Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Lol, yeah, I had similar thoughts.
I think the art difference usually works fine. Like, sure, it's pretty funny how smol your party members are compared to humanoid enemies or some fucking leaf bunny or whatever, but it also emphasizes their status as underdogs. They're just little guys and they go up against those larger-than-life monstrous enemies. And, of course, it works great with actual monsters like dragons and such.
In this case, however, Sabin and Vargas are presented as peers, as equals in status and abilities, so having one of them literally be larger than bears while another is this little guy, and it's his birthday, he's just a little birthday boy, is just hilarious.
So, some fun facts about Blitz:
- You can actually fuck it up by taking too much time, but the timing is very generous. The post above mentions that you can ignore diagonal inputs in favor of single arrows, making input even easier. All in all, it's very much a homage to fighting games rather than an honest attempt at recreation: using Blitz is a pretty relaxed process in comparison.
- It ignores rows, so make sure to stick Sabin in the back. It's kind of a trend in FFVI that most characters should guard the rear, which I guess is one way to ensure the players won't be confused over formation mechanics.
- It keys off Sabin's Magic stat and counts as magic attack, so it benefits from equipment increasing your Magic or amplifying magic damage. It also carries weird implications for the setting, since, yeah, apparently martial artists just have magic, even though it was gone for everyone else. Was War of the Magi actually a grand tournament arc?
- The one flaw of Blitz is that it's single-target, but you can't select the target. It's not an issue against Vargas, obviously, but can cause trouble with multiple enemies. Still better than default attack, though.
Overall, yeah, at this stage Sabin is a powerhouse alongside Edgar. For all that Terra's lethality is emphasized, it's actually her support magic that elevates her among her peers.
Banon: The point is, get in the box.
There was a chest.
Banon: Here is a relic that would make you feel safe... because now you can throw your shield away and shank them motherfuckers with both hands!
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It's no "he'd slit his momma's throat for a nickel" but tbh it's probably for the best that we left the weirdly violent escalation of Locke's "call me a treasure hunter or I'll rip your lungs out!" in the past as well.
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
I really can't think of any greater compliment for Uematsu's work in VI than the fact that you, a person who basically ignored the music in every previous game, have mentioned the music multiple times each post for your VI playthrough.
The original had another glorious Woolseyism, with Terra commenting that Sabin, "looked like a bodybuilder that strayed from his gym."Terra has one of the funniest comments of all time:
Incredible.
It's a pretty easy section if you just use Noisemaker. It works on everything here, causing enemies to attack one another, and what attacks do come through are easily outhealed by praying.
If FFVI were released today, there would absolutely be microtransactions to reskin Edgar's Tools.
I would immediately buy one that turned Noise Blaster into an electric guitar. >.<
This isn't actually true of all the blitz options, but a more detailed mechanical breakdown should wait for later.
Edit:
I mean, that and we also all sort of bullied him into it.
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SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Why would you remove that? Just to go out of your way to make the game more boring?
Well admittedly, I was talking "Locke is the stealbot" as in at this point in the game, more than anything else. In South Figaro, Locke is up against Terra and Edgar as your other party members who can both use better armor and the same or better weapons as him, while also having access to Magic and Tools respectively. Or, as Omi puts it later: "Locke was there too I guess".
I will say, the one thing that kind of annoys me about this otherwise cool-looking mode is how the chocobos now use tank controls instead of just letting you run directly where you want like normal overworld movement. Does look dope though, it's always fun to see how SNES games would try to emulate 3D. Makes me think of my earliest experiences with such a thing in Secret of Mana, which had a fast travel system where you get launched out of cannons to other parts of the world map and would do this by physically showing your characters flying over the map in the process.
Omi, Omi nooooo now you've missed out on BETTER ITEMS laterrrrrrrrrr
I think it came up already, but now's as good a time as any to elaborate. For whatever inane, unexplained reason, in FFVI a lot of treasure chests can just be left for later and the items inside will be randomly upgraded to better ones. This is of course not hinted at anywhere in the game, so really I recommend just not worrying about it. At the least, it's no FFXII and the goddamn Zodiac Spear (lmao what if we made an ultimate weapon that only appears in the endgame if you refused to open 4 completely unmarked chests scattered throughout the game as normal loot including one in the very first area).
I love Shadow, he's like... so absolutely edgy ninja that it loops from being over the top to being cool again. And his dog is adorable too, even if he probably wants to eat your face for being within 20 feet of him and not being Shadow.
Personally I usually give the Hermes Shoes to Locke at this point just so he can steal more loot even faster while the other two kill the enemies, but really it can go on whoever works at this point.
On Duncan's wife not knowing, I just took this as "Old martial artist has his isolated shack by the mountains for training his disciples" which I assume is the goal here. So presumably, news just hasn't traveled all the way down to South Figaro yet (I'd also assume the world map is technically bigger than shown, seeing as ingame it takes all of ten seconds to walk from South Figaro to the mountain shack).
Main benefit you get is being able to hit enemies from behind for bonus damage, I think? Might also mean your entire party doesn't get hit at once by AoE attacks similar to how when surrounded you can't target both sides at once, but don't quote me on that one.
Really Omi? After alllll that waffling about about imperial bioweapons, you let Edgar go down the same route? For shame, for shame
And yes, "Locke is there also" is a trend for these early parts of the game before you get the relics and equipment to really make him shine, sadly.
A few others have mentioned it, but in the original versions of the game Blitz just highlighted Sabin and then you got to freestyle the command that you had hopefully memorized from the menu at some point. This is also why when Sabin explains Blitz in game, he very slowly goes "PRESS LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, A, OKAY PLAYER? DID YOU GET THAT?" Because if you didn't get that, you were about to get wiped by Vargas like a dumbo kid who couldn't figure out the Blitz command.
(It's me I'm the dumbo kid)
Seems Vargas' Shadow Clone technique couldn't save him here at the end of the fight. Very sad.
Man I can never look at Edgar's character portrait without giggling. There's just something about his expression as he looks up to the right that makes me laugh every time.
Well Omi, you see-
-nothing! You see nothing.
As befitting one of the most physically powerful party members in the entire game, he's built like a bear and hits like one too.
So on one hand? That Gauntlet is actually a limited Relic, you only get... two or three in the entire game, no way to farm them.
On the other hand fuckin LMAO who would ever take two handing a weapon over dual-wielding, especially this early in the game?
I think it's safe to say that even if he's the same archetype as Edge, what little we've seen of Edge so far does paint him as a more well-rounded character. Of course, this is probably helped by showing up 20 minutes into the game for more screentime, rather than being a random "well guess we need a 5th party member" who shows up super lategame.
Oh yeah, I didn't even realize this briefing scene was a thing this time around because I jumped straight for the Genji Glove.
You... wiped twice on the river? That feels kind of impressive, considering Banon has an infinite use party heal. Granted Banon also has the durability of a wet paper bag and I don't recall if he starts in the front row or not, so if he does... probably swap him back, to start with.
I am like 95% certain that NPC is totally still in the relic shop? At least, I distinctly recall seeing this exact scene just recently.
Actually, keying off of Sabin's magic stat is Blitz-dependent. Of the current ones, only Aura Cannon is magic based, Raging Fist and Meteor Strike are both physical. Still means there's some value in giving Sabin the occasional magic-boosting equipment or relic for certain blitzes though.
Have I mentioned that you have a certain way with words? It's poetry, really.
Also, I can't help but picture you eating corks now.
I got lucky because I initially lost to Vargas and thus decided to do a bunch of 4xEXP encounters in his room. Even with that boost I still needed two tries to survive the boat. The difficulty is randomly pretty tough.
cB557
voOOP
I figure they just wanted to explain that major mechanic earlier in the game, and make it something you can have explained to you more than once.
Oh right, since New Character Acquired, that means More Character Analysis!
So Sabin... Sabin is a monk. That was pretty obvious I should think, but it's also an important factor in both his stats and his equipment set. Because on one hand, Sabin is an absolute bear of a physical fighter, some of the highest physical stats in the game by far, hits like a truck and high HP and natural defense to take physical blows like a champ. On the other hand, his equipment choices are... fairly lacking, with mostly light armors and iirc only claws as actual weapons, meaning others like Terra and Edgar can easily compensate for his defenses by just wearing bigger armor and also don't have his cripplingly low magic defense.
As for his special skill, Blitz is kind of like Tools where it's a reliable, infinite use option that gives Sabin some nice variety beyond "slap with wepon", but it's also... not quite as versatile as Tools? Don't get me wrong Blitz is still great, but the fact that you can't choose targets and that some attacks like Aura Cannon key off of Sabin's abysmal magic stat can occasionally hold him back. Still a great fun party member though.
So Sabin... Sabin is a monk. That was pretty obvious I should think, but it's also an important factor in both his stats and his equipment set. Because on one hand, Sabin is an absolute bear of a physical fighter, some of the highest physical stats in the game by far, hits like a truck and high HP and natural defense to take physical blows like a champ. On the other hand, his equipment choices are... fairly lacking, with mostly light armors and iirc only claws as actual weapons, meaning others like Terra and Edgar can easily compensate for his defenses by just wearing bigger armor and also don't have his cripplingly low magic defense.
As for his special skill, Blitz is kind of like Tools where it's a reliable, infinite use option that gives Sabin some nice variety beyond "slap with wepon", but it's also... not quite as versatile as Tools? Don't get me wrong Blitz is still great, but the fact that you can't choose targets and that some attacks like Aura Cannon key off of Sabin's abysmal magic stat can occasionally hold him back. Still a great fun party member though.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
To allay the worries of whoever feel bad that they fucked up Blitz, here Sakaguchi also fucking it up back in 2018:
View: https://youtu.be/p7jpiuIoqXE?t=8079
"Decapitatiooooooooo-OOoooooo-Oooooooo-OOooooooonnnn!"
And doggie is best doggie, agree.
View: https://youtu.be/p7jpiuIoqXE?t=8079
A guitar that summons lightning. Followed by the use of the chainsaw as an axe.
"Decapitatiooooooooo-OOoooooo-Oooooooo-OOooooooonnnn!"
Fair enough.
You know, I hesitate to call him edgy. Emotionless, ruthless, detached, for sure, and for good reason. But not quite edgy. But as you say, whatever edginess doesn't detract from the coolness.
And doggie is best doggie, agree.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Fun fact: Shadow is one of two VI characters who, while having character art from Amano, was originally designed by somebody else: Tetsuya Nomura, he of zipper and plaid fame. He'd done debugging on IV and monster design on V, and this is where he started the move towards main character design that was to be his bread and butter for the next decade and a half.
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FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
He's the bestest boi!
- Location
- Australia
Please don't give Omicron ideas. I'm still traumatized by the chicken parmeclay; I don't know what I would do if I woke up one day to Omicron telling a story about the time he decided that marinated cork would make an excellent substitute for tofu in a dish or something.
- Location
- the Republic
- Pronouns
- He/They
Really?
I mean, uh... what an interesting update! Kind of curious to find out what the deal was with pre-war magitek as opposed to modern magitek. Is that where Relics come from? Also, I really like the triple-no option as, like, "we have to send the player to one place and there's no getting around it, but we can make some fun alternate content anyway".
Muramasa
Best Girl
On Sabin's blitzs. In the original version, they use to be a lot harder to pull off. There was no prompt in which you could select the blitz you wanted and the correct inputs listing at the top of the screen. You had to memorize everything and getting it wrong caused Sabin to skip his turn (though the game at least showed you the correct inputs in the abilities screen outside of battle). And I also was running off a bad assumption that the blitz inputs changed based on which way Sabin was facing (a.k.a what happens in Street Fighter II).
I could not tell you how many times I wiped at the Vargas fight watching repeatedly as the doom counter ticked to zero and the grim reaper taking Sabins soul away.
That fight had me stumped for weeks.
I could not tell you how many times I wiped at the Vargas fight watching repeatedly as the doom counter ticked to zero and the grim reaper taking Sabins soul away.
That fight had me stumped for weeks.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
I do like that there are actual consequences to the answer picked for the "join or not" question, both in terms of mechanics (different relics) and in terms of story beats (the differing motivation Terra has for going on the quest), even with the story being, by necessity, on something of a railroad.
It's one way in which FFVI doesn't forget that it's a videogame and gives some agency to the players, making their choices weight to what extent it can afford. This is just one instance of it, but by far not the last. The fact that what would be "you must!" fake choice in another game (which always anger me, since why offer me a choice instead of making it just continuous dialogue if the choice is forced) actually have some consequences, meaning that the choice is there because the questions is a meaningful one, even if only in terms of mechanics and characterization, it's one of those small touches that elevates FFVI above most other games. It's something worth keeping an eye on.
It's one way in which FFVI doesn't forget that it's a videogame and gives some agency to the players, making their choices weight to what extent it can afford. This is just one instance of it, but by far not the last. The fact that what would be "you must!" fake choice in another game (which always anger me, since why offer me a choice instead of making it just continuous dialogue if the choice is forced) actually have some consequences, meaning that the choice is there because the questions is a meaningful one, even if only in terms of mechanics and characterization, it's one of those small touches that elevates FFVI above most other games. It's something worth keeping an eye on.
- Location
- Nunya, Arizona
This next section is honestly pretty vicious, especially if you haven't done much or any grinding and aren't already familiar with the game. Folks have noted the remaster version is actually harder than the original SNES version, and that version absolutely wrecked me a few times back in the day. Banon has an infinite use party heal and if you don't use it you frikkin' die... and sometimes the wrong thing happens and you die anyway.
... can't remember exactly what it was that liked to dumpster me, though.
Something about crabs and lightning? Something in that river hits hard.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
So what? They fixed blindness or something? : D
... Wait. Don't tell me they fixed blindness. D :
- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
It's the Lesser Lopros, blue dragony-looking bastard. Can wipe the party with !Fireball if you don't kill it quickly enough.
Yeah I've seen a few people comment it now, so I suppose I'm just the outlier? Even on the remaster, I just immediately stuck Banon in the back row spamming his heal, had the rest of the party do as necessary (Auto Crossbows, Blitzes, and Terra alternating between Fire and focused healing) and got through the entire river without issues. Guess I might have just gotten lucky.
I've seen several mentions around the internet of fixing enemy AIs so they use their special attacks more often, so that could be part of it. Plus they probably fixed some of the old glitches like "Evasion does literally nothing Magic Evasion actually covers both types", which by proxy means blind actually matters again.