Not sure if it's been commented upon, or if it's been noted, but did you know that most of the characters have their own little ways of lining up for battle? Edgar dropping down, like a dragoon, Locke jumping in from the enemies side as if he was scouting ahead, Mog with a little dance, Relm with a cheeky wave to the camera, etc.
It's a little often overlooked bit of characterization.
Not sure if it's been commented upon, or if it's been noted, but did you know that most of the characters have their own little ways of lining up for battle? Edgar dropping down, like a dragoon, Locke jumping in from the enemies side as if he was scouting ahead, Mog with a little dance, Relm with a cheeky wave to the camera, etc.
It's a little often overlooked bit of characterization.
I did notice it, but only for some characters - I kept asking myself why Mog specifically entered every battle dancing and Relm waving to the camera, if that was supposed to mean something specific about the fight, because I didn't notice most of the other custom animations.
The Brachiosaur might be the single most interesting encounter in the series. There are a few random/normal encounters that are harder than it, but those universally involve harder games and often take advantage of particularly challenging mechanics those games often have. The Brachiosaur is in an easy game in the series, has zero buildup whatsoever, and is somehow a better magic user than the final boss of the giant tower in which you can only use magic.
it's also less bullshit than some of the harder encounters anyways.
I did notice it, but only for some characters - I kept asking myself why Mog specifically entered every battle dancing and Relm waving to the camera, if that was supposed to mean something specific about the fight, because I didn't notice most of the other custom animations.
Yeah, as I said, it's often overlooked, because aside from ones like Mog and Relm, they tend to be very brief, and you kind of have to know to look for them.
There's a (slightly) easier way to get Celestriads, at the Coliseum.
Needed items: Murakumo, Aegis Shield, Safety Bit, and Brigands Gloves.
Equip GoGo with the Aegis, Bit, Gloves, and whatever else you want to put on. Make sure the command list (it's a weird touch, you can specify and give GoGo anything and not have to worry about having the correct character for a free Mimic ...) is loaded with Steal commands.
Bet the Murakumo.
You'll fight a Galypdes, an enemy that has a chance of Celestriad steal. You'll win a Holy Lance. ... or you'll steal a Phoenix down but that's the odds...
Now bet the Holy Lance (you'll fight Death Machine), and win a Murakumo.
Heal, rinse, repeat.
Galypdes and Death Machine only have 6k hp, and since the Safety Bit protects from the Death magics DM uses, and Galypdes doesn't have Ultima (or over 40k hp holy crap I had almost forgotten how bad it was to fight Brachiosars) the fights will go a bit better.
And Kefka's Tower looms.... your characters are what, about mid-40's level now? Might be a little underleveled but still doable.
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.
Funny thing about that. Hidon's sidequest is repeatable. Talk to Gungho enough times, and he'll tell you that Hidon is back again, and you can return to Ebot's Rock; you'll have to go on the treasure hunt for coral again, but you can fight Hidon again, and thus have the opportunity to gain the Lore if you missed it.
Which is kind of fitting, in a way. Relm is a child who lived a pretty normal life, and therefore doesn't really have much of a backstory to flesh out or any grand personal struggles to deal with. They could have put something in there with Shadow but even if they had the time and cartridge space Shadow seems like he'd be too ashamed to admit anything anyway.
Since I don't think it made it into any of Omicron's screen shots (hopefully he grabbed it and just had to trim for word count), in Cyan's dream, the memories of Elayne and Owain meld to form that sword mounted in the ground, right? If you examine that it's a Katana for him to use. Made of the memories of his dead wife and son. Another nice capstone to that whole scene. The awkward part about this is that while it is a good weapon, it's not actually the best one Cyan gets and given the thematic weight of it, it really feels like it should be.
I've called out other places where I like the Woolsey script better than the Pixel remaster, but fair's fair - this a big L for the Woolsey script. In the original SNES, the introductory line for Shadow was "He'd slit his momma's throat for a nickel." It's a good line on its own, but loses the ironic callback entirely.
Not sure if it's been commented upon, or if it's been noted, but did you know that most of the characters have their own little ways of lining up for battle? Edgar dropping down, like a dragoon, Locke jumping in from the enemies side as if he was scouting ahead, Mog with a little dance, Relm with a cheeky wave to the camera, etc.
It's a little often overlooked bit of characterization.
Each character also has a quote when you talk to them on the Falcon to change parties. It's just one line each so it doesn't surprise me that Omicron never featured them, but we take the characterization we can get in this house, dang it!
Edit: Also, that desert near Maranda that I and others tried to point Omicron to, but didn't make it into the update is the other place in FFVI you can encounter the Cactuar besides the coliseum as a rare spawn. It dodges everything that can be dodged, but it dies in one hit giving a cool 10AP. Grinding magic on the Veldt has the benefit of not making you shuffle your Magicite around for level up bonuses since the Veldt doesn't give XP, but Cactuar hunting is the fastest way to learn magic overall.
Now that you have saw Shadow's dream, I think it's kind of interesting to come back to the moment where Relm had been trapped by a fire and that Shadow didn't move from the end because he was "sleeping".
There are two possibilities for me :
- one is that Shadow was having one of this kind of dreams (specially because he was back at this place), which makes him sleep very profoundly, so much that he can't hear anything.
- the second is that Shadow is totally conflicted about the situation. I mean, Relm is probably the only one thing in the world for who he could have feeling, the only thing which can probably bypass his own whole "cut his past" or "cut your feeling" thing. Because of that, he definitely can't go to save her for free, because it would be totally to recognize that his actual way of doing things is totally wrong. That's why he lets the others go save her by themself, which allows him to maintain his face. Maybe because he knows them enough and believe that they are able to do it without him?
But then, at the end of the day, he has to act. He can't let his own daughter to die in a fire. He just can't. I can totally see him to survey the whole ordeal, hidden in the roof (well, he is a ninja), because he doesn't want to help, but it cannot stop his feelings and urge to be sure that his daughter will be safe. So, when the dice seems to be thrown, he let his feelings go free, and went to save his daughter. The game let the player thinks it's an edgelord move in a badass way to show how cool he is, but in fact, it's just a "worried father taking care of his young daughter" moment. Which is neat. And differently cool.
I prefer the second one honestly, because for the first... Shadow is a ninja, he's cool, he's edgy, it's impossible for him to be unguarded !
And of course, because it brings more layers about Shadow.
About the dreams, Young Me had a hard time with them. I had them on my second playthrough and I almost didn't understand what was happening, I mixed Clive and Baram and didn't know who was who, didn't understand what they were doing and what was happening to them. I have connected the dots at the end and understood that Shadow was Relm's father, but.... It totally destroyed my theory about Edgar as Relm's father, so I was a bit sad too. But at least, I found that it was cool that Shadow is Relm's father.
The Celestriad. As cool as the effect to drop all spell costs to 1 MP sounds, I honestly never found a use for it in battle.
You just never burn through enough MP to run out in a single fight, and you have plenty of ways to top off, especially with how powerful Osmose is in this game. I'd rather use the slot on something that either buffs or protects me. It's useful for healing to full health after battle though.
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 now have a new goal to at least finish up the writeup for the FFXI MSQ before you finish FFX.
(Actually going through the game is relatively simple, especially now that I'm ridiculously overlevelled, but dealing with screenshots and integrating them into a coherent post is the main ordeal. Especially since being a MMORPG, I end up with lots of stuff done out of order.)
I am looking forward to your analysis of Chrono Trigger, because I think it's going to be a game you'll probably have a lot to talk about, but I also concede that it's only Final Fantasy adjacent, so I completely understand if you want to do it after finishing the rest of the mainline games, or even if you just want to play it "offscreen" and then come back with a general summary of thoughts. (As mentioned, Chrono Trigger is a surprisingly short game, but is dense with stuff to talk about.)
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.
Completely understandable. The main issue is the low chance of even encountering a Brachiosaur in the first place, coupled with the ridiculously low drop rate of the Celestriad. (Trivia: Woolsey translation of "Celestriad" was "Economizer", which I felt was more descriptive of its role, albeit less fantasy-esque.)
My primary use of Brachiosaurs is actually using Locke to Steal Ribbons from them. This is also a little frustrating, because even if you're overlevelled enough to make Steal technically a guaranteed success, the Ribbon is in their "Rare Steal" slot, so it's only a 12.5% chance of succeeding per attempt. (Nothing in the "Normal Steal" slot, so Locke only needs to roll against the "Rare Steal" slot.)
Luckily, there's a way to ensure unlimited attempts: the Brachiosaur, being a random encounter in the overworld, counts as "just" a regular monster. As such, Relm with the Fake Moustache can Control it. And as long as you don't hit it with physical attacks (eg its own Attacks), you can hit it (or Steal from it) with impunity, and it will remain Controlled.
I usually bring Sabin along, because his Phantom Rush counts as a magical attack, and won't break the Brachiosaur from Control.
(Mechanics-wise, the calculations for Control means for a guaranteed success on Control, Relm needs to be at least the same level as the monster. In Brachiosaur's case, that's level 77. So this trick might not work as well if Relm is low-level and RNG works against you. Relm just needs to succeed once, but that's a tall order when Brachiosaur is flinging Ultimas.)
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.
We've actually already heard it once in one of the occupied towns in the Southern Continent back in the World Of Balance (I want to say Albrook?), as the BGM for "Imperial troops have taken over this pub and are being rowdy", but it's far more associated with the Coliseum.
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.
What really amused me about this scene is that while the rest of the party (minus Mog, Umaro, and Gogo) are busy trying to gentrify Gau, Shadow is sleeping.
He didn't even excuse himself like the other three. He just appears in the scene, but in bed.
Evidently when there is a plot development regarding parenthood and the abandonment of children, Shadow's first instinct is to take a nap.
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.
Technically you did have to go through a long dungeon crawl for the Ragnarok magicite and the Cursed Shield. It's just that the dungeon was the Phoenix Cave, and we thought the Phoenix magicite was all we're getting.
As a bonus, we also got the ambulatory lockpick called Locke, who was needed to break into people's homes to get Ultima.
Since Chrono Trigger may be happening, I've been wondering what the main thing of a third Chrono game (think 'Chrono Break' was the planned title) would've been, as Trigger did time travel while Chrono Cross did alternate timelines? Time loops? Time stoppage? Multiple time periods happening at once? Space travel which also involves time travel due to relativity?
Locke certainly did better than Lone Wolf, who was walking out of Narshe when we were heading in, and goes "all the doors are locked, it would require a LEGENDARY TREASURE HUNTER to open them" like he's mugging to a panto crowd.
In fairness, Lone Wolf only ever described himself as a pickpocket, so picking locks might not be in his skillset. (Surviving long falls from cliffs he threw himself off of out of spite apparently was.)
Ironically, all the actual treasures in chests had likely already been looted by us back in the World Of Balance, so the remaining "treasures" of a magicite/sword and Cursed Shield were held by actual people, ie what a pickpocket would presumably be used to dealing with. Never mind that these "treasures" were being willingly given away by their previous owners.
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
It's later than your examples, but I think the Fire Emblem series is a decent landmark. It's awkwardly-named support system fits the mold and I think it was already fully formed in 2002.
It's later than your examples, but I think the Fire Emblem series is a decent landmark. It's awkwardly-named support system fits the mold and I think it was already fully formed in 2002.
It's later than your examples, but I think the Fire Emblem series is a decent landmark. It's awkwardly-named support system fits the mold and I think it was already fully formed in 2002.
The Support system is only for 1-on-1 conversations though, so it doesn't have the whole "entire party bouncing off each other and bonding" effect. Understandably so, considering that Fire Emblem's signature trait at the time was Perma-death.
Of course, the early support system also includes guys becoming such good friends that neither of them marry any of their love interests making it inherently perfect and flawless.
So, now that it's no longer a spoiler to say this, I will also add that, in additions to other reasons I have expressed disappointment with FFVI is that, despite being the game with the higher number of summons so far (I think it's between 25 and 30?) it is the first game since FFII that does not features Leviathan. There's no reason for this, yet it is how the game was designed.
That's annoying to me, because there's no good reason why it shouldn't, and also it breaks the stretch of the series where Bahamut and Leviathan had the same amount of appearances (Bahamut having debuted in FF but having been absent from FFII where Leviathan was introduced), and while Bahamut's presence in this title is minimal, especially compared to what he had in every single previous title where he appeared, he at least is there. It's minor, but I have a personal beef with such a decision being made when designing the game, so I did want to remark on it.
I do want to be clear that I don't hate FFVI or anything; I think it's a very good game, actually. Just, it falls short of what it promises, and those failures are not compensated for by other aspects of the game itself being fun, and also are usually ignored by fans in a way they, I feel, ought not to be.
So, now that it's no longer a spoiler to say this, I will also add that, in additions to other reasons I have expressed disappointment with FFVI is that, despite being the game with the higher number of summons so far (I think it's between 25 and 30?) it is the first game since FFII that does not features Leviathan. There's no reason for this, yet it is how the game was designed.
27 Espers in the OG version, 31 in the GBA version. More than half of them are new (or new and lasting designs with re-used names, like Cait Sith, who was previously a Coeurl recolor).
Incidentially, of the new ones, XIV still yet to use Kirin, Phantom, Maduin, Seraph, Quetzali, Ragnarok, Valigarmanda, OR Crusader,and it already used Fenrir, Bismarck, Cait Sith, Alexander, Zona Seeker, Midgarsormr, and Raiden even if only Bismarck and Alexander were used as Primal fodder rather than non-primal magical critters
27 Espers in the OG version, 31 in the GBA version. More than half of them are new (or new and lasting designs with re-used names, like Cait Sith, who was previously a Coeurl recolor).
Incidentially, of the new ones, XIV still yet to use Kirin, Phantom, Maduin, Seraph, Quetzali, Ragnarok, Valigarmanda, OR Crusader,and it already used Fenrir, Bismarck, Cait Sith, Alexander, Zona Seeker, Midgarsormr, and Raiden even if only Bismarck and Alexander were used as Primal fodder rather than non-primal magical critters
Seraph and Kirin have been used for stuff in XIV actually. Kirin as the ARR "mount rewarded from getting all the boss mounts", and Seraph as a Scholar summon.
