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Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]

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I would definitely recommend doing Tactics before 12 - the direct connections are tenuous, sure, but theyre enough that you want to play them in dev order to see how the concepts evolved.
 
Omicron said:
First female main(?) character in Terra the summoner (where Summons are called Espers this time around), who starts the game under some kind of mind control. First introduction of Magitek to the series, used by an evil empire who is enslaving summoners. The Warring Triad are involved in some capacity, there's an evil train that you can suplex, and there's an opera scene. Oh, and Kefka starts out as a joke villain and then at some point powers up and destroys the world.
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The accuracy of this has me biting my metaphorical lip :V

... but yeah,
don't forget to suplex the train. You'll know when it's time.
 
Omicron said:
There are plenty of good beats in FF's finales, from the friends we made along the way in III through Golbez and FuSoYa fighting Zemus in IV to Gilgamesh's final appearances in V. I think I would need to play other JRPGs of the time to see if the final dungeons being slogs are just endemic to JRPG game design of the time, or if they're a problem particular to FF as a series.
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I've only played a few other jrpgs, but I remember them also turning into massive end-game slogs. (Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey Tales of Berseria, IIRC).

So I'm inclined to say it's a genre thing (though finales can be difficult to pull off more generally even than that), but maybe I've just not played enough of them and some are actually fine.

Omicron said:
Writing-wise, I'm starting to really see where the "giant space flea from nowhere" emerged, and my take on it is that these final antagonists don't actually come from nowhere
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Oh no, I can promise you, they absolutely do sometimes come from nowhere. The closest we've had so far is the CoD, and that did at least have some scrap of mention beforehand.

Obviously there's also the Evil Dragon problem, which is somewhat related, and we've had some influence from. (You have a complex social and political situation, with no easy resolution, but then you reach the endgame and the Evil Dragon appears, who is to blame for everything, but that you can then just punch, which solves every problem forever.)
 
deadcrystal said:
Obviously there's also the Evil Dragon problem, which is somewhat related, and we've had some influence from. (You have a complex social and political situation, with no easy resolution, but then you reach the endgame and the Evil Dragon appears, who is to blame for everything, but that you can then just punch, which solves every problem forever.)
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Yeah, that particular issue hasn't showed up much (mostly because FF so far doesn't really do complex social or political situations in the first place lmao) but it's definitely been a negative with Golbez and Baron in IV. To some lesser extent, the whole "we intensified the powers of the crystals and risked the fate of the world out of greed" thing in early V is discarded relatively quickly and never brought up again.
 
Omicron said:
Yeah, that particular issue hasn't showed up much (mostly because FF so far doesn't really do complex social or political situations in the first place lmao) but it's definitely been a negative with Golbez and Baron in IV. To some lesser extent, the whole "we intensified the powers of the crystals and risked the fate of the world out of greed" thing in early V is discarded relatively quickly and never brought up again.
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Yeah come to think you commented on how the world was maybe doomed with no solution in sight to 'whoopsie the crystals f-ing shattered and the world is slowly dying now' and then lol they just kinda... reform? For no particular reason? Just fight Exdeath and this gets completely incidentally solved without actual specific effort from our protagonists or any part of the supporting cast save perhaps the already dead Dawn Warriors.
 
Terrabrand said:
Yeah come to think you commented on how the world was maybe doomed with no solution in sight to 'whoopsie the crystals f-ing shattered and the world is slowly dying now' and then lol they just kinda... reform? For no particular reason? Just fight Exdeath and this gets completely incidentally solved without actual specific effort from our protagonists or any part of the supporting cast save perhaps the already dead Dawn Warriors.
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I feel like the plot would work better if the crystal shards were collected and used by Exdeath to obtain the ultimate power rather than just shatter. This way, the possibility of restoring them to their former state can be established, and it provides direct and obvious link between that and defeating Exdeath.
 
illhousen said:
I feel like the plot would work better if the crystal shards were collected and used by Exdeath to obtain the ultimate power rather than just shatter.
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Seems a bit too similar to FFIV to me, and the crystals shattering leading to Exdeath being freed fit better with the game's themes, I think. Still, given how the whole "oh no, the crystal shattered anyway!" plot developments were handled in the game, I can agree that something should have been done to make that whole sequence a bit more coherent and self-consistent.

Of course, there are a lot of things that could be changed to make each of the Final Fantasy games substantially better; I have a list somewhere, in fact. I wanted to wait to ask @Omicron about what changes would be required to make each game as closer to perfection as possible while staying true to itself until after FFIX - it was going to be one of my points in the big argument I'll make at that time for why FFIX is the best of the series. However, with the issues having been raised, I do note that I'd be curious to hear what everybody thinks, in terms of changes, would be necessary to "fix" each of the Final Fantasy we've seen so far in the thread.

As in, if you could send game-design notes to the developing teams in the past, what would you say?
 
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Omicron said:
I think I would need to play other JRPGs of the time to see if the final dungeons being slogs are just endemic to JRPG game design of the time, or if they're a problem particular to FF as a series.
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It's honestly common across not just JRPGs of the time, but cRPGs in general across all eras. The endgames are a. content that the people making it *know* won't be seen by as many people as the start, b. the people who get there will already be dedicated to finishing; c. need to be challenging on a mechanical level.

So you tend to get monster gauntlets and extended-length encounters (hence the classic multi-form boss) because those are easy ways to add difficulty. Consider KotoR's Star Forge sequence, or the Mass Effect 1 & 2 end sequences, or CT's Black Omen, or Phantasy Star IV's Rykos, or Pokemon's Final Four, etc.

They can be impressive in their own right for other reasons, but they do tend to be of the 'let's throw a pile of our hardest enemies at you' school of design, as both a sort of vibe-check of the player's preparation and a means to attrit their resources before they hit whatever the final fight actually is.
 
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foamy said:
or Pokemon's Final Four, etc.
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The Elite Four are also traditionally preceded by Victory Road, which rather than as you might anticipate from the name being a victory lap is a grueling, lengthy dungeon filled with some of the nastiest wild pokemon and most badass trainers in the game, and filled to the gills with them. Gen 1 victory road is particularly blunt for the fact that it's loaded down with deadly self destruct/explosion wild mons to really wipe out your party if you don't just keep cramming potions down their throats.
 
I'm looking forward to the FFVI playthrough for the reactions of other people in the thread to the updated, more accurate FFVI script.

I was reminded of it because of an earlier discussion (I think during the FFIV playthrough) about the immense liberties the singular translator had to make for FFVI's English script due to lacking basically all context apart from what he could manage to play himself. But the Woolsey translation is what most of us are familiar with, inaccuracies and all, so there might be actual major character plot points that read entirely differently now.
 
As much as we might love some of the Woolseyisms, one has to remember that he worked under some crappy conditions that caused mistranslated and badly construed expositions (NoA's censure didn't help). Later translations might lack the charm, but they communicate the story far much better.
 
Well, if nothing else I have the benefit of not having any particular attachment to the Woolsey translation seeing as I never read it.

I will be a bit sad if no one says "Son of a submariner!" at some point, though. It's like the one meme line I know from the game.
 
Omicron said:
First female main(?) character in Terra the summoner (where Summons are called Espers this time around), who starts the game under some kind of mind control. First introduction of Magitek to the series, used by an evil empire who is enslaving summoners. The Warring Triad are involved in some capacity, there's an evil train that you can suplex, and there's an opera scene. Oh, and Kefka starts out as a joke villain and then at some point powers up and destroys the world.
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Ah, so the memes and most famous parts, then. Well, I'd only call one of those an actual spoiler, so you'll get to enjoy [REDACTED] and [WHOOPS] without worrying. Oh, and there's also [NOPE], as well as [DEFINITELY NOT SPOILING THIS ONE]. You're in for a treat!
 
SerGregness said:
Ah, so the memes and most famous parts, then. Well, I'd only call one of those an actual spoiler, so you'll get to enjoy [REDACTED] and [WHOOPS] without worrying. Oh, and there's also [NOPE], as well as [DEFINITELY NOT SPOILING THIS ONE]. You're in for a treat!
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On the other hand, I suspect Omi might find the mechanics of VI a step back from V. Characters' stats and magic spells are customizable, but their jobs (thus unique skills) and available-relic lists are not.
 
illhousen said:
I feel like the plot would work better if the crystal shards were collected and used by Exdeath to obtain the ultimate power rather than just shatter.
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But... the power of the crystals is being collected and used after they're shattered. By the party, to get new Jobs. Which then raises the possibility that maybe the crystals being restored should probably have been something the Warriors of Light do after the battle, by giving up the power they got from them.
 
foamy said:
It's honestly common across not just JRPGs of the time, but cRPGs in general across all eras. The endgames are a. content that the people making it *know* won't be seen by as many people as the start, b. the people who get there will already be dedicated to finishing; c. need to be challenging on a mechanical level.

So you tend to get monster gauntlets and extended-length encounters (hence the classic multi-form boss) because those are easy ways to add difficulty. Consider KotoR's Star Forge sequence, or the Mass Effect 1 & 2 end sequences, or CT's Black Omen, or Phantasy Star IV's Rykos, or Pokemon's Final Four, etc.

They can be impressive in their own right for other reasons, but they do tend to be of the 'let's throw a pile of our hardest enemies at you' school of design, as both a sort of vibe-check of the player's preparation and a means to attrit their resources before they hit whatever the final fight actually is.
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I do feel that long and hard does not need to mean 'slog' though. The description of the FF5 endgame gameplay just genuinely sounded strikingly annoying in it's design. In contrast, the usual Pokemon endgame, to use one of your examples, continues to use it's regular toolkit. The Elite Four doesn't suddenly use Evasion-boosting, mindreading Wobuffets or other weird-but-strong shit.
Though Pokemon in particular restricts itself within battles completely to what a player themselves would( or eventually will) have access to, so there is also just an upper limit to how bullshit you can design enemies to be.
 
It's pretty easy to beat 5 with a "standard" party of knight, (multi-)mage, (multi)-mage, and agi job for a very smooth endgame. You're not gonna beat the super bosses without some cheese, but those were designed around cheese anyway.

F for the best game being over and it all being downhill until 12. :sad:
 
FFVI (well 3 SNES at the time) was my very first RPG. It still holds up as one of my favorite games of all time. Omicron is in for a treat with VI.
 
One thing I remember being discussed in a podcast that @Omicron and anyone going fresh into FFVI should consider.

If V is a cartoon, VI is theater.
 
I realize everyone is waiting with bated breath, and I am very excited to start FFVI, but I am forcing myself to take a few days' break so I can advance some other projects and get a breather before getting sucked up into another FF.
 
Jakobstj said:
Which then raises the possibility that maybe the crystals being restored should probably have been something the Warriors of Light do after the battle, by giving up the power they got from them.
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That's what happens in the cutscene after defeating Exdeath. The shards fly off into the distance and reform the crystals.
 
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