21stCentury
Let's get down to bismuth
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I also disliked rope classes.
But smoke classes? Loved those.
But smoke classes? Loved those.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Playing: Final Fantasy IX]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Yuffie's also top of her class in "sensing Cloud is opening a chest containing materia somewhere, without her" class.
I like to imagine her, Red and Barret trekking along somewhere, and then her head perks up like a pointing dog or Punxsutawney Phil in springtime.
"Ooh, that one's a summon!"
"How do you DO that"
"Ninja senses."
"That CANNOT be a thing."
"I don't tell you how to... mine coal, or whatever! Don't tell me how to Thief. I mean Ninja."
I like to imagine her, Red and Barret trekking along somewhere, and then her head perks up like a pointing dog or Punxsutawney Phil in springtime.
"Ooh, that one's a summon!"
"How do you DO that"
"Ninja senses."
"That CANNOT be a thing."
"I don't tell you how to... mine coal, or whatever! Don't tell me how to Thief. I mean Ninja."
Sadly having a Sephiroth is a deck stacker all on his own as seen in Ever Crisis as a First Soldier Scene
View: https://youtu.be/Rejc0w2V9Kk?si=GgNrWrQL9nYOT4uI
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Looks like they also gave him some high level materia, just to stack the deck further.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
You'll be pleased to know that this is something corrected by Remake, as while the Steal materia itself may still exist, Yuffie knows Mug as an ATB move that's accessible on all but one of her weapons in Intermission so presumably she will be able to rob people no matter what in Rebirth.
Hell yeah brother, never give more than your wage is worth. Based Reno, gotta teach the rookie to goldbrick early.
Cloud when a minor tries to rope him into whatever stupid melodrama she's obsessed with this week (mentally he is a small toy robot dog doing backflips):
Reminds me of the Star Wars Visions short Lop and Ocho, which is about Literally Japan In Space getting colonised by the Empire and turned into a smog-choked industrial zone that poisons the planet, and when fighting to liberate her home Lop gets a lightsaber which is specifically shaped like a katana do you get it.
Which is cool, allegories for how much American capitalist interventionism sucks and ruins everyone's lives are always morally correct-
It's a shame Wutai was confirmed for Untitled Remake 3 because this has the potential to be the funniest series of interactions in all of Square Enix history.
Until, eventually, we find Corneo, along with his two captives, arranged in… Whatever the hell kind of scenario this is:
Corneo: "ALRIGHT LADIES IT'S BIBLE ROLEPLAY TIME, WHICH OF YOU WANTS TO BE DISMAS AND WHICH OF YOU WANTS TO BE GESTAS"
Yuffie: "What's the difference!?"
Corneo: "IF YOU DID THE READING YOU'D KNOW"
There's no way in hell this interaction or indeed entire scene remains this way in Untitled Third Remake so excuse me while I manifest a boss fight where Solo Yuffie and NPC Ally Elena team up and beat Corneo to death with hammers.
Out of desperation, I throw the tool I know won't work: A basic Attack.
…
Well now I just feel like an idiot.
Rapps: "how could you know... my one weakness... was swords..." *crumples like its bones were turned off in Source*
View: https://youtu.be/_wk-jT9rn-8
Yuffie: "Anyways, that sure was close. No, normally I would kick their butts, Boom, Bang!!"
Yuffie: "That Corneo guy's a real pain. I'd rather deal with my dad than with that guy."
Yuffie: "You know, some of those Turk guys are pretty good, huh?"
Yuffie: "At least, after all that, we got the Materia back."
Yuffie: "Now come on everybody, let's continue on our journey…"
At which point Yuffie turns back around.
And finds that EVERYONE JUST LEFT WHILE SHE WAS TALKING.
Incredible stuff.
Bullying Yuffie will never not be funny. Honestly, I am starting to think leaving Wutai for later might be the best option, not for difficulty or balance or pacing reasons, but specifically to maximize the amount of shitkiddery for which all of this is deserved payback.
Yuffie calls out to the group to wait for her, then grabs that MP Absorb Materia she stole from us earlier and runs after us, saying that no matter what we think, she's going with us.
I'm honestly not even sure why, at this point. Perhaps she hopes she'll find a treasure along the way that'll make up for all that Materia she failed to steal from us? Maybe she feels she owes us after we saved her life? Maybe she's starting, just a little, to believe in friendship? We don't know, because no one in the party gives a shit.
Truly the character of all time, 10/10.
God. There's no way in hell Rebirth and Untitled Third Game keep this tenor of interaction with Yuffie but I won't lie I'll probably miss it when it's gone, because being unrelentingly mean to Yuffie because she's annoying has been a 10/10 so far. It's like Daffy Duck getting his beak blown off.
But yeah you're not kidding, Yuffie's reasons for staying with the party are shaky at best here. Best guess is she still has to clear the pagoda trial and she knows that her best shot at that is tagging along with Cloud & Co for levels and materia.
This is something that makes more sense in Intermission, where Yuffie comes to Midgar as a Sneaky Undercover Ninja Infiltrator (she is in her huge conspicuous Moogle hoodie poncho from Dirge of Cerberus) specifically to steal a rumoured prototype Giga-Materia from the Shinra R&D lab. In fact I'm unsure she'll even steal the party's materia in the remake continuity, both because it wouldn't be that much of a hindrance with how characters are mechanically defined under that system and because she'll have a full game of interacting and bonding with them before Wutai. Then again she's a teenager and desperate so maybe it'll be recontextualised as a moment of weakness borne of a sudden change in circumstances that the party don't begrudge her over after catching her.
So, remember the Turtle's Paradise posters? They're those posters that are plastered at various points across the world advertising the Turtle's Paradise, a cool place with drinks and ambiance. The posters are part of a promotional campaign, and we're supposed to collect them all. Well, I don't know if you've noticed, but there's a building in Wutai with a particular feature…
The local bar has a turtle hanging over its entrance.
Checking the board next to it reveals a Turtle's Paradise sign telling us about their awesome new publicity campaign, and all we have to do to get our special reward is find all six posters in the world, read them, and come back here to boast about it!
So fun fact about Intermission;
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hqIqPvJmJg
They made like eight versions of the Happy Turtle theme song in the DLC, all in different musical genres, for each of the collectible Happy Turtle flyers.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
Oh my god, Yuffie has a dramatic tattered hooded cape but the hood is a giant moogle head, in a world where moogles are cutesy corporate mascots. That is hilarious. I'm guessing she thinks it makes her look badass.
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Remake's music team is clearly just having the most fun possible all through the game.
Did they need a hip hop version of the chocobo song? No. No one needs that. But they did it anyway.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvW4wB74jtM
She was going undercover against ShinRa, clearly she needed to blend in
People in Midgar go around wearing giant moogles, right
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Morganite
Happiness is a large book.
- Location
- Dynamis - Firefly Alley
Eh...
It's not that it doesn't make sense, but it's unsatisfying. I can't quite put my finger on why though.
So, I can't actually read Japanese, but I know enough about the writing system to be dangerous, and since no one else has spoken up, I'll give it a shot.
... But most of it is too small and scribbly for me to make out from the images posted.
Exceptions:
First off, it -is- Japanese, because one of the signs has hiragana on it, and one in back looks like it's got katakana, so it can't be Chinese.
You know where else in FF7 has a lot of Japanese writing? Wall Market! So now my headcanon is that area had a lot of refugees from the war with Wutai settle down in it.
Except... you know where else else has a lot of Japanese writing? Shinra stuff! It's in their logo, the numbering on the reactors, it's in that car video (which includes some hiragana too, so definitely Japanese)...
So IDEK now.
Turtle's Paradise (or at least I think that's the building) has it's name on the outside, which isn't that unreasonable. 亀道楽 it looks like? Except I'm not sure how to interpret 道楽. My dictionary program comes up with "hobby, pastime, dissipation, dissipated", while google translate suggests... "debauchery". Allrightthenmovingon! The other little sign says のみ処, which google interprets as "nostalgia". I don't know about that either way, but some googling finds it attached to other restaurants.
As for that building in the front middle, with the big single kanji sign, that's 火, "fire".
And if you want me to make myself look foolish in relation to any of the other signs, I'll need better screenshots of them.
New headcanon accepted.
Maybe they had family and friends in Sector 7, and now they're seeking revenge? First the original Turks, then the party, then they'll throw Rufus off the side of the airship (not that he was directly involved in the plate drop decision but, you know, as a precaution), and then take out the rest of the leadership. Except maybe Reeve.
But can you pet the cat? Or any of the cats?
This is very important.
That she was so focused on picking his pocket that she didn't try to escape?
I refuse to believe that he doesn't have henchmen, because I refuse to believe that he could capture Yuffie on his own. Or Elena. Or anything much more energetic than a ham sandwich.
Corneo doesn't need to know that.
Do what now?
Gotta say, I'm not sure exactly what would be uniquely Chinese here. The only thing that's leaping out at me is that Da-Chao, according to the wiki, could be written as Da Zhao, and there's a Da Zhao Temple in China. Eeexcept that's a Tibetan Buddhist monastery, so actually that's not exactly Chinese?
*blinks* *googles*
... Sure. Good luck with that, chief.
-Morgan.
FelOnyx
Love and Peace!
- Location
- Gunsmoke
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I think the katakana on the materia shop is "Materia," more stunning translation insights to follow.
MiskWisk
Hoot
- Location
- Somewhere devoid of wit
- Pronouns
- He
Well, I've got very little to say today except:
So, you build up his limit break before the boss fight and hit Rapps with it immediately, reducing Rapps' MP to 0 and removing the threat of aeroga.
The strategy guide I had actually recommended Barret for this fight. Why? Because of his second level 1 limit, Mindblow, targets MP.
So, you build up his limit break before the boss fight and hit Rapps with it immediately, reducing Rapps' MP to 0 and removing the threat of aeroga.
It's been several decades from the end of FFVII. After the dismantling of the Mako infrastructure, civilization returned to the natural source of energy: oil.
The Planet is dying. Again.
Yuffie is a grizzled woman who has one of her eyes replaced with the Steal Materia. She leads an eco-terrorist group Avalanche (named such after an organization she's heard about once. She isn't clear on details because she didn't pay attention at the time) in a fight against an evil oil baron.
That is, until the oil baron is killed by a mysterious swordsman with an unnaturally huge sword, a swordsman who seems to have a connection to Yuffie and loves bullying her.
The oil baron is replaced by his eviler daughter, and the hunt for the swordsman is on.
Well, think about it this way: several times now you've run into issues with money. With an extra hour of grinding behind you, you should be f-
...Oh.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
At least now he'll never have to pay it again!
Although I bet those Ft. Condor guys are probably running low...
Morganite
Happiness is a large book.
- Location
- Dynamis - Firefly Alley
Those Ft. Condor guys are always running low. It's fiiiine.
-Morgan.
- Location
- Australia
You know, I'd read that, ngl.
SolipsistSerpent
Endlessly Devouring
After the first miserable battle I skip it and never come back, that's how that part of the game works.
FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
Wutai is as much Ye Olde Kyoto as it is Japaina, as Japan has a long and storied history of jacking China's shit to seem cooler 
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Before you do that, you might want to make sure you use the Bronco to explore as much water-accessible areas as possible; in particular, there should be a few places around Junon you couldn't reach before but can now.
It's absolutely worth it to do the pagoda as soon as you can. I believe at least the first few battles should be doable at your level, even, since you do happen to have Big Guard and Beta; you just need to equip Yuffie properly. And there's Adamantoises just outside Wutai which have some interesting stuff to steal, as well as an Enemy Skill to learn; that might help.
Also: if you have a save file to before going into Wutai, the sleeping man has a ton of extra dialog that you can get from him if you continue bothering him, but only if you do it before starting the search for Yuffie. It's quite illuminating on several points.
Materia damage is based on the user's magic stat, so the message the video was sending there was that Sephiroth maxed that one alongside his speed and strength, for maximum overpoweredness.
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- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
Personally I interpret 亀道楽 by splitting up the three kanji, so it's "Turtle Path Comfort", ie "Paradise of the Way of the Turtle". There is always the possibility that it's an intentional play on words between 道楽 and 道、楽, turning it into both "Paradise of the Way of the Turtle" and "Turtle's Pastime".
As for のみ処, it's more straightforwardly のみ and 処: "nomi" for "drinks" and "tokoro" for "place". As in "place for drinks".
Wutai is as much Ye Olde Kyoto as it is Japaina, as Japan has a long and storied history of jacking China's shit to seem cooler
To elaborate, Japan trying to emulate China is historically so accurate that it's difficult to overstate how much Japan tried to be China, in aesthetics and culture. China's government structure (even in the midst of its civil wars) and general societal cultures were seen as the end-solution to "how to government" by Japan, or rather the Imperial Court that claimed sovereignty over Japan. This became especially pronounced during the Tang Dynasty in China, which the Nara period of Japanese history copied down to the architecture. It took until the Heian period (starting at around the 9th century AD) where the Japanese Imperial Court went "okay, we're too much like China".
Incidentally, the Heian period is when the Imperial Capital was moved to the city then known as Heian-kyo, and today known as Kyoto. It also happened to be when samurai became a thing, which is why stories set during the "let's copy China" eras of Japanese history don't have them.
This apparent division between "Japan Imperial Court interchangeable with China Imperial Court" and "Culturally Japan" turns up in a lot of present-day Japanese pop culture and media; it's about as well-explored as the cultural changes during the Meiji Restoration, and I would say more common in media than the cultural changes post-WW2.
So personally, my own interpretation of "Modern Cyberpunk Midgar won a war against Traditional Ancient Wutai" is less about "the Allied Powers taking over Japan after World War 2", and more a generalized "modernity charging ahead vs safe traditions". In other words, Midgar isn't "the West"; it's Tokyo, winning the cultural competition against "traditional" (or "backwards", derogatively) areas like Nara.
EDIT:
On re-reading, I want to point out this screenshot in particular:
This is the Materia store. We can tell, because the sign says "Materia".
It says "Materia" in the most ridiculous way possible. 魔手理亜, which is how the sign reads right-to-left and with more olden writing, literally reads as "Ma Te Li A", and means nothing as a kanji combination. They just use the kanji sounds to say "Materia". (The first kanji is a little blurry, so it could be 麻 or such instead, but it doesn't matter, because the kanji pronunciation is all that matters, not the meaning.)
It's along the lines of a store using "Ye Olde Shoppe", with that spelling, and not even bothering to use the proper thorn symbol for "Ye". The overall impression is extremely kitsch, whether because the owner is trying too hard to be over-pretentious, or it's a tourist trap intentionally designed to be kitsch and tacky and "old-timey".
Perhaps related distantly, Japanese media stereotypes of the "biker gang" small-time gangsters like to use kanji like this too: they want to express a word that's more normally written in katakana loanword, but they want to be Traditional and Japanese and Manly, so they just mash together a bunch of kanji with the right pronunciations. Because they want to show off that they know these kanji, but are not actually well-read enough to come up with proper phrases that mean something in kanji.
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Thozmp
Gets my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine.
A thought I had: we know there are/were more Nibelheimers in Midgar then Cloud and Tifa. They wrote letters home and everything. So, when Nibelheim burned, did they just suddenly stop receiving letters? A letter saying "To whom it may concern, your loved one has decided to no longer remain in contact with you and does not want you to question why."? Hell, when Tifa got to Midgar, did she track them down and tell them their home got torched?
Questions for later, maybe.
Questions for later, maybe.
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Grizzled, ancient 30-something Yuffie, leader of the terrorist group Avalanche which is definitely original do not steal, is truly the FF7 sequel we all deserved.
To no one's surprise, google can hook you up on genderswapped Rufus.
On a more serious note.
Yeah, it's an issue that crops up in FF games surprisingly often for a JRPG series. Characters are often weirdly interchangeable when it comes to mechanics.
For all that FFVI was imperfect and a victim of its own ambition, I do think its approach to this was preferable. You bring Locke along if you want to steal some cool loot, you bring Setzer if you want to suffer, etc. That reinforced each character's unique identity and made them more memorable, at least for the first half of the game.
I guess FFVII approach does resolve the issue of "do you bring along the characters you like or the characters who are effective", but IDK if the cost is worth it.
Personally, when it comes to JRPGs, I prefer a predefined class for each character, preferably with forks into advanced classes or some extra modular abilities. Full customization is good for a Western style of RPG where the MC is usually meant to fully be a player's avatar rather than its own person, but if they do have a defined life beyond my will, it's good for that to be reflected mechanically.
Yeah, it's an issue that crops up in FF games surprisingly often for a JRPG series. Characters are often weirdly interchangeable when it comes to mechanics.
For all that FFVI was imperfect and a victim of its own ambition, I do think its approach to this was preferable. You bring Locke along if you want to steal some cool loot, you bring Setzer if you want to suffer, etc. That reinforced each character's unique identity and made them more memorable, at least for the first half of the game.
I guess FFVII approach does resolve the issue of "do you bring along the characters you like or the characters who are effective", but IDK if the cost is worth it.
Personally, when it comes to JRPGs, I prefer a predefined class for each character, preferably with forks into advanced classes or some extra modular abilities. Full customization is good for a Western style of RPG where the MC is usually meant to fully be a player's avatar rather than its own person, but if they do have a defined life beyond my will, it's good for that to be reflected mechanically.
I feel an insatiable need to point out the first three letters of the url for the picture are "Eww".
This means absolutely nothing, since it's randomly generated, but I find it funny so I'm sharing it with the class.
Yeah if I'm being honest, something between FFIV and FFVI is around where I like my party members in a JRPG. Not completely "one pre-defined path for everything they get", but just a bit more uniqueness than "has one unique battle command and otherwise ends up homogeneous". I haven't gotten around to actually playing it, but I believe Dragon Quest XI has some sort of skill tree system where each character has their own specific role, but then you can take said role down different paths? That's about the level I like best, especially if it gets balanced out well enough to make every character at least somewhat viable.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Of the Final Fantasy the thread has explored so far, I still hold that the best gameplay was in FFV.
Yes, it might seem like that's less unique than FFVI giving each character their own individual command, but in actual play, the individual commands in FFVI lose importance once Magicite show up, and Magicite very much leads to creating characters with identical builds almost immediately.
On the other hand, FFV class system is different because each class takes investment, and so, while characters can, in theory, all be copies of one-another, in practice each one has a unique build that give the character a specific gameplay uniqueness without compromising the player's ability to customize their own characters.
Sadly, in the endgame FFV diversity collapses into identical "optimal" builds, but that's still longer that the character stay unique than what FFVI provides. FFVII is much lower on that end, with characters being nearly interchangeable, when limits are ignored - and if limits are taken into account, it's really only Caith Sith, Vincent and Aerith that have any uniqueness to them, with Tifa deserving an honorable mention for at least taking a different mechanical approach to produce the same "more damage!" result with her limit that everybody else does.
Finding a proper compromise between allowing the player freedom of choice in their character build and giving the individual characters well defined gameplay roles is one of the hardest things about a RPG, and Final Fantasy as a series has tended to favor customization over characterization so far, with FFIV being the biggest exception. To be seen is whether they can manage to find a better balance going forwards.
My personal preference would be something that combined the FFIV and FFV approaches - give each character a combination of classes to choose from, some of which shared between them all, but some also exclusive to the characters, and then let the player decide what to prioritize in development terms... basically, a more evolved version of what Final Fantasy Tactics does. But there's other approaches that might work.
I do want to say that one thing that the FFVII system does well is that, since abilities are contained into equipment, they can be obtain as treasure, and that adds a lot to the sense of exploration in the game - as well as allow unique sequences like this Yuffie theft; something like this would never have worked with the much more limited amount of Magicite available in FFVI. Gaining abilities as treasure is one of the best way to make exploration rewarding, and despite its other foibles on the mechanical front, that's something FFVII really nailed. At least in my opinion.
Yes, it might seem like that's less unique than FFVI giving each character their own individual command, but in actual play, the individual commands in FFVI lose importance once Magicite show up, and Magicite very much leads to creating characters with identical builds almost immediately.
On the other hand, FFV class system is different because each class takes investment, and so, while characters can, in theory, all be copies of one-another, in practice each one has a unique build that give the character a specific gameplay uniqueness without compromising the player's ability to customize their own characters.
Sadly, in the endgame FFV diversity collapses into identical "optimal" builds, but that's still longer that the character stay unique than what FFVI provides. FFVII is much lower on that end, with characters being nearly interchangeable, when limits are ignored - and if limits are taken into account, it's really only Caith Sith, Vincent and Aerith that have any uniqueness to them, with Tifa deserving an honorable mention for at least taking a different mechanical approach to produce the same "more damage!" result with her limit that everybody else does.
Finding a proper compromise between allowing the player freedom of choice in their character build and giving the individual characters well defined gameplay roles is one of the hardest things about a RPG, and Final Fantasy as a series has tended to favor customization over characterization so far, with FFIV being the biggest exception. To be seen is whether they can manage to find a better balance going forwards.
My personal preference would be something that combined the FFIV and FFV approaches - give each character a combination of classes to choose from, some of which shared between them all, but some also exclusive to the characters, and then let the player decide what to prioritize in development terms... basically, a more evolved version of what Final Fantasy Tactics does. But there's other approaches that might work.
I do want to say that one thing that the FFVII system does well is that, since abilities are contained into equipment, they can be obtain as treasure, and that adds a lot to the sense of exploration in the game - as well as allow unique sequences like this Yuffie theft; something like this would never have worked with the much more limited amount of Magicite available in FFVI. Gaining abilities as treasure is one of the best way to make exploration rewarding, and despite its other foibles on the mechanical front, that's something FFVII really nailed. At least in my opinion.
Guile
Having a really great time right now
I generally like the interchangeability. I'd rather take my preferred characters than, for example, needing to bring the one healer character with you throughout the entire game.
It's not perfect, because some builds are inevitably better than others, but the ability to loop around from Sword to Greatsword, or need to go down both trees to get a REALLY good combination ability, gives you a lot of options without requiring a lot of backtracking.
Some later Final Fantasies will have that skill grid style, and it's a good setup. Some, like Remake, are pretty much 'a skill grid exists, but it's basically a straight line', and that's kind of lame.
DQ 11 gives each character 3 weapons and each weapon corresponds to one chunk of the skill tree (plus an extra character-specific tree: Guile or Luminary or whatever).
It's not perfect, because some builds are inevitably better than others, but the ability to loop around from Sword to Greatsword, or need to go down both trees to get a REALLY good combination ability, gives you a lot of options without requiring a lot of backtracking.
Some later Final Fantasies will have that skill grid style, and it's a good setup. Some, like Remake, are pretty much 'a skill grid exists, but it's basically a straight line', and that's kind of lame.
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Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Dragon Quest VIII has a similar system to Dragon Quest XI - each character has three weapons plus fist along with their personal ability set, and the game only gives you enough ability points to max three skill trees of the six for each character. Well, unless you want to grind for ultra-rare drops against the repeatable secret superboss, anyway. I don't know if that really counts though, since you keep the same team of four throughout so all the abilities are available at all times, and ultimately each character's skill tree is entirely unique to them - three people have swords, but of those twenty or so different sword abilities, only about three are accessible to more than one character.