One Ninja for throwing is pretty worth it, but releveling casters at the actual end of the game isn't worth it to me.
The DS version gave you the two jobs earlier and I missed that changed.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
One Ninja for throwing is pretty worth it, but releveling casters at the actual end of the game isn't worth it to me.
The DS version gave you the two jobs earlier and I missed that changed.
Vocalist
Verdant Maiden in Violet
- Location
- By a Cedar Tree
Maximum chuuni...not even the Ninja exceeds this, really.
- Location
- Not your place of residence
I guess he decided if you were strong enough to beat him, you were strong enough to beat the final boss without his help. Fun fact, Bahamut in that first encounter actually has more health than said final boss.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I have a few polite questions to ask to whoever decided to put in the Green Dragon as a random encounter you can roll several times in a row and would like to enquire as to their name and address.
You got multiple dragons WITHOUT grinding for them? I don't know if that's lucky or cursed.
What, only the Green Dragon so far?
Listen, if you don't have that then you couldn't get the actual best gear in the entire game.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
The Joker would call the endgame encounter tables normal.
ExquisiteTopHat
Lined with 🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️🏳️⚧️
- Location
- Planet Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her/It/Its
Is the Joker a friend of Gary Gygax?
Final Fantasy III, Part 14, Part A
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
For the time being, we'll be going with a Ninja/Sage/Sage/Ninja setup. Since Mimi's Dragoon is lv 90 anyway, I can swap to it anytime I want anyway.
Time to explore the Crystal Tower.
'Earlier boss shows up as a random encounter' is a Final Fantasy classic, but let me tell you, these guys still hurt, and three of them at once is nothing to sneeze at. Their basic attack can inflict Poison or Blind, for which I only have limited status healing items, and this game made the decision to make Esuna a high-level spell of which I have few casts.
…okay, it's incredibly funny that there's a color swap of Goldor that is platinum instead of gold and it's called 'Platinel.' It's literally just 'I'm you but better.' I wonder if he has the same personality, and if his existence implies Goldor wasn't some dude with an obsession for shinies but an actual monster…
…or would he be?
Shinobi, nights in platinum armor, another Za Warudo reskin, a more powerful Djinn…
…and this.
Hmmm. The Chaos Shrine was full of monsters because of the influence of Chaos and the Four Fiends. Pandaemonium was full of demons because it was, literally, hell. What's Syrcus Tower home to? Some monsters, yes. But also, just… people. Or at least people-shaped things. Knights in armor, ninjas, entities defined by their 'job' in the gameplay sense. A 'Dark General' later on. That djinn that just looks like a big human. And Unei's clones and Doga's clones.
So…
In FFXIV, the backstory of the Crystal Tower relies heavily on the conceit that the civilization of Ancient Allag developed advanced cloning technology, and started cloning not just themselves, but ancient historical figures. So maybe I'm back-projecting here, but I kind of want to say that they didn't just come up with it for FFXIV based on nothing.
Someone filled the Crystal Tower with monsters. And there are essentially only two possible candidate for that job: the Ancients, who constructed it as a means of harnessing the power of light and nearly destroyed the world, and Xande himself, who claimed it to speedrun the apocalypse.
And we know that Doga and Unei are not Ancients.
So…
Xande used his magic and/or the tower's technology to fill it with clones. Some of demonic monsters, many simply of… humans. Maybe of Ancients, maybe of the people of his time. The ninjas were described as having long disappeared by the Dark Knight, but this tower is full of them - because Xande brought them back from the dead.
And then he made clones of his only friends, who were now his bitter enemies.
I mean. Doga and Unei are the students of Noah, great and powerful wizards, it makes perfect strategic sense, if you have the ability to do so, to create clones who are presumably modified in some way to be loyal to you.
But also, poisoned by spite, seeking to destroy the world, having slammed the door on his friends, Noah's two other disciples, Xande found his way into Syrcus Tower and locked the door behind him so that none may follow, and there in the crystal halls he dwelled in hate and anger against the world and his dead mentor and old friends, and he consorted with the darkness to scheme against the very nature of existence, and sink the world in a flood of darkness…
…and at some point, this godlike exile from the world, this world-slaying prisoner, this man without peer or company, made clones of his old, old friends, who agreed with him and would stay by his side.
It's genuinely kind of sad.
It's hard to show with screenshots alone, but the Crystal Tower can only be navigated by using hidden cracked wall shortcuts, which are clearly legible on the map but would be a massive pain for navigation without one.
'Suddenly the floor is a dark void' is starting to be a well-trod trope for conveying that you've reached the higher, spookier tiers of a dungeon.
So. This thing.
Crystal Tower enemies, in general, don't fuck around. It's not that they're that dangerous, it's, hm…
Okay so basically in both FF1 and FF2 I was largely able to autobattle through final dungeons, which I thought was nice, because random encounters are kind of boring. In Pandaemonium's case that involved a lot of Toad castings rather than just Attack, but same idea.
I can't do that in Crystal Tower. Every encounter requires a direct hand in each action choice. They're not complicated - I don't need complex, customized plans for each enemy, it's mostly just keeping on my toes in case a Ninja needs to use a Phoenix Down on someone and which exact spell the Sages need to use - but autobattling is a way to a quick death. Characters do die to random mobs, because they hit hard, take more than one attack to kill, and are fast enough to act before all my characters have attacked. It's fairly frequent for a battle to take two full turns, meaning the enemies get two to four goes at my characters. Bahamut is a powerful sweeper, but I have few lv 8 spell slots and I need to keep some for Arise when a character dies, so using him is a rarity. The Ninjas hit really hard, but it's down to chance whether they one- or two-hit enemies, which makes a significant difference in damage received, which in turns means a cost in healing spells.
I don't wipe. There are many individual character deaths, but with a steady eye on the HP bars and a good reserve of Phoenix Down, I manage to make it through just fine.
This guy, though.
This Green Fucking Dragon.
He's essentially a boss in disguise. He's got 35,000 HP (most of my attacks deal between 1k and 3k damage), and his attacks are powerful enough to put any given character to death's door, so my DPS drops as I have to ensure steady healing. Even so…
Victory comes in-between raising actions, leaving a dead Tsugumi as testimony to the beast's power.
A bracing fight, but one I still won in the end. Now-
OH FUCK YOU
THERE'S A SECOND ONE
It's fine. I'm running out of high-level spell slots but I still have some Elixirs, and I use them mid-battle to refill Rushanaq and Tsugumi's tanks and take it down. Also, each green dragon drops an Elixir, so it kind of pays for itself.
Then, finally, we're seeing the end of the tunnel.
Dragon ahead, no problem, I've been eating these up by the truckful.
…that's a lot of dragons, and none of them are attacking me.
This is such a weird trap conceit. The dragons do a stirring animation, but they don't move yet, so I guess they need time to wake up? Or animate, if they're artificial constructs? Now to be clear putting a magical paralyzing mirror in a room full of hungry dragons is an effective trap, it's just such a bizarre idea. It almost feels like a JoJo plot, honestly.
Including how jarringly grim it is - the idea of a bunch of kids being eaten alive by dragons while utterly helpless to even move is like… Yeesh. We could have gone for something a little more PG.
And the resolution to it is going to be nearly as baffling.
This is so funny. Like, the Warriors of Light are paralyzed, right? They can't really 'persevere' until Doga is back in the sense that they can't do anything. They're basically just stuck waiting to find out which happens first, the wyrms fully awakening and eating them alive, or Doga coming back with 'five hearts of light.' And with the limited 16-bit aesthetic, it's not clear what's happening and at what speed - my read is that the five wyrms are statues that are slowly coming to life? Doga just came in, went 'damn that's fucked bro' and then peaced out.
Anyway, that doesn't really matter, because what happens is really cool:
Oh yeah baby. We are doing the 'reach out to all the friends we made along the way so they can lend us their ki,' I love this, this is literally a flawless bit, give it to me
But of course, some of the obvious choices run into the tragedy of the losses we've felt - Doga couldn't reach out to Aria, for instance, or to Desch-
EXCUSE ME?!
OH MY GOD HE'S LITERALLY JUST FINE
THERE IS NO EXPLANATION, HE LOCKED HIMSELF INTO A BURNING FURNACE AND HE JUST SAID 'SAY NO TO DEATH, FIRE CAN'T BURN YOU WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT'
My man is just constructed in an alternative fashion
This is amazing, they're just hype to jump into a deadly curse that puts the fate of the world at stake, these old geezers are so wholesome. I love them.
I love that stuff. It's so nice when the game's narrative keeps track of your journey and remembers what you've done at the end - I had all but forgotten Princess Sara (I'm a terrible friend). And now that the path has been cleared, it's time to confront the man behind every disaster we've been thwarting this whole time, and find out what he's got to say for himself.
Cut for length.
Time to explore the Crystal Tower.
'Earlier boss shows up as a random encounter' is a Final Fantasy classic, but let me tell you, these guys still hurt, and three of them at once is nothing to sneeze at. Their basic attack can inflict Poison or Blind, for which I only have limited status healing items, and this game made the decision to make Esuna a high-level spell of which I have few casts.
…okay, it's incredibly funny that there's a color swap of Goldor that is platinum instead of gold and it's called 'Platinel.' It's literally just 'I'm you but better.' I wonder if he has the same personality, and if his existence implies Goldor wasn't some dude with an obsession for shinies but an actual monster…
…or would he be?
Shinobi, nights in platinum armor, another Za Warudo reskin, a more powerful Djinn…
…and this.
Hmmm. The Chaos Shrine was full of monsters because of the influence of Chaos and the Four Fiends. Pandaemonium was full of demons because it was, literally, hell. What's Syrcus Tower home to? Some monsters, yes. But also, just… people. Or at least people-shaped things. Knights in armor, ninjas, entities defined by their 'job' in the gameplay sense. A 'Dark General' later on. That djinn that just looks like a big human. And Unei's clones and Doga's clones.
So…
In FFXIV, the backstory of the Crystal Tower relies heavily on the conceit that the civilization of Ancient Allag developed advanced cloning technology, and started cloning not just themselves, but ancient historical figures. So maybe I'm back-projecting here, but I kind of want to say that they didn't just come up with it for FFXIV based on nothing.
Someone filled the Crystal Tower with monsters. And there are essentially only two possible candidate for that job: the Ancients, who constructed it as a means of harnessing the power of light and nearly destroyed the world, and Xande himself, who claimed it to speedrun the apocalypse.
And we know that Doga and Unei are not Ancients.
So…
Xande used his magic and/or the tower's technology to fill it with clones. Some of demonic monsters, many simply of… humans. Maybe of Ancients, maybe of the people of his time. The ninjas were described as having long disappeared by the Dark Knight, but this tower is full of them - because Xande brought them back from the dead.
And then he made clones of his only friends, who were now his bitter enemies.
I mean. Doga and Unei are the students of Noah, great and powerful wizards, it makes perfect strategic sense, if you have the ability to do so, to create clones who are presumably modified in some way to be loyal to you.
But also, poisoned by spite, seeking to destroy the world, having slammed the door on his friends, Noah's two other disciples, Xande found his way into Syrcus Tower and locked the door behind him so that none may follow, and there in the crystal halls he dwelled in hate and anger against the world and his dead mentor and old friends, and he consorted with the darkness to scheme against the very nature of existence, and sink the world in a flood of darkness…
…and at some point, this godlike exile from the world, this world-slaying prisoner, this man without peer or company, made clones of his old, old friends, who agreed with him and would stay by his side.
It's genuinely kind of sad.
It's hard to show with screenshots alone, but the Crystal Tower can only be navigated by using hidden cracked wall shortcuts, which are clearly legible on the map but would be a massive pain for navigation without one.
'Suddenly the floor is a dark void' is starting to be a well-trod trope for conveying that you've reached the higher, spookier tiers of a dungeon.
So. This thing.
Crystal Tower enemies, in general, don't fuck around. It's not that they're that dangerous, it's, hm…
Okay so basically in both FF1 and FF2 I was largely able to autobattle through final dungeons, which I thought was nice, because random encounters are kind of boring. In Pandaemonium's case that involved a lot of Toad castings rather than just Attack, but same idea.
I can't do that in Crystal Tower. Every encounter requires a direct hand in each action choice. They're not complicated - I don't need complex, customized plans for each enemy, it's mostly just keeping on my toes in case a Ninja needs to use a Phoenix Down on someone and which exact spell the Sages need to use - but autobattling is a way to a quick death. Characters do die to random mobs, because they hit hard, take more than one attack to kill, and are fast enough to act before all my characters have attacked. It's fairly frequent for a battle to take two full turns, meaning the enemies get two to four goes at my characters. Bahamut is a powerful sweeper, but I have few lv 8 spell slots and I need to keep some for Arise when a character dies, so using him is a rarity. The Ninjas hit really hard, but it's down to chance whether they one- or two-hit enemies, which makes a significant difference in damage received, which in turns means a cost in healing spells.
I don't wipe. There are many individual character deaths, but with a steady eye on the HP bars and a good reserve of Phoenix Down, I manage to make it through just fine.
This guy, though.
This Green Fucking Dragon.
He's essentially a boss in disguise. He's got 35,000 HP (most of my attacks deal between 1k and 3k damage), and his attacks are powerful enough to put any given character to death's door, so my DPS drops as I have to ensure steady healing. Even so…
Victory comes in-between raising actions, leaving a dead Tsugumi as testimony to the beast's power.
A bracing fight, but one I still won in the end. Now-
OH FUCK YOU
THERE'S A SECOND ONE
It's fine. I'm running out of high-level spell slots but I still have some Elixirs, and I use them mid-battle to refill Rushanaq and Tsugumi's tanks and take it down. Also, each green dragon drops an Elixir, so it kind of pays for itself.
Then, finally, we're seeing the end of the tunnel.
Dragon ahead, no problem, I've been eating these up by the truckful.
…that's a lot of dragons, and none of them are attacking me.
This is such a weird trap conceit. The dragons do a stirring animation, but they don't move yet, so I guess they need time to wake up? Or animate, if they're artificial constructs? Now to be clear putting a magical paralyzing mirror in a room full of hungry dragons is an effective trap, it's just such a bizarre idea. It almost feels like a JoJo plot, honestly.
Including how jarringly grim it is - the idea of a bunch of kids being eaten alive by dragons while utterly helpless to even move is like… Yeesh. We could have gone for something a little more PG.
And the resolution to it is going to be nearly as baffling.
This is so funny. Like, the Warriors of Light are paralyzed, right? They can't really 'persevere' until Doga is back in the sense that they can't do anything. They're basically just stuck waiting to find out which happens first, the wyrms fully awakening and eating them alive, or Doga coming back with 'five hearts of light.' And with the limited 16-bit aesthetic, it's not clear what's happening and at what speed - my read is that the five wyrms are statues that are slowly coming to life? Doga just came in, went 'damn that's fucked bro' and then peaced out.
Anyway, that doesn't really matter, because what happens is really cool:
Oh yeah baby. We are doing the 'reach out to all the friends we made along the way so they can lend us their ki,' I love this, this is literally a flawless bit, give it to me
But of course, some of the obvious choices run into the tragedy of the losses we've felt - Doga couldn't reach out to Aria, for instance, or to Desch-
EXCUSE ME?!
OH MY GOD HE'S LITERALLY JUST FINE
THERE IS NO EXPLANATION, HE LOCKED HIMSELF INTO A BURNING FURNACE AND HE JUST SAID 'SAY NO TO DEATH, FIRE CAN'T BURN YOU WITHOUT YOUR CONSENT'
My man is just constructed in an alternative fashion
This is amazing, they're just hype to jump into a deadly curse that puts the fate of the world at stake, these old geezers are so wholesome. I love them.
I love that stuff. It's so nice when the game's narrative keeps track of your journey and remembers what you've done at the end - I had all but forgotten Princess Sara (I'm a terrible friend). And now that the path has been cleared, it's time to confront the man behind every disaster we've been thwarting this whole time, and find out what he's got to say for himself.
Cut for length.
Final Fantasy III, Part 14, Part B
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Xande is a powerful wizard, wielding Quake, Flare, Meteor, inflicting devastating damage to my party that I am only barely able to keep on top of.
This is the result of a single Quake. It's a good thing Rushanaq and Tsugumi have high magic resistance.
In contrast, this is what one multi-casting of Curaja can regen - but thanks to Rush-K and Tsugumi, I can double up on the healing to some extent.
Any Meteor cast threatens a team wipe if I don't keep everyone healed up at all times - but as you can see here, I manage to stay on the ball enough that I can even afford a few turns in which everyone is attacking.
I use Haste once or twice, but frankly I'm not sold on buffs in this game. Bard seems fine, but actual buff spells feel weaksauce. Haste seems to run out too quickly while lacking enough effect to justify its lv 6 casting, Temper/Saber/Berserk don't exist in this game, Protect seems to suck and cannot be multicast… All in all, it feels better to just cast Bahamut/Flare/Holy as many times as spell slots will allow other using buffs, unless they don't take up a caster's turn, like Bacchus's Cider, a consumable that casts Haste.
All in all, it's an endurance battle, coming at the tail end of a long dungeon filled with battles that are themselves endurance matches. Victory is more about efficient use of resources and luck than strategizing as such. As long as you do things right, you'll be fine - but you can't afford one misstep. Ultimately, though, everyone is decked in high-end gear, using the most powerful jobs in the game, and the most powerful spells, and we make it through fine.
Victory, with no character down. The entire thing is a razor's edge exercise the whole time, though; as you can see, if on that turn Xande had cast Meteor before Tsugumi got to the Curaga, it might have been a wipe.
Not sure why there is so much variance between everybody's job levels, though.
So we're definitely in the 'Xande has gone completely nihilistic, will take the world down with him, and doesn't care about his own death,' Owlman-style. Nice. I like a man with commitment.
Okay, wait, when he said 'darkness has already gathered,' I didn't think he meant, like, right here and now-
M-mommy???
Okay, I'm not sure why the Cloud of Darkness is taking the form of a giant naked woman, not that I am necessarily complaining, but this is a really bad time - okay I can burn through my last Elixirs, top everyone up, finish this-
Oh.
OH.
Well.
FF1 and FF2 both had shades of it, but I would say it's with this here that we have the first fully-materialized example of a Final Fantasy game having you dispose of its main, 'face' antagonist only to introduce the fabled Giant Space Flea From Nowhere, escalating to a new, even more powerful opponent that you've barely heard of before. The twist of Chaos is that it was Garland all along, the twist with the Emperor is that his own death didn't stop him, but the Cloud of Darkness is just the vague concept of a dark power that Xande has been using turning out to have a face, a voice, and some really, really hard punches to throw.
Thankfully, we still have our friends.
This is literally the anime bit where all the friendly bystanders shout inspiring words at the defeated protagonist so they get revved up and go back into the fight with the power of friendship, that's amazing.
Aaaaw.
So Doga and Unei did die, in the end - what time or the destruction of their bodies could not achieve, a willing sacrifice of their own life force to save others from death did. In a fit of irony, while the one who was gifted with mortality resented it so much, the two who were made immortal were the ones to willingly give up their lives when the time came. Real Fantasy Mentor Figure hours.
So Xande created the Cloud of Darkness, and in turn became manipulated by it. To what extent was his desire to end the world genuine, and to what extent was it nurtured in him after he first reached out to the darkness? I suppose we'll never know.
It's time to head for the last stretch of our journey.
This whole scene is just really nice and endearing. It's taking something FF2 already kind of did, with the spirits of dead friends silently appearing in support, but making it a lot more - these aren't just friends we lost in a tragic war epic, they're living friends whose lives we helped save and better in some way, who survived, showing up at the last hour to give us moral support. It really neatly emphasizes how the orphans of Ur are just… nice and kind-hearted? They made friends everywhere they went, and now these friends are showing their total trust in them, and asking them to come back safely.
It's just very charming.
And now…
Next time on Final Fantasy III: the endgame?
This is the result of a single Quake. It's a good thing Rushanaq and Tsugumi have high magic resistance.
In contrast, this is what one multi-casting of Curaja can regen - but thanks to Rush-K and Tsugumi, I can double up on the healing to some extent.
Any Meteor cast threatens a team wipe if I don't keep everyone healed up at all times - but as you can see here, I manage to stay on the ball enough that I can even afford a few turns in which everyone is attacking.
I use Haste once or twice, but frankly I'm not sold on buffs in this game. Bard seems fine, but actual buff spells feel weaksauce. Haste seems to run out too quickly while lacking enough effect to justify its lv 6 casting, Temper/Saber/Berserk don't exist in this game, Protect seems to suck and cannot be multicast… All in all, it feels better to just cast Bahamut/Flare/Holy as many times as spell slots will allow other using buffs, unless they don't take up a caster's turn, like Bacchus's Cider, a consumable that casts Haste.
All in all, it's an endurance battle, coming at the tail end of a long dungeon filled with battles that are themselves endurance matches. Victory is more about efficient use of resources and luck than strategizing as such. As long as you do things right, you'll be fine - but you can't afford one misstep. Ultimately, though, everyone is decked in high-end gear, using the most powerful jobs in the game, and the most powerful spells, and we make it through fine.
Victory, with no character down. The entire thing is a razor's edge exercise the whole time, though; as you can see, if on that turn Xande had cast Meteor before Tsugumi got to the Curaga, it might have been a wipe.
Not sure why there is so much variance between everybody's job levels, though.
So we're definitely in the 'Xande has gone completely nihilistic, will take the world down with him, and doesn't care about his own death,' Owlman-style. Nice. I like a man with commitment.
Okay, wait, when he said 'darkness has already gathered,' I didn't think he meant, like, right here and now-
M-mommy???
Okay, I'm not sure why the Cloud of Darkness is taking the form of a giant naked woman, not that I am necessarily complaining, but this is a really bad time - okay I can burn through my last Elixirs, top everyone up, finish this-
Oh.
OH.
Well.
FF1 and FF2 both had shades of it, but I would say it's with this here that we have the first fully-materialized example of a Final Fantasy game having you dispose of its main, 'face' antagonist only to introduce the fabled Giant Space Flea From Nowhere, escalating to a new, even more powerful opponent that you've barely heard of before. The twist of Chaos is that it was Garland all along, the twist with the Emperor is that his own death didn't stop him, but the Cloud of Darkness is just the vague concept of a dark power that Xande has been using turning out to have a face, a voice, and some really, really hard punches to throw.
Thankfully, we still have our friends.
This is literally the anime bit where all the friendly bystanders shout inspiring words at the defeated protagonist so they get revved up and go back into the fight with the power of friendship, that's amazing.
Aaaaw.
So Doga and Unei did die, in the end - what time or the destruction of their bodies could not achieve, a willing sacrifice of their own life force to save others from death did. In a fit of irony, while the one who was gifted with mortality resented it so much, the two who were made immortal were the ones to willingly give up their lives when the time came. Real Fantasy Mentor Figure hours.
So Xande created the Cloud of Darkness, and in turn became manipulated by it. To what extent was his desire to end the world genuine, and to what extent was it nurtured in him after he first reached out to the darkness? I suppose we'll never know.
It's time to head for the last stretch of our journey.
This whole scene is just really nice and endearing. It's taking something FF2 already kind of did, with the spirits of dead friends silently appearing in support, but making it a lot more - these aren't just friends we lost in a tragic war epic, they're living friends whose lives we helped save and better in some way, who survived, showing up at the last hour to give us moral support. It really neatly emphasizes how the orphans of Ur are just… nice and kind-hearted? They made friends everywhere they went, and now these friends are showing their total trust in them, and asking them to come back safely.
It's just very charming.
And now…
Next time on Final Fantasy III: the endgame?
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
Did you know there's like three seperate dragons each on different floors who each drop different parts of the ultimate onion knight gear set? Did you know Crystal Tower was designed by dangerous psychopaths? Did you?
I can't believe Nomura put Kingdom Hearts bullshit in my Final Fantasy game.
Desch said "You thought I died to burn damage? That's kinda cringe."
Fakeout so nice Final Fantasy 4 used it [REDACTED] number of times.
I've heard some people are upset one of the Boomers of Light comes to help instead of Aria's spirit, and while it'd be nice if Aria showed up... it's entirely appropriate for one of the geezers to help out as well? Their gag is that they're kind of arrogant and completely oblivious but also thoroughly good-natured and hold no hard feelings over being proven wrong, it's sweet that one of them still gets to be a hero and help the party.
You and your descendants will not see Heaven.
M-mommy???
I can't believe Nomura put Kingdom Hearts bullshit in my Final Fantasy-
And now…
Next time on Final Fantasy III: the endgame?
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
I'll note that turning flooding the world to turn everyone to statues wasn't just an attempt at killing everyone - it's likely that it was Xande's first (and only, before he got brainwashed) shot at immortality. Stopping time for everyone in the world including himself is one way to never die, I suppose.
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
holy shit desch the ancients are Just Built Different I guess.
Man, totally forgot that Desch spent your entire journey on the world below in a fucking probably nuclear reactor and is just... unceremoniously fine. Like jeez dude.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
Not just in a nuclear reactor, repairing that reactor from the inside. Likely without rest.
Wait, so the reason five 'hearts of light' were needed to 'break the curse of five wyrms' is because they literally needed five people to physically fight the dragons so they don't eat you?
Also: Pixel Remaster, for shame. "wryms", really?
The whole game revolves around the motivations, actions and personal history of this one guy, and all he has to say for himself is "[Generic villain line 1]. [Generic villain line 2]!" Okay.
At least the Space Flea From Nowhere is fun to look at.
GilliamYaeger
M'crazy.
I'm willing to forgive it because at this point, he's basically a hollow shell with all the personality scooped out of him. He's mentally degraded from trying to preserve his own life to ending everyone's. We were never going to meet with the "real" Xande, he's been gone since before the start of the game.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
The Space Flea From Nowhere accusations against the series (at least some of of the games) have irked me since FF9. Sure some are less justifiable than others but one of these days Imma put on paper search for a TED talk about how they are actually appropiate thematic conclusions to the thesis of each main villain, because hot damn most people seem to just stay with the surface reading of "wtf".
You: *smoke'd*
Yarp, same here. Give me just one so-so example of this over ten of the lone triumphant hero any day any week any yet, I'll eat it with gusto.
Ancients are apparently made of some fine high grade lead.
Mommy Darkness after Beaming you: "Ssssssmokin'!"
You: *smoke'd*
- Location
- Not your place of residence
I, as well as many other people, are not as inclined to forgive Xande's lack of character. Because the cool backstory, and the speculation of motivations he may have once had, don't feel like enough to make a character that's interesting or memorable on his own.
I've honestly been waiting for Xande's appearance for a while now. Because honestly, the thread has had more than a tinge of comedy with all this speculation and theorizing. It's genuinely interesting, and thought provoking...but it's about Xande. And Xande as a character and villain is widely considered to be awful.
Xande is commonly considered one of the worst villains in the entire series, to the point that he sometimes doesn't even show up on the "list of villains in final fantasy", both done by fans and by Square themselves. FFIII's villain pick for Final Fantasy Dissidia was the Cloud of Darkness, who you don't encounter and doesn't even EXIST YET until literally just the final dungeon. Yeah, Xande got beat out by what's effectively his own summon.
Then again, when you ALSO don't encounter Xande until his boss fight then there might be a bit of an issue there.
Xande suffers from two major issues as a villain; he doesn't do anything personally to hinder the heroes, and he has absolutely nothing of interest about him when you actually DO encounter him, other than sounding disturbingly like a Kingdom Hearts villain in a game other than Kingdom Hearts. There's all this intriguing backstory, possible character motivations, maybe ruminating on the nature of life and death...but nope, the out of nowhere final boss that's going to pontificate on life, dreams, and hope happens 6 games from now.
Perhaps the biggest point of failure with Xande though is his most immediate competition and predecessors as villains in the series. Chaos/Garland didn't do or say much personally, but not only was this excusable as a game from 1987 before they ironed out kinks such as giving characters multiple text boxes, he at least did something intriguing in that limited screentime, both with the timeloop to keep himself alive, and with the simple fact that the random first boss you beat at the start of the game was actually the final boss all along. The Emperor may be pretty stock standard with his seeming motivation of world conquest and UNLIMITED POWER, but he goes about the task of being the Emperor with such aplomb that he gets away with it; when you pull a masterful Shock and Awe on the player, you get a lot of slack even if the rest of your villainous persona might as well be Palpatine with the numbers filed off. Oh, and then you kill him and he conquers HELL ITSELF to get back at you. These are who Xande follows in the footsteps of, and he does not measure up in the slightest.
The Cloud of Darkness isn't exactly a Space Flea from nowhere, it was foreshadowed at least a bit, but to me it's still very telling that a character that literally comes into existence in the 11th hour gets the Dissidia spot and not Xande. Though to be fair, near naked tits are probably at least a little bit of a factor.
I've honestly been waiting for Xande's appearance for a while now. Because honestly, the thread has had more than a tinge of comedy with all this speculation and theorizing. It's genuinely interesting, and thought provoking...but it's about Xande. And Xande as a character and villain is widely considered to be awful.
Xande is commonly considered one of the worst villains in the entire series, to the point that he sometimes doesn't even show up on the "list of villains in final fantasy", both done by fans and by Square themselves. FFIII's villain pick for Final Fantasy Dissidia was the Cloud of Darkness, who you don't encounter and doesn't even EXIST YET until literally just the final dungeon. Yeah, Xande got beat out by what's effectively his own summon.
Then again, when you ALSO don't encounter Xande until his boss fight then there might be a bit of an issue there.
Xande suffers from two major issues as a villain; he doesn't do anything personally to hinder the heroes, and he has absolutely nothing of interest about him when you actually DO encounter him, other than sounding disturbingly like a Kingdom Hearts villain in a game other than Kingdom Hearts. There's all this intriguing backstory, possible character motivations, maybe ruminating on the nature of life and death...but nope, the out of nowhere final boss that's going to pontificate on life, dreams, and hope happens 6 games from now.
Perhaps the biggest point of failure with Xande though is his most immediate competition and predecessors as villains in the series. Chaos/Garland didn't do or say much personally, but not only was this excusable as a game from 1987 before they ironed out kinks such as giving characters multiple text boxes, he at least did something intriguing in that limited screentime, both with the timeloop to keep himself alive, and with the simple fact that the random first boss you beat at the start of the game was actually the final boss all along. The Emperor may be pretty stock standard with his seeming motivation of world conquest and UNLIMITED POWER, but he goes about the task of being the Emperor with such aplomb that he gets away with it; when you pull a masterful Shock and Awe on the player, you get a lot of slack even if the rest of your villainous persona might as well be Palpatine with the numbers filed off. Oh, and then you kill him and he conquers HELL ITSELF to get back at you. These are who Xande follows in the footsteps of, and he does not measure up in the slightest.
The Cloud of Darkness isn't exactly a Space Flea from nowhere, it was foreshadowed at least a bit, but to me it's still very telling that a character that literally comes into existence in the 11th hour gets the Dissidia spot and not Xande. Though to be fair, near naked tits are probably at least a little bit of a factor.
- Location
- Phoenix
So which version of FF4 are you going to play, Omicron?
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
It bears repeating- this is the point of no return. Until the end of Crystal Tower, you could even in the original version leave the dungeon, save, heal up at an inn, restock your items, grind, then come back. This is the point of no return - in the original, everything from encountering Xande onward was "no healing, no saving" marathon, if you die, restart from before Xande and hope you remembered to leave the tower and save after the cutscene with the allies and the mirror.
Pixel Remake, I suspect.
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- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I have all the games as the Pixel Remaster bundle so that will be what I will be playing, but I'm interested in what other versions exist?
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
- Original Super Famicom version
- SNES Version / Backported to Japan as FF4 Easy Type (guess what changes were made for the SNES version!)
- Playstation version, mostly the Super Famicom but with a few tweaks from Easy Type and a couple added quality of life features, new translation, FMVs
- GBA Remake with added dungeons and features, another new translation
- DS remake in 3d with voice acting, entirely different set of added features and a somewhat redone script
- Pixel Remake
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