Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
Barret, I'm not entirely certain that's something you pin the words "Don't Worry" in front of.
Meteor's aesthetic is absolutely fantastic, I can still remember seeing it constantly looming there in the sky on the overworld map well over a decade later. One of those elements of FFVII that's really stuck with me.
Good ol' competent Shinra, looking at this massive trenchcoated man as wide as six guys put together and going "yeah he's not sus, let him in to the private execution chambers".
Considering what happens towards the end of this sequence... yeah, it's absolutely just some stereotypical "older evil woman is jealous that main character girl is younger and hotter than she is".
Yup, pretty sure the farther you go into the game, the more there's various translation issues. I'm sure the thread + Retranslated content will help keep things in line though.
"Holding children's lives hostage and backstabbing friends is A-Okay, but Capital Punishment? THAT'S WHERE I DRAW THE LINE!"
-Cait Sith, who unlike Tifa clearly isn't from Texas
The internet has forever corrupted me, because the instant I read a textbox with just the word gas Jerma's voice just starts playing in my head.
At this point, I wouldn't be surprised if dunking on/gaslighting Yuffie is just a full party sport that everyone agreed to after she robbed the party. "Yeah alright, we can bring her back, but we should totally fuck with her constantly as revenge, it'll be great guys".
Also, clearly this is setup for how effective Yuffie's disguises will be in the bad future timeline where she leads Neo-Avalanche to take down Evil Oil Baron Barret.
Out of curiosity since I'm too lazy to check - does the game give you someone else here if you never recruited Yuffie, or do you just play the rest of the Barret/Cait Sith sequence with only two party members?
JUNON STRIKES AGAIN
MINIGAME HELL RETURNS
YOU WILL NEVER ESCAPE OMICRON
I'MA FIRAN MY LAZORNot to worry, though. Fish Weapon is coming to the rescue.
Memes aside, Sapphire Weapon really does look dope as all hell.
I do wonder if outside the context of being sprite-based games, any previous enemies or bosses in the earlier games were meant to be of a larger scale in this fashion. I mean, there's some enemies and bosses that take up their entire half of the battlefield screen. I could easily picture the Four Fiends and Chaos, or The Emperor of Pandemonium, or Dark Cloud all being rather massive. Kefka's God Tower final boss is absolutely massive, for sure.
...Granted, it also probably says something that every example I can think of is major catastrophe or endgame boss territory.
THE BATTLE TO END ALL BATTLES
WHO WILL WIN THIS UNARMED MELEE COMBAT: AN MIDDLE AGED OFFICE LADY, OR A TRAINED MARTIAL ARTIST?
The office lady, apparently. Great job Omi, can't believe you'd fail Shitty Junon Minigame Number 286
Considering his whole sacrifice scene previously, I think by this point it's been implied enough that Cait Sith is semi-autonomous? Not fully, but enough so that he could... I don't know, at least be directed to keep smashing things by the party if The Man In The Chair develops a sudden case of Bullet To The Back Of The Head.
Oh shit, even more evidence for my theory that Yoshi-P will some day finally go mad and slaughter the Square Enix Board of Directors to take over the company and lead it into a golden age when he gets tired of holding the entire thing up on his shoulders.
To be fair, the crew did just specify that Cid was a good part of the reason they turned... meaning they're probably most loyal to him, so throwing him overboard might just cause Mutiny Two: Electric Boogaloo.
Cloud's mono-focus on the mission and incredible ability to just compartmentalize and ignore all his problems does certainly help him project the idea that he's a good leader.
And now... the world is your oyster.
Or like, some of the world. They totally still managed to gate a bunch of random areas behind twenty seven hours of chocobo breeding minigames lmao
Omi has basically shoved him in the "not in the party" backlines all game, and he hasn't had any major character-specific story beats since his recruitment, so... yeah, hasn't really had any lines. Granted, Vincent would also be "Sir Not Appearing In This Game" if Omi hadn't been using him fairly often, even in this whole escape sequence he just kinda showed up at the end.
Nope, 200% real and that's probably why it's so memorable for people who played. It just come so far out of left field that you can't not remember and meme about it.
The slap fight is ridiculous, but I could buy that Tifa isn't 100% after the gas chamber experience. It's definitely one of the scenes I'm most excited to see redone in the Remake though.
Cid: "&^#^%! First the Airship, then the Rocket, and now, the Tiny Bronco.
Shinra took outer space away from me and now you want to take the sky away from me too!?"
I can see Cid being nice in this scenario actually. The crew are Shinra employees who are pissed at Shinra just like Cid used to be, and as per the conversation he had with Rufus back in Rocket Town he used to either own or pilot the Airship, and given his name probably designed and/or built the thing.
Cid: "&^#^%! First the Airship, then the Rocket, and now, the Tiny Bronco.
Shinra took outer space away from me and now you want to take the sky away from me too!?"
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Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
Well, several towns have upgraded their inventory, so doing a full world tour visiting every city might be a good starting point.
Assuming Rufus kept pace with Cloud in terms of levels, that Scarlet really is a match for Tifa in hand-to-hand, and that Hojo has some form of experimental beast he can summon out of pocket, if Barret was alone, maybe they could take him in a three-on-one fight. Or Rufus might have had a dozen soldiers 2nd class strike at once? As Omicron noted, they're decently strong.
I mean, my reading of the scene was that Cid, Yuffie, Red and Vincent managed to seize the Highwind and escape, but Barret was caring for unconscious TIfa and wasn't able to get her to the airship in time, so he opted not to fight because he didn't think he could both escape and keep her safe at the same time. He clearly didn't expect to be executed from how he was surprised when Rufus revealed that was the plan, so he might have gambled that "not even Shinra is gonna be so stupid as to harm us when there's the apocalypse we need to worry about" was a reasonable position to take.
But if you want to imagine the Shinra board managing to subdue Barret, there's at least some in-game justification for it.
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Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Doylistically, Yuffie and Vincent are optional, and so cannot be made crucial to main-sequence-plot scenes, leaving only the dog to be actually there in terms of writers intent and not being killed. Its not a side-quest you'd only see if you recruited them and it's not a "party members are interchangeable except for a couple lines of dialogue", so they need to be written out and kept away from the action.
This is probably one of the more obvious instances of such, since otherwise this would probably be Yuffie's time to shine as a ninja stealth-and-infiltration expert.
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Nothing brings people together like commiserating over a shitty boss.
Dybbukpossesed
Falling Somewhere
- Location
- California
I wish so hard that I could say that people can watch up to episode 27. Sadly I cannot however because the last minute and change is filled with spoilers. The opening has an amazing bit though if you're willing to risk it.
Edit: Also as far the whole "Cait Sith holding Marleen hostage plot" I think he might actually be helping by keeping her hostage? Like, Shinra knows she exists. What do you think Scarlett or Heidegger would do with a hostage if they had the chance? Mystery drone operator comes in and convinces Rufus that the best use would be as insurance incase they get found out so they can continue to keep tabs on the party.
Edit: Also as far the whole "Cait Sith holding Marleen hostage plot" I think he might actually be helping by keeping her hostage? Like, Shinra knows she exists. What do you think Scarlett or Heidegger would do with a hostage if they had the chance? Mystery drone operator comes in and convinces Rufus that the best use would be as insurance incase they get found out so they can continue to keep tabs on the party.
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As far as we know, being held hostage could be anything from "prison cell and an armed guard" to "surprise enrollment in the Shinra Employee Family Daycare Center with free meals and board (just don't ask where your dad is or why your teacher is some giant bald guy in a suit named Rude."
Belay this lmao I totally forgot she was on the phone call bit
Of course if they had actually successfully offed Barret and Tifa she would immediately become useless as a hostage, since all the remaining party members have never met nor give a shit about Marlene, but details Shinra doesn't think about those.
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ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
And now it's time.
For the funniest, dumbest minigame of the entire game.
For you see, this is the 90s, and two female characters are now engaging in a physical confrontation: A younger, prettier protagonist, and an arrogant, older, implicitly jealous villainess. What can this mean? Did someone just say 'a solo boss fight just like Cloud got against Rufus and Barret against Dyne'? You idiot. You buffoon. You absolute moron. That would be dignified.
No. It's time for a slapfight.
Now, 'Scarlet slaps Tifa, Tifa slaps her back harder' would be one thing. But I did mean it when I said it was a minigame. And a slapfight. It's both those things at once. Scarlet and Tifa just take turn slapping each other, and we have to press the slap button with the right timing in order to deliver more slaps than Scarlet does.
It's just so completely ridiculous. Anyway, due to trying to navigate the slapping minigame and timed screenshots at the same time, I unfortunately fail the minigame. Tifa exclaims "What!?" and dramatically falls to her knees, defeated by, and I can't emphasize this enough, slapping.
#BestAnimaBattlesOfAllTime
I realize the Shinra goons probably took away her arms and armor along with her Materia, but this girl once punched Jenova.
And you know the funny thing? This minigame is bugged anyway. The 'tifa win' dialogue is incorrectly flagged to play after six slaps when you can only get a maximum of five in, so if anything you losing was canon.
Man, this is too late for them to likely even get to in the remakes given the implied level of diversion, but I don't know what I'd want more; a lavish one-on-one boss fight where something happens to give Tifa an actual peer opponent with sauce for her to fight atop the Junon cannon, or if they intro'd a lavishly-produced minigame complete with its own UI and tutorial popup, only for Tifa to hit Scarlet so hard she becomes a Source engine ragdoll.
Are...
Are we sure Marlene was actually kidnapped.
Like is it possible Cait Sith was fully lying about that and was just like 'hey kid give you a chocolate bar if you help me prank your dad'.
Which is why every gamedev studio should break away from its publishers and become a worker co-op, following the crew of the Highwind's example. Every worker a member of the board!
Image is broken, though honestly that makes it funnier somehow.Which is why every gamedev studio should break away from its publishers and become a worker co-op, following the crew of the Highwind's example. Every worker a member of the board!
- Location
- Phoenix
Omnicron goes directly to a spot in the world that has enemies way too powerful for the party, gets his ass handed to him, and spends the entire next update trying to kill them as revenge for handing him his own ass.
Ending Shinra at this point comes across less like stopping a Super Power and more like sitting back and watching a fire go out
- Location
- PA
THANK YOU! Yes, all Cait needed might have been a recording of the girl and he could totally get Barrett dancing to his tune while the real deal is off enjoying the daycare Barrett left her in, totally unharmed.
- Location
- SV's Only Complete Persona Quest
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Funny thing about comparing FF7 with NGE is that Xenogears would come out and be even more like NGE... including in some more unfortunate ways like production issues.
SoA wouldn't be the only one, the first Grandia game took a similar approach in this era (the second was a little more FF-ish though)
SoA wouldn't be the only one, the first Grandia game took a similar approach in this era (the second was a little more FF-ish though)
- Location
- Sweden
So I actually have one half-baked theory that would maybe explain two of the weird aspects of the whole breakout, Cait Sith's decision to just leave Tifa and Tifa only escaping because a soldier happened to drop a key: That soldier didn't drop a key by accident, Cait Sith/his controller had gotten that soldier to work for them to help with the breakout. He "leaves" Tifa because her breaking out was already planned!
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
You say that, but it still had a silver-haired prettyboy heroic paragon-turned-villain antagonist, so even in its denial of FF7's influence it still kept some
MiskWisk
Hoot
- Location
- Somewhere devoid of wit
- Pronouns
- He
Yo dawg, we heard you liked the minigames last time, so here's some more!
Meteor's reveal is a great scene. Not as dramatic a shift as 6's destroyed world, but the way it just sits there as a sword of damocles manages to give it a lot of gravitas without needing to do much.
I mean, he is someone who's brain they can pick for a solution and he is probably the most informed man on the matter. Makes sense they'd want to keep him on side to science up a solution.
After all, if Meteor falls, they all die, and Hojo's included in that number. It's perfectly reasonable to expect him to work with Shinra on this.
It's never explained, but it's entirely possible the soldier did it deliberately. As the airship crew show, not even Shinra employees like their bosses.
Chekov is very happy he got to fire a gun that big.
Hello Sapphire WEAPON!
Goodbye Sapphire WEAPON!
But yeah, poor Sapphire is somewhat of a joke for just showing up to get their head blown off. It does serve to illustrate these beings aren't invincible though; just tremendously dangerous.
My guess would be the report that the Highwind got hijacked hasn't actually been spread about due to the chaos of the attack, if it's even been reported stolen at all.
After all, Cait Sith is organising this and the crew helped. It wouldn'tbe surprising that by the time anyone realised what was going on was when Scarlett saw it flying off with Tifa. And the communication lines are probably swamped at the moment.
My guess would be that Cait Sith in fact had a different, much better thought out plan.
Unfortunately, Cat's plan, DMs laugh, and throw a kaiju at Cait Sith.
So, one thing to keep in mind with Cid is that Rocket Town is probably the single worst place for him to be living for the sake of his mood. Meanwhile, the airship is his happy place, he is literally in the (second) best spot for giving him a good mood.
It's definitely a problem of him being introduced so late in the story though. Cid just doesn't have the moments to be characterised at this point. Unless you take him with you for the story, he's just kind of there. And why would you take him over characters you've actually grown attached to?
This is an example, I feel, of what the crewman was talking about. Cid is finally in a place where he's not miserable, and it shows in him actually taking a moment to try and reassure Tifa.
You know, I spent so long messing around in the endgame that it legitimately felt weird on subsequent playthroughs to not have Meteor hanging overhead.
EDIT:
Not a bad idea. Combine that with Cait adapt by the seat of his Moogle when WEAPON shows up and I feel it explains what went on pretty well.
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Guile
Having a really great time right now
The fire's going to burn the entire forest down before it goes, tho
dinomannitro6
all your gender is belong to us
- Location
- The Land Where The Sunflowers Bloom
Didn't Cait only reveal Marlene being Hostage to Cloud and whoever's on the date, and tell them to keep it secret? In a playthrough that had Aerith on the date it might be that the rest of the party doesn't actually know about that at this point.
dhasenan
always lowercase
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The appropriate weapons to use against kaiju are micro-oxygen and masers. Accept no substitutes.
Look at this immaculate 90s open office aesthetic, with the CRT monitors and everything. It's amusing how that wasn't meant to be retro at the time of the game's production, but now looks retro anyway.
Not just that, but it's specifically set up exactly like the stereotypical Japanese corporate office, with the Chief's desk against the window and facing his underlings. It's one of those little cultural shibboleths that gets included in a work of media without even noticing that your doing it. I think another good example would be, say, how the roof of Midwich Elementary in Silent Hill is very clearly modeled off the standard Japanese style school rooftop as opposed to the rest of the school which was modeled after the one in Kindergarten Cop. But since Kindergarten Cop doesn't have any school roof scenes, well, we'll just draw from our on experience, because it's not like American roof are much different, right?
If you squint, I think it looks more like M. Bison if anything.
Honestly, just more evidence that making Yuffie an optional character (or any character optional, frankly) is a silly choice, because if you had written her in from the start, it'd be a perfect ninja-y thing for her to be the guard dropping the key.
Not just saving any party members, but the two explicitly tied to AVALANCHE. I'll admit, I'm a big sucker for that sort of thing.
Honestly, considering all the heinous murders Shinra is responsible for up to and including Wutai and the Plate Drop, it might be less of deflection than he'd want them to believe.
I'm glad we're in agreement here, because as someone with a deep and abiding love of old scifi/horror/toku/kaiju/etc. films, this sequence is pure bliss. You mention Shin Godzilla and Anno specifically, which uses several old Toho scores in secveral parts of the film. But I feel like you could slot in any bombastic battle theme by Akira Ifukube and be true to the spirit of this thing.
Hey, It's '97 and all this render time doesn't grow on trees.
The Highwind reminds me so much of the airship Greta Garbo from the (incredible) OVA Giant Robo: The Day The Earth Stood Stiil, that I have to wonder if there's wasn't some amount of inspiration beyond just the sort of retrofuture industrial fantasy vibes.
BARRET: "What the *%$#& were you thinking with that plan, cat?!"
CAIT SIT: "You both lived right? Also, we needed a distraction, and I needed an airship."
CID: "You mean *MY* airship, right?"
CAIT: *silently calculating fuel costs, crew salaries, mantainence budgets, and insurance premiums for the Highwind*
CAIT: "...Yes. *Your* airship. Enjoy!"
Maybe it's just me, but I find it very amusing any time anyone ingame tries to call Cait Sith out on something, his answer is to just go "Firstly, it worked. Second, sorry can't talk too busy, in a rush to the world haha byyyeeeee."
Y'know, I had never thought about it until now...but how *big* is the Lifestream? How much space is it taking up where normally there would be the crust and mantle of an ordanary Earth-like planet? If you really want to overthink it, is there even a planet core at all, or is it just Mako all the way down?
I hope you like minigames.
FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
I wanted to say more, but was very cautious so as not to pre-emptively spoil the sequence Omi just did where shit goes full Eva
Idealistic for sure, but I'm not sure I'd call the characters simple? Skies' characters aren't really trying to subvert their archetypes, sure, but they've pretty much all got enough else hung off them to flesh themselves out. The main cast, at least. Arguably not Vyse as the primary conduit of the game's overwhelming optimism, maybe? Even then he has more nuanced moments than you'd expect. Even with the antagonists, despite that maybe half the Valuan Admirals are every bit the caricatures they seem to be at first, the other half get some decent depth added.
Huh, I played Grandia II and one of the noteworthy things about that game is how sour the protag is to start, and I just kind of assumed the first one was the same way.
It probably is a reaction to Sephiroth at least in part, but for the sake of Argument did FF VII even create Sephiroth's archetype, or are both Final Fantasy and Skies drawing on earlier anime/manga themes, like with the Eva bits?
Hot take maybe, but I think Ramirez is the more interesting of the two.
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