The 'ultimate magic' is, of course, a lv 1 spell that can't even one-shot random encounters - but it is noticeably more powerful than any other lv 1 spell because it ignores all Magic Defense. So I decide it's worth leveling up, and Guy has been spending a lot of time practicing Ultima on enemies.
The most tragic irony of Ultima (well, in the versions of the game where it works, anyway) is that Minwu, one of the only characters who could actually put it to work, dies in the process of getting it. Unfortunately, the Pixel Remaster lacks the ability to see just how well he could do so.
He does it extremely well. (For comparison, lategame bosses have around 5000-7000 HP, and the final boss of Soul of Rebirth has 25,000.)
Sort of depends on your definition; I can think of several that fit, as long as you're willing to accept "revealed during the final dungeon" as a valid interpretation. And, if you're willing to accept "revealed just before the final dungeon", FFI sort of qualifies - there's no indication in the game of the existence of Chaos until very near the end of the story, although maybe the fact that the plot also gets revealed all at the same time might give that one a pass.
This is probably not the thread to extensively debate this, at least not til Omicron is farther into the series, but I disagree with FF1 qualifying pretty much completely.
For one thing, Chaos doesn't have 'no plot relevance' even if you consider him an asspull. He's a late reveal, yes. But he's a late reveal that connects the very earliest quest- defeating Garland- to the events of the game, explains why the world is dying- Chaos sent the Four Fiends forward- and by extension literally every major boss since you beat Astos, and is the final explanation for how you're actually saving the world- by defeating Chaos- and of course, finally explains why Garland is in a place called the Shrine of Chaos (because it's where Chaos is) or to be more precise why the random ruins he is in have that name, and even explains the random bats you spotted at the start.
Like. Chaos is intimately tied to the entire plot, his existence giving explanations, however bare bones, for most of the events of the game, including particularly why the four fiends are wrecking everything now and not sooner. It's not a very precise explanation, but Chaos is absolutely plot relevant on multiple levels.
The reason this is a dumbass move is because the tome is white, so I went white magic = Guy and taught him Ultima because he has the highest Spirit stat in the group. But actually Ultima doesn't work off Spirit - it works off how many skill levels you have across all your weapons and spells. Which means that, in effect, it's a spell that is more powerful the stronger and broader your character's skillset. I should have taught it to Maria, who has more spells and more weapons than Guy.
Oh, well. Lesson learned: remember to hard save before doing important things.
The 'ultimate magic' is, of course, a lv 1 spell that can't even one-shot random encounters - but it is noticeably more powerful than any other lv 1 spell because it ignores all Magic Defense. So I decide it's worth leveling up, and Guy has been spending a lot of time practicing Ultima on enemies.
Using the ultimate magic that sealed away an entire hell-palace on random overworld critters for practice is a delicious flex.
Also there's that well-known story that Sakaguchi tells about FFII's Ultima. In the original, it was bugged and didn't calculate your skill levels across your other weapons/spells, so it remained weaker than your other spells.
Sakaguchi went "that can't be right", and messaged Nasir Gebelli. Who responded back with "ah, but it's not a bug, it's a feature. Ultima was the greatest of the ancient spells, but now magic has advanced, and of course present-day spells are stronger."
Which was obvious BS, but apparently Sakaguchi couldn't fix the issue before the game had to ship, and so Ultima remained bugged.
It depends, because there's actually two criteria: "final boss out of nowhere", and "final boss with no plot relevance". A lot of Final Fantasy games (and other games, for that matter) have a Big Reveal just at the final dungeon or final boss battle that the final boss has been behind all the bad stuff all along, but we just didn't know their names or natures until then. So plot-relevant, but also out of nowhere.
FFX is one of those, but given that interpretation, I'd say FFIV would be the earliest example. As for "no plot relevance", FFIX kind of springs to mind.
Fair enough. As I said, it's largely a matter of definition, so I can easily concede that Chaos doesn't qualify. We can discuss the rest once the thread gets past the relevant titles, to preserve surprise. I'll just say I disagree with your assessment that none of the first six qualifies, for now.
Maybe put all of this under spoiler, so that Omicron can get the experience instead of knowing in advance? Seeing the surprised reaction is half the fun of following a blind let's play, even an only partially blind like this one. Limiting information on the games to come would be the polite approach.
Talking of false endings, probably my favourite is from the original Wild ARMs, where it happens like 45 minutes into the game, lasts at least 5 minutes, and shows you the credits as it pans over a town that's on fire and filled with monsters. As a kid I genuinely believed I'd done something wrong and that the game was showing me a failing ending.
This one doesn't have a milligram of believability to it, and I doubt anyone believed it was the end even when the game first came out.
Also there's that well-known story that Sakaguchi tells about FFII's Ultima. In the original, it was bugged and didn't calculate your skill levels across your other weapons/spells, so it remained weaker than your other spells.
Sakaguchi went "that can't be right", and messaged Nasir Gebelli. Who responded back with "ah, but it's not a bug, it's a feature. Ultima was the greatest of the ancient spells, but now magic has advanced, and of course present-day spells are stronger."
Which was obvious BS, but apparently Sakaguchi couldn't fix the issue before the game had to ship, and so Ultima remained bugged.
You left out the best part, which is why Sakaguchi couldn't fix it. Nasir actually got so attached to the idea that he ciphered the code to make sure nobody could change it.
Which is an extremely '80s game programmer thing to do, really.
With regards to the "people in robes with hidden faces turning into monsters in battle", it's worth noting that there ARE games between this one and XIV that used it - IV comes to mind.
In part because at that point map sprites weren't detailed enough for monster fiddly bits (and so they only needed one map sprite for monsters to save on data use), but still.
You left out the best part, which is why Sakaguchi couldn't fix it. Nasir actually got so attached to the idea that he ciphered the code to make sure nobody could change it.
Which is an extremely '80s game programmer thing to do, really.
I heard about that too, but I wasn't sure how accurate it was, because in my expectation a programmer who went "no, boss, this is my idea, and I ciphered the code to keep it that way, good luck changing it before ship date" is not likely to remain employed. But as you say, the 80s were a wild time for software development.
Talking of false endings, probably my favourite is from the original Wild ARMs, where it happens like 45 minutes into the game, lasts at least 5 minutes, and shows you the credits as it pans over a town that's on fire and filled with monsters. As a kid I genuinely believed I'd done something wrong and that the game was showing me a failing ending.
This one doesn't have a milligram of believability to it, and I doubt anyone believed it was the end even when the game first came out.
Even when you know they're fake pretty much instantly, fakeout endings can be pretty good; I'm personally fond of Control, which throws a Bad End at you and rolls the credit, only visibly distorted by the influence of the alien entity you're facing, which is really nice and creepy even if it's obvious it's not how the game actually ends, then drops you in the world's worst NG+ where you're an office worker.[/spoiler]
Tvtropes reckons FF3 is the first one that qualifies. And I do remember FF9's quite well from LPs, since I never made it through Memoria on my own playthroughs.
TBH I wouldn't say FFX counts. Sure the actual fight is unexpected, but Yu Yevon is quite critical to the story, and it thematically works following the Jecht fight as putting a final end to the Dream of Zanarkand by killing the nationalist madman responsible for its existence.
Sakaguchi went "that can't be right", and messaged Nasir Gebelli. Who responded back with "ah, but it's not a bug, it's a feature. Ultima was the greatest of the ancient spells, but now magic has advanced, and of course present-day spells are stronger."
I'm reminded of A Dragon's ReQuest, where the heroines bemoan that after getting the Hero's Legendary Sword, it's worse than the stuff they bought two steps out from the starting castle. Turns out that after a century or two, bronze isn't the cutting edge of cutting edge technology anymore.
You left out the best part, which is why Sakaguchi couldn't fix it. Nasir actually got so attached to the idea that he ciphered the code to make sure nobody could change it.
Which is an extremely '80s game programmer thing to do, really.
People have poked around in the code and found that there isn't any ciphering going on with it, so it seems to be one of those cases of Sakaguchi either misremembering or coming up with a funny story. He does that a lot.
The 'ultimate magic' is, of course, a lv 1 spell that can't even one-shot random encounters - but it is noticeably more powerful than any other lv 1 spell because it ignores all Magic Defense. So I decide it's worth leveling up, and Guy has been spending a lot of time practicing Ultima on enemies.
I kinda like the idea of the ultimate technique being something you get midgame and have to train heavily before the endgame, because why should it be easy to use? But from what you've said about FF2's skill leveling system, this is just the worst possible context.
I never entirely got over the one in the fic Power Games. Without spoiling too much for those that haven't read it, I think this quote sums it up. The protagonists defeat the threat, everybody goes home, and then:
"I don't remember walking from my house to yours – it's like I just dashed out of my house and then I was straight there. I remember travelling but... it's like Fate says her earliest memories are. Like someone told me it happened, instead of the memory of it happening, you know?"
The Emperor is dead, but the threat of the Empire is not gone. The Dark Knight, now revealed to be Leon, Maria's brother, has taken the throne, and is intent on resuming the war.
We don't have much insight into the Empire's hierarchy and society, I wonder who was expected to take the throne before this coup.
It's honestly not a bad working theory, given that we don't have any context for his actions.
I'm curious about Palacemia's society. The only Palamecian characters with spoken lines are the Sergeant in the mythril cave, the guard at the entrance to the Dreadnought, the Dark Knight, and the Emperor, so we don't really have any idea what it's like to live in the imperial core. The game is content to leave it at 'evil empire is evil', which is for its time, but since we've been drawing comparisons to Star Wars: this game could benefit from a scene similar to the roundtable between the top military staff in A New Hope, which very efficiently conveys an idea of what it's like among the military brass and lays out some basic facts about the Empire (there was a Senate, but it's been abolished, power falls to the military junta and local governors, the military elites fetishize wunderwaffen and technology and scoff at faith and the Force). It does a lot in a very small space, and FFII would benefit from something like it.
It's not a big deal. The Empire doesn't need to be anything but the evil force set to conquer the world, and the Emperor doesn't need to be anything but Smug Evil David Bowie. The suffering of those conquered by the Empire in Bafsk or Salamand and the silence of those who once lived in Altair is enough to testify to the Empire's evil, but I would like a glance at what it's like being a citizen in Palamecia itself.
Anyway, it's time to head there but, as mentioned, the fortress in the mountain is inaccessible.
I can imagine a solution to that.
It turns out Paul's big breakthrough isn't his own - it's an old friend who's found his way to us.
Damn.
This game is brutal to its cast.
So far it's killed off… Josef, Scott, Minwu, and now Cid? It's only four people but considering how small the character roster is in the first place, it's significant. The game is really going for a kind of… dramatic, sweeping epic story. It's hampered by its technical limitations and still being so early in the franchise's history, but the ambition is certainly there.
This is, rather sadly, the moment where we unlock the airship.
It's way late compared to FFI. At this point, we've explored pretty much the entire map. We even know where Palamecia is, even if we can't get there (it's that mountain building next to the Coliseum). In fact, as far as I can tell, Palamecia is the only location we haven't explored yet.
Zoooom.
Due to the circumstances, the feeling of getting the airship has massively changed from FFI. It's not a liberating moment of the world opening up to exploration, because it's pretty much all been explored already. It's a grim moment of resolve, a tool given to fulfill a specific job: getting you to Palamecia straight away. In FFI, the airship not facing random encounters meant you were free to use it to wander about as you liked, backtrack to old locations, get some stuff done, explore, stumble on the dragon caves, and so on. In FFII, most of the old locations are either gone, destroyed by the empire, or are dungeons you've already looted your way through; thee airship not facing random encounters just means it is more efficient at delivering you to the Dark Knight's door angry and ready to kick ass.
It's a fascinating change in presentation despite the mechanics remaining identical.
(I do briefly go to Bafsk and Salamand but their dialogue hasn't been updated since the last time I visited them.)
Welcome to Palamecia.
Real talk I am getting a little tired of these castles with largely identical environments beside some color shifting. I want Dreadnought and Leviathan back, dammit. The combat background isn't any more interesting either, although the enemy I'm fighting in this screenshot is:
'Imperial Shadow.' Using the Emperor's own sprite, and found here guarding a chest. The Blood Sword heals it while hurting me, instead of the opposite, meaning it belongs to the undead category. That's fascinating.
It must have been summoned specifically to guard the treasure chest that contains the Thunder Spear, and bound to its spot. Is it a duplicate, conjured by the late Emperor himself, some facsimile of his soul, disembodied and facing us as a spirit? Possibly. Perhaps it's a shadow of the Emperor born in his fall, some ghostly echo still bouncing around some relic weapon that held some meaning to it, but I doubt it.
I'm going to engage my Maximum Bullshit Generators, and go with another interpretation.
This is the fate of the previous Emperor. Perhaps even of all Emperors.
Palamecia is a violent place, its soldiers think nothing of fighting side-by-side with monsters, it does not balk at appointing a demon governor of the territory it has bloodily conquered, it will wipe out entire cities rather than letting them exist beyond its grasp. Might makes right. Such violent and authoritarian regimes seldom grant their elites peaceful lives, though it might grant them great reaches, for they are ever at threat of being consumed by the monsters they ride to victory. Vae victis: woe to the vanquished, and there are none more vanquished than the dead. To die is the ultimate loser move, and losers have no rights. Therefore, whatever glory and power graced the previous Emperor while he was on the throne mattered not once he had died. No grand mausoleum and state funeral for him. The Emperor summoned his shade, and bound him as an eternal sentry over some magical spear. Such is the fate of the vanquished.
Hmm. Perhaps Palamecia used to be peaceful. Perhaps its previous ruler was a man of peace, and the Emperor either ousted him, or merely succeeded him in the natural way, and kicked off his rule of terror by raising and binding the soul of his predecessor. But I think that's unlikely. Not when Palamecia itself is a fortress in the mountains and its Coliseum is its only highlighted cultural feature.
This game canonically establishes from the get-go that there is an Underworld, that is also referred to as "Hell."
Perhaps the Emperors of Palamecia have long sought to escape whatever burning fate awaits them in the afterlife, and told themselves it would be a better fate to exist as a shade, bound to this castle as mere guards, than to go to their final judgment. Perhaps this is what they want for themselves. Perhaps in the Emperor's refusal to accept death in his last moments, there was fear, as well as defiance, for there was no proper successor to bind him with the proper rites - only a foreign orphan, his second-in-command, unschooled in these dark magics.
Just because you've dealt with the devils does not mean they will look on you kindly when you fall into their hands. Perhaps in his last moments he realized he would be the first of his line to fall to the Underworld, and generations of cunning punishments had been devised waiting for the one Emperor to finally fall into its grasp. His soul would have to be enough to sate the hunger raised by a dozen others.
Probably it's just some duplicate shadow the late Emperor made of himself, though. Or some splinter of his soul. Its high HP and ability to inflict the Curse status make it an engaging fight, though not a difficult one.
Most of Palamecia is just another dungeon castle, there's little to say about it, so I hope you'll forgive me if I do a little nerd tangent:
I wonder if this Lamia Queen is a separate ruler from a different Lamia tribe, the successor to the one I killed, or demons just respawn in Hell when killed and eventually come back for round two.
This is the first appearance of the Coeurl. It's a cat with tentacle-like whiskers and a paralyzing Blast attack.
It's also a deep cut old-school sci-fi reference. Or a D&D reference? Or both!
The name 'Coeurl' is taken from the 1939 short story Black Destroyer by A.E. van Vogt. In it, a proto-Star Trek expedition of scientists on a spaceship exploring the universe for the purposes of science comes upon a desolate planet, once inhabited by a technological civilization that appears to have been wiped out. The story, however, is not told from the point of view of the scientists - it's told from the point of view of the Coeurl, a sapient, cat-like creature with two tentacles and a powerful ability to control energy. The Coeurl feeds on phosphorus which it apparently can only draw from organic beings, and it approaches the scientists, who are all too happy to encounter alien intelligence and to take the creature on their ships to study it with its consent and cooperation. However, the Coeurl's actual intent is to kill everyone aboard, take over the ship, and head to Earth where it will have an unlimited supply. Thus begins a hide-and-seek game between two highly intelligent opponents, one with advanced technology and one with superpowers.
Black Destroyer is the ur-source of the 'trapped in space with some kind of alien monster' trope, long before Alien. In fact, van Vogt successfully sued Fox over Alien ripping off his story. It's considered by some to essentially having kicked off the Golden Age of Science Fiction. It's huge, and most people have never heard of it. Dungeons and Dragons' own Displacer Beast is very clearly based off the Coeurl - you don't land on 'intelligent, malicious black panther with tentacles sticking out of its backs and terminating in suckers' by accident, although their supernatural abilities are different and DBs have six legs, which makes them not complete ripoffs.
Amano's vision of the Coeurl, contrasted with a cover illustration of the original work. Note how the emphasis on tentacles is much reduced, as these appendages look more like elongated whiskers - this will vary between FF games.
FFI took basically its entire Bestiary from a Monster Manual, which is why it's interesting to me that this take on the monster references not the D&D version, but the original name from Black Destroyer. I wonder if it was more popular in Japan than I would expect, or if it was a particular dev's own little homage to a story he liked.
Anyway, it's through this long line of descent that we eventually land at today, when Final Fantasy XIV has an understated running gag of sorts that the word 'cat' doesn't exist in its setting, but 'coeurls' do and come both in giant predatory form and in tiny housepet form, so anywhere the game would mention cats, it says coeurl instead, which can be confusing if you didn't get the memo (there are a handful of exceptions, like the 'Fat Cat' minion or I believe one instance of a character being referred to as a 'catboy'.)
And now you know!
Anyway, Palamecia. Fighting our way through several floors of opponents, with Generals being the most dangerous, we eventually find…
I don't know, dude, we literally never fought and I just killed the Emperor, how do I know you live up to your own hype?
Hmm.
I wasn't expecting Shakespearian levels of character depth here, granted, but this is a bit weak. There's the outline of something interesting here - Leon was captured, and when he saw all the devastation wrought by the Empire his conclusion was not that the Empire had to be opposed at all costs, but rather than, its power existing and being unimpeachable, the fault lied on the Rebels who caused untold death by engaging in futile resistance rather than complying with the superior power's will.
He's an IR realist, I guess. He's just particularly edgy about it.
It's not conveyed super well, though. He comes across less as a tragic figure and more as just an asshole. He also had a personal hand in bringing the horrors of war upon the innocent - saying the rebels were wrong to resist rings hollow when he was the one on the bridge commanding the Dreadnought while it rained death on most of the free world.
So this is it. The final confrontation. The Emperor has been defeated, but his legacy of evil and brutality, embodied in one of its very victims turned into another tool of its self-perpetuating machine of conquest, remains. Brother against sister, friend against friend, it's time for the final showdown.
Which is when Final Fantasy II decides to go into Final Fantasy gear.
Oh yeah, baby.
The Emperor is back and he has all the powers of Hell now. His refusal to die was so strong, so stubborn, that he simply crawled his way back out of the Underworld and came back even more powerful. His sprite has changed, and the spooky fireworks show he's putting on here clearly signal we're dealing with something way out of step with whatever we've fought before, and nobody is prepared or ready for this fight. Which is why Ricard decides to add his name to the ever-increasing list of heroic sacrifice his game has got going:
Alas, the Last Dragoon is no more. Their lineage has truly perished. There will be no pupil to carry on Ricard's knowledge. The world is lessened today.
And as we fly away…
Palamecia is gone. It has been replaced by Pandaemonium, the dwelling of the Lord of Hell.
What happened to the Palamecian people? Do they dwell in a city that the game doesn't bother modeling, now watching this hellish fortress replace their capital? Did they all die as their homes crumbled, sacrificed without even an afterthought by the man who once ruled them but who no longer has need of them? Would their souls merely manifest right back where they died, shades dwelling in an afterlife that has burst forth from the ground and replaced their city?
The game isn't really interested in these things, but I enjoy speculating.
Split for image count - even skipping some of the dialogue boxes, story-heavy scenes involve a lot of screenshots.
Thanks to the Wyvern, we're back in Fynn in a giffy.
…
…I'm sorry, is that it?!
I-
"As long as the Emperor lives, more will die," okay but Leon my boy, you were poised to do the work yourself just a moment ago! Where is this epiphany coming from? You've been working with his army of monsters, enslaving people to work on death machines that you gleefully used to level entire cities.
This is the fastest redemption arc ever, in that it's not an arc, it's a 90° right angle: Is good guy. Is now bad guy. Is good guy again. I mean, it's still a massive step up from Final Fantasy I, but wow.
Leon, of course, has a quarter the HP of the rest of the group and no magic. Whatever. He's the last companion I'll get so I'll still give him some good gear and hope for the best (the best will not happen; level-appropriate foes preferentially target Leon and kill him in either one or two hits).
Which is, itself, interesting, because FFII is the first game to introduce the Dark Knight, but it doesn't yet know what a Dark Knight is. It's got the aesthetic ('medieval Darth Vader'), but not the mechanical identity. Leon wears heavy armor, is broadly skilled in a wide range of weapon, and his default weapon set is dual-wielding sword and axe. He's a dark knight: he's a knight who is dark. He does not have special features.
This is kinda like Ricard, in that at this stage 'Dragoon' amounts to 'knight who deals with dragons in some fashion.' In Ricard's case, he has a pet Wyvern, which is story-relevant when we use it to travel places and combat-relevant when we use the Wyvern item to cast Blaze, as a kind of proto-summon. A dragon-riding knight is a strong identity, but it will be discarded as Dragoon's identity across FF games mutates to focus on their jumping and aerial battling.
Well, whether he lives up to the hype or not, Leon's back on our team, and it's time to save the world.
We have our next destination: the Jade Passage, a tunnel which leads directly to the Underworld.
Paul has the appropriate reaction to learning about our plans:
I like Paul. He's one of my favorite characters.
Okay, tentative character ranking:
Leila (wife)
Paul (fun and helpful)
Minwu (powerful, wise, mentor figure, Kamehameha)
Gordon (generic, but has an actual complete character arc)
The Emperor (David Bowie)
Hilda (woman in charge, cool hat)
Guy (funny beaver gag)
Everyone else.
I do a bit of a round up of visiting other places before heading to the Jade Passage:
The adult survivor of Deist trying to convince herself that Ricard died a good death while obviously nearly breaking in tears is probably the saddest bit in the whole game.
And we are off.
"And now I'm in a place I know quite well, I've left the world and I've entered Hell…"
Next time on Final Fantasy: we attack and dethrone Satan.
So by going straight to the Jade Passage you've missed arguably the coolest touch. Now that the Emperor is the super mega hell emperor, he's unleashed the powers of hell and it's hell on earth!
Most random encounter tables across the world map are now replaced by various high level demons, which will otherwise only be fought in, well, the end game dungeon itself.
(My recollection is that the snow area is an exception? But most areas? demons everywhere, baby!)
it's unfortunate that you now have the airship, in a way, because it makes it easy to miss this touch.
Fun fact - the bonus dungeon in the GBA remake, dropped again from this one, revealed that souls split in two when they die. The evil part of the soul goes to hell, and the good part goes to heaven.
The good part of Emperor Bowie's soul was ALSO evil, conquered heaven, and had to be defeated by a party of the allies the Wild Roses lost along the way; Minwu, Ricard, Josef, and Gordon's brother Scott.
I wonder if this Lamia Queen is a separate ruler from a different Lamia tribe, the successor to the one I killed, or demons just respawn in Hell when killed and eventually come back for round two.
'Imperial Shadow.' Using the Emperor's own sprite, and found here guarding a chest. The Blood Sword heals it while hurting me, instead of the opposite, meaning it belongs to the undead category. That's fascinating.
It must have been summoned specifically to guard the treasure chest that contains the Thunder Spear, and bound to its spot. Is it a duplicate, conjured by the late Emperor himself, some facsimile of his soul, disembodied and facing us as a spirit? Possibly. Perhaps it's a shadow of the Emperor born in his fall, some ghostly echo still bouncing around some relic weapon that held some meaning to it, but I doubt it.
I'm going to engage my Maximum Bullshit Generators, and go with another interpretation.
This is the fate of the previous Emperor. Perhaps even of all Emperors.
I know your interpretation is a tragic history of the Imperial line of Palamecia and how it destroys the humanity of even the most well-intentioned heirs to the throne, but given the sprite is that of the Emperor, I now cannot help but imagine a long, unbroken line of Emperor David Bowies.
(Personally my immediate guess was that this was a decoy created by the Emperor, possibly out of some poor soul sentenced to undeath. And then the Emperor stuck that decoy to guard a chest, wasting all that effort and the sacrifice of how that decoy was made, because the Emperor is a jerk like that.)
Emperor Bowie may not be the deepest character but he gets high points from me on straight up using the forces of Hell and bringing himself back from the dead
I had no idea Final Fantasy borrowed so heavily from D&D. I knew D&D was pretty huge in Japan around this time so it does make sense, but man, American and Japanese fantasy really do share a common ancestor.
I had no idea Final Fantasy borrowed so heavily from D&D. I knew D&D was pretty huge in Japan around this time so it does make sense, but man, American and Japanese fantasy really do share a common ancestor.
The lineage is somewhat complicated. The true originator might well be Wizardry, which was huge in Japan, and a major inspiration for Dragon Quest (though Wizardry, like many early RPGs, was at the very least D&D-esque). That said, Final Fantasy was looking at D&D in specific, given how many elements are pulled from it rather than other RPGs.
