Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
My first game was Final Fantasy 12 - Revenant Wings. The first proper FF4 for me was 4DS, but I might have actually played Tactics A2 before that one. I actually haven't played another one since then since I stick with Nintendo hardware which got stuff like Bravely Default and Dragon Quest Remakes instead.
My introduction to the franchise were the Final Fantasy 11 Novelization, though. I think there were two trilogies? The first bunch had weird gamey stuff iirc, like people finding random chests in caves or mages getting stronger by buying higher levels of spells in shops after grinding currency. My memories of the second are fond, though. My mind was blown when it, after introducing the Protagonist as the son of some legendary heroes, actually had his mom show up and kick loads of ass. I also remember loving Shantotto, but no actual scenes of her doing stuff.
My introduction to the franchise were the Final Fantasy 11 Novelization, though. I think there were two trilogies? The first bunch had weird gamey stuff iirc, like people finding random chests in caves or mages getting stronger by buying higher levels of spells in shops after grinding currency. My memories of the second are fond, though. My mind was blown when it, after introducing the Protagonist as the son of some legendary heroes, actually had his mom show up and kick loads of ass. I also remember loving Shantotto, but no actual scenes of her doing stuff.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
I was being sarcastic. The joke I was making is that as it turns out Final Fantasy has been full of these elements from the very beginning - see here five pure hearts of light being summoned to rescue the heroes in their darkest hour, gathered from the friends they made along their journey - and that people treating that stuff in Kingdom Hearts as some Separate, Cringe, Foreign Thing are illiterate boomers with nostalgia goggles on. Tifa literally dives into Cloud's Station of Awakening to repair his heart for god's sake.
Final Fantasy III, Part 15, Part A
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
This is the end of a long journey.
The final stretch, into the world of darkness.
As you can see, the world of darkness appears similar to Pandaemonium - a translucent, crystalline lattice of bridges and cliffs floating over an endless, shimmering void. It certainly does not feel like a home - like a place where people might live, where heroes might have once hailed from. But perhaps it is simply that we are on this world's equivalent of the Floating Continent, some elusive island in the void? Or perhaps something more sinister is at play.
As you can see here, the central room you arrive in is symmetrical, with four identical pathways branching off and a 'main' path north framed by columns to emphasize its significance.
Going northeast first, you can see how this is a long, spiraling corridor that goes in only one direction, but which is much easier/quicker to navigate if you notice the cracked walls indicating shortcuts.
A typical WoD encounter. An earlier boss recycled as a slightly weaker but still significant opponent, combining high-level spells with tons of HP.
The World of Darkness is constructed in a very simple fashion: the room up north leads to the final boss. Before you can tackle said boss, you must explore each of the four other rooms. Each room contains an optional chest containing a valuable Ribbon (immunity to status effects, high magic defense), and a boss fight, all four with the same opponent:
Yeah.
I'm not sure what this game's deal with clones is. I've sunk a lot of theorizing into Xande's motives and backstory, but at the point where even encountering him in person nets three lines of generic villain dialogue, I kind of have to give up. Did Xande make these clones of himself, in a way similar to what's implied with FF2's Imperial Shades, to protect some valuable treasures? But he never expected anyone to enter the World of Darkness. Did the darkness, creating copies and puppets of its new favorite toy? That's hard to say, because it's hard to discern to which extent the darkness was a conscient agent with active goals prior to it forming into the Cloud of Darkness. All we have are Xande's Clones protecting chests.
They're a significant step up from the FF2 Imperial Shades, though.
Xande's Clones aren't quite as powerful as their big brother, but they still have access to Meteor and Quake, which hit my whole party for most oft heir HP, while being able to survive 4 or 5 rounds of concerted attacks. This makes each one of them effectively a boss battle, and a significant drain on my resources on the way to the actual boss of each sub-level in the World of Darkness.
Because yes, each of these small maze-like areas has its own boss.
That's right: it's a crystal room. The Fire Crystal room, to be precise. Just as there are four Crystals of Light, there are four Crystals of Darkness, and the Cloud of Darkness has been harnessing their power just as Xande did the Crystals of Light, which goes some way to explaining why even though we freed and cleansed all four Crystals of Light, the CoD is still so powerful - it has the powers of an entire world to call upon.
Each Dark Crystal is protected by a differenboss - the Wind Crystal by Cerberus, the Water Crystal by Echidna, and the Earth Crystal by Ahriman. Each of them has slight differences in capabilities and strategies, but fundamentally the game here is running into its own limitations - it just doesn't have a lot of enemy abilities to work with. By and large, what the game does to give high-end enemies special abilities is give them access to high-level spells. So, they have a lot of HP, they cast Quake, Flare, and Blizzaga/Thundaga/Firaga, and then maybe they have a slight gimmick on top. This gets repetitive, while requiring no less focus to navigate without wiping even after the third or fourth time you have to deal with it.
Here you can see my party flirt perilously close to disaster. A couple dozen extra damage on Rushanaq and this might have been a TPK.
The beast perishes.
The Two-Headed Dragon's defeat means we have released the Fire Crystal, and this, in turn, has some very interesting results, as somebody emerges from the crystal:
Ooookay.
Much of this is just confirmation of what could be inferred before, of course - but it's interesting still. The game has been clear this whole time that an excess of Light and an excess of Dark are both apocalyptic threats to both worlds, and the fact that the threat we face in this age is an excess of dark is not indicative of darkness being inherently evil. This feels a little strange now that said darkness is not merely an elemental force without will but a proactive agent, but…
Well, the Void is beyond light and darkness. It's what the world came from, and what it will return to one day. Entropy is inevitable, though it can be delayed by the hope in human souls. In a sense the Cloud of Darkness is just as much of a puppet as Xande - it is the Void's agency manifested through the shape of Darkness. The Dark does not 'gain' anything from the worlds being annihilated and returned to the primordial void, but it cannot do otherwise, because it is not even as human as Xande was. Perhaps, during the Wrath of Light, a very similar being, clad in white and gold and all the appearances of an angel, yet just much of a nihilistic, destructive force, sought to unmake its own world, its own element.
Finger-puppets of entropy.
We can't defeat the Cloud of Darkness with the power of light. We tried; we failed. It killed us, or nearly so. But the Dark is not evil, and faces annihilation just as we do; it's its power that we need to wield in concert with the Light, so as to take away from the Cloud of Darkness its own power. And for this, we need the Warriors of Dark of old.
Who were sealed in this crystal, in this empty world…
I think I get it. This world died first. We're walking in the remnants of an apocalypse.
The Wrath of Light nearly destroyed our world; but Warriors of Darkness, who presumably saw the threat creep towards their own world, showed up in time to save us. Their world must have been like ours now - struck by a creeping wave of calamity even though it was alive and thriving. Our world must have been like theirs now - nearly all the way destroyed but for the Floating Continent emerging out of the light-scoured land as a last bastion of life. Now we must return the favor. Perhaps we'd be seeing more of their world, perhaps there'd be more left to save, if Xande hadn't been actively aiding the enemy on our side, or if the chosen ones hadn't been so young - but it's what we have now, and what we must do with.
Also…
I don't think I could tackle the entire World of Darkness as things stand. Even with all the consumables in my inventory, there's no way I could go through four boss fights like this one - which tanked my entire lv 7 and 8 spell reserves - and then have enough left in the tank to take on the Cloud.
Luckily, I don't have to.
The Dark Crystals serving as resting points is mechanically extremely convenient, but also it's just such a powerful way of making you feel like… Yeah, these are your allies. Yeah, this dark and foreboding world trusts in you, and will have your back. Yeah, even here, at the end of all things, where the Shrine of Chaos had only Fiends and Pandaemonium only demons, here you have friends.
This is unrelated to anything, but one of the most common random encounters in the Dark World are ninjas. Just… ninjas. Someone please come up with a lore explanation to this for me.
Southeast area…
This is a fun one for @Chehrazad. Ahriman is the first instance of a recurring Final Fantasy antagonist, typically being a giant floating eyeball with a single eye, a mouth, and bat wings. Here, it's a boss; in FFXIV, it's one of the more dangerous but still relatively common forms of voidsent. So I guess we're killing the Zoroastrian Evil Spirit today - Angra Mainyu get rekt. Ahriman is mostly more of what the Two-Headed Dragon had to give:
You can see what I mean by these being difficult yet repetitive. Yep, you sure did cast Meteor and put my entire party below half HP. Gonna try something else? Maybe a status effect? No? Well then I guess I'll just omnicast Curaja and hope my caster goes first before your next attack and we'll call it a day. As far as I can tell to the extent that Ahriman has a special 'thing' it's high magic resistance, which mostly just means the fight drags on.
(It's also ostensibly a flying opponent, so Dragoon would have been nice, but I couldn't have known that going in.)
Victory comes before I have time to raise Quaver on this turn, and with everyone in a bad spot. Highly scuffed.
We're making steady progress so far.
This room is significantly easier than it first appears, as most of its invisible tunnels are actually connected to one another.
Proving that even 'lesser' foes are still threats in this environment, the local Xande clone takes out half my party.
Echidna is the same basic template as the others, with one twist: she likes to cast Drain, which takes out 700-1000 HP from one character (not life threatening, but significant) while healing herself by the same amount, which makes her less dangerous (I would much rather eat a Drain than a Meteor) but more resilient, staying in the game for longer and tapping my resources.
As you can see here, the numbers on her attacks are also smaller. She casts Meteor, but it just doesn't hurt as much as when Ahriman did it. I'm starting to think there is a clear 'difficulty order' for the Dark Crystals - and I tackled it in exactly the wrong direction, starting with one of the hardest.
That one takes me by surprise. She's only the second enemy in the game to successfully cast death on me.
There are some KOs, an Elixir used to top up healing, but eventually we wear out through Echidna's Drain-backed HP and claim a full victory.
I'm starting to wonder if there's a translation issue. The Cloud of Darkness is the entity that will manifest if either Dark or Light grows too powerful? Is the Darkness referred to in its name a different element than the darkness of the 'Dark Crystals' and the 'World of Darkness'? If Light grew too powerful, it would still be a Cloud of Darkness that would appear to drag the world down? Or is this saying that the same entity, but by another name, would appear?
This all feels like it would be a lot simpler if the CoD was called 'the Voidcloud' or something. But no - later dialogue makes it clear it's a darkness entity drawing power from darkness and at home in the dark world, so I'm sticking with the 'manifestation of entropy dressed up in darkness's clothes' theory.
Well, Water Crystal down, one to go…
Split for length.
The final stretch, into the world of darkness.
As you can see, the world of darkness appears similar to Pandaemonium - a translucent, crystalline lattice of bridges and cliffs floating over an endless, shimmering void. It certainly does not feel like a home - like a place where people might live, where heroes might have once hailed from. But perhaps it is simply that we are on this world's equivalent of the Floating Continent, some elusive island in the void? Or perhaps something more sinister is at play.
As you can see here, the central room you arrive in is symmetrical, with four identical pathways branching off and a 'main' path north framed by columns to emphasize its significance.
Going northeast first, you can see how this is a long, spiraling corridor that goes in only one direction, but which is much easier/quicker to navigate if you notice the cracked walls indicating shortcuts.
A typical WoD encounter. An earlier boss recycled as a slightly weaker but still significant opponent, combining high-level spells with tons of HP.
The World of Darkness is constructed in a very simple fashion: the room up north leads to the final boss. Before you can tackle said boss, you must explore each of the four other rooms. Each room contains an optional chest containing a valuable Ribbon (immunity to status effects, high magic defense), and a boss fight, all four with the same opponent:
Yeah.
I'm not sure what this game's deal with clones is. I've sunk a lot of theorizing into Xande's motives and backstory, but at the point where even encountering him in person nets three lines of generic villain dialogue, I kind of have to give up. Did Xande make these clones of himself, in a way similar to what's implied with FF2's Imperial Shades, to protect some valuable treasures? But he never expected anyone to enter the World of Darkness. Did the darkness, creating copies and puppets of its new favorite toy? That's hard to say, because it's hard to discern to which extent the darkness was a conscient agent with active goals prior to it forming into the Cloud of Darkness. All we have are Xande's Clones protecting chests.
They're a significant step up from the FF2 Imperial Shades, though.
Xande's Clones aren't quite as powerful as their big brother, but they still have access to Meteor and Quake, which hit my whole party for most oft heir HP, while being able to survive 4 or 5 rounds of concerted attacks. This makes each one of them effectively a boss battle, and a significant drain on my resources on the way to the actual boss of each sub-level in the World of Darkness.
Because yes, each of these small maze-like areas has its own boss.
That's right: it's a crystal room. The Fire Crystal room, to be precise. Just as there are four Crystals of Light, there are four Crystals of Darkness, and the Cloud of Darkness has been harnessing their power just as Xande did the Crystals of Light, which goes some way to explaining why even though we freed and cleansed all four Crystals of Light, the CoD is still so powerful - it has the powers of an entire world to call upon.
Each Dark Crystal is protected by a differenboss - the Wind Crystal by Cerberus, the Water Crystal by Echidna, and the Earth Crystal by Ahriman. Each of them has slight differences in capabilities and strategies, but fundamentally the game here is running into its own limitations - it just doesn't have a lot of enemy abilities to work with. By and large, what the game does to give high-end enemies special abilities is give them access to high-level spells. So, they have a lot of HP, they cast Quake, Flare, and Blizzaga/Thundaga/Firaga, and then maybe they have a slight gimmick on top. This gets repetitive, while requiring no less focus to navigate without wiping even after the third or fourth time you have to deal with it.
Here you can see my party flirt perilously close to disaster. A couple dozen extra damage on Rushanaq and this might have been a TPK.
The beast perishes.
The Two-Headed Dragon's defeat means we have released the Fire Crystal, and this, in turn, has some very interesting results, as somebody emerges from the crystal:
Ooookay.
Much of this is just confirmation of what could be inferred before, of course - but it's interesting still. The game has been clear this whole time that an excess of Light and an excess of Dark are both apocalyptic threats to both worlds, and the fact that the threat we face in this age is an excess of dark is not indicative of darkness being inherently evil. This feels a little strange now that said darkness is not merely an elemental force without will but a proactive agent, but…
Well, the Void is beyond light and darkness. It's what the world came from, and what it will return to one day. Entropy is inevitable, though it can be delayed by the hope in human souls. In a sense the Cloud of Darkness is just as much of a puppet as Xande - it is the Void's agency manifested through the shape of Darkness. The Dark does not 'gain' anything from the worlds being annihilated and returned to the primordial void, but it cannot do otherwise, because it is not even as human as Xande was. Perhaps, during the Wrath of Light, a very similar being, clad in white and gold and all the appearances of an angel, yet just much of a nihilistic, destructive force, sought to unmake its own world, its own element.
Finger-puppets of entropy.
We can't defeat the Cloud of Darkness with the power of light. We tried; we failed. It killed us, or nearly so. But the Dark is not evil, and faces annihilation just as we do; it's its power that we need to wield in concert with the Light, so as to take away from the Cloud of Darkness its own power. And for this, we need the Warriors of Dark of old.
Who were sealed in this crystal, in this empty world…
I think I get it. This world died first. We're walking in the remnants of an apocalypse.
The Wrath of Light nearly destroyed our world; but Warriors of Darkness, who presumably saw the threat creep towards their own world, showed up in time to save us. Their world must have been like ours now - struck by a creeping wave of calamity even though it was alive and thriving. Our world must have been like theirs now - nearly all the way destroyed but for the Floating Continent emerging out of the light-scoured land as a last bastion of life. Now we must return the favor. Perhaps we'd be seeing more of their world, perhaps there'd be more left to save, if Xande hadn't been actively aiding the enemy on our side, or if the chosen ones hadn't been so young - but it's what we have now, and what we must do with.
Also…
I don't think I could tackle the entire World of Darkness as things stand. Even with all the consumables in my inventory, there's no way I could go through four boss fights like this one - which tanked my entire lv 7 and 8 spell reserves - and then have enough left in the tank to take on the Cloud.
Luckily, I don't have to.
The Dark Crystals serving as resting points is mechanically extremely convenient, but also it's just such a powerful way of making you feel like… Yeah, these are your allies. Yeah, this dark and foreboding world trusts in you, and will have your back. Yeah, even here, at the end of all things, where the Shrine of Chaos had only Fiends and Pandaemonium only demons, here you have friends.
This is unrelated to anything, but one of the most common random encounters in the Dark World are ninjas. Just… ninjas. Someone please come up with a lore explanation to this for me.
Southeast area…
This is a fun one for @Chehrazad. Ahriman is the first instance of a recurring Final Fantasy antagonist, typically being a giant floating eyeball with a single eye, a mouth, and bat wings. Here, it's a boss; in FFXIV, it's one of the more dangerous but still relatively common forms of voidsent. So I guess we're killing the Zoroastrian Evil Spirit today - Angra Mainyu get rekt. Ahriman is mostly more of what the Two-Headed Dragon had to give:
You can see what I mean by these being difficult yet repetitive. Yep, you sure did cast Meteor and put my entire party below half HP. Gonna try something else? Maybe a status effect? No? Well then I guess I'll just omnicast Curaja and hope my caster goes first before your next attack and we'll call it a day. As far as I can tell to the extent that Ahriman has a special 'thing' it's high magic resistance, which mostly just means the fight drags on.
(It's also ostensibly a flying opponent, so Dragoon would have been nice, but I couldn't have known that going in.)
Victory comes before I have time to raise Quaver on this turn, and with everyone in a bad spot. Highly scuffed.
We're making steady progress so far.
This room is significantly easier than it first appears, as most of its invisible tunnels are actually connected to one another.
Proving that even 'lesser' foes are still threats in this environment, the local Xande clone takes out half my party.
Echidna is the same basic template as the others, with one twist: she likes to cast Drain, which takes out 700-1000 HP from one character (not life threatening, but significant) while healing herself by the same amount, which makes her less dangerous (I would much rather eat a Drain than a Meteor) but more resilient, staying in the game for longer and tapping my resources.
As you can see here, the numbers on her attacks are also smaller. She casts Meteor, but it just doesn't hurt as much as when Ahriman did it. I'm starting to think there is a clear 'difficulty order' for the Dark Crystals - and I tackled it in exactly the wrong direction, starting with one of the hardest.
That one takes me by surprise. She's only the second enemy in the game to successfully cast death on me.
There are some KOs, an Elixir used to top up healing, but eventually we wear out through Echidna's Drain-backed HP and claim a full victory.
I'm starting to wonder if there's a translation issue. The Cloud of Darkness is the entity that will manifest if either Dark or Light grows too powerful? Is the Darkness referred to in its name a different element than the darkness of the 'Dark Crystals' and the 'World of Darkness'? If Light grew too powerful, it would still be a Cloud of Darkness that would appear to drag the world down? Or is this saying that the same entity, but by another name, would appear?
This all feels like it would be a lot simpler if the CoD was called 'the Voidcloud' or something. But no - later dialogue makes it clear it's a darkness entity drawing power from darkness and at home in the dark world, so I'm sticking with the 'manifestation of entropy dressed up in darkness's clothes' theory.
Well, Water Crystal down, one to go…
Split for length.
Final Fantasy III, Part 15, Part B
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
These are getting downright claustrophobic.
Yeah, okay. Cerberus is the only one of the four Dark Crystal protectors that's a palette swap of a random encounter (Garm, another enemy in this area), visibly smaller than the other three, and kind of pathetic in comparison. There are tier rankings of the Cloud's four lieutenants, and I tackled them in reverse order of difficulty, while also gaining several levels in the process.
Doggie is going to a farm upstate.
This is simply the coolest animation in the game.
Cerberus's best move is a Lightning move that deals like 400 damage to everyone max. He simply wasn't cut out for this line of work.
Those of you who haven't played Final Fantasy XIV can't imagine how hard it is for me to not to start shouting and pointing at the screen right now.
And with this, all four Dark Crystals are free, all four Warriors of Dark are released, and it's time to confront the Cloud of Darkness at the very heart of its power.
As you can see, I have made an executive decision to swap Mimi back to Dragoon for the final fight.
The Cloud of Darkness.
On the one hand, yeah, it appears at the eleventh hour, barely built up to previously, only technically alluded to, taking up the place of Xande, and emphasizing the disappointment of how little material there was to Xande at the moment of final confrontation.
On the other hand, its appearance is key to drawing the WoLs into the World of Darkness, to see this crucial bit of backstory, meet the Warriors of Dark, explore the nature of the calamity that is occurring, highlight that the Worlds of Light and Dark were fundamentally similar and Dark truly was not evil, whatever the nature of the Cloud of Darkness itself.
Perhaps that goal might have been achieved by having Xande pull an Emperor and reform in the dark world after his defeat in Crystal Tower? But replaying that trope twice in a row would be weak.
There's a better construction for the ending, I know it.
Okay.
The fight, though.
Without a doubt, the final boss of Final Fantasy III is a much tougher challenge than the Emperor, and a very different one from Chaos.
This is what we're going to be seeing the whole time. Cumulus With Chance of Rain here has two moves: a basic attack, which it uses rarely, and Particle Beam, which hits everyone for massive damage, which it uses almost every turn. It's an extremely simple scenario, really. The Cloud of Darkness has more HP than any boss in the game history so far, and you don't deal quite as much damage as you did in another. Every turn it deals massive damage to your entire party. You have only limited healing. The turn order is completely opaque and, for all intents and purposes, random: you can't tell which of your casters will act first and whether Cumulonimbus will act first, second, third, fourth, or fifth. If it uses Particle Beam twice in a row before you have had a chance to heal, which is partially randomly decided, the party wipes. This means I have to plan ahead, like having both Rushanaq and Tsugumi cast omni-Curaja on the same turn, in the hope that one of them goes first, Particle Beam happens, the other goes second, and if the Cloud goes first next turn your party is already fully healed.
Even so I might still die: if the Cloud goes last, after Tsugumi and Rushanaq both cast healing spells, then Quaver goes first in the next round and the Cloud goes second, that's a wipe.
I have a saving grace, though…
Mimi spends every other turn up in the air, immune to damage, and when she lands she hits for heavy damage plus a fairly hefty self-heal. It's not perfect - sometimes she lands after the heal and into a Particle Beam, sometimes she takes off before the heal, it's not great.
The problem is that having Tsugumi and Rushanaq both heal every turn means it will take forever to kill the Cloud, while wasting some heals inefficiently, while extending the number of turns I will need to spend healing. It could be a viable position if I abused the Elixirs I have left? But I'm not confident it would and it's a huge loss of time if it doesn't pan out. So I try to wring as much DPS out of my healers as I can, Bahamur after Bahamur after Leviathan after Flare, trying to weave heals and damaging spells.
It… doesn't… always go flawlessly.
Pictures taken seconds before disaster. You can see that Rushanaq had a Curaja pending in the turn order, and is about to die before she gets to cast it.
This could have gone better. Took forever, too! Cloud of Darkness fights are long. Longer than any fight in the series so far. It's just a grueling endurance match.
My second attempt goes just about nearly as well.
I don't know if it's because of their mage-type gear or being in the back row, but the Sages consistently take less damage from Particle Beam than the Ninjas, with comical results such as these where my two warriors in the heaviest armor in the game are down and my two Sages are trying to save the day. As you can see, I'm trying to use a combination of Arise (which raises a character with full HP) to bring back the Ninjas while using Curaja to cover the damage Tsugumi will take in the process.
I manage to pull it off…
LOOK AT THESE NUMBERS
I SWEAR TO GOD SHE JUST CALCULATES HER ATTACK TIMINGS JUST TO MESS WITH ME
So now I am one healer down, and both my characters are within kill range of the next attack. Just, fantastic. If you look closely you can see Tsugumi is using an Elixir, because I straight up ran out of Raises.
Yeah, I think that one's a write-off. Everyone but Tsugumi down, and her going to be killed no matter what by the Cloud's next attack?
Oh, wow. Okay, so it worked, but I still only have one active attacker and my sages are still trying to save everyone from the brink of death and bring back Quaver…
Is it… is it working?
With Mimi in the air… with the right cure spells…
I got everyone back??? I'm about to have Rushanaq raised with full HP???
RUSHANAQ IS BACK FROM BEHIND WITH THE BAHAMUT-BRANDED STEEL CHAIR-
DRAGON JUMP LANDING, COULD IT BE, COULD THIS BE-
BY GO AS MY WITNESS, WE'VE DONE IT
WOOOOOOOOOO
IT'S DONE! SECOND TRY! CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS IS D E F E A T E D
God but that first wipe though. I managed to do everything - the entirety of Syrcus Tower to Cloud of Darkness - without a team wipe, and it took hours. Can you imagine? Falling on that stumbling block? Having to do the entire thing over again?
What a nightmare design. Jail is too good for whoever came up with this. But we play a modern remaster, and we don't need to worry about that.
BUT WE WON, BABY
I'm gonna take a break. I obviously already saw the epilogue but this is a Whole Lot and I need to wrap up the epilogue in its own post and then put my thoughts about the game separately.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Ahrimans are my favorite FF monster. There's something just so charming about their design to me, I just love the little guys. My go-to little pet in FF14. Always makes me smile whenever they are treated like some terrifying beast when they are just adorable.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
The Ahriman thing gave them trouble when doing the 14 raid version of this dungeon since they'd already introduced it as a random encounter critter under that name. For those who haven't played it, their solution was to make the boss version bigger and use the Avestan rather than Persian name and call it Angara Mainyu.
For those who HAVE played the 14 version - it is amazingly ironic that Cerberus is the easy boss here.
Also worth noting- AFIK the crystals of darkness healing you is new to the pixel remaster
For those who HAVE played the 14 version - it is amazingly ironic that Cerberus is the easy boss here.
Also worth noting- AFIK the crystals of darkness healing you is new to the pixel remaster
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Mister Bad Guy
Mr Mercury to friends
- Location
- Bay Area
I do not blame you for having your brain melted out, but this isn't quite accurate: Two-Headed Dragon doesn't use magic attacks at all. It just hits stupidly hard with physical attacks that have a chance to inflict Silence.This is the end of a long journey.
That's right: it's a crystal room. The Fire Crystal room, to be precise. Just as there are four Crystals of Light, there are four Crystals of Darkness, and the Cloud of Darkness has been harnessing their power just as Xande did the Crystals of Light, which goes some way to explaining why even though we freed and cleansed all four Crystals of Light, the CoD is still so powerful - it has the powers of an entire world to call upon.
Each Dark Crystal is protected by a differenboss - the Wind Crystal by Cerberus, the Water Crystal by Echidna, and the Earth Crystal by Ahriman. Each of them has slight differences in capabilities and strategies, but fundamentally the game here is running into its own limitations - it just doesn't have a lot of enemy abilities to work with. By and large, what the game does to give high-end enemies special abilities is give them access to high-level spells. So, they have a lot of HP, they cast Quake, Flare, and Blizzaga/Thundaga/Firaga, and then maybe they have a slight gimmick on top. This gets repetitive, while requiring no less focus to navigate without wiping even after the third or fourth time you have to deal with it.
Here you can see my party flirt perilously close to disaster. A couple dozen extra damage on Rushanaq and this might have been a TPK.
The beast perishes.
The Two-Headed Dragon's defeat means we have released the Fire Crystal, and this, in turn, has some very interesting results, as somebody emerges from the crystal:
This is a fun one for @Chehrazad. Ahriman is the first instance of a recurring Final Fantasy antagonist, typically being a giant floating eyeball with a single eye, a mouth, and bat wings. Here, it's a boss; in FFXIV, it's one of the more dangerous but still relatively common forms of voidsent. So I guess we're killing the Zoroastrian Evil Spirit today - Angra Mainyu get rekt. Ahriman is mostly more of what the Two-Headed Dragon had to give:
You can see what I mean by these being difficult yet repetitive. Yep, you sure did cast Meteor and put my entire party below half HP. Gonna try something else? Maybe a status effect? No? Well then I guess I'll just omnicast Curaja and hope my caster goes first before your next attack and we'll call it a day. As far as I can tell to the extent that Ahriman has a special 'thing' it's high magic resistance, which mostly just means the fight drags on.
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
I can. On the upside, restarting from outside the tower gives you the chance to try and buy more healing stuff. On the downside, it's a trial. As I said at some point, the thing that is most talked about FFIII is how difficult the ending is to get through, which honestly I think it's a shame, because otherwise I quite like the rest of the game, mechanics and story-wise both.
In any case, congratulation for making it through FFIII! FFIV should make for something of a break after the one-two punch of FFII being a hassle to play and FFIII being fun but with a grueling finale; I actually like FFIII more, but I'll easily admit FFIV is a more relaxing game to go through.
Ah, I see; i misunderstood what you were saying. Mostly because none of those elements are linked to Nomura in my head at all. There's elements that are linked to Nomura in my head, which are presents in most games he makes, to a greater degree in games where he has more creative control, which are overwhelmingly present in Kingdom Hearts and work very well there, and are not at all at home in Final Fantasy and are part of what has made the titles from FFVII onward feel far less like part of the franchise and far more confused in their identity, to me. That's what I had in mind. In fact, sincerity and cheesiness is one of the things the most recent Final Fantasy have less of, in my experience, and they suffer because of it.
Guile
Having a really great time right now
Your first Final Fantasy game was one of the like five sequels in the entire canon? That must have been an experience.
How was Revenant Wings? RTS seems like such a weird fit for Final Fantasy, but then, so did all real-time combat at first.
deadcrystal
Slaaneshi Cultist
- Location
- The Warp
I thought Squall was so fucking cool. And that Rinoa sucked and was cramping his style and ruining everything. Not helped by certain writing decisions in FF8 but still, I also did not get what they were doing with him.
I tried watching an LP of it, but just bounced off after the first hour, it just seemed so bland compared to what I expected from an FF game. Not helped by the artstyle and colour palette of at least the first areas. The 2000s era Gears of War Final Fantasy.
Once we get to FF8 and 9 I have so many secret and obscure mechanics to explain. So many.
I was at the wrong age when I saw FFX the first time and found Tidus a whiny stupid brat. That and the infamous laughter scene which I took to be just bad voice acting. Now I get it.
Aside from the mobs, raid boss and dungeon boss, there's also an Arch Angra Mainyu in FF14 Eureka! Extremely difficult, though admittedly the difficulty is having to suffer through Eureka.
I've seen far far more wipes on Angra Mainyu, think I've seen a wipe on Cerberus once ever. Maybe I've just had better luck with randoms than you?
I always thought of Yuna as the likeable main character, with Tidus the obnoxious sidekick. FFX is the story of Yuna's journey as the heroine who finally, permanently rids Spira of Sin..oh, and there was this aggravating guy Tidus who tagged along with her.
That was the realization/headcanon that I came to somewhere in the middle of the game; that Tidus wasn't the main character.
Idea: The World of Light and World of Darkness are opposites, mirror universes of a sort. So while in the World of Light ninjas are a nearly lost profession in the World of Darkness they remain common.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Ninjas are creatures of the shadows. Obviously they're more common where everything is shadow.
The ninjas were allies of the Warriors of Dark, protecting their resting places from the unworthy.
The story does not really get feature anything from 12 as far as I remember since it playsd out on an entirely different continent. They are the same characters, but it's not much different from some standalone book that starts with experienced characters with pre-existing connections.
Calling it an RTS kinda gives the wrong impression. You don't build structures. If a mission features summoning infrastructure at all you instead just capture it from enemies. The number of units you can summon is also super limited. I do not remember exactly, but I think you never ran around with more than twenty and I am not even sure if you could individually control them rather than just in bigger defined-while-summoning groups. Instead it has Hero units with tons of the usual RPG mechanics.
Enemies also did not really react or actively attack you iirc.
It plays more like some real-time Fire Emblem where you have a tiny amount of characters that switch between their Scrappy Solo Unit and their Powered-Up And Supported With Buddies states within a mission. The height of strategy within it is stuff like 'Which Hero has the best abilities for this mission?', 'Which enemy base is the weak one I can capture to become strong enough for the rest of the map?' and 'Can I kite the AI here to make things easier?'.
I enjoyed it as a kid because it was an RPG and I just loved the genre, but mechanically the whole thing is just a puddle with no real design space for diverse experiences. Fortunately I was happy as long as I got to equip characters with Excalibur to make their numbers go up.
I already gushed about it in this thread, but the One Great Thing is the Summon-Ars-Goetia-Tech-Tree. Shiva just hits different if she is a walking WMD that you only unlock after first courting the lesser members of her court rather than a glorified Super-Ice spell.
Guile
Having a really great time right now
In retrospect, it would have been interesting if Dark Knights and Ninjas were explicitly a job from the Dark World with the local branch being a small holdover from when the Warriors of Dark bulldozed through before returning to their world with their forces long ago.
Omegahugger
Inattentive Idiot
Well, "
This is unrelated to anything, but one of the most common random encounters in the Dark World are ninjas. Just… ninjas. Someone please come up with a lore explanation to this for me.
In addition, since a
Alternatively, the Cloud of Darkness is an entity of refined taste and culture who realises that Ninja are just plain cool, and thus made sure their legions of darkness included them. One of those two possibilities.
- Location
- The Great Beyond
- Pronouns
- He/She/They
well clearly in the post apocalypse of the World of Darkness only mighty warriors like Ninja survived, and now the Cloud has corrupted them to the dark.
You just keep making me more curious about ff14 every time you say things like this.
On a different note?
The four dark crystal guards are used as the area bosses for the first of the four Soul of Chaos dungeons in FF1, which is funny given how minor a footnote they are in their own native game.
Nevertheless, they get to show up with boastful dialogue, and, if I recall right, which I might not since it's been ages, dub themselves as Fiend of Whatever Element Crystal they were guarding when intro-ing themselves. Which is certainly an interesting decision.
- Location
- Not your place of residence
BAH GAWD AS MAH WITNESS, THAT CLOUD IS BROKEN IN HALF!
Looking back on things, it's almost definitely for the best that none of the games before V have actual superbosses that are stronger than the final boss; there's just nowhere near enough mechanical depth and difference for there to be massive changes to AI or boss patterns to make them harder in a way other than just Number Go Up.
I think people would have fonder memories of Cloud of Darkness in general if it weren't for the surrounding circumstances. Going through what is the worst endgame of the series in the original really puts a damper on things. Its name works for it as a force of nature or a symbol of imbalance more than an actual being with thoughts, emotions, and goals, but...uh...that seems to be part of the problem.
And finally, how fitting is it that Rushanaq got revived, summoned Bahamut, got the 2nd to last hit, only to be overshadowed by Mimi's jump? It all comes full circle!
Looking back on things, it's almost definitely for the best that none of the games before V have actual superbosses that are stronger than the final boss; there's just nowhere near enough mechanical depth and difference for there to be massive changes to AI or boss patterns to make them harder in a way other than just Number Go Up.
I think people would have fonder memories of Cloud of Darkness in general if it weren't for the surrounding circumstances. Going through what is the worst endgame of the series in the original really puts a damper on things. Its name works for it as a force of nature or a symbol of imbalance more than an actual being with thoughts, emotions, and goals, but...uh...that seems to be part of the problem.
And finally, how fitting is it that Rushanaq got revived, summoned Bahamut, got the 2nd to last hit, only to be overshadowed by Mimi's jump? It all comes full circle!
Vocalist
Verdant Maiden in Violet
- Location
- By a Cedar Tree
Oh my Lord, this must have been hell in the original version!
Ninjas are actually native to the World of Darkness - in fact, one of the Warriors of Darkness was a Ninja! During the Wrath of Light incident, they taught their secrets to a student in the World of Light and that was how Ninjas became introduced to the world. A corollary: the tradition of the Sage, the Ninja's magical counterpart, is native to the World of Light. Rushanaq better pass on some wisdom while she's in the World of Darkness, to pay them back!
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In fact, all of the Soul of Chaos dungeons have their area bosses be ripped from FF3 through FF6, since FF1 and FF2 were the games already packaged on the Dawn of Souls cartridge. The first dungeon you unlock is Earth so it has the FF3 bosses here, then Fire has FF4 bosses, then Water and Wind have FF5 and FF6 bosses rolling around. It's a fun tidbit that I didn't actually realize until the later GBA remakes for FF4-FF6 came out and I got a good dose of "oh my god I recognize those bosses".
While I've never gotten that far in the NES version, the DS version did also have the last possible save point be just outside the Crystal Tower, so can confirm: that final chunk of the game is absolute hell, and that's still on a presumably easier one. FF3 is actually the first Final Fantasy game that falls under "techncially not quite completed" for me because I managed this entire run, up to the Cloud of Darkness...
...and wiped in like 2 turns. Just threw my hands up and called it quits at the time because fuuuuuck going through several hours of no saves just for that nonsense, and I've never gotten around to going back and trying again. This thread has me considering doing so with either the Pixel version or possibly just replaying the DS version though.
Zap Rowsdower
Ex-cultist vagrant
- Location
- Bright lights, big city
- Pronouns
- He/Him
FFIV: The After Years, that not very good sequel I mentioned, did something similar to Soul of Chaos for its final installment's dungeon, four bosses from each of the other sprite games. Used the same lineup for 3, 5, and 6 as Soul of Chaos, plus the final dungeon chest monsters from 2 and the Four Fiends from 1.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
It's a little surprising that the Warriors of Dark don't use DRK sprites, but instead DRG ones.
ft. Knuckles
"Echidna" is a relatively common term that's still unusual enough to be used for JRPG enemy critters, so I don't know if it got re-used in later Final Fantasies, but I had a bit of a double-take due to expecting the spider lady from FFXIV.
Those of you who haven't played Final Fantasy XIV can't imagine how hard it is for me to not to start shouting and pointing at the screen right now.
"Take it. We fight as one!"
- Pronouns
- He
Particle Beam is a rather sciency term to be using for a boss like this, I have to say.