Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
Well, 'terra' just means earth and 'brand' is eg a mark, so way back I envisioned a character named terrabrand, because they were a necromancer with earth connections.
at this point it's more formally a completely different character concept with the same name but yeah. I came up with this name quite unrelatedly.
(there's also, not really surprisingly, plenty of other characters out there named Terra or variations thereof- the first time I can personally recall seeing it was Terra in the Teen Titans cartoon, and there's plenty of other examples besides.)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
After learning that there was an entire optional party member that I had missed by going to the Outpost before thoroughly checking every building in Narshe.
A character who, like Gau, as an entire custom mechanic that requires traveling around the world to find specific things to unlock specific abilities for him.
So that's when I reloaded a save from midway through the passage to the Sealed Gate, teleported out, went through the whole rigamarole required to recruit that character and get him upgraded and had to go back and do the passage again.
So that was what my three hours of FFVI play were about today. You're welcome. We'll pick up the whole fate of the world G7 summit some other day.
... I feel a song coming on...
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6AXb2DNE4M
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Phrasing it as him having 'earth connections' makes it sound like he's in business with the Earth Corporation or something. Or in debt to them, given the brand
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
@Omicron once you're done doing the peace summit with Old!Hitler, the first thing you should do, before progressing to the town that the game tells you to go to, is you should go back to the airship and talk to Setzer. Missable scene. It's a bit of a pain finding Setzer in the ship - he's in the engine room.
And, now that we have confirmation of Terra's backstory, let's take a trip down memory lane.
And, now that we have confirmation of Terra's backstory, let's take a trip down memory lane.
So, technically Gestahl killed/stunned Madeline and took Terra from her, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have then raised her like she was his own granddaughter. Very anime backstory, to be raised by the dude that secretly killed your mom.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You say theres a good chance the party didnt see the flashback, but I like to think Terra at least saw the flashback as a vision her father's magicite gave her.
In no small part because it means she now has an entirely wrong idea of where babies come from (and means the sparkles may have been Maduin's way of censoring the vision stork-style)
In no small part because it means she now has an entirely wrong idea of where babies come from (and means the sparkles may have been Maduin's way of censoring the vision stork-style)
FunkyEntropy
Occasionally insightful, possibly grumpy
- Location
- Los Angeles
Considering Maudin's summon sprite, they may also be bishie sparkles. This would also explain why Madeline had no problem going for the interspecis romance, because if anime has taught me anything it's that there are few that can resist the allure of bishie sparkle generating individuals.
- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
I'll take "Writers Cannot Do Maths" for $500, Alex.
I'm of the opinion that, Gau aside, Terra is the youngest of the bunch, and she's in her late teens/early adulthood, having spent most of her childhood under either Imperial domination or isolated education.
Yeah, it's clearly a bad judgement call, not just because the Espers are a powerful wild card in this equation, but at this point, I'll have to say the sitation is incredibly desperate. The Empire is unstoppable militarily, especially with the fall of Dohma, and the best Narshe and Figaro can do is stall, but not stop, and it doesn't look like they have any other options. Plus, it's safe to say he must have misunderstood from Terra's story that the Espers are just like us, and could be reasoned with. He forgot that, yes, they're just like us, and can be a bitter, vengeful lot too.
I agree on that front. The Espers Gate was intentional, losing Terra not so much. Unless Gestahl is ridiculously cavalier about his losses. I mean, he's not above throwing lives away for a good cause, but losing Terra like that was costly, not just because of the loss of two experienced magitech soldiers and three good mechs, but because Terra proceeded to shred a few more on the way out of Figaro.
Of course, there's the fact it was perfectly acceptable for both him and Kefka to throw fifty trained soldiers at her in a live fire exercise so they can watch her roast the poor saps to death. But then again, the sequence of events of "Sending Terra to retrieve an Esper" to "Terra opening the Sealed Gate" is an incredibly convoluted sequence of events that Xanatos would call bullshit on.
He didn't set the Imperial capital on fire, obviously, but yeah, he desperately needs friends to help him hold back the Espers right now, and he's probably biding his time.
As for the Imperial Banquet, it's a bit of a "Guide Dang It" moment. If you do well enough, you get to open a whole slew of good stuff, which is why I'd save before talking to the Imperial Guard (who, yes, are clearly a Star Wars reference, especially with how heavily this game is leaning into the "Rebel Alliance vs Evil Empire w/ wizards" narrative).
I'd say there might be a connection, but a lot of espers have weird shapes.
Considering this is Manduin explaining this to Terra, I bet it's his way of "then something happened and you were born as a bundle of joy into our lives".
I'm guessing FFXIII is a case of "good idea, mediocre execution". Its reputation precedes it, so I won't go into much here, plus I think I'm already on Omi's hit list by now. Thing is, it's like Squeenix decided to go for a very streamlined experience and wound up overshooting the mark.
He still locked her memories away behind a slave crown and effectively made her a mindless supersoldier, so I'll take that with a grain of salt.
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GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Re: Gestahl's gambit with Terra, I feel like the "give them Terra and they'll open the sealed gate for us" would have happened after Kefka went to Figaro, since the Empire seems to lose interest in taking Terra back after that - Kefka's taken off the hunt and assigned to Doma instead and doesn't really seem that interested in capturing her during the battle of Narshe.
It seems that as soon as they had confirmation that the Returners were the ones who had Terra and not the Narshians, they decided to cut her loose.
It seems that as soon as they had confirmation that the Returners were the ones who had Terra and not the Narshians, they decided to cut her loose.
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I don't really see what is so odd. Omicron already has so many combatants that the game needs to have an excuse like 'Someone needs to protect Narshe' to limit the party size to something the systems can handle.
This isn't an RPG like FF4 where each individual character usually has a unique impact on both any story scene and any battle they are present for. Characters aren't literally just skins, but they are fairly close to that. Just look at what Gau has contributed so far.
Not even like this is the only time an RPG has hidden or optional party members in the first place, even if it's a first for the Final Fantasy series. Heck, apparently one of the Suikoden games has 108 recruitable characters? Obviously that's pretty ridiculous compared to FF6, but as a game that already gives you a diverse cast of characters (Omi has met ten playable characters so far, and that's excluding one-offs like Biggs and Wedge, or Banon) and the first game with an actual party select system, I suppose the devs wanted to have a bit of fun with that by stuffing in a few optional characters.
Really, I just like that old game feeling of devs sticking in something as complex as an optional character or extra dungeon that players might just... never find. Kind of makes me think of how Dark Souls and its message system intentionally tries to harken back to that younger age of video gaming where you'd get those playground rumors of stuff that may or may not be bullshit. "Yeah if you go back to Narshe during that one part of the game where you have an airship for ten minutes, you can recruit a moogle as a playable character!" "What no way that's bullshit, last time you told me if you grind to level 10 in the Narshe Mines then Biggs and Wedge survive the Esper!"
And that's how we all end up trying to use Strength on a truck to unlock Mew.
Really, I just like that old game feeling of devs sticking in something as complex as an optional character or extra dungeon that players might just... never find. Kind of makes me think of how Dark Souls and its message system intentionally tries to harken back to that younger age of video gaming where you'd get those playground rumors of stuff that may or may not be bullshit. "Yeah if you go back to Narshe during that one part of the game where you have an airship for ten minutes, you can recruit a moogle as a playable character!" "What no way that's bullshit, last time you told me if you grind to level 10 in the Narshe Mines then Biggs and Wedge survive the Esper!"
And that's how we all end up trying to use Strength on a truck to unlock Mew.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Technically all of them do, that's that series' main gimmick
- Location
- Amman, Jordan
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
It's based on a combination of the 108 being a sacred number in Buddhist and Vedic (Hindu) mythology representing spiritual completion and the universe, and the Ming dynasty novel Water Margin, where 108 outlaws gather to fight a corrupt government.
Well, when the early game sales depended on parents buying their kids a toy to shut them up for a while, games were made to last, so you had to either make them hard as hell (Souls-likes have nothing on Battletoad or Ghosts 'n' Goblins) to force the tykes to spend a long time getting good, or you hide a lot of easter eggs for replayability factor. Combined with the fact that pre-Internet times didn't exactly have a ton of ways to fact-check rumors and the guy who owned an official strategy guide was seen as an all-knowing guru among his peers, and you get a lot of really weird rumors like reviving Aeris or Lara Croft's nude codes, which end up having no basis in reality.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You lot will be spared when the Giant Space Flea comes.
There isn't that much to go through!!! Once you've gotten the magicites, woken up Terra, and gotten the flashback, there's... stuff in the Jidoor Auction House, recruiting Mog, and some rare monsters you can go around trying to beat up or steal stuff from and a couple items to buy? Mog aside none of this is narrative-content and I would probably have breezed through it in terms of update length.
Well, I'm simply not doing that.
It's odd because it's never happened. This is literally the first time we have optional characters (or at least characters you can miss for a time and get back later), especially one so easy to miss (in at least this part of the story). That's fairly remarkable! It's also very different from more modern Western cRPG traditions in terms of party member writing.
Incidentally, the game completely drops this excuse once you unlock the airship: everyone travels together, but you're still limited to four characters in the active party.
I suppose the rest are busy with calibrations. Of slot machines, presumably.
Water dance is very useful in the esper cave specifically, and in general is very solid, but yeah, the need to do the whole raft/sea sequence again just to get it is super annoying.
Though, in general, I do appreciate Mog being Gau lite: similar mechanics, but much easier to actually get new dances and much more straightforward to use. Except for the whole 50% chance to just waste a turn if you decide to use a dance not matched to native environment.
But not so different from old school western RPGs! "This character joins only if you visit this specific optional area and do this specific optional quest" is, like, the standard for party members circa Infinity Engine era. Fallout 1-2, Baldur's Gate, Planescape, Arcanum - all of them would spread potential companions across the world and only guide you to some of them, the rest is up to you to discover.
The big difference between those games and FFVI is that FFVI's world changes as you progress the storyline, and Mog is available only during a specific section of gameplay, while you can recruit, say, Myron at any time before the end if you know how and didn't, like, kill NPCs necessary to lead you to him or something.
Plot-wise, the two are also similar. Companions in old western RPGs would often have one quest where they're active participants, and then fade into the background, silently doing whatever you need from them. Similarly, FFVI has some gimmick characters, most notably Gau and Mog, who had their initial quest and afterwards are just kinda there. I'm not entirely convinced Gau knows what the fuck "the Empire" even is.
On the one hand, the water dance is the best one.
On the other, Dance in general is significantly worse than just giving Mog a good spear and deploying dragoon strats.
On balance, you're not really missing much.
Kadmus
Dragon's teeth are surprisingly hard to sow
- Location
- Devon
- Pronouns
- He/Him
So far it kinda feels like FFVI is not taking advantage of its vaunted 'ensemble cast' as much as it should, what with all the completely missable pretty serious character beats that you just don't get if you don't take the exact right team via precognition and the fact that a chunk of the cast are basically non-entities (like Gau and Cyan and Shadow).
I suspect it would have made a much better game from a narrative - and likely mechanical - perspective if you had prescribed teams that you had to use for the 'split everyone up' bits so that they could actually deliver all the beats they want to and also they could have had encounters balanced around the specific party you would have so you didn't screw yourself over by using the wrong team for the wrong bit. Take lessons from FFIV, is what I'm saying.
I suspect it would have made a much better game from a narrative - and likely mechanical - perspective if you had prescribed teams that you had to use for the 'split everyone up' bits so that they could actually deliver all the beats they want to and also they could have had encounters balanced around the specific party you would have so you didn't screw yourself over by using the wrong team for the wrong bit. Take lessons from FFIV, is what I'm saying.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
What I find interesting is how many of these characters essentially had their character arcs upon joining the party, and then kinda just hang around. It's as if the character was a mechanical 'reward' for finishing their storyline - you completed Cyan's arc, here is Cyan as a playable character, but don't expect him to do much more than cameos in terms of narrative role going forward. Like, Cyan has a perfectly fine, if short, arc: the retainer to Doma watches his kingdom be wiped out, swears himself to revenge, is pulled from the brink of suicide-by-soldiers by strangers whom he befriends, ends up swept up into a magical train and, after fighting his way out, watches his wife and son tell him he was a good husband and father and saying goodbye as they depart from the afterlife. After that he gets a couple of scenes when he meets an imperial general like Celes or when Kefka is up to something, to remind you that it's not like he's completely over it and still hates the Empire and will fight for revenge, but it's not such a drive for revenge that it needs resolving; he is talked out of fighting Celes and never brings it up again, it does not foster long-lasting tensions among the group. For all intents and purposes, Cyan had his arc, and it's over. The same could be argued of Sabin. Gau, huh, never had an arc to begin with, but I get the sense he's more of a mascot.
As of last update, Kefka's in jail, the Empire has surrendered, and in his brief comment on the situation that I'll bring up next update Cyan sounds like he's kinda... over it? Obviously, of course, he could grow a new character arc after whatever plot stuff happens next, I'm just talking as he is right now.
We're 12 hours in right now, judging by precedent we're 1/3rd to 1/4th of the game in at most, so I'm interested to see what the game does with its cast in the remainder of the story.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Its technical I think - they hadnt quite figured out how to handle not being sure which characters youd have on you at any given time and not knowing who had and hadnt been recruited at all. "Unique dialog and party banter for each party comp" hadnt been added to the JRPG repertoire just yet.
And while WRPGs had "stop at any time to chat with your party members and get their opinions" to provide something for that, JRPGs didnt get anything similar until Dragon Quest 7's party chat feature and the recent post-Persona 3 merging of genres with dating sims, with the former form of party chat having largely remained a Dragon Quest thing
And while WRPGs had "stop at any time to chat with your party members and get their opinions" to provide something for that, JRPGs didnt get anything similar until Dragon Quest 7's party chat feature and the recent post-Persona 3 merging of genres with dating sims, with the former form of party chat having largely remained a Dragon Quest thing
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Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
It's one of the tradeoffs of being a good video-game: for choices to be meaningful, you need to be able to decide not to do things, which means things should be possible to miss. And it's also something that adds replayability, which is something else that good videogames should have.
With that said, it's true that the amount of things that are missable is not well-balanced in FFVI, and that makes it annoying; it'd be a thing if every member of the team was equally well developed, but they're not, and that means that, if somebody likes to use the characters who lack development, the game is poorer in terms of characterization and providing an interesting narrative for the characters.
I mean, whether it had to or not, it is sort of what FFVI needs to actually fully realize what it attempted to, and it's not like it's that hard a thing to figure out when you're already doing different dialogue options based on party composition in some scenes anyway, is it? It is forgivable, I will agree to that, but it's still a pretty big missing element in the game's structure.
In the end, FFVI aspires to do a lot, but it makes a lot of promises that it fails to keep. More importantly, it's pace is so relentless that it doesn't have the time to develop anybody properly; I personally think that it has the worst pacing in the series.
I do think FFVI is superior to FFIV; FFV, on the other hand... but that's likely a discussion best left for after the game is over, so that all the necessary data is included in it.
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Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Its also not the last game to have that exact issue- see Vincent and Yuffie in FFVII outside of dedicated sidequests centering on them. Or FFIX with Freya after disk 2 or so.
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Yeah. I was gonna sit on it until the game was over, but eh. One of the big things about FF6 that doesn't work for me is the ensemble cast. In my playthrough my crew ended up being Terra, Celes, and the Super Figaro Bros, and I stuck to them. Most of the others just didn't have enough going for them to be anything more than a dalliance.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
PSIV had that circa 1993, though it was more of a 'this is what you're currently supposed to be doing' reminder than anything, and it used the same system as FFIV of cycling people in and out of the main party as story-appropriate, so it wasn't really doing it to make up for missable content.
But it's not like the germ of the idea, at least, wasn't out there much sooner than you're saying.