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

[Connelly]

You actually don't have to play any of the minigames, bar one.

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Sure, but I imagine most people playing blind would go through them, if only to find how to progress.

 

[foamy]

Sure, but I imagine most people playing blind would go through them, if only to find how to progress.

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Yuuuuuuuuuuuup. First time I played through the Gold Saucer damn near broke me.

 

[deadcrystal]

Let's talk about GP.

I've never personally been in a casino, but having looked it up, the way most Western casinos work is they have 'casino tokens,' which are the same as poker chips, which are the casino's internal currency. They exist for a number of reasons that mostly have to do with convenience, security, and possibly psychologically incentivizing gambling, but they are, as long as everything is going well, a perfect 1v1 for money.

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My personal comparison point would instead be mobile games, and the currencies they use. Because you can't trade back into real money, and yeah, psychologically the fact you aren't buying things with money mentally dissociates you from purchases you otherwise wouldn't make.

Though in those cases they both inflate the numbers, so you can't tell easily how much a purchase is 'worth' and also only let you buy the currency in awkward packages that are precisely calibrated to never be able to buy the thing you want without splurging for a bigger package, and also always leaving you change so that you have to buy packages in order to use up your remainder and avoid 'wasting' it.

A custom controller that was an actual fucking gun.

The gun had a sensor of some kind, and basically you controlled the protagonist's aim on the screen by pointing the gun, and you shot by pulling the trigger. Another button was used to take cover/reload. Because the shooter is on rails, there was no need for any other form of controls; you just grabbed your gun and shot things. It was fucking sick.

And yes, it did mean you navigated the menu by shooting the options you wanted to select. This was a golden age whose heights civilization never reached again.

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It's an interesting example of a set of games where they're functionally obsoleted now. The original light guns as used with Time Crisis and House of the Dead worked in such a way they only work when used on a CRT television, so nowadays if you have an old copy you functionally can't play it.

 

[Amidatelion]

Cait Sith looks to be firmly into 'gag character' territory, but that may be me projecting the fact that I don't know, like… anything about them. They're not really a presence in any of the spinoff material I'm familiar with. Will they be another Mog and Umaro? Or will they be a character in their own right? Time will tell, I suppose.

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Man though, I don't remember a thing about the Golden Saucer.

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I have to say, I think every person I've ever talked to about FF7 doesn't remember anything about this Gold Saucer section. It's like a mental blister around the entire concept that reduces everything to a vague haze.

In my case this started applying before I even finished the game. Cait Sith included. He startled me whenever he showed up again because good lord, I forgot who or what he even is.

 

[Etranger]

There's a thin line between "this game section is a cutting satire on extractive capitalism and the commodification of joy" and "this shit sucks to play through" and the Gold Saucer absolutely does not bother to walk it. It is both ironically and unironically bad at the same time.

I would argue that Junon is actually Minigame Jail, where you're sentenced to serve a mandatory sentence for a crime you didn't commit. The Gold Saucer is the true Minigame Hell, where your choices are what torment you.

Anyway, not a huge fan of this section. Great writeup, though.

 

[Project 501D13R]

For now, we have a new addition to our party roster, though it'll be a while before we have a chance to check out what it is they do.

Everything about this is designed to lure you in with flashing lights and get you to spend all your hard-earned money gambling on gaining enough GP to get the big prize and leaving you out to dry without gil and without enough GP to get the big prizes anyway. And you can't save-scum it, because saving costs GP. And whatever GP you have at the end, it can't be converted back into cash. It's vicious.

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A word of warning, when you test out Cait Sith, DO NOT use the slots limit break, it has a chance to instantly kill your whole party and give you a game over.

As for the GP, it's meant to be an endgame money sink more than anything.

 

[foamy]

A word of warning, when you test out Cait Sith, DO NOT use the slots limit break, it has a chance to instantly kill your whole party and give you a game over.

As for the GP, it's meant to be an endgame money sink more than anything.

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It also has a chance to instantly win a fight against a superboss

The instant death thing can be avoided by learning the timing just like you do with Tifa's, IIRC.

 

[SolipsistSerpent]

Anyway I bring up Time Crisis mostly because if you've never heard about it, you probably don't know that it came with the most insane gimmick possible:
A custom controller that was an actual fucking gun.

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I feel like Duck Hunt beat them to the punch by a bit there.

 

[Zap Rowsdower]

I feel like Duck Hunt beat them to the punch by a bit there.

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And Super Scope 6. It was a continuous presense as a gimmick for three consecutive console generations.

 

[Geckonator]

Okay, so, first off, either the game or the translator need to learn the difference between 'cape' and 'cloak' or 'coat.'

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THEY DO THIS IN REUNION TOO! EVEN IN THE JAPANESE THEY APPARENTLY KEEP SAYING SEPHIROTH HAS A "CAPE" AND IT ANNOYS ME SO MUCH.

The Super Dunk minigame is also simple. You push and hold [OK] to "gather strength" and release to throw the ball. Too quick, you fall short, too long, you bounce off. There is no gauge or anything to indicate the correct timing; you just have to waste money guessing on the correct timing on failed throws until you've figured it out and then try to replicate it. I don't have time for this.

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This is the most time efficient way to farm GP in the arcade by the way.

Let that sink in.

The only way to even slightly profit out of this nightmare mountain is the Chocobo racing... as a Chocobo owner.

Too bad you don't have the property necessary to keep and raise Chocobos, eh?

Now, as a way of getting prizes, it fucking sucks. You need 3000 points in order to get a prize, which I just about barely manage on a second attempt, in which case our reward is…

Another 1/35 Soldier toy.

I went and looked it up, and these items are, in fact, worthless. They're literally just useless. They're one of three items we can win at 3k points, the other being the Super Sweeper (another toy model, also useless), and… The Masamune Blade?!

Yes. A replica of the Masamune Blade. A mall katana fashioned after that of the famous war hero. Completely without purpose.

I love what this is saying, as a setting element, but yeah. At this score, the only rewards are literally worthless. Now, if we scored 5,000 points we would get a new weapon for Aerith, but… I'm not doing that. It would take a dozen tries, if not more. The reason being that the speed of the aiming cursor means it's impossible to beat the game on reflexes alone. You have to actually memorize where the various enemies are coming from and have your cursor already waiting there; they're just not on screen long enough for the cursor to travel the distance to them. And I'm just not going to dedicate mental space to memorizing enemy location in this one minigame. We're done here.

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There is a hidden special target that lets you get into the "real prize" score levels extremely easily, if you want me to tell you. I am almost certain it was a cheat put in by the developers so they wouldn't have to win legitimately in testing, but it's still in there for the rest of us who want to be completionist without trying hard at a literal carnival scam.

 

[Dybbukpossesed]

Ok so I've been posting to the probably tiny or nonexistent number of people reading along and watching the parody who hadn't played FF7 already to warn them about spoilers. To those people now I say this: stop watching the parody! One of the major bits in this episode and multiple following ones involves major spoilers for a plot twist waaaaay in the future! If you do not care about spoilers however, then it's now up to episode 16 and I recommend watching for Yuffie and Tifa having fun in the park!

 

[yrsillar]

For what its worth the long winded and excited digressions into analyzing the environmental storytelling and themes are why I'm here, so I'm glad you don't just go for the quick summary route.

Chalk me up as another whose original run of this game ended here.

 

[Guile]

Ah, Cait Sith. Or as I think of him today, 'Remake's Oddest Decision.'

 

[Zap Rowsdower]

Ah, Cait Sith. Or as I think of him today, 'Remake's Oddest Decision.'

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I prefer to think of him as "one of my favorite examples of a character/weapon fighting style from earlier final fantasies they could hypothetically base an XIV class off of". Up there with a certain character from X.

 

[Thozmp]

one of my favorite examples of a character/weapon fighting style from earlier final fantasies

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The question suddenly hit me, but how are Cait Sith's weapons improved? Like for everyone else, it's as simple as having a better stabber or stronger beat stick, better gun, glove, whatever. But Cait Sith uses a megaphone to shout orders to the Mogre it rides on, how can that be improved? How does getting a better megaphone make the Mogre hit harder?

I may be over thinking it.

 

[Geckonator]

The question suddenly hit me, but how are Cait Sith's weapons improved? Like for everyone else, it's as simple as having a better stabber or stronger beat stick, better gun, glove, whatever. But Cait Sith uses a megaphone to shout orders to the Mogre it rides on, how can that be improved? How does getting a better megaphone make the Mogre hit harder?

I may be over thinking it.

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Mog is secretly the most powerful character in the world of Final Fantasy VII, and Caith Sith leveling up and getting better megaphones is merely providing the motivating force for Mog to overcome his inherent laziness and unleash that power.

 

[Zap Rowsdower]

The question suddenly hit me, but how are Cait Sith's weapons improved? Like for everyone else, it's as simple as having a better stabber or stronger beat stick, better gun, glove, whatever. But Cait Sith uses a megaphone to shout orders to the Mogre it rides on, how can that be improved? How does getting a better megaphone make the Mogre hit harder?

I may be over thinking it.

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Louder megaphone, obviously. Everyone knows the louder you are the more easily and quickly you are understood, its the principle behind which all assholes who travel abroad without learning the local language operate.

 

[illhousen]

I wonder if the GP rewards get bigger as the plot progresses (or if the currently closed games give better rewards). 1-3 GP per game feels painful in a way that should have been obvious to the devs: nobody would seriously try for the grand prize at this rate except for three hyper-obsessive nerds. It's not even gacha shit, which at least has the sense to dazzle you with bling, it's gacha shit with all the predatory mechanics exposed and easy to see by the players, effectively killing their impact.

Anyway, great satire of predatory gambling practices (relevant now more than at a time of release), would not recommend.

Final Fantasy VI had a "flying casino" in the form of Setzer's Blackjack airship, but we couldn't actually interact with it, the casino angle was purely décor (and also there was oddly no sign that he was taking on patrons at any point)

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Do you think before joining the Returners he was sadly spinning the roulette and throwing gil overboard when he lost?

Man though, I don't remember a thing about the Golden Saucer. Genuinely from the start to the Desert Prison it's nothing but static.

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You do realize, of course, that you're now bound to experience Traumatic Flashbacks about your secret past at the Gold Saucer?

 

[GilliamYaeger]

The question suddenly hit me, but how are Cait Sith's weapons improved? Like for everyone else, it's as simple as having a better stabber or stronger beat stick, better gun, glove, whatever. But Cait Sith uses a megaphone to shout orders to the Mogre it rides on, how can that be improved? How does getting a better megaphone make the Mogre hit harder?

I may be over thinking it.

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View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCyXsHC-lQ4

 

[Andy0915]

Look, it's campy as hell, for sure. This is some Hotel Transylvania-ass inn. But I love the childish spookiness of it, so over-the-top yet harmless, in direct contrast to the effective horror the game knows perfectly well how to utilize. This is just Having Fun With It. So is the rest of the Gold Saucer, but it doesn't resonate with me in the same way this does, maybe because when I was a child I had that PC game that was, like, a child-level point-and-click haunted mansion? I will probably never remember its name or find it again, but it exists as a vague memory, and it was kind of that level of kitschy spooks.

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I could be mistaken Omicron but I'm pretty sure the game you described from your childhood is Maniac Mansion which was developed
by Lucasfilm Games(formerly known as LucasArts).

 

[McFluffles]

Welcome back to Final Fantasy VII, the game where GOLD SAUCER. GOLD SAUCER. GOLD SAUCER TIIIIIME

Sometimes I wonder if I am approaching this Let's Play business right. Like, this entire update could have been, say, a single paragraph of a couple hundred words going "I went through Gold Saucer, it had a bunch of minigames, there were these positive aspects and these negative aspects, let's move on with the plot." Instead you get 8,5k words of me rambling about it in minute details. Was this necessary? Probably not. I did it anyway. Enjoy.

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Well, personally that's a big part of what I'm here for! I can get the "I played some minigames anyways on to plot" experience by just playing the game myself, but I am not the kind of person any good at making deep analysis of these mechanics or what's implied by these plot bits, so it's pretty great reading what you have to say even if I don't always directly comment on it.

Also I cut it for space but there was a screenshot of Yuffie before boarding the Ropeway saying "I have no sympathy for Barret, he never should have trusted Shinra" which, wow, kid, that's harsh.

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Dang, no punches pulled from the teenage ninja girl. I get the feeling Yuffie has some opinions when it comes to Shinra, which might come up eventually.

When we arrive, it's through this enormous… Moogle? Is that a moogle? No, the moogles are standing atop of it. What is that, Kirby?

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Well, apparently it's just plain a thing in-universe because Cait Sith looks pretty similar. Maybe it's the Moogle Equivalent of Fat Chocobo.

First of all, we head for that save point, and…

…find out that we can't use it.

The save point costs money to use.

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WELCOME TO CAPITALISM CITY

Aerith says she knows now might not seem like a great time for it, but she thinks it'd cheer us up to just have fun at the Golden Saucer. Barret says he isn't in the mood for cheer, and there's that exchange where Aerith acts kind of dismissive of his feelings and when Tifa tells her she's being harsh, she whispers that when someone's acting up like this, the best thing to do is to just act normal instead of tiptoeing around them. Barret storms off in a huff, storms off in a huff, reminding everyone not to forget we're after Sephiroth, and Aerith is worried she's made him mad, but Tifa says that she thinks he did look a little more like his normal self.

This is another of these exchanges where the original translations has the general meaning come across but each individual sentence be slightly off from where it should be, and Aerith comes off as more rude than she's meant to be; the idea here is that she is a very emotionally intelligent person, who knows that when someone is sad/upset (because we just went through North Corel and Barret was confronted by his past and guilt), it's best not to make it obvious that you're treating them with abnormal mindfulness and making them feel pitied or singled out, instead acting casual and suggesting activities that would take their mind off things, without making it obvious that it's what you're doing.

Aerith is a great character, you guys.

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She really is. It's come up a dozen times already, but replaying this game has been neat to see Aerith's original characterization in action, compared to the "pure healer girl" that ended up spreading around the internet for a few decades.

This man, it turns out, is the owner of the casino, and wants to know if Cloud is having a fun time; his name is… Dio.

Insert your favorite Jojo meme here and let's move on.

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YOU THOUGHT THE ONE RUNNING GOLD SAUCER WOULD BE AN ORDINARY EXECUTIVE, BUT IT WAS I, DIO!

...I mean, you asked.

What in God's name is that.

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This is what happens when you feed Mog too many nuts. He starts to GROW.

…so this thing is a playable character.

We are firmly in the weird shit territory here.

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And hey, weirdo mascot character of the game! Not something that shows up in every JRPG, but there's certainly a lot of ones with variable party members that throw in the weird, "how do you even exist" comic relief character. The Jar Jar Binks, if you will, though time will tell if Cait Sith is quite that comic relief dedicated.

Anyway, Cloud asks if it's true it can read the future, Cait Sith says it (he? Let's go with he) can find items, missing people, anything, so of course Cloud immediately asks if he can find a man named Sephiroth for us.

Man, we should be so lucky. I appreciate Cloud immediately reaching for any shot at sequence-skipping the plot, though.

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Cloud's one track mind is a thing to witness. Would that it reached the level of Jack Garland and his Chaos obsessions.

This, then, leads into the wildest party addition so far: Cait Sith declares that, as a fortune teller, having that kind of vague, unclear prediction hanging around is going to bug him; and he'll never be able to relax if he doesn't see how it's resolved, so he's coming with us. Tifa asks Cloud if it's alright letting them join, and then Cait Sith clarifies that this is not a request and forcibly merges into Cloud to join our party.

Incredible.

​

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Congrats, you got the... joke, mascot character of the game? Idunno, maybe it was before my time but I certainly didn't see Cait Sith merch of all things popping up back in the day.

Cait Sith has the 'Manipulate' Materia, which may be a kind of Command command, like Beastmasters/Relm? We'll see, I guess.

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Golly, that's not suspicious at all, forcing your way into the party to little protest while you have a mind control materia equipped!

I've never personally been in a casino, but having looked it up, the way most Western casinos work is they have 'casino tokens,' which are the same as poker chips, which are the casino's internal currency. They exist for a number of reasons that mostly have to do with convenience, security, and possibly psychologically incentivizing gambling, but they are, as long as everything is going well, a perfect 1v1 for money. You come in, you pay for $500's worth of casino tokens, you get $500's worth of casino tokens, you gamble, you win some and lose some, you end the day with $300's worth of casino tokens, you give the tokens back at the counter, they give you $300. Simple, right?

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I haven't been all that often, but yeah that's pretty accurate for the gambling game tables at least. The slots on the other hand tend to be "money in, receipt with money value out" where you can then punch said receipt into other slot machines and get more (or less) money from there, and eventually just turn it in up front for cold hard cash.

We've gone other the Arm Wrestling minigame, it sucks; you're meant to simply click [OK] as quickly as possible, and this doesn't appear to be possible to do it fast enough on my keyboard. It's a waste of money.

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Since you're on PC, would it be possible to set up an auto-clicker for the [OK] key, I wonder?

There's one decent minigame in the whole lot, and it is, of course, a repeat of the only decent minigame in the game so far:

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Can't argue with that, a bit of motorcycle road rage with a buster sword is always fun.

Though this brings to mind the hilarious image of some Shinra employee watching Cloud speed his way out of Midgar, cutting down soldiers left and right, and going "hot damn we could make a video game out of that", and a week later Gold Saucer has their brand new Motorcycle Game. Profiting even off of the deaths of their own soldiers and the escape of Avalanche, like True Capitalists.
[/QUOTE]

Incredible.

I feel like I might have underestimated FF7's ambition. Are its games an overly quirky attempt to vary and spice up gameplay, or are they an attempt to make a game that is all genres of game, all at once?

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To some degree, I think they're just trying to flex what exactly the PS1 could do, jumping from 2D games to 3D Polygons. That and maybe designing minigames was something for them to do when they were bored of working on the actual game, a palette cleanser of sorts. Just think, there's probably dozens more minigames left behind on the cutting room floor.

The gun had a sensor of some kind, and basically you controlled the protagonist's aim on the screen by pointing the gun, and you shot by pulling the trigger. Another button was used to take cover/reload. Because the shooter is on rails, there was no need for any other form of controls; you just grabbed your gun and shot things. It was fucking sick.

And yes, it did mean you navigated the menu by shooting the options you wanted to select. This was a golden age whose heights civilization never reached again.

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Time Crisis was the dopest of arcade games, not going to argue with that. Wish I could find it again to maybe beat it with my enhanced adult game knowledge.

The funniest gag in this section is the controls. Because we do have control over Cloud! …'s head gestures. Like the incredibly socially awkward boy that he is, he spends the entire time sitting with his arms crossed. By moving the D-pad or pushing OK, we can cause him to tilt his head to the left, or the right, or to lean forward, and that's literally all.

Also he doesn't say a single sentence the entire ride even as Tifa points out stuff to him and goes "wow, look at this!" I take it back, this is the funniest gag, I tried setting them up for a date-like activity and Cloud is so bad at it it wrapped around to being hilarious.

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So it's the same as Cloud in every cutscene?

So was the Gold Saucer trip worth it?

Hell no. This is a horrible place designed to pry you from all your money while dangling prizes you'll never get in front of you and foisting worthless trinkets as compensations when you fail. Most of the games suck to play, the ones that are moderately fun are impossible to play well enough to earn anything from, overall I rate this place Caesar Palace/10, a constant overwhelming assault on my senses from every direction. Please please take me out of here.

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So it's just like a real casino?

Or at least, a real casino in my experience. Meanwhile my parents visit one every month or two and I swear to god every one of those visits end with my mom going "oh yeah I walked in with one hundred dollars but left with three hundred, 10/10 good gambling experience". This is clearly the reason I'm willing to spend so much money on gacha games, it's her fault, I take no responsibility for my wallet.

More dead bodies everywhere. Except, there's a twist. As Cloud leans down to examine the bodies closer, he finds that they weren't cut down - they're all dead from gunshot wounds. And Sephiroth, as Cloud says, would never use a gun.

(Who would have known the genocidal bad guy was so based tbh.)

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I mean, can you imagine if someone saw the great Sephiroth using a gun? Would ruin his reputation forever, not to mention the marketing value! "Oh, the greatest most bestest SOLDIER uses a gun? How's that make him so awesome I can buy like six of those from Prepper Steve down the road, just point and shoot!" Gotta have that fancy katana for maximum badassery.

I wonder if the GP rewards get bigger as the plot progresses (or if the currently closed games give better rewards). 1-3 GP per game feels painful in a way that should have been obvious to the devs: nobody would seriously try for the grand prize at this rate except for three hyper-obsessive nerds.

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IIRC the best ways to make GP are either Chocobo racing, or there's a hidden NPC who will directly sell you GP for Gil in a back alley. Apparently he's hiding behind the save point, though no idea if he's there now and Omi missed him or shows up later, and also don't know the conversion rate and if it's actually worth it at this point compared to showing up endgame with ten billion gil.

 

[Zap Rowsdower]

And hey, weirdo mascot character of the game! Not something that shows up in every JRPG, but there's certainly a lot of ones with variable party members that throw in the weird, "how do you even exist" comic relief character. The Jar Jar Binks, if you will, though time will tell if Cait Sith is quite that comic relief dedicated.

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It was a lot more common in the '90s, IIRC; the trend kinda died AFIK once things moved to the PS2 and it started to clash tonally with the more realistic increasingly high definition graphics.

 

[MiskWisk]

IIRC the best ways to make GP are either Chocobo racing, or there's a hidden NPC who will directly sell you GP for Gil in a back alley. Apparently he's hiding behind the save point, though no idea if he's there now and Omi missed him or shows up later, and also don't know the conversion rate and if it's actually worth it at this point compared to showing up endgame with ten billion gil.

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Ah, that's what it was.

So, that hidden NPC can be accessed immediately, but they only have a chance of showing up whenever the screen loads in. Effectively, you have to go back and forth on the tram until they spawn, which also means sitting through the animation that plays every single time. Which now makes me wonder, when was the option to skip cutscenes put in? Because I'm thinking 10.

 

[Avernus]

Also their weapon of choice is… a phone??? Oh, no, that's just the character count issue, it's a megaphone. They attack by shouting at people. Incredible.

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IIRC, the first time I played I did think it was a phone for the whole game. I just thought that an "M-Phone" was some weird type of telephone.

It also has a chance to instantly win a fight against a superboss

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That happened to me once. It was funny; it was the first time I'd tried, and I'd read up on the superboss, ground up in levels, bought extra supplies, prepared every way I could think of to fight it...and two, three rounds in it just up and dies. I literally just stared at the screen for thirty seconds or so, wondering if there was some bug that kicked me out of the fight.

Then beelined straight for a place I could save, naturally.

 

[ArlequineLunaire]

The Gold Saucer was also where my playthrough of the game ended back in the day, though in my case it was because of a freezing glitch.

On another topic, Black Mirror's Charlie Brooker used to be game reviewer, and rated FF7 particularly highly. It's something the commentary of the Gold Saucer really reminded me of.

And as for Time Crisis having a gun as a controller, well how about having a chainsaw as a controller?


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAA7vItqLxs