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
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Indeed it is. Any further past that point and we'll start demanding Fallout reviews~
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
Let's just stick to the main FF and spin offs at most (been curious for a while on the Chocobo games myself). There are decent arguments to include CT and maybe the first Seiken Densetsus here, but let's not load Omi with more work than he proposed himself at the beginning.
Would this move to include spin-offs be including the Crystal Chronicles entries, seeing as the only one of those available on a modern console is a remake of the first game thereof?
I still fondly remember the online lobby people-towers.
EDIT: The people-towers thing was mostly a thing in Echoes of Time, the second DS entry, and it mostly came down to there not being much to do in the lobbies.
I still fondly remember the online lobby people-towers.
EDIT: The people-towers thing was mostly a thing in Echoes of Time, the second DS entry, and it mostly came down to there not being much to do in the lobbies.
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Foamy is Phantasy Star IV's strongest soldier and has not missed a single opportunity to try and get anyone to play it in the entire time I've known him. I respect the commitment, but even if I were to play it, I wouldn't be making a Let's Play of it.
Fallout New Vegas is one of my favorite games of all time and I started replaying it a couple of months ago with a mind to reevaluate it from my nostalgic memories of ten years ago, unfortunately midway through that journey it decided to crash forever and is currently unplayable. I'm not mad though. I'm not mad.Inb4 Omi's musings on Dead Money, Honest Hearts and Lonesome Road. Whatever you mean those ain't related to FF peeps
Let's just stick to the main FF and spin offs at most (been curious for a while on the Chocobo games myself). There are decent arguments to include CT and maybe the first Seiken Densetsus here, but let's not load Omi with more work than he proposed himself at the beginning.
Current plan is mainline games plus Tactics plus maybe Chrono Trigger as a replacement for FFXI, which I will not be playing, much as I respect @Adloquium's mad bet to do a full Let's Play of a twenty-year old, pre-WoW MMORPG.
I've been toying with the idea of doing related-but-non-mainline games as Patreon exclusives, like Square's other SNES RPGs (Bahamut Lagoon, for instance) or the off-line FFs like Crystal Chronicle, but figuring out how to do that without impacting this Let's Play project is difficult.
I mean, if this paid the bills I would have no objection to that, but unfortunately we're a ways off
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To be fair, "the game crashed forever and I can't even reload my saves" is in fact part of the New Vegas experience, so it's an important part of reevaluating it as well
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
True; most Gamebryo/Creation Engine games only glitch severely when modded heavily. New Vegas was so rushed with its deadline that it got quest-completion preventing glitches on console (I had the cowboy ghoul's personal quest unwinnable in my first Xbox 360 playthrough, because one of the people you need to talk to to advance said quest had apparently clipped permanently through the ground into the infinite void below and on console you can't just console command him back to reality).To be fair, "the game crashed forever and I can't even reload my saves" is in fact part of the New Vegas experience, so it's an important part of reevaluating it as well
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Well, one, I just think it's neat.
But second, and more seriously, the point would be to see what people other than Square were doing in the space at around the same time, before the jump to 3D basically irrevocably changed things. It's more of an age with FFV than VI, since VI is technologically, especially in the Remaster, more comparable to CT, whereas PSIV is an older and in some ways significantly more conservatively designed game, but it isn't that misaligned yet. Will be once things get into VII, though.
However I will say Omi's been quite clear they won't be doing it as an LP, or likely even at all given time constraints, so it's more just an offhand comment about one of my favourite games.
All you other people saying you've never played it don't have that excuse though and should go rectify that right now
RogueIce
Noctis Æternæ
- Location
- New Lunar Republic, Equestria
That's quite the expensive proposition.All you other people saying you've never played it don't have that excuse though and should go rectify that right now
I'm going to need you to give me $0.99 first.
Are you including the expansion games like FFX-2 or the two other games made about FF13 as mainline games or would those fall under releated-but-not-mainline games/onfline FF's(if you chose to do those at all)?
- Location
- Florida USA
Funny how I used to always do Phoenix Cave after some of the other stuff that's done, especially Narshe. Far more painful if done really early.
Anyway, guess there's just two dragons left. And the Strago quest and the Gau thing. Then it's time for Omi to crash Kefka's tower (and IIRC deal with the remaining dragons en passant).
Also, and I will only say this once.
Final Fantasy VI was the greatest of the series until XIV came along and joined it at the top rankings. To say otherwise is HERESY!
Anyway, guess there's just two dragons left. And the Strago quest and the Gau thing. Then it's time for Omi to crash Kefka's tower (and IIRC deal with the remaining dragons en passant).
Also, and I will only say this once.
Final Fantasy VI was the greatest of the series until XIV came along and joined it at the top rankings. To say otherwise is HERESY!
Final Fantasy VI, Part 23: Cleaning Up, Cont.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Sorry about the delayed gratification here, but I guess we won't be doing Kefka's Tower today - there's still stuff left, turns out, but it's the good stuff!
Good news too - I worked out the problem with the Shadow flashbacks!
Well, @McFluffles figured it out for me, but never mind that. Basically what I read online is that the dreams can trigger in any inn, so I rested at Thamasa's inn because it costs 1 gil, but it turns out that was probably a lie, and as soon as I spammed resting at an inn with a standard cost, the dreams started coming. Disinformation on the Internet! In this day and age! It's like I'm in middle school all over again.
There's a total of five dreams, counting the one we saw after rescuing Shadow in the Cave on the Veldt. We see Baram and Clyde again, fresh off a train heist - they managed to steal a million gil, and decide to celebrate by christening themselves with a cool bandit name - the 'Shadow Bandits,' 'great train robbers of the century.'
Unfortunately, they don't get to retire on that cushy prize - in the next flashback, we see Clyde and Baram by a river bank, with Baram wounded and bleeding.
Clyde tries to reassure him that he's gonna be okay, but Baram tells him he's done for, and tells him to run, as he still has a chance to make it. Clyde is reluctant, but eventually accepts - then, just before he leaves, Baram calls to him for one last favor, a twist of the knife: he wants Clyde to finish him off so he's not captured alive. It's unclear who they're chased after by, or what exactly they'll do if they get their hands on Baram, but it's clearly bad enough that Baram, who has 'never been afraid in his life,' is trembling like a leaf in fear.
Hmmm. I wonder who they were running from. It doesn't seem like many of FFVI's polities have that kind of bloodthirsty, "torture the criminals until they would sooner die" attitude - except maybe Vector, which would become the Empire? And they're robbing trains, so… Yeah, I think it's plausible they were on the run from proto-imperial forces.
Either way, Clyde can't bring himself to do it - he can't kill his best friend even at his own request, and runs away, leaving Baram to die or be captured, with Baram calling out to him, "How could you!"
Oh.
Oooooh.
Hey, remember the very first thing we're told about Shadow when we met him?
"He'd kill his own best friend for the right price."
Delicious, delicious irony.
In the last flashback, Clyde has made it to a town, exhausted and on the verge of collapse - where he's find by a young woman - and her dog.
And we've come full circle. The flashback ends there, but it's pretty easy connecting the dots. Clyde, on the run from the consequences of a life of banditry, finds refuge in Thamasa. There, he falls in love, and has a daughter. But, like most Final Fantasy mothers, the unnamed lover dies in childbirth. Clyde, for whatever reason (Afraid he can't be a good father? Incapable of resisting the call of a life of crime?) then leaves, and Interceptor follows him. From there, now with no one in his life, Clyde becomes Shadow, the world-traveling mercenary and assassin.
…
Still weird that there doesn't seem to be any way of acknowledging that in character; Shadow, Strago and Relm are both party members now but we can't really do anything with the knowledge of their connection. I guess Shadow rightly fears to be called out on his shit if he reveals himself as Relm's estranged father and the guy who abandoned Strago's granddaughter, and the others can't see flashbacks so they have no reason to suspect anything, but… You'd think we'd be doing something more with this. Ah well.
Love the 'would kill his own best friend' ironic callback, though. That's writing.
Now, let's check out Dinosaur Forest. It's a forest near the Veldt full of Tyrannosaurs. Tyrannosaurs are worth a lot of XP while not being all that threatening as encounters, so it's a great place to level up my backup characters…
…I beg your pardon?
Okay so a rare encounter in Dinosaur Forest is the Brachiosaurus, which can cast Ultima.
I have to admit that it's a pretty funny gag. Just, completely inexplicable. Why does this dinosaur know the ultimate magic? Who knows, fuck you! This is some "brachiosaurus launches its neck" One Piece-tier nonsense. I guess that's what the asteroid saved us from in this world - magic-casting dinosaurs.
We also know how to deal with Ultima from the Magic Master fight and apparently Brachiosaurus has good drops? So we'll try beating it.
It's not easy. Even knowing the Reraise tactic, the Brachiosaurus hits hard, fast, and often. It can cast Meteor, Ultima, Disaster (which inflicts multiple status effects), and has powerful physical attack. In my first attempt, I end up having my Reraise buffer spent against Meteor and immediately caught by Ultima with my pants down.
You can see it already wasn't going well.
Even with my strongest group, it's a hard fight. And every time, it takes ten minutes to half an hour just triggering the fight again, because of Brachiosaur's low encounter rate. Eventually though, we make it, with a tactic I like to call 'cheating bullshit': Terra using the Soul of Thamasa and Quick can four-cast Reraise, granting it to the entire group, then she and Celes can Dualcast Ultima for enormous damage.
The beast is defeated, yielding a sizeable amount of XP and Magic AP and…
Nothing.
The Brachiosaur doesn't drop any item.
Looking it up on the wiki, the Brachiosaur does have an item drop, and it is one of the best items in the game - the Celestriad has the astounding effect of lowering all spell costs to 1 MP.
However, it has a 12.5% chance of dropping in any given fight against Brachiosaur.
I am not putting up with that. The beast shall keep its treasure, I have better things to do with my time.
For now, let's head back to Thamasa - Strago and Relm have some business to take care of.
As soon as we arrive in town, Relm splits off from the party and heads home - but Strago only has time to reflect that he must be getting old, watching her so full of energy, before Relm hurries back to tell him that he has to come with her: Gungho, Strago's old monster hunting buddy who made fun of him for giving up in his search for the monster Hidon, is hurt.
Gungho tells him that he found Hidon and almost had him, but the beast injured him greatly - and he asks Strago to avenge him. He is also throwing in a lot of dramatic coughing and wheezing, but I'm sure that's nothing.
Relm berates Strago for standing around looking sad when there's a monster to slay, and Strago says she's right - he grew old and forgot about pursuing the dreams of his youth, but now is the time to settle that old grudge and avenge his friend.
As he heads for the door, Relm catches up to him, telling him he better not be thinking of trying to do it alone; Strago replies that it's a matter of pride, he has to settle the matter he couldn't all those years ago. Relm berates him for making things harder on himself than they have to be and that she can't just sit and watch him risk his life, and Strago relents. Thus, with a full party, we head for the new location that just opened on the map - Ebot's Rock.
Ebot's Rock is a dark cave, totally obscured but for a tiny circle of light around our character, and our path is blocked by a sentient chest who won't let us through unless we give him coral to eat, of all things.
Ebot's Rock is an interesting concept - basically, we have to probe around in the dark trying to find chests containing pieces of coral until we've gathered enough to feed the chest all at once (22 pieces). There are switches which teleport the party between various subsections of the cave, and the chests respawn with new coral content every time we do - the teleportation is completely random and can even teleport us in the same room multiple times. It's kind of like a mix between the Rock Tunnel and Sabrina's Gym in Pokemon Blue/Red.
The Pixel Remaster's introduction of a map, though, sort of trivializes the whole affair.
Not that I mind much, as Rock Tunnel without HM Flash isn't really my idea of a good time. Once we've collected enough coral, the inexplicable sentient chest is satisfied and allows us to pass, and we can confront Hidon. Whose name, Strago pointed out early, sounds like 'hidden.' I wonder what that pun was in the original Japanese.
Okay that dude looks fucked up. I love it.
Now, because I'm using backup characters, I can't just Ultima my way to victory. None of these characters even know Ultima.
…they do know Flare, though.
The highest damage dealer in the party, though, is Mog. With the Dragon Boots and Dragon Horn, his Jump command hits four times, which, because Hidon is undead and weak to Holy and Mog is wielding the Holy Lance, deals 3k+ damage per hit, four times. All in all…
Hidon's demise is swift.
Which turns out to be a mistake! In a twist I definitely should have anticipated considering that Hidon is the 'final boss' of Strago's character arc, Hidon knows the strongest lore available to a Blue Mage, Grand Delta, but only uses it when all the Erebus minions around it are dead. Unfortunately, I ended up killing both Hidon and its last Erebus at the same time, so… no Lore for Strago.
Which doesn't really matter, since, you know, I can just teach him Ultima. I'm starting to spot an issue with FFVI's late-game strategic design.
Still, I don't want to be grinding Ultima on every one of my characters, and Hidon is right there, so a quick reload later…
…we goad him into using his (incredibly cool-looking) ultimate attack and then deal with him, thus teaching Strago his ultimate Lore.
The old man is overjoyed at his victory, literally hopping in place in giddy excitement, and quickly heads back to Thamasa to tell Gungho he's been avenged. The news surprises him - so much so, in fact, that the supposedly near-fatally wounded old man jumps out of bed in shock.
Strago gloats that 'a little monster like Hidon couldn't hold a candle to the likes of me,' and Gungho concedes defeat, admitting Strago really showed him up. Strago asks him how his wounds are doing and Gungho, seemingly just then remembering that he is supposedly grievously injured, plays it off - and we fade in to an evening scene in which Strago and Gungho are sitting together, Strago absolutely restless with excitement as he recounts his fight with the monster.
That's not how it happened, Strago. You cast Flare.
This is genuinely a great scene, in the way it shows Strago's excitement and his child-like glee at having shown he's still got it. Compared to Final Fantasy's previous "quirky old men tagging along with the cast" Strago has suffered from a dearth of writing leaving him well behind Tellah and and even more so Galuf, but these little touches of humanity are what he needed to get.
And he's not the only one whose characterization is built upon by this scene - as Strago falls asleep from the fatigue of the day, Gungho heads out, and meets Relm in the street who asks him how her grandpa's doing. Gungho tells him he's fine, but he's wondering if it's okay to "leave him like this, thinking he was really hurt."
It was all a ploy by Relm and Gungho! Well, mostly by Relm, with Gungho as her patsy, faking his injuries to give Strago a reason to get off his ass and finally hunt down the monster he spent his youth trying to defeat.
I like that. It feels like a very Relm thing to do, in that it's fundamentally well-intentioned but also utterly reckless and completely uncaring of the possible negative consequences because everything can only work exactly according to her plans.
Gungho muses that he doesn't know how a man like Strago could have raised a granddaughter as wonderful as Relm, and her reaction, in typical Relm fashion, is to make fun of him for his terrible acting skills as a 'deathly injured' man. Which, ouch, but also, fair. Gungho shakes his fist at the impudent youth, and we are back to the present.
We're very nearly done now. The last stuff that needs taken care of is mostly grabbing some items that I missed and which were pointed out to me by the thread; for instance, in the Yeti's Cave is a chest full of Tonberries dropping the Minerva Bustier, one of the strongest armors in the game but which can only be equipped by Terra and Celes (not Relm; one imagines that as a child, she's not, huh, sized for it).
The tonberries do their classic slow march of death thing, but we wipe them out before they can reach the party - though not without casualties.
There's an item I'm told I've missed in the Moogle Lair. It's hidden in the wall just behind where Mog was sitting alone. What could it be?
*slow blinks*
Did that just say "Prevents all random enemy encounters"?
Holy shit.
Okay yes I can see how this would have been convenient to have a while ago… Although no, I wouldn't feel confident tackling the endgame with a lv 30 party, but at the same time…
God, I just slapped that on Mog and proceeded to be able to waltz through a whole dungeon without a single fight to grab some forgotten chest. Like, reason number 1 I don't often go back to places to grab an item I missed is that doing so means fighting ten random encounters and is just tedious, but with this…
Unfortunately, it can only be equipped by Mog, which means I won't be able to just do Kefka's Tower without random encounters. It might mean that at least my third party won't need to be fully leveled up, since I can just give Mog the Charm and have them complete their section of the dungeon without a fight (other than I suspect a mandatory boss fight; there are three parties, and there are three members of the Warring Triad - coincidence? I don't think so).
Well, that's another thing in our pocket for the final dungeon.
Next stop is the Coliseum - we have a couple more items to get there, like a second Minerva Bustier (so Celes and Terra can both equip it), the Merit Badge (which allows a character to equip any armor or weapon, although the fact that it takes up a Relic slot reduces its utility significantly), and the Snow Scarf, the best armor available for either Relm or Mog, the two characters who can equip it.
This all means Umaro turns out to be a very valuable addition to the team. He might not be doing much in normal combat scenario, but he's the one making all these Coliseum fights winnable. There are limits to his performance, though - he only has so much HP at this level, he can't get stat boosts from espers, and he can't equip anything except relics. So there are fights he can't win, like…
Hey, remember Siegfried?
We met him twice - first in the Phantom Train, where he talked a big game as a great swordsman, got instantly annihilated, stole treasure and ran away; then when heading for the buried Figaro Castle where he acted all badass and said he'd cut down the monsters to clear the way and then entered the castle and kind of… disappeared?
Well, he's in the Coliseum now:
O-okay???
I guess that means the first Siegried we met, the poser, was a fake, and the second one we met who acted cool was the real one? It's such a baffling plot point to throw in like this. Siegfried's "plotline" goes nowhere in a way that screams "unfinished content" to me.
He's also now available as a boss:
We have to bet the Megalixir and we fight him, with the prize being a Tintinabulum (Relic that heals HP out of combat per footsteps, marginal utility, I would much rather have a Megalixir). Unfortunately, he is brutally dangerous.
His Hyperdrive attack deals 6k+ damage, annihilating any character in one hit. I could try to build a setup that can kill him before he unleashes Hyperdrive, but like, I don't want to do that fight - I don't want to trade my Megalixir for a Relic I won't use. If it unlocked more story content, maybe, but it doesn't look that way. I guess he's just kind of an easter egg.
Then we grab a Tool for Edgar in a hidden room of the Cultists' Tower.
Okay, one last thing…
That weird old dude. Remember him? I don't remember if I brought him up before - he's an old man who lives in a cabin, and he's clearly kind of lost his marbles, mistaking characters who walk in on him for 'repairmen' that are supposed to repair things from his house. There's no way of actually doing those repairs, nor does it matter - here he clearly thinks we did repairs, even though we never did, but he wants more; last time we were supposed to repair his clock, this time he wants us to repair his chair.
Now, the last time I visited him, I had Gau in the group, and he made a weird, plaintive noise that was explicitly in Gau-speak when talking to the guy, then the old man made a reference to how he was waiting for a repairman who 'looked like a bear.' I understood that to be that I would need Gau to have some kind of bear-based Rage to perform the repair this guy needed and decided not to bother, but I was mistaken. The 'bear' comment was a callback to the very beginning of the game, when Terra made a comment about mistaking Sabin for a bear. This is a hint that we should come back with Gau and Sabin in the party, which triggers the cutscene above. Sabin tries to explain to the old guy that he's not a repairman, but the old man won't take it; Sabin takes the group aside and then has this comment…
Gau is confused, and unclear on what exactly a 'father' is, I'm pretty sure, but Sabin is convinced of it - and we do know that Gau was thrown away into the wilds as a kid by a father who had some kind of psychotic break and thought he was a demon. This, plus whatever physical resemblance can't be conveyed through sprite work, is enough to convince Sabin this guy is Gau's dad.
After being hesitant at first, Gau really gets into the idea, and Sabin says they should go and tell the old man - but then thinks again; this is a special occasion, and he thinks Gau should 'dress up' for it.
This is funny coming from Sabin, of all people, but he is a royal heir - the whole monk deal and living in the wild punching animals is by choice, he no doubt received proper etiquette training. And where better to find fancy clothes than… Heavy sigh… Jidoor.
What follows is one of the few scenes in the game to utilize nearly the entire party roster (minus Mog and Uramo), even if they don't all get spoken lines: Gau's Makeover Session.
It starts with Sabin trying to give Gau lessons in dinner etiquette and speaking, like saying "Sorry" instead of "Awoo," and then it's followed up by the whole group going to a clothing store and dressing Gau up - Celes and Terra get really into it; some of the male members of the party act in typical "can't we just grab some random thing and get over it" fashion and are nearly incinerated on the spot by the two ladies, but notably some of the other male characters get just as much into it and fight over how to properly dress Gau.
There's a moment of linguistics confusion when Cyan tries to present a 'fine and jaunty little hat,' which is immediately mocked as 'maybe if he were a clown'; Cyan mishears that as 'if he wore a crown,' and then laughs to himself that we wouldn't want his father to think Gau is some kind of prince, which he thinks is hilarious and nobody else does. Then Sabin trying to put him in a kempo gi:
Setzer laments that there is 'not an ounce of fashion sense' between the rest of the group and tries to order Gau-sized versions of his own clothes, a suggestion which is instantly shot down with 'Setzer, no, we're trying to make him look better, not worse!' which I find hilarious - Setzer isn't even badly dressed!
Then of course Edgar tries to turn Gau into a mini-me:
The rose is immediately called out as overdoing it. Then Locke tries to dress Gau up in his own style, with a sleeveless jacket and a bandana:
Edgar, don't be rude, this is actually the best-looking of all these outfits.
This is a… really charming scene? The whole group is there, together, just having fun characterful interactions that make them bounce each other, making fun of one another, doing comically ridiculous things, it has Celes and Terra getting to be human and doing casual things like dressing up the group's resident kid (other than Relm)...
This is what this game needs the most. Those moments of charm that make its overly large cast bounce off one another in fun, casual ways. It's the secret that modern JRPGs have cracked - it's in Tales of Berseria's skits, in FF7Remake's character interactions, in Persona 5's social link hangouts. But FFVI is too early, it hasn't yet realized their importance, or doesn't have the time and resources to put into putting them on the cartridge. And to be sure, this is not the first time the game does this - but at the tail end of the World of Ruin exploration, it feels like I'd almost forgotten it did, and I'm only now reminded of it. If the game had more of these scenes, especially in the late game, it would do far more to justify its large character roster.
Here, though, it's hidden away as a kind of capstone - a reward for getting the whole band together, to have everyone in the same scene, bouncing off one another like this.
Finally, the group appears to settle on Edgar's tuxedo outfit (but without the hat or the rose between the teeth), and they head back to the cabin, where the fun, casual charm of the previous scene leaves place to bittersweet drama.
The old man is confused, but Sabin insists - he had a son once, right? And then asks Gau to step forward and speak up, which Gau does - standing there in his little tuxedo, stammering out the words he's only just barely learned:
The old man scoffs - he doesn't have a son. But, now that they bring it up… And then the lights dim as he reminisces about the past; about a terrible dream he once had, in which a demon child was born.
He took the 'demon child,' and rushed off to the Veldt, and left him there to die, crying. He turned around and ran, trying not to look back - then all of a sudden, the crying stopped; he looked, and there was an awful monster.
But he says to Gau that his parents must be proud to have such a fine son, even as he still dreams of the terrifying demon child chasing after him.
This is where Sabin's patience runs out; he shouts about the old man 'running his mouth, not even so much thinking about Gau's feelings!' and threatens to 'beat some sense' into the old man - but as he steps forward threateningly, Gau interposes himself.
Even if he doesn't really understand all that's being said, he still doesn't want his dad hurt - the old man clearly doesn't really have it all together. I wonder - was he already crazy when he abandoned Gau on the Veldt (which is what's suggested by a literal reading of events as presented), or did he abandon Gau for other reasons (unable to take care of a child alone, resenting the death of Gau's mother in childbirth), and then go crazy from that?
I think it's the latter. I think Gau was born, his mother died, and his father couldn't bear to raise the child on his own, whether from lack of resources living alone in this remote cabin or because everytime he looked at him, he saw his mother's killer. So he took Gau to abandon him on the Veldt to die of exposure, and when a monster came, he thought it was devouring his son - and the horror and the guilt broke him, until he reconstructed all these events in his mind as the 'demon child' and erased any mention of the mother from the story.
Ironically, the monster wasn't there to kill Gau. It was going to rescue him and raise it among its own kin. But he could never have known that.
The group leaves the cabin, and Sabin apologizes for losing his temper. Gau, uncharacteristically thoughtful but without the words to express it, simply says this:
He's just happy he has a dad and knows he's alive. The rest doesn't matter.
Back to saving the world.
…
That was a really nice beat to keep for the end, I think. I don't have any criticism to make of this scene. It's FFVI at its strongest, and if it had more of this, it would be one of the best JRPGs I've ever played. That's not to say it's bad - there's been a lot of discussion in thread about whether FFVI delivers on its reputation or not, and I'm going to keep my final thoughts for the end, but its highs are truly high - and here, this piece, even though it's understated, without a lot of flourishes in the presentation or high stakes, is a real high, wonderfully using the contrast of casual character beats and the melancholy feeling of discovering you have family you never knew you had, but they will never know you, not even now, for they are too far gone.
I think that's everything now. All that's left would be Coliseum trading or chasing rare drops/steals, and I think I'm good. Some of my characters are pretty low-level (Setzer is still stuck at lv 29 with no good magic) and others are pretty high (Terra is lv 43 and has Ultima), but worse comes to worse I can dedicate an extra hour to grinding and equip my weakest group with the Molulu Charm to make their journey through Kefka's Tower relatively pain-free.
Next time: Kefka's Tower, for real this time.
Good news too - I worked out the problem with the Shadow flashbacks!
Well, @McFluffles figured it out for me, but never mind that. Basically what I read online is that the dreams can trigger in any inn, so I rested at Thamasa's inn because it costs 1 gil, but it turns out that was probably a lie, and as soon as I spammed resting at an inn with a standard cost, the dreams started coming. Disinformation on the Internet! In this day and age! It's like I'm in middle school all over again.
There's a total of five dreams, counting the one we saw after rescuing Shadow in the Cave on the Veldt. We see Baram and Clyde again, fresh off a train heist - they managed to steal a million gil, and decide to celebrate by christening themselves with a cool bandit name - the 'Shadow Bandits,' 'great train robbers of the century.'
Unfortunately, they don't get to retire on that cushy prize - in the next flashback, we see Clyde and Baram by a river bank, with Baram wounded and bleeding.
Clyde tries to reassure him that he's gonna be okay, but Baram tells him he's done for, and tells him to run, as he still has a chance to make it. Clyde is reluctant, but eventually accepts - then, just before he leaves, Baram calls to him for one last favor, a twist of the knife: he wants Clyde to finish him off so he's not captured alive. It's unclear who they're chased after by, or what exactly they'll do if they get their hands on Baram, but it's clearly bad enough that Baram, who has 'never been afraid in his life,' is trembling like a leaf in fear.
Hmmm. I wonder who they were running from. It doesn't seem like many of FFVI's polities have that kind of bloodthirsty, "torture the criminals until they would sooner die" attitude - except maybe Vector, which would become the Empire? And they're robbing trains, so… Yeah, I think it's plausible they were on the run from proto-imperial forces.
Either way, Clyde can't bring himself to do it - he can't kill his best friend even at his own request, and runs away, leaving Baram to die or be captured, with Baram calling out to him, "How could you!"
Oh.
Oooooh.
Hey, remember the very first thing we're told about Shadow when we met him?
"He'd kill his own best friend for the right price."
Delicious, delicious irony.
In the last flashback, Clyde has made it to a town, exhausted and on the verge of collapse - where he's find by a young woman - and her dog.
And we've come full circle. The flashback ends there, but it's pretty easy connecting the dots. Clyde, on the run from the consequences of a life of banditry, finds refuge in Thamasa. There, he falls in love, and has a daughter. But, like most Final Fantasy mothers, the unnamed lover dies in childbirth. Clyde, for whatever reason (Afraid he can't be a good father? Incapable of resisting the call of a life of crime?) then leaves, and Interceptor follows him. From there, now with no one in his life, Clyde becomes Shadow, the world-traveling mercenary and assassin.
…
Still weird that there doesn't seem to be any way of acknowledging that in character; Shadow, Strago and Relm are both party members now but we can't really do anything with the knowledge of their connection. I guess Shadow rightly fears to be called out on his shit if he reveals himself as Relm's estranged father and the guy who abandoned Strago's granddaughter, and the others can't see flashbacks so they have no reason to suspect anything, but… You'd think we'd be doing something more with this. Ah well.
Love the 'would kill his own best friend' ironic callback, though. That's writing.
Now, let's check out Dinosaur Forest. It's a forest near the Veldt full of Tyrannosaurs. Tyrannosaurs are worth a lot of XP while not being all that threatening as encounters, so it's a great place to level up my backup characters…
…I beg your pardon?
Okay so a rare encounter in Dinosaur Forest is the Brachiosaurus, which can cast Ultima.
I have to admit that it's a pretty funny gag. Just, completely inexplicable. Why does this dinosaur know the ultimate magic? Who knows, fuck you! This is some "brachiosaurus launches its neck" One Piece-tier nonsense. I guess that's what the asteroid saved us from in this world - magic-casting dinosaurs.
We also know how to deal with Ultima from the Magic Master fight and apparently Brachiosaurus has good drops? So we'll try beating it.
It's not easy. Even knowing the Reraise tactic, the Brachiosaurus hits hard, fast, and often. It can cast Meteor, Ultima, Disaster (which inflicts multiple status effects), and has powerful physical attack. In my first attempt, I end up having my Reraise buffer spent against Meteor and immediately caught by Ultima with my pants down.
You can see it already wasn't going well.
Even with my strongest group, it's a hard fight. And every time, it takes ten minutes to half an hour just triggering the fight again, because of Brachiosaur's low encounter rate. Eventually though, we make it, with a tactic I like to call 'cheating bullshit': Terra using the Soul of Thamasa and Quick can four-cast Reraise, granting it to the entire group, then she and Celes can Dualcast Ultima for enormous damage.
The beast is defeated, yielding a sizeable amount of XP and Magic AP and…
Nothing.
The Brachiosaur doesn't drop any item.
Looking it up on the wiki, the Brachiosaur does have an item drop, and it is one of the best items in the game - the Celestriad has the astounding effect of lowering all spell costs to 1 MP.
However, it has a 12.5% chance of dropping in any given fight against Brachiosaur.
I am not putting up with that. The beast shall keep its treasure, I have better things to do with my time.
For now, let's head back to Thamasa - Strago and Relm have some business to take care of.
As soon as we arrive in town, Relm splits off from the party and heads home - but Strago only has time to reflect that he must be getting old, watching her so full of energy, before Relm hurries back to tell him that he has to come with her: Gungho, Strago's old monster hunting buddy who made fun of him for giving up in his search for the monster Hidon, is hurt.
Gungho tells him that he found Hidon and almost had him, but the beast injured him greatly - and he asks Strago to avenge him. He is also throwing in a lot of dramatic coughing and wheezing, but I'm sure that's nothing.
Relm berates Strago for standing around looking sad when there's a monster to slay, and Strago says she's right - he grew old and forgot about pursuing the dreams of his youth, but now is the time to settle that old grudge and avenge his friend.
As he heads for the door, Relm catches up to him, telling him he better not be thinking of trying to do it alone; Strago replies that it's a matter of pride, he has to settle the matter he couldn't all those years ago. Relm berates him for making things harder on himself than they have to be and that she can't just sit and watch him risk his life, and Strago relents. Thus, with a full party, we head for the new location that just opened on the map - Ebot's Rock.
Ebot's Rock is a dark cave, totally obscured but for a tiny circle of light around our character, and our path is blocked by a sentient chest who won't let us through unless we give him coral to eat, of all things.
Ebot's Rock is an interesting concept - basically, we have to probe around in the dark trying to find chests containing pieces of coral until we've gathered enough to feed the chest all at once (22 pieces). There are switches which teleport the party between various subsections of the cave, and the chests respawn with new coral content every time we do - the teleportation is completely random and can even teleport us in the same room multiple times. It's kind of like a mix between the Rock Tunnel and Sabrina's Gym in Pokemon Blue/Red.
The Pixel Remaster's introduction of a map, though, sort of trivializes the whole affair.
Not that I mind much, as Rock Tunnel without HM Flash isn't really my idea of a good time. Once we've collected enough coral, the inexplicable sentient chest is satisfied and allows us to pass, and we can confront Hidon. Whose name, Strago pointed out early, sounds like 'hidden.' I wonder what that pun was in the original Japanese.
Okay that dude looks fucked up. I love it.
Now, because I'm using backup characters, I can't just Ultima my way to victory. None of these characters even know Ultima.
…they do know Flare, though.
The highest damage dealer in the party, though, is Mog. With the Dragon Boots and Dragon Horn, his Jump command hits four times, which, because Hidon is undead and weak to Holy and Mog is wielding the Holy Lance, deals 3k+ damage per hit, four times. All in all…
Hidon's demise is swift.
Which turns out to be a mistake! In a twist I definitely should have anticipated considering that Hidon is the 'final boss' of Strago's character arc, Hidon knows the strongest lore available to a Blue Mage, Grand Delta, but only uses it when all the Erebus minions around it are dead. Unfortunately, I ended up killing both Hidon and its last Erebus at the same time, so… no Lore for Strago.
Which doesn't really matter, since, you know, I can just teach him Ultima. I'm starting to spot an issue with FFVI's late-game strategic design.
Still, I don't want to be grinding Ultima on every one of my characters, and Hidon is right there, so a quick reload later…
…we goad him into using his (incredibly cool-looking) ultimate attack and then deal with him, thus teaching Strago his ultimate Lore.
The old man is overjoyed at his victory, literally hopping in place in giddy excitement, and quickly heads back to Thamasa to tell Gungho he's been avenged. The news surprises him - so much so, in fact, that the supposedly near-fatally wounded old man jumps out of bed in shock.
Strago gloats that 'a little monster like Hidon couldn't hold a candle to the likes of me,' and Gungho concedes defeat, admitting Strago really showed him up. Strago asks him how his wounds are doing and Gungho, seemingly just then remembering that he is supposedly grievously injured, plays it off - and we fade in to an evening scene in which Strago and Gungho are sitting together, Strago absolutely restless with excitement as he recounts his fight with the monster.
That's not how it happened, Strago. You cast Flare.
This is genuinely a great scene, in the way it shows Strago's excitement and his child-like glee at having shown he's still got it. Compared to Final Fantasy's previous "quirky old men tagging along with the cast" Strago has suffered from a dearth of writing leaving him well behind Tellah and and even more so Galuf, but these little touches of humanity are what he needed to get.
And he's not the only one whose characterization is built upon by this scene - as Strago falls asleep from the fatigue of the day, Gungho heads out, and meets Relm in the street who asks him how her grandpa's doing. Gungho tells him he's fine, but he's wondering if it's okay to "leave him like this, thinking he was really hurt."
It was all a ploy by Relm and Gungho! Well, mostly by Relm, with Gungho as her patsy, faking his injuries to give Strago a reason to get off his ass and finally hunt down the monster he spent his youth trying to defeat.
I like that. It feels like a very Relm thing to do, in that it's fundamentally well-intentioned but also utterly reckless and completely uncaring of the possible negative consequences because everything can only work exactly according to her plans.
Gungho muses that he doesn't know how a man like Strago could have raised a granddaughter as wonderful as Relm, and her reaction, in typical Relm fashion, is to make fun of him for his terrible acting skills as a 'deathly injured' man. Which, ouch, but also, fair. Gungho shakes his fist at the impudent youth, and we are back to the present.
We're very nearly done now. The last stuff that needs taken care of is mostly grabbing some items that I missed and which were pointed out to me by the thread; for instance, in the Yeti's Cave is a chest full of Tonberries dropping the Minerva Bustier, one of the strongest armors in the game but which can only be equipped by Terra and Celes (not Relm; one imagines that as a child, she's not, huh, sized for it).
The tonberries do their classic slow march of death thing, but we wipe them out before they can reach the party - though not without casualties.
There's an item I'm told I've missed in the Moogle Lair. It's hidden in the wall just behind where Mog was sitting alone. What could it be?
*slow blinks*
Did that just say "Prevents all random enemy encounters"?
Holy shit.
Okay yes I can see how this would have been convenient to have a while ago… Although no, I wouldn't feel confident tackling the endgame with a lv 30 party, but at the same time…
God, I just slapped that on Mog and proceeded to be able to waltz through a whole dungeon without a single fight to grab some forgotten chest. Like, reason number 1 I don't often go back to places to grab an item I missed is that doing so means fighting ten random encounters and is just tedious, but with this…
Unfortunately, it can only be equipped by Mog, which means I won't be able to just do Kefka's Tower without random encounters. It might mean that at least my third party won't need to be fully leveled up, since I can just give Mog the Charm and have them complete their section of the dungeon without a fight (other than I suspect a mandatory boss fight; there are three parties, and there are three members of the Warring Triad - coincidence? I don't think so).
Well, that's another thing in our pocket for the final dungeon.
Next stop is the Coliseum - we have a couple more items to get there, like a second Minerva Bustier (so Celes and Terra can both equip it), the Merit Badge (which allows a character to equip any armor or weapon, although the fact that it takes up a Relic slot reduces its utility significantly), and the Snow Scarf, the best armor available for either Relm or Mog, the two characters who can equip it.
This all means Umaro turns out to be a very valuable addition to the team. He might not be doing much in normal combat scenario, but he's the one making all these Coliseum fights winnable. There are limits to his performance, though - he only has so much HP at this level, he can't get stat boosts from espers, and he can't equip anything except relics. So there are fights he can't win, like…
Hey, remember Siegfried?
We met him twice - first in the Phantom Train, where he talked a big game as a great swordsman, got instantly annihilated, stole treasure and ran away; then when heading for the buried Figaro Castle where he acted all badass and said he'd cut down the monsters to clear the way and then entered the castle and kind of… disappeared?
Well, he's in the Coliseum now:
O-okay???
I guess that means the first Siegried we met, the poser, was a fake, and the second one we met who acted cool was the real one? It's such a baffling plot point to throw in like this. Siegfried's "plotline" goes nowhere in a way that screams "unfinished content" to me.
He's also now available as a boss:
We have to bet the Megalixir and we fight him, with the prize being a Tintinabulum (Relic that heals HP out of combat per footsteps, marginal utility, I would much rather have a Megalixir). Unfortunately, he is brutally dangerous.
His Hyperdrive attack deals 6k+ damage, annihilating any character in one hit. I could try to build a setup that can kill him before he unleashes Hyperdrive, but like, I don't want to do that fight - I don't want to trade my Megalixir for a Relic I won't use. If it unlocked more story content, maybe, but it doesn't look that way. I guess he's just kind of an easter egg.
Then we grab a Tool for Edgar in a hidden room of the Cultists' Tower.
Okay, one last thing…
That weird old dude. Remember him? I don't remember if I brought him up before - he's an old man who lives in a cabin, and he's clearly kind of lost his marbles, mistaking characters who walk in on him for 'repairmen' that are supposed to repair things from his house. There's no way of actually doing those repairs, nor does it matter - here he clearly thinks we did repairs, even though we never did, but he wants more; last time we were supposed to repair his clock, this time he wants us to repair his chair.
Now, the last time I visited him, I had Gau in the group, and he made a weird, plaintive noise that was explicitly in Gau-speak when talking to the guy, then the old man made a reference to how he was waiting for a repairman who 'looked like a bear.' I understood that to be that I would need Gau to have some kind of bear-based Rage to perform the repair this guy needed and decided not to bother, but I was mistaken. The 'bear' comment was a callback to the very beginning of the game, when Terra made a comment about mistaking Sabin for a bear. This is a hint that we should come back with Gau and Sabin in the party, which triggers the cutscene above. Sabin tries to explain to the old guy that he's not a repairman, but the old man won't take it; Sabin takes the group aside and then has this comment…
Gau is confused, and unclear on what exactly a 'father' is, I'm pretty sure, but Sabin is convinced of it - and we do know that Gau was thrown away into the wilds as a kid by a father who had some kind of psychotic break and thought he was a demon. This, plus whatever physical resemblance can't be conveyed through sprite work, is enough to convince Sabin this guy is Gau's dad.
After being hesitant at first, Gau really gets into the idea, and Sabin says they should go and tell the old man - but then thinks again; this is a special occasion, and he thinks Gau should 'dress up' for it.
This is funny coming from Sabin, of all people, but he is a royal heir - the whole monk deal and living in the wild punching animals is by choice, he no doubt received proper etiquette training. And where better to find fancy clothes than… Heavy sigh… Jidoor.
What follows is one of the few scenes in the game to utilize nearly the entire party roster (minus Mog and Uramo), even if they don't all get spoken lines: Gau's Makeover Session.
It starts with Sabin trying to give Gau lessons in dinner etiquette and speaking, like saying "Sorry" instead of "Awoo," and then it's followed up by the whole group going to a clothing store and dressing Gau up - Celes and Terra get really into it; some of the male members of the party act in typical "can't we just grab some random thing and get over it" fashion and are nearly incinerated on the spot by the two ladies, but notably some of the other male characters get just as much into it and fight over how to properly dress Gau.
There's a moment of linguistics confusion when Cyan tries to present a 'fine and jaunty little hat,' which is immediately mocked as 'maybe if he were a clown'; Cyan mishears that as 'if he wore a crown,' and then laughs to himself that we wouldn't want his father to think Gau is some kind of prince, which he thinks is hilarious and nobody else does. Then Sabin trying to put him in a kempo gi:
Setzer laments that there is 'not an ounce of fashion sense' between the rest of the group and tries to order Gau-sized versions of his own clothes, a suggestion which is instantly shot down with 'Setzer, no, we're trying to make him look better, not worse!' which I find hilarious - Setzer isn't even badly dressed!
Then of course Edgar tries to turn Gau into a mini-me:
The rose is immediately called out as overdoing it. Then Locke tries to dress Gau up in his own style, with a sleeveless jacket and a bandana:
Edgar, don't be rude, this is actually the best-looking of all these outfits.
This is a… really charming scene? The whole group is there, together, just having fun characterful interactions that make them bounce each other, making fun of one another, doing comically ridiculous things, it has Celes and Terra getting to be human and doing casual things like dressing up the group's resident kid (other than Relm)...
This is what this game needs the most. Those moments of charm that make its overly large cast bounce off one another in fun, casual ways. It's the secret that modern JRPGs have cracked - it's in Tales of Berseria's skits, in FF7Remake's character interactions, in Persona 5's social link hangouts. But FFVI is too early, it hasn't yet realized their importance, or doesn't have the time and resources to put into putting them on the cartridge. And to be sure, this is not the first time the game does this - but at the tail end of the World of Ruin exploration, it feels like I'd almost forgotten it did, and I'm only now reminded of it. If the game had more of these scenes, especially in the late game, it would do far more to justify its large character roster.
Here, though, it's hidden away as a kind of capstone - a reward for getting the whole band together, to have everyone in the same scene, bouncing off one another like this.
Finally, the group appears to settle on Edgar's tuxedo outfit (but without the hat or the rose between the teeth), and they head back to the cabin, where the fun, casual charm of the previous scene leaves place to bittersweet drama.
The old man is confused, but Sabin insists - he had a son once, right? And then asks Gau to step forward and speak up, which Gau does - standing there in his little tuxedo, stammering out the words he's only just barely learned:
The old man scoffs - he doesn't have a son. But, now that they bring it up… And then the lights dim as he reminisces about the past; about a terrible dream he once had, in which a demon child was born.
He took the 'demon child,' and rushed off to the Veldt, and left him there to die, crying. He turned around and ran, trying not to look back - then all of a sudden, the crying stopped; he looked, and there was an awful monster.
But he says to Gau that his parents must be proud to have such a fine son, even as he still dreams of the terrifying demon child chasing after him.
This is where Sabin's patience runs out; he shouts about the old man 'running his mouth, not even so much thinking about Gau's feelings!' and threatens to 'beat some sense' into the old man - but as he steps forward threateningly, Gau interposes himself.
Even if he doesn't really understand all that's being said, he still doesn't want his dad hurt - the old man clearly doesn't really have it all together. I wonder - was he already crazy when he abandoned Gau on the Veldt (which is what's suggested by a literal reading of events as presented), or did he abandon Gau for other reasons (unable to take care of a child alone, resenting the death of Gau's mother in childbirth), and then go crazy from that?
I think it's the latter. I think Gau was born, his mother died, and his father couldn't bear to raise the child on his own, whether from lack of resources living alone in this remote cabin or because everytime he looked at him, he saw his mother's killer. So he took Gau to abandon him on the Veldt to die of exposure, and when a monster came, he thought it was devouring his son - and the horror and the guilt broke him, until he reconstructed all these events in his mind as the 'demon child' and erased any mention of the mother from the story.
Ironically, the monster wasn't there to kill Gau. It was going to rescue him and raise it among its own kin. But he could never have known that.
The group leaves the cabin, and Sabin apologizes for losing his temper. Gau, uncharacteristically thoughtful but without the words to express it, simply says this:
He's just happy he has a dad and knows he's alive. The rest doesn't matter.
Back to saving the world.
…
That was a really nice beat to keep for the end, I think. I don't have any criticism to make of this scene. It's FFVI at its strongest, and if it had more of this, it would be one of the best JRPGs I've ever played. That's not to say it's bad - there's been a lot of discussion in thread about whether FFVI delivers on its reputation or not, and I'm going to keep my final thoughts for the end, but its highs are truly high - and here, this piece, even though it's understated, without a lot of flourishes in the presentation or high stakes, is a real high, wonderfully using the contrast of casual character beats and the melancholy feeling of discovering you have family you never knew you had, but they will never know you, not even now, for they are too far gone.
I think that's everything now. All that's left would be Coliseum trading or chasing rare drops/steals, and I think I'm good. Some of my characters are pretty low-level (Setzer is still stuck at lv 29 with no good magic) and others are pretty high (Terra is lv 43 and has Ultima), but worse comes to worse I can dedicate an extra hour to grinding and equip my weakest group with the Molulu Charm to make their journey through Kefka's Tower relatively pain-free.
Next time: Kefka's Tower, for real this time.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Men can equip the Minerva Bustier, but only if they have the Boy/Girl Scout Gender-Non-Conforming Merit Badge.
I appreciate the dedication to realism.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I wouldn't say these sorts of interactions are exclusive to modern JRPGs, there were a few older ones that realised this. The Tales series has had Skits since early on, Grandia had its Dinner Conversations, and even before S. Links were a thing, Persona 2 had these with its Demon Negotiations. True, FFVI was still before all of them, I think the only pre-FFVI JRPG to have these sorts of interactions was the Lunar series, but even those weren't systematised like Skits and S. Links are
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- Location
- Back in the 90s (In a very famous TV show)
- Pronouns
- She/Her/Ve/Ver
Unsure if this is sarcasm or satire on how society requires people to meet arbitrary standards to be perceived as "allowed" to dress in the way they wish.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
Take the grinding with calm, we can wait for the update. You can finish the game with a quite low level, but you don't want that frustration in a first playthrough.
(look I love VI, but I could say for example IX is better (my preference, others may differ) and I doubt I'd get many objections)
IIRC, after the last dream, you can get a talk between Shadow and Strago in Thamasa about this matter. May be wrong though.
The Heresy Side is the Fun Side! :^P
(look I love VI, but I could say for example IX is better (my preference, others may differ) and I doubt I'd get many objections)
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Not exactly - the Tales series does date back to Phantasia on the Super Famicom in late 1995 twenty months after the release of FFVI... but it didn't introduce skits until Tales of Destiny in late 1997, although it DID have more character interaction than FFVI even in the OG, building on FFVI's precedent. Only a few years between FFVI and the skits, but the almost 4 years between FFVI (April, 1994) and Tales of Destiny (December, 1997) was eons in terms of advancement of the JRPG genre, and in terms of how much could be crammed into a single game. Persona 2, which you also mention, was also a PS1 game.
You also mention Lunar, which did indeed come before FFVI and have more character interaction. Funny thing about Lunar... it was for Sega CD, and thus was a CD-rom based game rather than a cartridge-based game, with all the room for extra content that that implies.
IIRC, that's a deleted scene, not something actually in the game.
quoth the wiki
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Shadow_(Final_Fantasy_VI)#Behind_the_scenes said:
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No problem, just looked it up because I knew it couldn't be that difficult to find and discovered the apparent Thamasa 1 gil quirk to the whole thing.
Vector/The Empire is one possibility, though another thought I had reading it was... well, one million gil is a lot of money, and little honor among thieves. Wouldn't be surprised if the duo bragged about the heist in the wrong place and some other group of bandits decided "yo what if we shank them for the easy cash". Would also be another explanation for who exactly might be brutal enough that he'd rather not be captured alive.
Well obviously that's because his best friend wanted him to do it for free! Should've pulled some gil out of his back pocket while he was dying!
Just another tally on the FFVI "reach for great heights, not quite make it" scale I guess. Though really the more it's talked about, and paired with thing like the deleted Strago and Shadow scene mentioned above, the more I think it was less a dev time/interest issue, and more of a cartridge space issue. Since the World of Ruin wasn't originally planned to happen in the first place apparently, it's entirely possible that there would have been more (and better) character beats if everything was confined to just the World of Balance.
You know, I think what really makes it crazy about how good Ultima is, is that it's also super easy to access? There's no long dungeon crawl for some secret ultimate magicite, or a long sidequest. No Moon dungeon fight with Bahamut to get the best summon, no secret cave of ancient weapons with bonus bosses hidden beneath the Crystal Tower, No superboss Shinryu to get the Ragnarok sword.
You just dip into Narshe and some dude goes "sup brah you want some ultimate magicite? Or maybe I can make it the second best sword in the game for you?" And even if you take the sword there's another guy in the same town that hands you the Cursed Shield so you can get the Paladin Shield and learn Ultima that way.
Ultima doesn't feel like some super awesome reward in FFVI, it's just handed to you on a silver platter and you go "oh guess I'll rip open the rest of the game with this".
Hey now, don't mages have to wave their staff around to cast magic? Let him be a bit dramatic about the Flare casting!
You know in retrospect, Relm doesn't really have much of an arc as a character, does she? And yet she still gets a decent amount of screen time and interest by tying into Strago and Shadow's characters. More than someone like Mog gets in this game, anyways.
Yeah, while it won't completely trivialize a full third of Kefka's Tower, just having one party that doesn't have to worry about the resource grind of random encounters is a godsend. And even outside of that, for things like late-game completion dungeon runs to pick up missed chests or anything, now you can just slap Mog and his charm in the party and speed through.
Siegfried is entirely an easter egg unless you're going for 100% bestiary completion, yes.
Honestly your pictures of this scene are just making me laugh because here's Gau and Sabin having a serious conversation... while Relm stands there probably bored out of her mind, and Umaro is just... around. Just this massive Yeti man who has no idea what's going on.
Despite the fact that Gau's little sidequest in the World of Ruin has absolutely zero material reward (not even an unlocked Rage or something the way Sabin and Cyan got Blitzes and Bushidos from their quests), it's definitely still a sidequest worth doing just for this cutscene, that's for sure. Would that FFVI had room for more scenes like this in the latter half of the game.
My personal take has always been that Gau's mother dying in childbirth was what caused his father to have the psychotic break and view him as a monster, but maybe I'm just more optimistic that he wouldn't straight up abandon his child while still completely sane of mind.
I mean, if we're going by "the one I played as a kid" that means I have to nominate FFVIII, as always
Though honestly I played a lot of Final Fantasy games a few years after VIII, between the GBA ports and getting my hands on copies of FFVII and Tactics. IX is actually where my knowledge of the series starts to drop off, since I played it late and never finished.
- Location
- ORCA HQ
silly omi thats another game, the dinosaurs were psychic and the asteroid was the much bigger problem in the end.
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- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
True, the CD format definitely would've given devs more room for extra dialogue to flesh out characters and their dynamics. But you can see my point that these kinds of character interactions were being normalised in JRPGs quite a while before the 2010s