots, too, because Zero was the only one who lasted the full final battle. Freaking Isis up and abandoned me!

All in all, it wasn't a bad game, and for a GB game, the story was pretty neat. I still think Dad is a horrible dad, though, and I'm not at all sold on the idea of Mask being someone other than him. I'm pretty sure Dad just puts the Mask on so he can have his second wife and daughter in an entirely different world from his first wife and son. Dad is a pretty messed up guy, really.

Watching

Spoiler

Apollo

melt was terrifying, though. Also, what kind of a lame MAGI is Heart, anyway?

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You should try the DS remake if you get a chance. I'd like to see what you think about it.

I remember the final boss in the remake gets stupid hard because it starts putting out so much damage towards the end of the fight (which ends up dragging out the fight because I have to heal EVERY round to avoid dying). Not fun when Double Star Buster takes out like 700-900 health. I usually only have two people left when it's all said and done.

I'm attempting to get start another playthrough of FFXII IZJS on my pc, but I'm not sure when I'll start. I had gotten about 15 hours into a game, but then had to reformat my pc, and forgot to take the save games with me. (I know, I know) I really want to beat it, as I've spent about 200 hours on the vanilla version, and the fact that I can really make a character play a role is awesome. Now to find the time...

Phew, finished Final Fantasy VIII again. Spent about 25 hours or so this time (including a couple times when I was away from the controller.)

I still really like the game and feel like it's definitely one of the more interesting games in the series, gameplay-wise... mostly because the junction system is so satisfying to exploit. But I did reconfirm for myself that yeah, the game definitely gets worse as it progresses. The first disc is some of my favorite RPGing of all time... places like Timber and Deling City were awesomely gloomy, and had killer music to match. And I liked that at that point, the game was on a smaller scale, rather than tasking you with saving the world.

That kinda goes to hell right around the time you visit Trabia Garden. Completely.

I still enjoy the game quite a bit after that, though it's not as good. The story and settings just kinda lost their edge.

Anyway, I think VIII's probably my favorite of the PS1 Final Fantasy games. It's definitely better than 9, as far as I'm concerned. Though as far as the whole series is concerned, 10 is, as I suspected, still my favorite by a fuckin' mile.

CorvoSol said:

I had a lot of fun with Dissidia 012. The backstory is admittedly better than the main story

Spoiler

Chaos and the Warrior of Light's relationship, The Great Will and Shinryu, and all that

.


Anyway, I just beat Final Fantasy Legends II. It's a fun game, but MAN does the difficulty spike toward the end of the game. How am I supposed to tank 4 tornadoes in a row? It's absurd. Thank God for Robots, too, because Zero was the only one who lasted the full final battle. Freaking Isis up and abandoned me!

All in all, it wasn't a bad game, and for a GB game, the story was pretty neat. I still think Dad is a horrible dad, though, and I'm not at all sold on the idea of Mask being someone other than him. I'm pretty sure Dad just puts the Mask on so he can have his second wife and daughter in an entirely different world from his first wife and son. Dad is a pretty messed up guy, really.

Watching

Spoiler

Apollo

melt was terrifying, though. Also, what kind of a lame MAGI is Heart, anyway?

Anyway, I'll post my final stats for that and FF7NES later.

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\



Dissidia 012 was leagues above Dissidia 13. Simply because it's much more interesting to see the heroes coping with an unwinnable battle than the usual "Well we know they have to win at EVENTUALLY, duh."

Also, man, you shoulda played the DS version. It is superior. It keeps the original flavor but man the music sounds nice all synthed up. Uematsu did a damn good job.

Also I didn't mean to make you feel bad before, CorvoSol Just amazed was all.

Done Crisis Core, possibly the best they've made in this generation?

Ultratech said:

You should try the DS remake if you get a chance. I'd like to see what you think about it.

I remember the final boss in the remake gets stupid hard because it starts putting out so much damage towards the end of the fight (which ends up dragging out the fight because I have to heal EVERY round to avoid dying). Not fun when Double Star Buster takes out like 700-900 health. I usually only have two people left when it's all said and done.

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Trivia: The Final boss has two different difficulty levels. He's WAY harder if you used the new game addition of the goddesses and their group attacks. If you didn't, he's much more like his GB version.

Though why would you WANT to avoid the goddesses? They're great.

jaxword said:

Trivia: The Final boss has two different difficulty levels. He's WAY harder if you used the new game addition of the goddesses and their group attacks. If you didn't, he's much more like his GB version.

Though why would you WANT to avoid the goddesses? They're great.

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I've heard that, though it made me curious how less difficult it was if you did that.
Does it just skip the last form or something?

I may try a playthrough to do that.

Ultratech said:

I've heard that, though it made me curious how less difficult it was if you did that.
Does it just skip the last form or something?

I may try a playthrough to do that.

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Pretty much, yeah, it's just like the GB battle.

Making my way through the PSP version of FF II. This game is uh...interesting. Im sure the difficulty is toned down which help, but the stat leveling is still odd. I'm about 4 hours in and moving right along.

FF2 update!

Recovered Cid and Hilda an from the Dreadnought, went and put the egg in the spring at Deist, and now going to save Hilda again from the Coliseum.

Freaking damsel in distress

Ultratech said:

You should try the DS remake if you get a chance. I'd like to see what you think about it.

I remember the final boss in the remake gets stupid hard because it starts putting out so much damage towards the end of the fight (which ends up dragging out the fight because I have to heal EVERY round to avoid dying). Not fun when Double Star Buster takes out like 700-900 health. I usually only have two people left when it's all said and done.

Click to expand...

Good, Golly, that final leg of the game was stupid hard already. Freaking Zero, my Robot, was a walking tank with max stats in everything but agility, armed with Xcalbr and everything, and STILL he died because how does anybody take two straight Tornadoes? I cannot imagine it getting harder. On this run through the series, I've vowed to kill every Super-Boss in every version I play. Proto-Babil was already rage mode, I hate to know how Omega V and Shinryu Verus are gonna feel.

jaxword said:

\



Dissidia 012 was leagues above Dissidia 13. Simply because it's much more interesting to see the heroes coping with an unwinnable battle than the usual "Well we know they have to win at EVENTUALLY, duh."

Also, man, you shoulda played the DS version. It is superior. It keeps the original flavor but man the music sounds nice all synthed up. Uematsu did a damn good job.

Also I didn't mean to make you feel bad before, CorvoSol Just amazed was all.

Done Crisis Core, possibly the best they've made in this generation?



Trivia: The Final boss has two different difficulty levels. He's WAY harder if you used the new game addition of the goddesses and their group attacks. If you didn't, he's much more like his GB version.

Though why would you WANT to avoid the goddesses? They're great.

Click to expand...

What I really liked most was Scenario 000 in Duodecim. Any team I want, Chaos has literally roflstomped the entire pantheon of FF, and then comes the megaton . Really, I liked all the backstory in that game, about the War of the Lufaine, about Chaos and Cosmos' origins, and the origin of the Warrior of Light.

And though I like Crisis Core, the best FF this gen is Type-0. It takes everything good about Crisis Core and expands on it. CC also suffers from having the single worst villain in the series. I cannot hate Red Sephiroth enough. Heck, the villain in Echoes of Time was cooler than him (granted, Echoes of Time's villain also seemed like a more heroic guy than it's surrogate protagonist, Sherlotta.)