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

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Okay, so my favourite cutscene is coming up in the next update. Bad news, it's missable. Good news, you have to win at a minigame where they don't explain the rules in order to miss it, so it's easy to not miss.

Rules explanation below:

Cid is sick and needs fish to survive. His life is on a timer and every second he loses one HP. There are four speeds of fish: the slowest makes him lose HP, the second slowest does nothing, the second fastest gives a small amount of HP, and the fastest gives a large amount of HP. If you enter the shack when he's at 0 HP he's dead, if you enter when he's at max HP he recovers.

If you win you get one cutscene, if you lose you get the other. The latter cutscene is much better.
 
Muramasa said:
Unrelated but I think the remaster actually whiffed on the floating continent and ultima weapon battle soundtracks here. To be fair, these are both great sound tracks that are difficult to top, and I feel the remaster didn't quite measure up here.


View: https://youtu.be/cPnZj2yG2gU

View: https://youtu.be/svUcKuUfftY
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The Ultima weapon remaster sounds like they decided to emphasize how unnatural an opponent it is, rather than make an epic bossfight theme. But yeah, doesn't quite land. Actually, I kind of forgot that the "ultima weapon" theme was separate from the other boss music, because there I've heard so many remixes that just meld the two together.
 
Eh, as a young teen when this first came out, the Kefka bit didn't really bug me. Batman: The Animated Series had been out for about 2 years at this point, so drawing the comparison between the Joker and Kefka was relatively simple.

As for the Esper Genocide, I have 2 major thoughts. First, I always assumed he simply had the barrier from Number 24 from back in the Magitek Research Facility, and Kefka just switches it as needed when fighting the Espers.

The other thought is basically on Kefka's nature. Kefka is the dangerous prototype compared to Celes standardized stable model of Magitek Soldier. When Cid & Company pumped Kefka full of esper juice, they 'broke' him. Hence the jester outfit, the manic personality, etc. But that wasn't all - Kefka is much more magically inclined then the other soldiers, and much more willing and successful when experimenting with magic. He worked out the Slave Crown, he figured out using illusions to substitue for himself in a fight, probably a half dozen other tricks he never bothered pulling out, and he figured out how to convert Espers to Magicite. (Or the ol' Vanish/X-Zone trick). As for the bit at the Triad, again, Kefka's more sensitive to magic than anyone not an Esper. So of course Kefka realized that the magical interference caused by the energy the Triad were passing between each other would also work to disrupt attacks at people within it.

To use a bit of analogy, the three Great Generals of the Empire are Leo, Celes, and Kefka. In D&D terms, the Warrior, the Cleric, and the Wizard/Sorceror. Espers are literally magic in a (usually monstrous) incarnate form. Leo and Celes are both equipped to defeat an Esper. Kefka's the only one with the magical knowledge, insight, and craziness to figure out a way to flat-out unmake them, to dispel their incarnate form. And when presented with a massive flux of magical power (the Triad), he was the one who figured out how to harness and direct it on the fly.
 
McFluffles said:
GESTAHL YOU FOOL

YOU FORGOT TO TAKE THE PLOT ARMOR BACK FROM KEFKA AFTER THE ESPERS SCENE, HE'S STILL IMMUNE TO MAGIIIIIIIIIIIC
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New headcanon accepted

McFluffles said:
Once again, I say: Welcome to the World of Ruin. And boy, that overworld track is just haunting, especially compared to what we had in the World of Balance.
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It's a really great example of just how powerful silence can be when properly utilized. Yes, the organ is playing every note but there's a lot of space between each attack and that does an incredible job selling the emptiness of the world. Sparse instrumentation (the very few chime hits are also a very nice touch) and lots of space between notes means the emptiness of the music and world are perfectly aligned. Great writing.

Also, too, the organ is a "sacred" instrument so using it here in this way is a great way of conveying the defilement that's taken place. There is no paradise here, only empty ruin.

ArlequineLunaire said:
About the Ultima Weapon originally being translated at 'Atma Weapon', at first I thought it was just a misspelling, or that they didn't want any confusion with the Ultima wRPGs. But no, credit to Woolsey, 'Atma' (also spelt Atman) is a real concept, being the Soul or True Self in Hinduism and other Dharmic religions.
Still maybe a stretch to describe the Weapon, but no more so than any other FF monster names
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I did not know that and that is fucking rad. Thanks for sharing!
 
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Omicron said:
The earth quakes. Forests come apart. Towns break and fall into the earth. People topple to their deaths in the chasms that open between falling mountains. The destruction is utterly indiscriminate, hitting Imperials, Returners, and civilians alike. But it's not just the earth, the waves of power are rocking the air - and the Blackjack comes apart.

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When I first played FFVI, this was the biggest impact for me, for some reason.

I think it was because while FFVI was technically my first RPG, I had only gotten as far as Mount Koltz the first time before I had to return the cartridge to my cousin, and later I managed to get FFIV for my Final Fantasy cravings. And in FFIV, the airships we get seem pretty durable, surviving everything the game threw at them, and they only stopped being used once they became obsoleted. They're the party's transportation, reliable and trusty.

So I thought the Blackjack would be the same, and it was a major shock to me to see the airship I thought would be our transportation for the entire game being snapped in half.
 
Out of the games you've reviewed so far, III and VI were the only ones I hadn't played before. So I went into this mostly blind. I wasn't trying to avoid spoilers when I read the comments, so I knew going into the last few updates that Kefka would pull a bunch of new powers out of his ass, become the Big Bad, and score a major victory. If any of the comments I read did mention the apocalypse, though, I must have dismissed it as exaggeration, because that caught me off guard. I'm now tempted to find a video of this scene.

Kefka suddenly finding the "I win" is annoying, and I'm just reading a playthrough. I'd probably be really mad if I were playing the game myself. Like others have said, whether you're more angry about Kefka or awed by the devastation probably depends on when in your life you play the game.

Omicron said:
Which tells us something interesting about Kefka: that he actually expected this to work. He wasn't hiding under an illusion and didn't have a defensive spell prepared, he's genuinely so disconnected from how people work that he thought telling Celes to kill all her friends and they'd welcome her back at their side to conquer the world would work. This actually did take him off-guard.
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Mr Kefka, you have no conscience.
And that's your weakness.
Did it ever occur to you that there are very few people that would kill their friends for the Empire's forgiveness? It didn't, did it.
I knew it wouldn't.
No conscience.
Limits your imagination.
You can't conceive of anybody being any different than what you are.
And you're greedy.
And that's why, as bright as you are, and you're bright, you believed that Celes could be bought.

(If anyone's curious, this was more or less ripped from the last scene of Columbo: Ransom for a Dead Man. I watched it yesterday and couldn't resist.)
 
Frumple said:
Also one of those things that, like... you'd need a spoiler to know about it, because natural play isn't going to encounter it at any point. There's no indication it exists and you'd have to be actively bad at the game to see it otherwise, heh, and not just actively bad, but actively bad in such a precise way you don't actively fail and still land in a very specific time frame.

It's genuinely one of the most bullshit missables of all time, and its very presence inspired and kept people trying at all the fake "missable" stuff that was floating around FF6, because if that horseshit actually happened, maybe you actually did need to walk around Narshe widdershins five times to get Leo to resurrect or somethin'.
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IT'S ME, I WAS THE PERSON WHO WAS BAD AT THE GAME

IT WAS ME ALL ALONG
 
TrueNeutral said:
Out of the games you've reviewed so far, III and VI were the only ones I hadn't played before. So I went into this mostly blind. I wasn't trying to avoid spoilers when I read the comments, so I knew going into the last few updates that Kefka would pull a bunch of new powers out of his ass, become the Big Bad, and score a major victory. If any of the comments I read did mention the apocalypse, though, I must have dismissed it as exaggeration, because that caught me off guard. I'm now tempted to find a video of this scene.
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View: https://youtu.be/gMBtu4Ui4d0?t=1803

Here you go!
 
Amidatelion said:
Bleah, Chrono Cross really had the worst huge party roster I've personally seen.

The vast majority of them in my memory are just "HELLO! I am DUDE. I have TRAIT. You will now ignore me for the rest of the game."
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blankslate said:
True.

The worst part was that there weren't any multi thread setups like in FF6 that would have justified having so many.

Realistically the total roster in CC should probably have capped at maybe 9 permanent options and a half dozen or so temp members.
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Which is a shame because most of them would be just fine as "Random NPC #XXXXXX". I think this was a case of the design team putting every last idea they have into this, effectively pulling a George Lucas in the process (putting in as many ideas as possible without taking into account whether it's necessary or logical), while trying to both play off the "multiverse" idea (you can't get all characters on a singly playthrough and need to do multiple runs to enact it, and to compare characters between universes).

Problem is, as you said, most are relegated to either one-note characters, characters used for a single gimmick and then promptly hang around your party, practically forgotten (like the alien whose starship you need to access a spot, I kid you not), and a handful of characters you use because they're infinitely better than the others.
Zimmerwald1915 said:
I see your Chrono Cross and raise you a Fire Emblem.
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As pointed out before, Fire Emblem isn't an RPG, it's a tactical/strategic RPG, meaning you're expected to bring in an army to fight. It gets tiresome managing them all, but that's the whole point of the game. Also, Suikoden (which was also mentioned) basically has 108 characters divided between your army and your civilian infrastructure/support.
GilliamYaeger said:
>spoiler<
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"What, isn't a killer clown allowed to feel pretty inside?!"
 
CeBrudras said:
I am impressed. I ended up on that path, but the game took so damn long to actually hand me that L that I ended up frustrated and looked up a guide out of confusion at how long the sequence took.
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I played games badly as a kid and sort of lucked into it
 
AKuz said:
I played games badly as a kid and sort of lucked into it
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Oh my bad. I myself played it for the first time like two months ago so my mind just immediately went into that setting rather than someone authentically stumbling through as a child. Though as mentioned, if adult-me had more patience I would have experienced the same thing child-you did.
 
Thinking a little more about it: I feel like the earlier section where Kefka steamrolled the entire esper population bothers me significantly more than this part in terms of him being handed a win without believable in-universe rationale not just because of the huge and effective shake-up to the world, but also because Kefka just, like, takes a derailed train of emotional Ls in the process.

Even though he "wins".
 
Also, now that I have about ten hours of gameplay past the initial point when this post was made, I would like to extend an apology:

illhousen said:
Finally, in the very "me problem" corner, I tend to forget that summoning espers is a thing. You can't set it on auto because it can only be done once per battle, so it's not very useful during random fights, and to select a summon you need to scroll up the magic menu even though you're on the first row, so it tends to slip my mind that it's something that can be done.
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When I read that post last month, I secretly thought to myself, "Skill issue, I would simply remember to use summons at all times." I didn't say that, because I didn't want to be rude and also didn't want to be publicly punished for my arrogance, but I thought it.

Ten hours of game later, I have used summons I think four times exactly, each time in a random encounter or because I thought "oh, I should check out what this looks like." And then I forget it exists again.

Ironically for the game in the series in which the summons are the most involved in and relevant to the plot so far, FFVI is also the one where I just... don't use them, ever, because the menu was built wrong and so I never remember that they exist.
 
Omicron said:
Also, now that I have about ten hours of gameplay past the initial point when this post was made, I would like to extend an apology:



When I read that post last month, I secretly thought to myself, "Skill issue, I would simply remember to use summons at all times." I didn't say that, because I didn't want to be rude and also didn't want to be publicly punished for my arrogance, but I thought it.

Ten hours of game later, I have used summons I think four times exactly, each time in a random encounter or because I thought "oh, I should check out what this looks like." And then I forget it exists again.

Ironically for the game in the series in which the summons are the most involved in and relevant to the plot so far, FFVI is also the one where I just... don't use them, ever, because the menu was built wrong and so I never remember that they exist.
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*Validation noises*
 
Skill issue, I simply would remember to use summons at all times.

See, I get to say it because I'm not playing the game for an audience right now. Somehow the Let's Play curse transcends video format and goes into forum based let's plays.
 
I could probably count on one hand the number of times I've actually used Espers in VI. One part "didn't need them" and MANY parts "forget they exist."
 
Omicron said:
Ten hours of game later, I have used summons I think four times exactly, each time in a random encounter or because I thought "oh, I should check out what this looks like." And then I forget it exists again.
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Honestly, the only reason I'm even remembering summons exist in my own playthrough is because I'll get to areas where occasionally the guide I'm following along to not miss things will also say "oh hey phantom breaks this whole area because enemies only physically attack" so I'll use it's full party Vanish ability. And... that's probably the most summoning I've ever done in a FFVI playthrough, ever.

On the other hand, I did finally see a limit break for the first time against Air Force when Cyan used Tsubame Gaeshi on the Bit, so that was neat.
 
End Disc One.

Yeah, there's a reason that many people just don't use the summons. It's because they suck. Except for the ones that give things like shell and protect, they all deal pathetic amounts of damage and cost way too much mp. None of the summons you have right now are better than a Ra spell and the later ones are outclassed by real big spells.
 
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There are some summons that are good! Phantom, Golem, um, Siren sometimes...

Okay, I got nothin'. The summons are just overly expensive, single use, wimpy spells. Apart from the rare few that do something you can't otherwise access - full party Vanish, Golem's fake HP thing, etc - they're useless.
 
I am super used to being able to press Up to go to the bottom of a list, so Summons were genuinely pretty annoying. Especially since FF6 has a ton of spells to scroll through.
 
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