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

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there being four different translation scripts and several different sets of added features sounds like a recipe for an edition war
 
Hoo boy yeah.
Omicron said:
there being four different translation scripts and several different sets of added features sounds like a recipe for an edition war
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Checking the wiki I must correct myself, there were five translations - the PSP version had its own translation.


edit: Oh, and there's a sequel (not very good, don't bother with it - it was designed for cell phones back in the days of flip-phones, and is extremely episodic as a result since an entire game would have been too big, mostly rehashing the original).

And an interquel released after the sequel set between the original and the sequel, only included on the PSP version.
 
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There's also the unofficial translation of the SFC version, done by a group called j2e way back in the early days of that sort of thing, but it's mostly just a spiced up version of the SNES version's script with a comparatively small amount of original translation done.

You'd almost be able to use it as an example of what that script could've looked like if Square had hired a competent editor for it if not for the occasional bit where they spiced it up (because it's the uncensored version so they had to make it look more mature, see?)

Quick edit: My point is that the j2e version's interesting from a historical perspective but not really worth looking into otherwise, in case that wasn't clear.
 
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Really If I was recommending a specific version of FF4, it would just be between GBA (extra game content and dungeons), DS (3D with voice acting, extra game mechanics, and a serious overhaul to the combat that actually makes the game fairly challenging), or Pixel (a good "definitive" edition of the original). And since Omni already has Pixel, that's what I'd recommend.

Though speaking of 3D remakes of classic Final Fantasy Games, Square where the hell are my FF5 and FF6 3D Remakes

I've been waiting for Fourteen years
 
pedanterrific said:
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.
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Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed. We've been speculating on what Xande's deal is for the whole game. Omicron has written hundreds of words trying to color in the bare outline the game gives us. I was hoping all along that Xande would shed some light on himself: confirm one theory or another, or at least have some haunting lines that give us a view into his nature.

But nope. Nope! Fucking Goldor feels more complete than him, and he was comic relief! In general, the villains of Final Fantasy III have been the worst so far, which is interesting for a game with such a developed side cast. It's generally a more cute, lighthearted, childish game than the predecessors, but that doesn't mean the villains have to be so weak and incomplete!
 
McFluffles said:
Though speaking of 3D remakes of classic Final Fantasy Games, Square where the hell are my FF5 and FF6 3D Remakes

I've been waiting for Fourteen years
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FF5 and FF6 are intimidating as all hell for 3D Remakes for surprisingly similar reasons. Namely character sprites. FF5 as ALOT of sprites for so few characters, and because of the expanded job system every job has to have animations for every jobs abilities. FF6 on the other hand just plain has a lot of characters and some even have multiple sprites.

So the options are to spend a long time doing sprite work or to cut down on the number of character models. And nothing would piss off the fanbase more than cutting content.
 
Vocalist said:
Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed. We've been speculating on what Xande's deal is for the whole game. Omicron has written hundreds of words trying to color in the bare outline the game gives us. I was hoping all along that Xande would shed some light on himself: confirm one theory or another, or at least have some haunting lines that give us a view into his nature.

But nope. Nope! Fucking Goldor feels more complete than him, and he was comic relief! In general, the villains of Final Fantasy III have been the worst so far, which is interesting for a game with such a developed side cast. It's generally a more cute, lighthearted, childish game than the predecessors, but that doesn't mean the villains have to be so weak and incomplete!
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It reminds me of Dragon Quest that way - memorable characters and settings, fun minibosses and sub-arcs, villain directing the villains of those sub-arcs just a generic bad guy.

Funnily enough DQ4 came out almost exactly the same time, and was one of the few DQ games to have a well developed tragic villain for its central baddie. Like the two traded themes a bit as they tried to figure out their franchise identity.
 
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Kakanma said:
FF5 and FF6 are intimidating as all hell for 3D Remakes for surprisingly similar reasons. Namely character sprites. FF5 as ALOT of sprites for so few characters, and because of the expanded job system every job has to have animations for every jobs abilities. FF6 on the other hand just plain has a lot of characters and some even have multiple sprites.

So the options are to spend a long time doing sprite work or to cut down on the number of character models. And nothing would piss off the fanbase more than cutting content.
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Oh, I know why it's never happening, I just really want it to anyways. Teenage me was so absolutely hyped after FF3 and FF4 got remakes on the DS, going "oh of course they'll do FF5 and FF6 as well, and those are my favorites so it'll be even better!"

Alas, it's unlikely to ever happen, not only because of the reasons you listed but also because iirc the DS remakes just weren't all that profitable, so why would they continue making them instead of just porting mostly the same games over and over again with different makeovers?
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
SNES Version / Backported to Japan as FF4 Easy Type (guess what changes were made for the SNES version!)
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Interestingly "Easy Type" is mechanically more like a version 1.1 patch, where they do reduce the difficulty some, but mostly by adding QoL changes and simplifying (or removing) some obtuse mechanics.

A large part of the "easy" is in the dialogue, where they simplify the kanji. Like turning "slaughter" into "kill a lot" levels of simplifying.
 
Most of my understanding of III comes from Dissidia and this lets play really made me wonder why Xande got the shaft, but, well, now I understand why Dissidia replaced Xande with Laura Bailey.
 
I think this is one of the things where the Let's Play format really shines. I could have written this as a review after finishing the game and write a couple sentences about Xande being an intriguing yet ultimately disappointing villain.

But instead I took all of you along on my multithousand words journey into the game, speculating wildly alongside me, only for you all to experience the same anticlimax as I did when Xande turned out to have had three entire sentences.

You can't just get that same disappointment in a normal review.
 
Omicron said:
I think this is one of the things where the Let's Play format really shines. I could have written this as a review after finishing the game and write a couple sentences about Xande being an intriguing yet ultimately disappointing villain.

But instead I took all of you along on my multithousand words journey into the game, speculating wildly alongside me, only for you all to experience the same anticlimax as I did when Xande turned out to have had three entire sentences.

You can't just get that same disappointment in a normal review.
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At least you got a decent boss fight out of it.
 
NotYourParents said:
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.
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I'll agree with that. I feel like a better way to handle it would have had Doga and Unei still be alive so they can react to their old friend being reduced to basically a mindless thing - there's definitely still a way to give him character even as someone who is, essentially, dead in every meaningful way before the story even starts. And there's none of that here. There's no mindless husk of a man, nor is there the attempt at making him sympathetic from the DS remake. All there is is...this.

I said that I'm willing to forgive the poor handling of Xande, which inherently means they fucked up with him. But there's a lot about FF3's story that's awkward and stumbling, likely due to inexperience. Omi's pointed out a lot of gaps in the story - I hesitate to call them plot holes but they're definitely gaps of some sort that more experienced writers would have filled in. This is the awkward midpoint between the story-light FF1 and FF2 and the story-rich FF4, after all.

Zap Rowsdower said:
Hoo boy yeah.

Checking the wiki I must correct myself, there were five translations - the PSP version had its own translation.


edit: Oh, and there's a sequel (not very good, don't bother with it - it was designed for cell phones back in the days of flip-phones, and is extremely episodic as a result since an entire game would have been too big, mostly rehashing the original).

And an interquel released after the sequel set between the original and the sequel, only included on the PSP version.
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Oh, are you talking about Final Fantasy Dimensions? That's actually surprisingly good for a mobile game. Really good classic FF gane, actually pretty different to FF3 since it involves the world splitting into dark and light with each world having its own party of four to build with an FFV-style job system.
 
Omicron said:
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.​
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I won't lie, the first time I saw this, I thought for a moment that the '2016' meant that Xande is literally the monstrous embodiment of the year 2016 before I remembered this is a game from the 90s.
 
The Zog said:
Most of my understanding of III comes from Dissidia and this lets play really made me wonder why Xande got the shaft, but, well, now I understand why Dissidia replaced Xande with Laura Bailey.
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Yeah, same. Having something with such a mundane name in Dissidia always made me curious whenever I read about it, but I guess weak competition plus the Not-yet-Another-Dude factor gave her the win.
 
Got to the Oldsters of Light being tapped for the assist and started counting on my fingers. He said five souls of light, right? We're up to how many now??

But then it turns out only one of them was Light enough to count, or they were only a quarter soul of light apiece or something
 
GilliamYaeger said:
Not just in a nuclear reactor, repairing that reactor from the inside. Likely without rest.
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Or he just took naps in the reactor, which is it's own impressive.

Guile said:
Got to the Oldsters of Light being tapped for the assist and started counting on my fingers. He said five souls of light, right? We're up to how many now??

But then it turns out only one of them was Light enough to count, or they were only a quarter soul of light apiece or something
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Obviously the oldsters are actually one entity with multiple bodies.
 
If Desch can survive the nuclear furnace, it makes you wonder what the hell actually did the Ancients in.
 
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