Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It was much too big to be called a bardiche. Massive, thick, heavy, and far too rough. Indeed, it was more like a heap of raw iron.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Playing: Final Fantasy IX]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
When I was first playing the games so far, I noticed how rarely Square ever modified their world maps. This was strange in the SNES era, but made perfect sense in the Famicom and PSX eras, due to technical limitations. If you see them change something about the world map, they mean it, that change is important, and for them to do it when you're not even supposed to come back to the area in the near future, like with Cleyra, means it's even more serious.
They got around their technical limitations here in a pretty straightforward fashion: there was never a Cleyra on the world map to begin with, just a whirlwind object that had to be a more expensive "game object" in order to animate it (as opposed to part of the level geometry, which is more-or-less fixed in this era). Once they pulled that off, it was easy enough to delete it and reveal the ruins it was hiding all along. In contrast, compare Lindblum, which I'm pretty sure is never modified at all, but they hide the fact by keeping it conveniently out of the player's view after the damage happens!
FWIW, the Fat Chocobo had actually been in most of the Chocobo games at this point, even playing an important role in one of them!
......He's a walking fat joke in most of the others, mind......
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I also enjoyed Fossil Roo, which considering my hatred of cave dungeons is a high compliment.
The first dungeon to do this in the series, and in my mind still the best, was FFII's coliseum, when you're forced to fight the Behemoth, and then get locked in prison, so not only are you forced to deal with the attrition after the boss, but you can't just walk out, either! You also have to put in the footwork to find Hilda, forcing you to stay even longer unless you want to stage a second excursion! The only problem is all the petrification. In our playthrough it led to some tense moments, because we were right on the edge of learning Esuna 5, and that made it a race against time that we won by the skin of our teeth. But I imagine that for most people, who hadn't been levelling Esuna at all, that was probably just yet kick in the pants from ol' FFII.
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*Putting down skull-measuring instruments*
Awww...
The obvious guess would be the sudden arrival of Mist flooding the tunnels with monsters. Possibly transforming Gargantuans themselves into abominations? I don't think the Mist was shown to mutate people, but perhaps when it just appeared, it did, later settling on just maintaining the numbers of monsters created that day.
Nothing new about this guy, but I'm including him so we can see the battle screen and that this whole region is genuinely just hard, cracked, dry soil.
It's kinda weird to have wandering monsters when monsters are originated in the Mist, and the Outer Continent is defined by being free of Mist. So I guess we have Mist monsters and regular monsters, who are still going to kill you if given an opportunity. Vagaries of the gameplay needs, I suppose.
My first though was that these could still be the same root system, reaching all the way from the Mist Continent through the Roo.
Roo is a fun thing to say. Gargan Roo. Fossil Roo. Roo de Seine.
My favorite Beatles thing is Abbey Roo. Cheesy horror film - Nightmare on Elm Roo. Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Roo. Let's listen to the AC/DC classic, Roo to Hell.
My favorite Beatles thing is Abbey Roo. Cheesy horror film - Nightmare on Elm Roo. Sherlock Holmes lives on Baker Roo. Let's listen to the AC/DC classic, Roo to Hell.
- Pronouns
- Him/He
...Lani is taller than Zidane? They really did put a lot of effort into making her character design attractive.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
It's fascinating to see the contrasting reactions of the Alexandrian soldiers throughout Lindblum. Like here, this soldier says "There was no need to take things this far, with the needless spilling of blood and suffering of citizens." (The rest of the lines are as translated.)
Meanwhile, back in the previous screen:
This Alexandrian soldier goes "The age where the number of airships fielded determined the course of a war is over. With Black Mage Soldiers and Eidolons, we can win wars without getting our hands dirty."
It's the sort of thing which would have military scifi writers spend paragraphs talking about "paradigm shifts" in warfare. Overwhelming force and teleport insertions to crush all resistance, then send in the troops to clean up and occupy.
And I feel like if this Alexandrian soldier was talking to the previous soldier, the conversation would have had something along the lines of "Good news, you do not need to kill people to keep Alexandria strong. All you need to do is leave it to the Black Mage Soldiers and Eidolons, and you personally will keep your conscience clean."
The primary difference appears to be how much concern is placed on collateral damage. The Black Mage Soldiers are clearly indiscriminate in their targets, and the Eidolon summons are thus far too large to separate "military" from "civilians". There is thus a divide in views of rules of engagement and the honourable conduct of warfare: the Alexandrian soldiers who have doubts are the idealistic ones who believe in concepts like "(don't do) warcrimes" and "avoid civilian casualties", while the enthusiastic Alexandrian soldiers are the cynical ones who go "war is war, if you're in the vicinity you're fair game, too bad,
I want to emphasize once again how Lowell is using gratuitous English in his speech. Every time he says "big", think of it as him saying "BIG" in all-caps emphasis, possibly with a sparkly flourish.
Lowell also does say Alexandria is a "backwater town" (田舎町 "inaka machi"), and the way he says it sounds like he's being prideful with deigning to grace this faraway place with his presence. But as we've seen, Alexandria has been described as kind of "backwards" or "lagging behind the times" in other places in the game text, like Steiner's first visit to Lindblum.
I kind of want to know what the general cultural standings of the Mist Continent nations were before all of this. Alexandria, Lindblum, and Burmecia-Cleyra, especially with the split between Burmecia and Cleyra, and how the three Jewel Pieces were divided between Alexandria, Lindblum, and Cleyra.
The Strangereal setting of Ace Combat is kind of constrained by how it wants to tell the same story of "aggressive ultranationalist country launches unprovoked invasion on peaceful democratic country using superweapons", but has to keep going around the world to find new "them vs us" regions. Erusea vs the rest of Usea in Ace Combat 4, Osea vs Yuktobania in Ace Combat 5, Emmeria vs Estovakia in Ace Combat 6, and in Ace Combat 7 the game writers decided to use Osea and Erusea again as callbacks.
And due to wanting to include further callbacks to Ace Combat Zero, the strong implication in the Ace Combat series is every single war is directly or indirectly due to Belka, ie Nazi Germany. Belka churned out superweapon after superweapon, and after the Belkan War in Ace Combat Zero, most of its scientists and engineers were Operation Paperclipped to the rest of the world, where they continued to develop the rest of the superweapons seen in the series. Thus we get the superweapon vs superweapon matchups, including the inevitable plot developments when the superweapon that used to be on "our" side gets taken over by the enemy and we have to destroy it.
To bring it back to FFIX, it is, as mentioned earlier, a series of "military paradigm shifts" from whatever came before to airships to teleporting Black Mage Soldiers. Superweapon after superweapon after superweapon.
I acknowledge this is a pretty common plot device, and FFIX definitely pre-dates the more story-heavy Ace Combat entries. But with the pseudo tunnel run back during the Black Waltz 3 confrontation, it's a fun similarity.
An additional bit of information here is the spoils of war (戦利品 "senri hin") taken by Alexandria is "stacks and stacks of cheap food". I think the translator assumed the dialogue saying "cheap food" meant "not expensive valuables", but I wonder if that might be reading a bit further than intended.
My own speculation is "cheap food" implies foodstuff in bulk, meaning the Alexandrian soldiers were ordered to take as much food as they could, prioritizing quantity over quality. Queen Brahne is more interested in venturing out immediately (presumably to the Outer Continent) than to consolidate her recent conquest of Lindblum. The attack on Lindblum thus feels more like a large-scale raid for immediate resources; I don't think they're even setting up a proper logistics channel.
More elaboration in Japanese: the Lindblum soldier wants them to stall further, because "'That' needs a bit more time to be stopped".
I don't know what "that" is. It could be something Cid has planned in secret, or it could just be referring to the fleet itself, and the Lindblum soldiers just want to delay its departure further. It's possible they mean the trolley Cid wanted to stop mid-track to jam the Serpent's Gate (or, in Japanese, 水竜の門 "mizu-ryuu no mon", "Water Dragon's Gate"), but that kind of feels weird in terms of timing and logistics of letting the soldiers know.
Dagger: "What if, after crossing the seas to a continent we've never seen before, something happened to you two? I might not be able to help you on my own."
Dagger is not worrying about herself as such, but more about her ability to save the others in case things go horribly wrong. She does immediately go "if a princess loses her excellent guards, that would be troublesome, wouldn't it? Yes, very troublesome!" so I think she's playing up her vulnerability here, to downplay her concern over Zidane.
The "elite guards" is 優秀な護衛 "yuushuu na goei", which I translated to "excellent", because 優秀 is more a value descriptor than a rank descriptor that "elite" might imply. Hence Zidane being flattered by being called one:
Zidane: "Hehe, what sort of thing should I say at a time like this? 'My thanks for your words, princess~' or something like that?"
Zidane is well aware and playing along, hence his lighthearted "just kidding, no need for that" when Dagger pouts.
As a bit of trivia, back when we first visited Lindblum, the Red Mage Lady was looking for a souvenir to bring back from Lindblum, and considered some Oglop Oil.
So Oglop Oil is considered a Lindblum specialty. One wonders whether Cid's stint as an oglop will cause him to reconsider this industry.
The officer in charge suspects Cid because one of the soldiers says she heard "gwok gwok" while the trolley was being jammed, so clearly Cid has no control over his vocalizations during stealth missions.
Also, back in the Theatre District:
Alexandrian soldier: "If you underestimate us because we're women, you'll be sorry. Just obediently follow our orders."
I'm very curious how the soldiers of Alexandria see themselves, both internally within Alexandria, as well as their reputation in other nations.
We've had some speculation and discussion about the social hierarchy of men and women in Alexandria's armed forces, given the Knights Of Pluto vs the wider Alexandria military. I get the feeling there might be a big, complicated tangle of viewpoints and biases, conscious and unconscious, from both characters and writers.
There are Alexandrian soldiers who see themselves as "just soldiers", those who are willing to show some "regular people" interests (eg the soldier admiring the painting), those who are willing to show "female coded (as of the 90s and 00s)" interests (eg the soldier who wanted to go shopping), and those who are defensive about being women (eg the soldier daring others to underestimate them due to their gender).
I also keep thinking about how Beatrix has been consistently referred to as 女将軍 "onna shogun", ie "Lady General". Which specifies the "Lady" part in the same way words like "henchwoman" or "sorceress" does; it subtly acknowledges the default is male, and so the female affix has to be added. And everyone refers to Beatrix as "Lady General" for her title, both in and outside Alexandria, so what does that mean for Alexandria's view of what a default "General" would look like?
Post-Lindblum events split for image count.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
The world map description.
The Japanese description is... very poetic, to the point I honestly would not have any idea what it actually means. So I am assuming the English translation is accurate.
そして『恐れ』を前進に変えよ - "And let 'fear' turn into progress forward."
弱き者、尾をふり返る事なかれ - "Weaklings, do not let your tail make you turn back."
武き者、髭を湿らせる事なかれ - "Warriors, do not let your beards dampen your spirits."
The "dampen your spirits" part is literally "make you wet/moist", so I was wondering what "wet beards" had to do with anything.
チョコボの夢の中 "Chocobo no yume no naka", "Inside the Chocobo's Dream".
I admit I'd been saving the Chocobo World screenshots for some time, because I was following a walkthrough guide and thus I had unlocked it fairly early on. Looks like the translation is accurate; the Fat Chocobo (no dialogue box label, so for all I know their official name is "Chocobo King or something) speaks like the stereotypical king, with "O Wanderer" and royal "we" and such.
Something the HD remaster of FFIX has done is make certain technical mechanisms in the environment stand out more, and in this case stand out much more than is probably intended.
You can clearly see the paths in the bushes here. It's the equivalent of those old cartoons where you can tell which part of the bookshelf or wall is going to be significant in a scene, because it's a completely different shade.
In the original, you can also see the paths if you look closely, but it blends in much more with the uninteractable background.
忘れられた道 "wasurerareta michi", "Forgotten Road".
It's still not clear whether Fossil Roo is supposed to be an "excavation site" as the English translation says, or a "mine" as the Japanese 採掘場 "saikutsuba" translates into. Because look at that entrance, why does it have gargoyles and gothic stone stairs leading down into a dungeon-like cave passage. What sort of supervillain lair is this.
This is one of those sayings I've only heard of in anime, so I don't know if I'm reading it correctly. Dagger's line is 鼻の下伸ばさない "hana no shita nobasanai", which literally translates to "don't stretch out (the part of your face) under your nose". It's a visual gag in anime where a character's upper lip/philtrum stretches out into a goofy face when they see someone pretty. I think the equivalent in cartoons is the "awooga" alarm sound and wolf-panting.
Have some HD Lani.
The HD-fication makes the clipping much more obvious; Lani's right arm is clipping through her sleeve, so it looks weird here. This also happens in the original, but the lower resolution hides it a bit better.
Lani: "It's a little difficult with just me alone."
Which implies she's going to have another go in the future, but with backup. Probably another monster-type like the Armodullahan. (I never did get caught by it, so I didn't get a chance to see whether its Japanese name is different.)
This person's dialogue box label is 盗掘屋 "toukutsu-ya". The last kanji is just "shop" or "person (who is the previous kanji)".
盗掘 literally translates to "illegal digging". In most RL situations, a single person who does some sort of illegal digging, implied to be stealing goods and items from that dig, is generally engaged in a particular sort of digging: grave robbing. So translating this at a glance would have led to this person being labelled "Grave Robber", or "Tomb Robber".
"Treasure Hunter" is probably the family-friendly version.
Anyway, the Treasure Hunter is here in this excavation site/mine because he heard there are lots of gems and "rare fossils" (珍しい化石 "mezurashii kaseki") here. So it's not so much existing valuables hidden in storage, but rather stuff to dig out of the walls himself which might have value to collectors outside.
There are of course random encounters in these tunnels, fighting unholy abominations.
No, I mean literally, that thing is called Abomination:
Japanese name スケアモンスター "Sukea Monsutaa". Scare Monster. Understandable name.
The warning is by the "Treasure Hunters Association" (or "Grave Robbers Association" via the Japanese translation), which made me double-take for "you guys have an association?"
(組合 "kumiai" can also mean "guild" or "union", for further speculation.)
Imagine living somewhere your whole life and suddenly being told the official name of your homeland is "The Outer Continent".
- Location
- Somewhere between the stars
Huh, the fact that the mist continent is green, while everything else is not is very interesting. I'm definintly on board the "Ancients are a thing", which is tends to be in final fantasy game, so i think the question is "How did the Ancients cause this chain of events"
Typically, in final fantasy, you have two types of Ancients, the helpfull one that fought of space aliens and such, but died in the process and the "Yeah, let's seal all the world's evil in this flimsy coka cola bottle, what can go wrong".
I'm generally considering two thoughts here. Cleyra is a city that was hidden beneath a tornado, using ancient pearl magic...Could be the mist be the same thing? Did the Ancients essentially hide away the entire continent, doing a Cleyra just with the entire continent. Since Cleyra was done with old magic, and generally Ancients tend to be even better, that would kinda track.
My other thought, going more with the "Yeah, i don't see how this could go wrong ancients". Did they somehow like..suck lifeforce away from the rest of the continent, forming this hyper vibrant chocked full with life Mist continent, where the mist is sorta the aftereffect of putting so much life energy there.
of course, i'm still on the belief that Zidane is going to be from space, and maybe Dagger, so how does a potential moon-space station fit in here...hmm
Well, that didn't take long.
daniel_gudman
KING (in land of blind)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I want to say it's an allusion to the Battle of Dan-no-Ura at the conclusion of the Genpei War, which was a sea battle at the Kanmon straights, so it's saying "don't fall in the water guys"; but I really don't know if that's true, or if I'm seeing a false positive because the last Japanese movie I watched was set during the earlier part of the Kamakura period and was about a guy from that region.
- Location
- Russia
- Pronouns
- He
Or they transliterated the name instead of translating, because Russian "Бердыш" would be transliterated into Latin script exactly as "Berdysh". The Polish word which Wikipedia says is the origin is also "berdysz".
- Pronouns
- Him/He
At this point Dagger has enough practical experience to know that Zidane isn't doing diplomacy or some plot, and is just being a horndog.
And while she may not always provide direction or momentum, she feels like she's responsible for this outing overall, or at least co-leading with Zidane, so it's fun to see her start to really direct her ordering-ness on Zidane now that she knows what she's doing.
And Zidane shows off his actually-decent-character by just accepting Dagger asserting her place with neither a wink or flinch, just going along with what she's decided the plan is. (Which is not flirting with hostile women, we're gonna beat her ass)
- Pronouns
- She/They
Don't you see, she's happy because all of his other groupies were killed in the invasion, so she has him all to herself. Good for her!
And whomst a-wait hang on, you can't do this to me
Because this game is written by cowards.
It does raise the question of what is the Mist, and what it's for – for all we know, it could have been a defensive measure of some sort. If the Outer Continent has access to some great and terrible technology, maybe the Mist was designed to make the continent undesireable for outsiders, and while it makes life difficult for the people there, it at least leaves the plateaus open as places of peace and plenty.
It could very well be that the Gargantuans weren't taken by surprise in their fall, and had time to react to whatever was happening, and it could be the Mist was a part of that response.
It's probably a bit early to speculate on that too much, but it is what comes to mind.
- Location
- USA
I think this needs the whole description to make sense? I don't have the actual game so I can't really check, but the Japanese wiki I'm looking at shows that the full text is two screens long.
「夢に果てなきうちは、道もまた果てのなきもの。
さえぎるものが在るならば、それは内なる『恐れ』、ただそれのみである」
「そして『恐れ』を前進に変えよ。
弱き者、尾をふり返る事なかれ。
武き者、髭を湿らせる事なかれ」
"As long as your dream remains unfulfilled, so too does your path remain [before you].
If there exist obstructions [interruptions?], those are merely [of] 'fear' within you."
"Turn 'fear' into progress.
Those who are weak, do not turn on your tails.
Those who fight, keep your whiskers dry."
This is...incredibly flowery language even for someone given to speaking in fancy ways. I can see how Fratley ended up charming Freya.
For the last two lines, it's a little amusing how the writers used the fact that Fratley is a rat folk to put metaphors into his lines. "Turn tail and run" is the English equivalent for the first line, but the second line doesn't have such a convenient translation. The closest would be "don't fall into the sea" as mentioned by someone else a couple of posts earlier (or, if you want something slightly ahead of the times, "keep your [gun]powder dry"). In Japanese, the double meaning works because "beard" and "whisker" use the same kanji, with a reader supposed to understand its meaning from context. Rats depend on their whiskers as part of their senses, and getting them wet would definitely not be a fun time for a rat. (The insinuation of the line is that those who fight should take heed to remain alert and unhindered.)
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- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
The first part of the full text is the description of the Mist Continent Map, ie the Disc One map we received early on. It should have occurred to me to check both map descriptions, because I agree it was definitely intended to be read together.
And yeah, most of the passage can be understood easily, apart from the final line. My initial speculation was "don't let your beard/whiskers be soaked by tears (of fear)", but that seemed too far a stretch. "Don't fall into the sea" is as good an interpretation as any, I think.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Oh my god. OH MY GOD.
OK.
Listen.
View: https://i.imgur.com/lebRPx6.jpeg
Burmecia is a citystate where it never stops raining. Meaning for the ratfolk living there, their whiskers would be constantly getting wet and probably exist in a state of perpetual dampness. If wet whiskers is an unpleasant experience for them, why would they ever willingly live there?
Answer: they don't. Willingly, that is.
I think damp whiskers is a power limiter for Burmecians. In the beforetimes, the ratfolk were the supreme warriors of the Mist Continent. Their warriors more than a match for any opponent from Alexandria or Lindblum. So clearly what happened is that in the distant past Alexandria and Lindblum were locked in an existential conflict with the
As part of the surrender agreement the ratfolk are forced to resettle in present-day Burmecia, where the rain wets their whiskers and dampens their tremendous power. Never again would the Mist Continent be terrorized by legions of ratfolk dragoons raining down destruction from above.
As evidence, consider Fratley and Freya.
They are both presented as badasses, able to easily deal with the common Alexandrian footsoldiers and even Alexandria's revolutionary black mage automatons.
Consider further that they are the only two dragoons presented in setting, and both are shown that they do not spend the majority of their time in Burmecia. They even wear widebrimmed hats to shield their whiskers from the rain.
Freya and Fratleys whiskers are dry.
And what happens when Freya returns to Burmecia? She's running around in the rain. Her whiskers get damp from all the ambient moisture.
She loses to Beatrix.
Just like all the Burmecian soldiers who spend their lives in their city, their whiskers damp from the eternal rain.
Fratley's advice to keep your whiskers dry is not just simple advice. It is a call to ratfolk to reclaim their lost power.
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Fuckin'
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
To be slightly more accurate, the summon isn't truly random, it takes place after a certain amount of time, and it's not a one-per-turn deal, it'll keep happening until Garnet next take an action - so you can just have her take no action, and the summon you choose will keep going on repeat, at no MP cost.
This would have been cool back when you only had the MP to summon a Eidolon once per fight, but even setting that aside, it's still free damage and, once you have access to the stronger Eidolons, it easily beats all other Trances in terms of damage - not to mention that, since you don't need to have Garnet take action, it will last the whole battle, as you won't be consuming Trance bar by making Garnet do things.
Overall, I honestly think that Garnet's Trance is the strongest in the game due to these features.
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is, I think, the defining mystery of the game at this stage: What is the Mist? Why is the Mist?
For the people of the Mist Continent, it's just a fact of life. Their whole society is adapted to it, with settlements built on plateaus, tiered with the lower levels locked down, or fortified or magically protected. Sea and river travel are basically dead, while the Mist itself powers airships that conduct trade between cities.
And it turns out that's... Just completely unique to that one place. The Outer Continent is just Normal. So why is Mist localized to that one specific continent?
People say the Mist is home to monsters, which is clearly true, but... It turns out Mistless continents also have monsters, and they're even more powerful? That's not a pure game abstraction; people in-story have said that strange foreign monsters hang out near the Fossil Roo, so monsters have somehow traveled all the way from the Outer Continent to the Mist Continent. So what actually is the connection between Mist and monsters?
I have two theories in mind right now:
1) The Mist migrates; it arrives someplace, starts spawning monsters, the monsters grow increasingly powerful and destructive, wrecking civilization, then eventually this reaches a terminal point and the Mist dissipates/leaves. That means that the "Mist Continent" is early in the stages of this disaster, and its peoples aren't prepared for things to get worse Pacific Rim style, while the Outer Continent is post-Mist and so mostly desert and barren with terminal stage monsters running around, possibly slowly starving and dying out.
2) The Mist is a defensive measure left over from the Gargantuans; people associate it with monsters but that's misattributing cause and effect, the Mist was deployed early in a monster infestation and so it's keeping the Continent "low level," giving the people there a chance to survive, and if it ever goes away it's going to be the Monster Mash and nobody is prepared for it.
Of course the problem with option 2 is that the Mist only came down recently in historical terms, so it would have had to be somehow triggered ages after the Gargantuans died out. It would really help if we had reliable information on how common/dangerous monsters were on the "Mist Continent" before the Mist actually showed up.
It's very intriguing and all the more for how little the characters think about it because this big mystery is just their normal life.
This is stranger than it seems! Yes, you can see the paths easily, but the paths change between rooms, even though your visuals don't. As a result, you've got a weird effect where they are highlighted like those old cartoons, but often don't work, anyways! The PSX version was the same, but again, it was less obvious. It's a weird call!
Where's the clip from that anime making fun of the animation cel thing, where the wrong side of the cliff collapses and the guy says, "Wow, they were doing a really complicated scene!"?
Ace of Scarabs
Mechanoid Pilot
- Location
- Singapore
Lani to my eye has the same fashion/design cues as the female Selkies in Crystal Chronicles, lending fuel to my theory that she came from that game and lost her memories (such memory loss is a canon plot point in Crystal Chronicles 1).
the flow of time is convoluted in gaia
- Location
- Armenia
- Pronouns
- He/Him
After the time-compression incident of Balamb Garden, prior to the founding of Lindblum-