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

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By the way, when Omicron mentioned 'that dude in the cart' when talking about psychopomps, he was most likely referring to Ankou, which funnily enough would sound like a Japanese name if you weren't aware.

Even more amusingly, there's art of Ankou online where it looks like he has his arse on backwards (he's actually holding a woman). I'd post it here but it'd probably count as NSFW
 
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Great update, and it's so satisfying to slam the train into its own tracks!

My take on the train of the dead is that the afterlife is somewhat shaped by the beliefs and mindset of the times. Back in Ye Ancient Times, the reaper either worked alone or with a cart. As more people were born and technology advanced, the advent of railroad and technology seeped into people's beliefs and into the afterlife (sort of a take on the idea the dead decided to copy the train idea from the humans).

So while Shadow's left the party for now, you'll definitely be able to recruit him later. Here's a fun game; whenever he's in your party, try and sleep at an inn. Not a tent or cabin, an actual inn.
 
I'd say that Cyan's 'thee, thou' etc. is being used incorrectly? He's a stuffy old warrior-aristocrat, why is he using the informal with people he has never met before? Like, in French, would you expect Cyan to jump into 'tu' with Sabin and Shadow the second he meets them?

I mean, I know the reason why they do it; 'you' feels like a more 'modern' word (despite the fact a) it's old and b) 'thee, thou' etc. was still used in some places in the UK as recently as my grandparents' generation) and so if you want to pretend at Ye Olde English you feel you have to use 'thou'. Despite that being the wrong choice in almost all the cases where it's used.
 
I'm guessing in the original Japanese script Cyan would've used archaic samurai pronouns, e.g., 'sessha', '-dono', 'wagahai', and having him speak in Ye Olde English was the easiest way the translation could get that across (better than the alternative of making him sound like he's from a bad samurai movie dub anyway)
 
ArlequineLunaire said:
I'm guessing in the original Japanese script Cyan would've used archaic samurai pronouns, e.g., 'sessha', '-dono', 'wagahai', and having him speak in Ye Olde English was the easiest way the translation could get that across (better than the alternative of making him sound like he's from a bad samurai movie dub anyway)
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Which is why it's so weird that he's basically going 'hey wassup my dudes?'
 
Kadmus said:
I'd say that Cyan's 'thee, thou' etc. is being used incorrectly? He's a stuffy old warrior-aristocrat, why is he using the informal with people he has never met before? Like, in French, would you expect Cyan to jump into 'tu' with Sabin and Shadow the second he meets them?

I mean, I know the reason why they do it; 'you' feels like a more 'modern' word (despite the fact a) it's old and b) 'thee, thou' etc. was still used in some places in the UK as recently as my grandparents' generation) and so if you want to pretend at Ye Olde English you feel you have to use 'thou'. Despite that being the wrong choice in almost all the cases where it's used.
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It manages to cross the low, low bar of "thy before consonants, thine before vowels," not confusing "thee" for "thy" or "thou," and keeping the "-eth" and "-est" endings to a minimum. By most fantasy standards it's pretty much Shakespeare.
 
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Amusingly, he addresses Sabin as "Sir", but he doesn't even know yet the basic musclehead is actually a prince.
 
ArlequineLunaire said:
I'm guessing in the original Japanese script Cyan would've used archaic samurai pronouns, e.g., 'sessha', '-dono', 'wagahai', and having him speak in Ye Olde English was the easiest way the translation could get that across (better than the alternative of making him sound like he's from a bad samurai movie dub anyway)
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NGL, having Cyan use honorifics while no one else does, complete with translation notes at the bottom of dialogue boxes, would be extremely funny and in keeping with presentation of the samurai class as exotic that the game does with Bushido moves.
 
illhousen said:
NGL, having Cyan use honorifics while no one else does, complete with translation notes at the bottom of dialogue boxes, would be extremely funny and in keeping with presentation of the samurai class as exotic that the game does with Bushido moves.
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No. Take it further. All of his dialogue is completely untranslated, no notes or footnotes. The burden of knowledge should be on the reader, not the translator!
 
Is nobody else going to mention that @Omicron skipped 4 in his numbering? Nobody? Ok, I'll be That Guy then. :V

Anyway I'm pumped for this. FF6 was my introduction to the franchise, back in the days when it was known as FF3. I dabbled a little in FF4/2 at various points but don't think I ever played much beyond Mt. Ordeals in a single playthrough (as opposed to various points in save games from rental cartridges - remember when those were a thing? Good times). Then ny next game was of course FF7.

At first I was of course intimidated by the huge page count but then I remembered Reader Mode exists :V Thirteen pages is a lot more digestible than the 150+ we're at now. Of course, I'm missing out on a lot of no doubt fascinating background info and discussion but I'll just have to live with that.

I have to say, having read through FF2 so far, I do find it a super interesting game and would be interested to see what they'd do with it given a Remake Treatment. I feel they should keep it as close to the original story beats as possible but with what they've learned and put into plot, characterization and better battle mechanics and I think it would be interesting. A dark, epic tale of war and devastation where even the ending has a fairly melancholy feel, reminding you of what you lost along the way, is really a super interesting direction to take and I feel rather bold for the second entry in the series.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
FFXIV related fun fact: the names Cyan and Owain are Woolseyisms. Cyan is, in Japanese, called Cayenne. Or, as its spelled in katakana, Kaien. Owain's Japanese name is Shun.
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Final Fantasy Wiki said:
His Japanese name Kaien, if written with the kanji 海燕, means "sea swallow". This name goes along with Hien's name (meaning "flying swallow"). It's possibly related to his Desperation Attack, Tsubame Gaeshi ("Swallow Reversal").
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Today, almost three decades after I first played FFVI, I learn that Cyan - ahem, sorry, Kaien - is probably actually a Japanese dude who was isekai'd to a world where a fantasy Japan analogue doesn't exist, became a noble with his OP katana powers, finished his manga/light novel/web novel run after marrying locally, gave his son an obligatory and common Japanese name, and is now being folded into another story set years into the future where he's now a supporting cast member.
 
Kei said:
Today, almost three decades after I first played FFVI, I learn that Cyan - ahem, sorry, Kaien - is probably actually a Japanese dude who was isekai'd to a world where a fantasy Japan analogue doesn't exist, became a noble with his OP katana powers, finished his manga/light novel/web novel run after marrying locally, gave his son an obligatory and common Japanese name, and is now being folded into another story set years into the future where he's now a supporting cast member.
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Reincarnated In Another World With A Blade That Was Folded 10'000 Times But Like Decades Ago And By Now They Rudely Invented Guns To Counter My Katana And My Hairline Is Retiring And Also Some Clown Just Murdered Everyone I Know
 
CeBrudras said:
Reincarnated In Another World With A Blade That Was Folded 10'000 Times But Like Decades Ago And By Now They Rudely Invented Guns To Counter My Katana And My Hairline Is Retiring And Also Some Clown Just Murdered Everyone I Know
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I don't think it's the guns that countered Cyan's katana. Just the ATB.
 
Adloquium said:
I don't think it's the guns that countered Cyan's katana. Just the ATB.
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I'll give him this, I'm up to four Bushido's unlocked and the change of not having to wait on Cyan's ATB screen letting my party get beat up while he charges for so long he could get a spot on the set of DBZ? Certainly feels like it's made him a better party member. Still has speed and charge time issues, but it's not nearly as noticeable.
 
McFluffles said:
I'll give him this, I'm up to four Bushido's unlocked and the change of not having to wait on Cyan's ATB screen letting my party get beat up while he charges for so long he could get a spot on the set of DBZ? Certainly feels like it's made him a better party member. Still has speed and charge time issues, but it's not nearly as noticeable.
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Yeah, set and forget is a major improvement to Cyan's usability. It turns him into a decent boss-killer, although I think even with the changes, it's still a better damage-to-turn ratio to just use Fang and only Fang every time for Bushido, due to bypassing defence.

Having said that, for general overworld or dungeon trash critter grinding, anything other than Fang would mean the battle is over before Cyan gets a chance to do anything, due to the good AoE abilities of other characters, like Edgar's Tools. So Cyan goes from "too slow to be useful for anything" to "good at his niche, but only at his niche".
 
Noxlux013 said:
FF2 with a more Elder Scrolls skill system I feel would work really well.
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Dear God, no, TES leveling is terrible even without level scaling. People only put up with it because they remember how cool it was to walk into a city built out of a corpse of a giant crab.

If you want to do skill-based system, just go with "level up gives you N skill points to distribute as you see fit". It's simple and works fine for Fallout, for Arcanum (though there you can invest your points into stats as well, or waste them by directly increasing HP and Stamina if you're a loser), for Might & Magic, for a lot of other games.
 
So, I went hunting and pretty much all of the characters have official ages. More than that some of the old guidebooks had little character profiles for everyone (likes, dislikes, blood type, etc). I doubt any of that comes up in the game (I'm going into this more blind than Omi, so I could be wrong), so would it be okay to post that info for people we've encountered so far? With or without spoiler tabs?

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illhousen said:
Dear God, no, TES leveling is terrible even without level scaling. People only put up with it because they remember how cool it was to walk into a city built out of a corpse of a giant crab.

If you want to do skill-based system, just go with "level up gives you N skill points to distribute as you see fit". It's simple and works fine for Fallout, for Arcanum (though there you can invest your points into stats as well, or waste them by directly increasing HP and Stamina if you're a loser), for Might & Magic, for a lot of other games.
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I was thinking more Skyrim than…Oblivion? Morrowind? Sorry, every time I try to start a game from the Elder Scrolls series I fall down a Modding rabbit hole and never get around to actually playing the game.

But something more Fallout would also be interesting. With such heavy D&D inspirations, I'm surprised they never did something like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic where the underlying system was basically D&D 3.X with the serial numbers filed off.
 
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Noxlux013 said:
With such heavy D&D inspirations, I'm surprised they never did something like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic where the underlying system was basically D&D 3.X with the serial numbers filed off.
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Wellllll, the problem here is that D&D, especially in the specific "pause combat" incarnation, is also terrible as a foundation for a video game, which KOTOR demonstrates pretty well with its tepid battle system and weirdly constrained skills that don't fit well into a single player game. I suppose it's something of a good fit for FF because the flaws of of such games are similar to the flaws of ATB system, but, like, it's not exactly an endorsement.

Note also how FF never used proper Vancian casting and got rid of even its vestiges in FFIV because a single mana pool is an objectively superior design in the context of a video game (or, like, any game not centered around managing extremely potent but also extremely limited resources).

The only good D&D video game is Planescape, and it's because it just went "fuck it, let's simplify everything, allow you to just increase attributes on level up, cut down the number of classes to three and allow you to switch between them, and make it so you can just chug infinite healing potions in the middle of a fight because who gives a shit about challenge where there is a chaste succubus to impress with your massive brain? Also, have Cloud Kill, it kills half the enemies on screen because why not at this point."
 
Adloquium said:
Yeah, set and forget is a major improvement to Cyan's usability. It turns him into a decent boss-killer, although I think even with the changes, it's still a better damage-to-turn ratio to just use Fang and only Fang every time for Bushido, due to bypassing defence.

Having said that, for general overworld or dungeon trash critter grinding, anything other than Fang would mean the battle is over before Cyan gets a chance to do anything, due to the good AoE abilities of other characters, like Edgar's Tools. So Cyan goes from "too slow to be useful for anything" to "good at his niche, but only at his niche".
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There are worse niches to have than 'kills bosses'. I've said before, but I found Cyan fairly strong throughout the playthrough. He's not at the top of the heap, but I'd say pretty squarely top half.

illhousen said:
Dear God, no, TES leveling is terrible even without level scaling. People only put up with it because they remember how cool it was to walk into a city built out of a corpse of a giant crab.

If you want to do skill-based system, just go with "level up gives you N skill points to distribute as you see fit". It's simple and works fine for Fallout, for Arcanum (though there you can invest your points into stats as well, or waste them by directly increasing HP and Stamina if you're a loser), for Might & Magic, for a lot of other games.
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Tyranny had an interesting hybrid where skills leveled as you used them, and every X skill ranks your overall level would increase, giving you HP, talent points, and so on. I'm sure other games have done something similar, but I've started Tyranny recently so that's top-of-mind. :V
 
illhousen said:
The only good D&D video game is Planescape, and it's because it just went "fuck it, let's simplify everything, allow you to just increase attributes on level up, cut down the number of classes to three and allow you to switch between them, and make it so you can just chug infinite healing potions in the middle of a fight because who gives a shit about challenge where there is a chaste succubus to impress with your massive brain? Also, have Cloud Kill, it kills half the enemies on screen because why not at this point."
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Planescape Torment was my first Visual Novel.
 
illhousen said:
Dear God, no, TES leveling is terrible even without level scaling. People only put up with it because they remember how cool it was to walk into a city built out of a corpse of a giant crab.

If you want to do skill-based system, just go with "level up gives you N skill points to distribute as you see fit". It's simple and works fine for Fallout, for Arcanum (though there you can invest your points into stats as well, or waste them by directly increasing HP and Stamina if you're a loser), for Might & Magic, for a lot of other games.
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One of the most popular mod groups for Skyrim is, unsurprisingly, one for tweaking the entire skill system into an experience based one with point distribution. Because who the hell has the time to deal with a system that decides that this one skil you only used this one time is your main skill just because it gave you your first level up. :V
 
Oblivion (the only one I actually played) also has major leveling mods, both "level skills and automatically gain stats and level up" (closer to how the original system worked but without its micromanagement flaw) and "get XP to level up, then explicitly assign points" (works better due to nasty enemy scaling - but even so, most of the game is easiest at level 1).
 
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