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

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FFXIV is basically a love letter to the entire series. I have never played another Final Fantasy game, but playing it and hearing especially @Tempera talking about the series, its traditions, reoccuring features and how the like... plots and stuff I really like about FFXIV are references and callbacks to a much older tradition, has really made me much more interested in playing the older series.
 
FFXIV is in several ways a "Greatest hits of Final Fantasy"

There are a lot of references to other games in the series to greater or lesser extent. But in general, the game very much takes its own spin on things. For example, the Ruby Diamond etc weapons make an appearance as optional trial bosses, but are explicitly "the magitech fascist empire you've been fighting from ARR onwards is going off the deep end with their wunderwaffen attempts."

So it does have a bit of "I clapped when I saw this", but in the majority of cases for me, it's always felt part of the world and that 14 has made the plot beat or the boss or the location it's own thing- the only time where it doesn't really ground itself is when the reference things are explicitly "replica creations of things that the replicator has previously encountered"

And yeah, it's definitely coming from a place of love, rather than just a quick "it is a reference."
 
To be fair 3 is actually one of the bigger sources XIV draws on for a variety of reasons, AND 3 has has far fewer US releases than even 2. It's far from surprising most US players, even ones who catch the references and cameos from four onwards and references to 1, might miss the plot elements drawn from and expanding on parts of 3.
 
It's impossible to separate Final Fantasy 14 from the Final Fantasy franchise because it is a game that is, deliberately, a letter of love to the franchise in its entirety. It wants to acknowledge the roots it comes from in a meaningful way while still also producing a work that is a solid and meaningful experience in its own right.

It isn't really "I clapped when I saw it" because the value isn't implicitly in just making a reference. It is about taking elements from its own franchise and weaving them together to form something new in a way that is still recognizable as being from individual parts of the franchise.

I was talking to Omicron earlier on Discord about how this very update is a fantastic example. You can see the inspiration for major plot elements in FFXIV from here; the idea of an ancient society mishandling things resulting in a flood of light that was stopped by the Warriors of Darkness and resulted in the remnants of society living in a small isolated segment of the world is one that is carried on to the later game. However, it is not at all a 1:1 with the plot, and they took care to provide twists on the premise and also to ground it on the lore and themes of the later work so that it feels like a natural and organic part of that work while also being a reference to the plot of FF3.
 
deadcrystal said:
This is especially amusing, what with FF9 being the previous "Greatest hits of Final Fantasy". Even if there aren't too many FF9 references in FF14.
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Are you kidding? They may not be many, but there's one bit that's FUCKING HUGE.
Garland and Terra = Elidibus and Aumarot. Man reduced by years to near automaton seeking to destroy civilizations so he can seize their souls and use said souls to bring his own dead civilization back to life, with the protagonist being a rogue member of his faction, and previous soul seizing efforts being responsible for catastrophes and seeming natural disasters that shaped the protagonists' world, while current such efforts involve manipulating the creation of an evil empire whose success matters less to the plan than that it stir strife
 
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Zap Rowsdower said:
Are you kidding? They may not be many, but there's one bit that's FUCKING HUGE.
Garland and Terra = Elidibus and Aumarot. Man reduced by years to near automaton seeking to destroy civilizations so he can seize their souls and use said souls to bring his own dead civilization back to life, with the protagonist being a rogue member of his faction, and previous soul seizing efforts being responsible for catastrophes and seeming natural disasters that shaped the protagonists' world, while current such efforts involve manipulating the creation of an evil empire whose success matters less to the plan than that it stir strife
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Well, that and half of Endwalker.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
Are you kidding? They may not be many, but there's one bit that's FUCKING HUGE.
Garland and Terra = Elidibus and Aumarot. Man reduced by years to near automaton seeking to destroy civilizations so he can seize their souls and use said souls to bring his own dead civilization back to life, with the protagonist being a rogue member of his faction, and previous soul seizing efforts being responsible for catastrophes and seeming natural disasters that shaped the protagonists' world, while current such efforts involve manipulating the creation of an evil empire whose success matters less to the plan than that it stir strife
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I mean in comparison to the other games, where it rips entire arcs almost beat for beat. There are FF9 refs obviously, but they're either little nods or references with quite heavy changes. Or there are arcs where they've pulled from several games to make the FF14 story. So far we don't have, for example, an entire raid series which is nothing but a love letter to one of the games.
 
There's precisely one questline in FFXIV that's very 'I clapped when I saw it' rather than going through effort to naturally integrate the references into the world and it's also one of my least liked ones until it stops doing that.
 
CeBrudras said:
I am a bit surprised at all the FFXIV mentions. Omicron at times sounds like some youth whose first movie was Ready Player One who is now watching some popular older movies. Has that game been an 'I clapped when I saw it'-thing that miraculously turned out - assuming I can trust everyone I have not played it - good all this time?
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It's like how most Final Fantasy games have recurring elements like Bahamut, Shiva Ifrit etc except it extends to plot elements from the entire franchise rather than just summons and weapons. The most obvious example of this is the Crystal Tower alliance raid which pays reference to FF3, which Omicron will almost certainly bring up to compare to how each game handled those plot elements.
 
GilliamYaeger said:
It's like how most Final Fantasy games have recurring elements like Bahamut, Shiva Ifrit etc except it extends to plot elements from the entire franchise rather than just summons and weapons. The most obvious example of this is the Crystal Tower alliance raid which pays reference to FF3, which Omicron will almost certainly bring up to compare to how each game handled those plot elements.
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Tbh the biggest constant in recurring elements is the Star Wars references, they're there even when the usual summons are just name drops

Though some, like a certain duo, took on a life of their own unique to but consistent in final fantasy
 
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Omicron said:
I have mixed feelings about Minwu, because on the one hand the set-up makes some level of sense (he's not sure he can survive breaking the door so he needs the heroes to be there), but also dude literally dies to a door, which, like... C'mon.
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Fun fact, in Dawn of Souls, When you play as Minwu In the afterlife, there is another copy of Ultima that is sealed behind the exact same seal. He does the exact same move and survives that time and he comes to the conclusion that he was destined to die because he had to be there for a reason (slaying the light half of the emperor). The Spell is also protected by Ultima Weapon.
 
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Related to the XIV discussion: Desch and Salina are both mentioned in the Crystal Tower alliance raids :V

(Also, I found Ivalice to be one of the worst references in XIV, especially because how it felt shoehorned in for me, vs other references)
 
Athas said:
Related to the XIV discussion: Desch and Salina are both mentioned in the Crystal Tower alliance raids :V

(Also, I found Ivalice to be one of the worst references in XIV, especially because how it felt shoehorned in for me, vs other references)
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The Ivalice Raids were incredibly tediously written, and I suspect that's because they were trying to convey the plot of Final Fantasy Tactics to me for context, but couldn't find a better way of doing so than having the characters recite historical exposition about long-dead heroes and villains, at great length, in long dialogue boxes filled with capitalized nouns, and as a result I retain 0 knowledge of it whatsoever today, a mere few months later.
 
Omicron said:
couldn't find a better way of doing so than having the characters recite historical exposition about long-dead heroes and villains, at great length, in long dialogue boxes filled with capitalized nouns, and as a result I retain 0 knowledge of it whatsoever today, a mere few months later.
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If it helps, Final Fantasy Tactics has an in game chronicle of the historical events going on in the background which is actually interactive - that is, new voices appear after you check other ones (sometimes requiring you to exit and re-enter the chronicle screen), the items you obtain, what your most recent battle is, and which tavern information you have read. There's so much information in there, and so much of it is barely (if at all) relevant to the game's plot, you'd spend hours trying to just write it all out. Most people don't learn even half of it.

So, really, don't fault the game too much, they assigned themselves a task that FFT itself failed to successfully achieve (delivering all of the relevant events without resorting to storing large amounts of it in a menu voice). I'm impressed anybody attempted such a task at all, to be honest, even with the largest amount of space an MMO (FFXIV is an MMO, right? I haven't misunderstood that?) has available.
 
Egleris said:
(FFXIV is an MMO, right? I haven't misunderstood that?)
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Yes. It tends to be one of the more significant barriers to getting people to get on board with it, and why I didn't even give it the time of day for years until my friends managed to break my resolve and successfully recruited me into their cult.

Random Member said:
How could you possibly not have heard of the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV?
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Please.

It's "the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, with an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 with no restrictions on playtime!"

Get it right!
 
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Omicron said:
Yes. It tends to be one of the more significant barriers to getting people to get on board with it
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Makes sense. I have never played any MMO (and never will) because I have a policy of never playing anything that I can't run on a PC which is disconnected from the Internet. Which has resulted in me playing less and less modern games with the passing of time, but since I've yet to run out of old games I haven't tried yet, I'm perfectly fine with that.

If nothing else, learning about FFXIV from your comments (and the discussion they encourage) is one of the most interesting parts of this thread, because I did hear of it (often as "the only good Final Fantasy in the last ten, or twelve, or in some cases even twenty years"), but have no personal experience of it due to its MMO nature. So, consider that another aspect of your play that it's making it very interesting to me, in that your experience is almost a mirror to mine. Makes this a fascinating read.
 
Omicron said:
Please.

It's "the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV, with an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 with no restrictions on playtime!"

Get it right!
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*sigh*

I was trying to get you guys to gradually complete the entire meme in pieces, but you just had to ruin the joke all by yourself!

No sense of humor....
 
It is interesting seeing the bones of a job system I'm familiar with from Octopath Traveler taking shape in FF3, with a lot of key differences but many of the same general ideas! Octopath really did innovate on the early Final Fantasy gameplay style in a lot of ways:
- Elemental weaknesses being a lot more important
- Character skills diverging a lot more
- Passive skills
Final Fantasy gets flack for buffs and debuffs not being important, and looking at the first few games I don't really see it…when did that start?
 
eagle II said:
Final Fantasy gets flack for buffs and debuffs not being important, and looking at the first few games I don't really see it…when did that start?
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I don't remember for sure, but it was probably Final Fantasy IV, AKA the west's Final Fantasy II, which had its difficulty intentionally and severely nerfed.

The DS Version undoes those nerfs and it shows.
 
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