So I do what I do when I have no clue, I go talk to the Dancing Girl in Cornelia, who is there as an advice dispenser to give clues about where to go next.
I'm still a little curious about what sort of JRPG culture expectations there were back in 1987 where the signpost character role who informs the players of their next goal is assigned to the Dancing Girl.
Is she just mysteriously well-informed? Does she get her information from the people who watch her dance and chat her up? Is she a secret agent of the chancellor of Corneria, who is (if I recall) the one who points you to her? So many possibilities.
I am ashamed of having not noticed this until now. Rest assured that I absolutely endorse this product or service, as ridiculous as LPing this entire series is as a plan.
Also nice to see someone actually fight Marilith when the game expects you to for a change! See, veteran FF1 players generally just skip her and come back later, because her dungeon doesn't really have much in the way of useful treasure and it's full of instakill monsters. And since the game doesn't make anything you need to go past her contingent on actually fighting her...
I'm still a little curious about what sort of JRPG culture expectations there were back in 1987 where the signpost character role who informs the players of their next goal is assigned to the Dancing Girl.
Is she just mysteriously well-informed? Does she get her information from the people who watch her dance and chat her up? Is she a secret agent of the chancellor of Corneria, who is (if I recall) the one who points you to her? So many possibilities.
For the record, in the original version her dialogue never updates at any point and consists entirely of her introducing herself. Presumably they decided when they were making the first set of remakes that there ought to be more hints about what to do, though I'm not sure about the wisdom of having her hints end right as the game properly opens up.
I am ashamed of having not noticed this until now. Rest assured that I absolutely endorse this product or service, as ridiculous as LPing this entire series is as a plan.
Also nice to see someone actually fight Marilith when the game expects you to for a change! See, veteran FF1 players generally just skip her and come back later, because her dungeon doesn't really have much in the way of useful treasure and it's full of instakill monsters. And since the game doesn't make anything you need to go past her contingent on actually fighting her...
For the record, in the original version her dialogue never updates at any point and consists entirely of her introducing herself. Presumably they decided when they were making the first set of remakes that there ought to be more hints about what to do, though I'm not sure about the wisdom of having her hints end right as the game properly opens up.
The funniest prank the game played on me is that I found the Ice Brand, a sword that deals ice damage that is especially powerful against fire-type foes, after beating Marilith when it was completely useless to me.
Something I don't think you've commented on - and which I don't know if you will have noticed, due to having a 4-class party - is that the stat-ups on level up seem to be random weighted ala Fire Emblem; I've started a new game of FFI inspired by this LP and have 2 Warriors, and they do not have the same stats and do not gain the same stats on level up.
(It's very irritating and yet another part of archaic game design that's purely a timesink that I do not miss.)
Something I don't think you've commented on - and which I don't know if you will have noticed, due to having a 4-class party - is that the stat-ups on level up seem to be random weighted ala Fire Emblem; I've started a new game of FFI inspired by this LP and have 2 Warriors, and they do not have the same stats and do not gain the same stats on level up.
(It's very irritating and yet another part of archaic game design that's purely a timesink that I do not miss.)
I try not to pay much attention to the exact stat increases because it drives me nuts. For instance, it's incredibly difficult to tell which characters are actually any good at taking hits: Alisaie's HP progression has been absolutely awful, consistently trailing behind everyone else, but she can actually put on armor so she takes much less damage from attacks, whereas Alphinaud has a gigantic pool of health that goes away in a few hits because of how much damage he takes.
There was a whole stretch where the Red Mage just refused to level Intellect so her spells did no damage, but recently it's picked up, but it's trailing behind still?
It's just very hard for me to tell what is intended class design and what is the RNG levelling screwing me over.
I try not to pay much attention to the exact stat increases because it drives me nuts. For instance, it's incredibly difficult to tell which characters are actually any good at taking hits: Alisaie's HP progression has been absolutely awful, consistently trailing behind everyone else, but she can actually put on armor so she takes much less damage from attacks, whereas Alphinaud has a gigantic pool of health that goes away in a few hits because of how much damage he takes.
There was a whole stretch where the Red Mage just refused to level Intellect so her spells did no damage, but recently it's picked up, but it's trailing behind still?
It's just very hard for me to tell what is intended class design and what is the RNG levelling screwing me over.
There was a point in my life where I considered myself a Final Fantasy fan, because I enjoyed playing every game in that series. Eventually, I looked back and thought this wasn't right, because while I had played some of every mainline Final Fantasy game ever released, I had never finished a single one. Not one!
Is this better or worse than me who had really only ever beaten Final Fantasy VI, and played maybe about half of 8? Similar story though, all growing up it was "oh yeah, I love final fantasy!", but I was 'the nintendo house' of my friend group growing up, and the series has spent most of my life after that as Playstation exclusive. >.<
Your threads are usually a pretty good time, and FFVI is one of my all time favorite games so I'll be eager to see how it lands for you.
Well this is gonna be interesting for me. And fun! While I myself wouldn't really call myself a Final Fantasy fan...that's also more because I haven't really played too much of the series. Out of the ones I've played, I've only completed two games myself (IV and VI, the latter of which I can easily say I love), and the rest I didn't get that far in with (that being I, II, VII and VIII). So in terms of keeping up with this LP, I'm probably going to duck out of certain ones I feel like I don't wanna be spoiled on. Which probably will be a good while considering those would be mainly VII onwards (with the only exception being II), but I digress.
I did however see one of my favorite Youtubers play through FFI Pixel Remaster blind and I'll say that, as much as I enjoyed watching him go through it, I think it'll be one of the FF games I'm not gonna play for myself unless someone convinces me otherwise. I am looking forward to see the rest of this. Like I just said, for me FFI feels like the kind of game I'd rather see other people play than playing it myself. It's been fun so far.
It's also interesting to see you get a bit lost because of me comparing it to aforementioned Youtuber. He figured out a lot of it quickly simply because, as he himself said during his playthrough, "old RPGs tend to have ther 'plot' told through NPCs, so it's best to talk to everyone", so he did talk to (pretty much) everyone.
--never mind, someone already mentioned the prehistoric animal before I did. XD But yes, hyaenodons are a thing. Just remember they're not related to hyenas at all, even if the name means "hyena tooth".
Well, yeah, not surprised about that. That's why I mentioned it'll be mainly VII and onwards I'm gonna duck out and that'll be from a long time from now.
The only exception is FFII, but in the case of that, it's more because I want the silly satisfaction of finishing a game I got stuck on as a kid (i think it was something to do with getting the airship and having no idea where to find it), so what I actually don't wanna get spoiled on is the game itself, not really just the story.
There was a whole stretch where the Red Mage just refused to level Intellect so her spells did no damage, but recently it's picked up, but it's trailing behind still?
A reminder that if you like my work and want to support it, or want to ensure I am trapped in my commitment to seeing this whole thing through by financial incentives, you can donate to my ko-fi or Patreon!
Last time on Final Fantasy, we slew the Fiend of Fire, Marilith!
With no clear direction on where to go next and the whole party injured, we do the sensible thing and go back to Crescent Lake. This turns out to be the right move as, after replenishing supplies (I bought thirty Ethers, most important item in the game, I honestly should have shelled for a full 99), it turns out one of the townsfolk NPCs, who was previously sleeping, is now awake and telling me about his search for the "levistone."
Not one to leave a man to hang dry while the opportunity to steal his lifelong dream from him is right there, I follow his directions to an ice cave to the north which is the latest location he's tracked the "levistone" to.
This requires a lot of navigating rivers and I'm starting to realize the Pixel Remaster has a massive difference from the NES original: going from the level design alone there are many screens, both in dungeons and in the overworld, that require navigation. Plenty of dungeon corridors terminate in dead ends. Rivers run through impassable mountains and ford into streams and only one of them will lead you to your objective. If you go by the screen alone, this can actually get tricky, cause you to waste time, get lost, and bump into more random encounters than your resources can comfortably allow.
But the Pixel Remaster has a minimap and a full world map, which turns into a floor map when in dungeons. It's right there in the corner of the screen and it gives you an extended view of the environment. You can always pick the most efficient route to get to anywhere. So there's an entire level of gameplay that has just vanished in the name of quality-of-life improvements.
Is that… bad? I don't know.
I could just decide to turn off the minimap and not consult the map, and work my way through the game the old-fashioned way. But I don't want to. The game is fun as it is, but combat encounters aren't interesting enough for me to play in a way where the primary mechanical change is going to be how many I have to fight through as I figure out where to go. Would it be a dealbreaker if the choice was taken from me and the game just didn't include a map? Would it be more fun in the end? I don't think so. But it's something to think about.
Anyway, we make our way to the Ice Cave!
Chilly.
The ice cave offers two environmental challenges. One is that some stretches of the dungeon are covered in ice spikes, which function as Mount Gulg's lava, doing damage when you walk on them (I am guessing the game was too early to implement a "slide" mechanic like later ice dungeons in many games typically would). The other are cracks on the ground. If you step on a crack, you fall into a hole and land on the floor below. I manage not to find any crack until the final room with the levistone in it, which makes my disappointment immeasurable and my day ruined when I go for the loot and immediately fall back into the depths of the dungeon.
Interestingly, while I still haven't seen any "dark elves" in the narrative portion of the story and likely won't, these guys are using a downsized, palette-swapped model of Astos, their king.
Eventually I make my way back up and, as I reach for the levistone (which I forgot to take a screenshot of), I am instead confronted with this:
Spooky!
I don't know what this guy's about or why he's here, but my immediate thought on seeing him is, "uh, looks kind of like a beholder without the eyestalk." After all, so far, FF's bestiary has been lifted almost entirely from a D&D monster manual. Flying skulls are common as hell in fantasy, but I think it's the single huge eye that had me go 'Beholder.' I check that thing's wiki page, and, wouldn't you know it…
Incidentally a nice reminder that, while the character and enemy stripes remain the same only upscaled, the Pixel Remaster is a massive beautification of everything else in the game.
And it's "Beholder" in Japanese too; they changed the model and name in English releases for copyright reasons, which I find very amusing.
The Evil Eye has a bevvy of spells which include several instant kill ones. Unfortunately it has the HP of a standard enemy, not a dungeon boss, which means it goes down in a single hit from Yda without requiring any buffs.
Notice the cracks in the floor. Try not to step on them.
Now that I have the levistone, I can…
I can…
Okay so there are no hints that I can find in-game. The guy who was looking for the levistone has no new dialogue, the twelve sages don't either, and I'm not spending half an hour just visiting every town in the game to talk to random NPCs until someone gives me a hint.
Wiki time!
Okay I have to go into the desert south of Crescent Lake. I did find it odd that there was this patch of desert fully sealed in a circle of mountains with one entrance, but I went to explore it earlier and it was just normal desert; I would have no reason to go back there. Is it possible I missed an environmental hint or an NPC talking about some ancient legend related to that desert? Can't think of any. Maybe I was supposed to just wander around the map until I accidentally stumbled onto it, as some of the busywork stuff games like this ask you to do sometimes.
But thanks to the magic of the Internet, I head down there immediately, and as soon as I set foot inside the desert area, a cutscene plays out…
The party unfolds and raises the levistone…
The earth rumbles…
And the airship emerges!
Holy shit, I got the airship.
Oh wow that slanted view of the map so you can see that you're "up in the air" certainly is something. And the airship is fast. The whole world just zooms by underneath us as I start moving. But where do we go?
Anywhere we want, baby.
Spooky desert tower.
Mysterious new forest town.
Lost ancient castle in the middle of a marsh.
The sky is, quite literally, the limit.
Okay technically the ground is. I'll explain.
The feeling of freedom on obtaining the airship is kind of exhilarating. We can fly over any place we want. There are no random encounters in the sky; within minutes I can cover the entirety of the map, see every town, every landscape feature, every overworld dungeon. Nothing's hidden anymore.
However, emphasis on "fly over." I cannot actually land on anything that isn't grasslands (yes, even the desert tile we first found the airship in). This means that the need to fight your way through the overworld isn't gone entirely - you still have to find a patch of grassland and make your way to your destination on foot. But this means we can now access the norther hemisphere - those two continents up north don't have any docks, which means our ship couldn't get us there before. Kind of a lame ship if you ask me.
There are two towns in the northern continents, and the first one I head to proves… Intriguingly useless.
This antique-looking place full of people in robes and headbands seems interesting… Only problem is I don't speak their language. Every character I bump into in this city repeats the same line of meaningless syllables. From this repetition and the greyish, antique aspect of the town, my initial assumption is that I stumbled on some cursed forgotten city and its mad inhabitants, but a line of dialogue from another NPC later on refers to a city whose language cannot be deciphered without a Rosetta Stone, so I guess they're just staunch isolationists.
In a hilarious bit of ludonarrative dissonance, this town also has a magic shop tucked away far from the main body of the town, its vendors are perfectly functional and speak English, but they have no lines of dialogue other than selling you shit.
So, this having been a dud, it's time to head for the second town.
I like the random freestanding Greek columns as decoration.
Yeah, that line.
Onrac is close to the sea, and legend has it that the Shrine of Water used to be right there next to it, until it was swallowed by the sea - likely as a result of the Fiend of Water's influence. It is rumored that the sunken shrine is now populated by mermaids, and, well…
Let's just say there are some subtle hints that the town's female population is at least partly made up of Ariels who decided to try out life on the human side.
Going to the town docks reveals a barrel that someone has converted into a submersible, but the NPC refuses to allow me to use it on account of how it doesn't have an oxygen tank and so when she tried to use it, she nearly asphyxiated. I obviously need to find a way to fix that.
Next to her is an NPC who tells me he saw something shiny fall from the sky behind a nearby waterfall. A quick zip with the airship does reveal a waterfall in the overworld nearby. I put two and two together and conclude I will find an oxygen convertor of some kind in the waterfall dungeon, then use the submersible to dive to the Sunken Shrine and slay the Fiend of Water. Easy as Sunday mornin'.
However, before doing any of that, I bump into a rather interesting-looking NPC…
An actual fucking dragon, just hanging about town.
Dragon people? Citadel of trials? Recognition of the Dragon King?
Fuck me baby, you know there's no way I don't go for it.
The Citadel of Trials can only be one of the two overworld locations left: the spooky desert tower or the mean-looking castle, and my money's on the castle.
This place.
Inside, we find yet another old dude with a robe and a hat, who tells us…
Baby, I started a thread promising to play through every single Final Fantasy game without even having finished the first. "Courage" doesn't even begin to describe it.
The old dude tells me to sit on the throne, and vanishes. I explore the floor, find a corner room with a throne on it, and as soon as I interact with it, light surrounds me, and…
Oh I get it, the trials thing was a scam and now I'm just gonna be locked in his serial killer basement.
But no, the door opens, and the Citadel of Trials' gimmick quickly becomes clear:
These glowy items are teleporters. Each room has at least two. One of them sends you to the room ahead, the other sends you back. There is one correct path forward, and the only way to figure it out is trial and error. As usual, your only limitations are your patience and how many random encounters you can sustain with your resources.
Enemies of the Citadel include gorgons and clay golems, and the loot include… A staff I can use for infinite healing?!?
"Four enemies who can petrify me" is one of the few encounters that could potentially cause me a run loss, so I don't intend to stick around more than I have to.
Those are some… interesting… designs.
This item is very strange, in that its special ability is in fact unusable while equipped; it's activated from your inventory. I have only used it in battle so far - it only struck me just now that I might actually have obtained infinite out-of-battle healing?
I get relatively lucky finding my way through the teleporter maze, and quickly find the final room, with the special relic that will prove my courage to the Dragon King…
I beg your pardon.
Interacting with the spooky robed figured protecting the throne triggers the boss fight against two dragon zombies. Like any encounter in which I can convert Alphinaud to anti-undead DPS, it's over pretty quickly.
With the rat's tail (am I missing a cultural reference from 80s Japan?), I head to a string of island between the two northern continents that has a number of suspicious holes in them. Interacting with each hole takes me into a dragon's lair.
They're a friendly bunch.
And in the very last of these lairs…
Check out those new sprites!
Bahamut, the Dragon King, receives the rat's tail and proceeds to use his awesome power to transform my entire party into upgraded versions of their base classes.
Yda is now a Master. Alisaie is a Red Wizard. Alphinaud is a White Wizard. Papalymo is a Black Wizard.
Whether these new upgrades translate to raw stat boosts is unclear. Yda is definitely hitting harder, and Alisaie can now equip better stuff, but a lot of the underlying mechanics are obscured if you don't use a wiki, and even if you do it's hard to parse what applies to Pixel Remaster as opposed to Dawn of Souls or NES classic. More importantly, however, I can finally buy every spell in the game. Alisaie, Alphinaud and Papalymo's range of spells have expanded to cover the entire library between the three of them, and I use the airship to go on a shopping spree and fill out their spellbooks, including with the Exit spell so I never have to deal with a dungeon run-back ever again.
There is, however, one problem with these new classes…
The sprites are wrong. Like, it's not just me, right? The game has so far had all the character sprites on a cute, kinda chibi-ish design, kinda squat and compressed and now they've been… stretched out? I can't actually tell if the sprites are taller than they were before, but they definitely feel like the characters grew three feet taller in their transformation, and that doesn't mesh with the visual style of the game. Look at Yda! She's triangular now! I appreciate Alphinaud's luscious cascade of red hair, but why did they have to take Papalymo's hat.
I'm not a fan.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHc3GV9V9b4 I incidentally recommend these videos by New Frame Plus on the animation of Final Fantasy games. Fingers crossed, I'll be done with the series before he is.
Also, it's interesting to me that - when so many other franchise-defining aspects have yet to show up - Bahamut is already there, in the first game, but… isn't a boss (or a summon, as those don't exist yet). In fact, he's an ally providing you with the biggest boon you can receive in the game. So he's still a huge deal! I find that interesting.
Anyroad, after my purchasing spree is over, what better way to test out my new strength than to go explore the waterfall?
The waterfall is unique, and conspicuous enough that you'd probably guess it's a location without hints.
The Waterfall Cavern proves the easiest dungeon so far. This is because it's much smaller (only one floor), I just got a huge power upgrade, and the "gimmick" to the extent that there is one, is that the dungeon is radial with many dead ends… But one look at the map lets you beeline for the correct room.
This is a pretty spooky encounter: the Cockatrices can petrify, the Pyrolisks can cause instant death, and the Mummies can put characters to sleep with their basic attacks. Unfortunately, my new Black Wizard can cast Flare, the ultimate damage spell in the game, wiping out the entire encounter in one move.
At the end of the dungeon, I bump into a friendly robot of mysterious origin, who gifts me…
Buh?
Okay so I completely misunderstood the inference of the dialogue lines about needing some source of oxygen for the bathysphere and the shiny thing falling from the sky. They're unrelated. This turns out to have been my hint for the path to the Air Shrine. Our robot friend here must have been the "shiny thing falling from the sky," cast down from the air shrine, which I assume is a flying city, hence needing the warp cube (despite having the airship?)
So I'm left with a mystery item, not sure how to find the oxygen-supplying item I need, and a cue as to how to get to the Fiend of Air. We'll see how I go about things next time around!
Nope! If you ask around in the Pixel Remaster you get the same explanation you do in the recent Stranger of Paradise DLC - the token of courage can appear to be anything in any world. Bahamut can simply see it for what it really is and reward you accordingly. This also means no cheating by just giving him a literal rat's tail.
Is it too early for it to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the 'kill these rats in my basement' thing? I'm not sure when that came into being but if it was around and known in the Japanese D&D community at the time I can absolutely see a game this D&D inspired having that sort of reference in it.
Let's just say there are some subtle hints that the town's female population is at least partly made up of Ariels who decided to try out life on the human side.
While I know it's not intended to be a secret or any sort of revelation, I have to say these dialogue boxes give me big "how do you do, fellow landwalkers" vibes.
Was the dragon telling you to come check out this plot hook new? I remember just randomly wandering in to Bahamut's castle then actively looking for the castle of ordeals.
I know there's plenty of people who think of JRPG overworlds as some sort of obsolete nonsense to be eliminated, but I gotta say there's not a whole lot that's as satisfying as getting your airship and suddenly being able to go anywhere. That's something you just can't replicate with the modern "just make it a menu" style.
There's a reason people used to call TSR "They Sue Regularly."
The Evil Eye's interesting for another reason, though, which is that it's XP value (at least in the NES version) is high enough that a solo character can level up in a reasonable number of fights with it at any point in the level curve. Since these mid-boss fights are handled as spiked squares that don't turn off after you win and it can't really do anything threatening outside of its instakills, that fight ends up being the best grinding spot for solo runs once you have instakill protection.
This item is very strange, in that its special ability is in fact unusable while equipped; it's activated from your inventory. I have only used it in battle so far - it only struck me just now that I might actually have obtained infinite out-of-battle healing?
If they haven't changed anything it will only be usable in battle. Which doesn't exactly make it worse at all, mind you—party-wide healing that isn't tied to MP is nothing to sneeze at. Especially since they switched back to the Vancian MP system so you don't eventually have enough MP to cast your healing spells for days.
Interestingly, in the NES version, they don't—the actual benefit is all the new equipment and spells your promoted class can use. Most of the time this doesn't matter since you want that new stuff, but to go back to solo runs for a bit there are some where the benefit is up in the air (namely Black and White Mages, whose best spells are already available—hell White Mages have had their most solo-relevant spell since Coneria) and there is absolutely no benefit to promoting a solo Black Belt. I'm pretty sure they gave the promoted classes actually better stat growth in the remakes, though.
Is it too early for it to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the 'kill these rats in my basement' thing? I'm not sure when that came into being but if it was around and known in the Japanese D&D community at the time I can absolutely see a game this D&D inspired having that sort of reference in it.
In all my years playing FF games I've never seen an explanation for why a rat tail of all things, so I'm going to go ahead and adopt this headcanon because the idea of the dragon king sending someone off through a whole-ass labyrinth full of monsters as the equivalent of a level 1 quest is funny as hell.
Was the dragon telling you to come check out this plot hook new? I remember just randomly wandering in to Bahamut's castle then actively looking for the castle of ordeals.
He's there in the PS1 FF Origins version, but it's easy to end up talking to Bahamut first if (like me) you go check out all the random caves on the little islands once you get the airship before moving on to other towns.
Also worth noting is that Bahamut as a divine dragon is yet another Dungeons and Dragons importation. While bahamut as the name of a cosmic beast goes back to medieval Arabian mythology, Bahamut in actual myth was a giant fish whose cosmic role was to carry the ox who carried the angel who carried the world, and it was Dungeons and Dragons that invented Bahamut as lawful draconic deity presiding over heroes and the forces of good rather than just a piscine mount for a mount.
You know all those enemies you've been running into that do scary status ailments with their attacks? In the NES version there's no way to defend against that because "status ailment tied to a regular attack" is a different flag from "status ailment tied to a spell or special ability" and ailment protection isn't properly hooked up to the former.
Just one of the silly bugs stemming from this being the biggest game the programmer had ever made and him not knowing anything about RPGs before this project.
Is it too early for it to be a tongue-in-cheek reference to the 'kill these rats in my basement' thing? I'm not sure when that came into being but if it was around and known in the Japanese D&D community at the time I can absolutely see a game this D&D inspired having that sort of reference in it.
I don't know if that's it, but it does remind me that it's actually pretty cool that the first "quest" you get in this game is "go fight the strongest knight in the whole kingdom to save the princess," and then immediately segues into saving the world, with no rat-hunting busywork at low level.
Interestingly, in the NES version, they don't—the actual benefit is all the new equipment and spells your promoted class can use. Most of the time this doesn't matter since you want that new stuff, but to go back to solo runs for a bit there are some where the benefit is up in the air (namely Black and White Mages, whose best spells are already available—hell White Mages have had their most solo-relevant spell since Coneria) and there is absolutely no benefit to promoting a solo Black Belt. I'm pretty sure they gave the promoted classes actually better stat growth in the remakes, though.
I believe that the formula the game uses to calculate the Monk's unarmed damage and unarmored defense changes to a better one as Master; at the very least Yda's damage numbers have gotten bigger.
You know all those enemies you've been running into that do scary status ailments with their attacks? In the NES version there's no way to defend against that because "status ailment tied to a regular attack" is a different flag from "status ailment tied to a spell or special ability" and ailment protection isn't properly hooked up to the former.
Just one of the silly bugs stemming from this being the biggest game the programmer had ever made and him not knowing anything about RPGs before this project.
