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

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- you can definitely see the seeds of the DRK questline in FFXIV here.
- Mount Ordeal being loaded up with undead makes perfect sense if it's supposed to be a Dark Knight redemption place; if it was covered in Dark-vulnerable dudes it wouldn't be much of a challenge your resolution.
- Tellah woke up and chose violence.

(Tellah: Spell seller, I'm going into battle and I want your strongest spell!
Porom: You can't handle this spell, it's too strong for you.)
 
So, you know the ghost enemies? They occasionally dropped an item, called the cursed ring. It drops your stats, but it changes all elemental resistances into elemental absorptions.
 
TricMagic said:
And both twins counter undead, making it an escort quest for them
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Not unless they hated every second of it. :V

Kadmus said:
- Tellah woke up and chose violence.
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"Violence choose one day to cross paths with me. Whatever happens now it's on him."

Kakanma said:
The current team runs on:

Porom: "Laughter"
Palom: "Compassion"
Tellah: "Incredible violence"
Cecil: "And hope."
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We still need one more to fill the party. And with the way you phrase it...
 
Omicron said:
So, Cecil is a twink now.

I think that's important to note. My dude is now rocking lustrous long blue-white anime hair, and it's clear that he was gorgeous under his helmet the entire time. No wonder Rosa wanted to get him out of that armor, if you know what I mean.
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I have to agree. A+ character design. Cecil has now achieved Bingo on the sheet of all my favorite character tropes. If I had played this game as a child, I would have written fanfiction about him. I might still end up doing that, in fact!
I will be so disappointed if the upcoming rescue mission does not include an excited mention of how great he looks now from Rosa (or Kain), followed by an inn scene where they re-affirm their love, fade to black.

I remain impressed by the level of storytelling they are managing in this game. For me, so far, FFIV is the point where the series becomes really good. Yes, III was technically impressive and had more mechanical depth, but this is the first time I find myself wanting to play the game myself. The story-gameplay integration in particular is something I love; in my opinion, that is the one thing games can do that no other storytelling medium can, and so it's a sign of the storyteller's mastery of the medium.

My one big gripe is, well...why is being a Dark Knight bad? Thematically, Cecil's class change makes perfect sense, of course - he did bad things, he wants to become a new person, someone who protects instead of just killing. It's thematically coherent. But not...diegetically coherent? Is that the right word? I mean, everyone in the game can take one look at Cecil and go, "oh, a Dark Knight with the power of darkness. How awful, you'll never defeat Golbez that way." Thematically, of course he can't stand up to evil using the powers with which he served evil. But physically, what's stopping him from whacking Golbez with his Dark sword until his HP reaches zero?

I hesistate to call this a "writing oversight", because it seems, rather, like an intrusion of a different type of story logic. A more "primitive" type of logic - and please understand, I'm not using that word in a pejorative sense. "The Dark Sword is bad because darkness is metaphysically bad, duh." If you're into reading old legends or fairy tales, you know what I'm talking about. "A guy did a bad thing (we know it was bad because God/the wise person said not to) and then misfortune happened as a natural metaphysical consequence of the bad thing happening." The insistence on having physical causes for events is a more Enlightenment approach to storytelling. So the treatment of the Dark Knight is not wrong, it's just...stylistically inconsistent with the rest of the game. I mean, we got an explanation of how Baron dominates other nations with its technological superiority, not because the king got secret knowledge from the moon sorcerers.
 
Vocalist said:
My one big gripe is, well...why is being a Dark Knight bad? Thematically, Cecil's class change makes perfect sense, of course - he did bad things, he wants to become a new person, someone who protects instead of just killing. It's thematically coherent. But not...diegetically coherent? Is that the right word? I mean, everyone in the game can take one look at Cecil and go, "oh, a Dark Knight with the power of darkness. How awful, you'll never defeat Golbez that way." Thematically, of course he can't stand up to evil using the powers with which he served evil. But physically, what's stopping him from whacking Golbez with his Dark sword until his HP reaches zero?

I hesistate to call this a "writing oversight", because it seems, rather, like an intrusion of a different type of story logic. A more "primitive" type of logic - and please understand, I'm not using that word in a pejorative sense. "The Dark Sword is bad because darkness is metaphysically bad, duh." If you're into reading old legends or fairy tales, you know what I'm talking about. "A guy did a bad thing (we know it was bad because God/the wise person said not to) and then misfortune happened as a natural metaphysical consequence of the bad thing happening." The insistence on having physical causes for events is a more Enlightenment approach to storytelling. So the treatment of the Dark Knight is not wrong, it's just...stylistically inconsistent with the rest of the game. I mean, we got an explanation of how Baron dominates other nations with its technological superiority, not because the king got secret knowledge from the moon sorcerers.
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I think I remember reading something like this before. In this thread, even. Is this- did that actually happen? Did someone say something similar? Am I just confused? Am I going insane? The answer to that one is yes.
 
Vocalist said:
I remain impressed by the level of storytelling they are managing in this game. For me, so far, FFIV is the point where the series becomes really good. Yes, III was technically impressive and had more mechanical depth, but this is the first time I find myself wanting to play the game myself. The story-gameplay integration in particular is something I love; in my opinion, that is the one thing games can do that no other storytelling medium can, and so it's a sign of the storyteller's mastery of the medium.
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For whatever reason, it feels like a lot of series make this change in the jump from NES to SNES. Not just Final Fantasy, but look at some classic Nintendo series like Zelda or Fire Emblem: SNES is often where there can start to be an actual story, and where they really get the gameplay nailed down so the games go from "this is a piece of history but I'm not entirely sure I'd recommend going back and playing it" to "this is an all-time videogame classic that everyone should try". FFIV falls under that same umbrella compared to its predecessors, particularly if you aren't playing the Pixel Remasters because the actual NES versions of FFI-FFIII are... very rough, as someone who's played a decent amount of them. Meanwhile the adjustments for FFIV Pixel Remaster are mostly things like some minor QoL improvements, but otherwise you could go right back to the SNES version of the game and be perfectly fine.
 
So, fun fact. In the original SNES version, the translation wasn't exactly perfect. Scarmiglione was named Milon, and his second form was called Milon Z.
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
Worth noting is that the spirit was definitely helping speed the process along artificially. The sequel (the one that's not worth playing outside of looking at pictures and bios of the characters because the only weapons, dungeons/maps, and enemies not ripped straight from the original with minimal changes are in the final dungeon), set 17 years later, has a character reveal that they spent the entirety of the 17-year timegap meditating at the top of Mt Ordeals, and only after 17 years of meditation did they unlock the class change (also, that defeating your inner darkness is a whole lot harder when your inner darkness isn't trained to use HP-depleting spells - Darkness consuming HP to use was part of the foreshadowing to the player of how to win that fight).

Relatedly, the sequel also reveals that Palom and Porom aren't actually (or at least don't always want to present themselves as) opposite gender identical twins; its just a phase they eventually grow out of.

Palom keeps the same look as a twenty-something (not realizing that the bowl cut and vertical green stripes look does NOT work when you aren't actually a cute kid anymore)



Whereas Porom decided to change her image entirely and dive facefirst into the deep end of Distinguishing Myself From My Brother By Looking More Girly and embraced the PINK
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So, I try to keep this place a positive space, and I really enjoy the meta-discussion around the games, and I'm not trying to scold people or anything, and I know that FFIV in particular has earned a reputation as a game that's in love with fakeout heroic sacrifices where the character later turns out alive, but, I would like to note,
1) It has that reputation because several (what looks like) heroic sacrifices happen in the story,
2) There is a bit in my very first FFIV post outlining which specific parts of FFIV's plot I knew about going in,
And hearing about Future!Porom and Future!Palom's fashion choices ahead of time did somewhat blunt the edge of one of the more dramatic heroic sacrifices in the series so far that the game just pulled on me in my own playthrough :V

So let's keep our enthusiasm about sequels, spinoffs and the like in check, is all I'm asking, yeah?
 
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Vocalist said:
I mean, we got an explanation of how Baron dominates other nations with its technological superiority, not because the king got secret knowledge from the moon sorcerers.
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I mean, this isn't true? We see how Baron gets its superiority, and it's absolutely through both magic and technology, not that there's an actual difference. Omicron made special note of the magic research labs. The big names in Baron are 2/3rds magical (Rosa and Cecil; Kain seems to be purely physical insofar as that's a thing in the Final Fantasy series).

Also it feels like it's definitely diegetically accurate that Cecil's Dark Knight powers can't defeat the dude who's stronger than him who is in charge of the country that knows everything about Dark Knights? It's weaker than the thematic resonance but it's definitely implied that there's common knowledge around the mechanisms of the Dark Knights and their strengths and weaknesses that makes it incredibly obvious to everyone that Cecil cannot stand up against Golbez.
 
So this isn't a spoiler because I don't actually know anything about FFIV's plot beyond this point but I'm just going to say this:

Is there any character in Final Fantasy who's planting their death flag more firmly into the bedrock than Tellah? Because that spell list is so obscene I can't imagine the game is going to let you keep him for long.
 
Ahh Mt Ordeals. One of the best points in one of my favorite games.

Also the place where my first attempt to play through FF4 ended - Scarmiglione caught me with his back attack, wiped me out and I hadn't used the save point. I'd have had to start from the bottom of the mountain, but I had to return the game. Save when you see a save point, kids.

Also, be sure to stop in the armor shop on your way back through Mysidia, or Cecil may run into a problem.
 
MiskWisk said:
So this isn't a spoiler because I don't actually know anything about FFIV's plot beyond this point but I'm just going to say this:

Is there any character in Final Fantasy who's planting their death flag more firmly into the bedrock than Tellah? Because that spell list is so obscene I can't imagine the game is going to let you keep him for long.
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There's a few Biggs and Wedge pairs that introduce themselves by planting death flags and die almost immediately thereafter, I think. Probably more I'm not thinking of.
 
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MiskWisk said:
So this isn't a spoiler because I don't actually know anything about FFIV's plot beyond this point but I'm just going to say this:

Is there any character in Final Fantasy who's planting their death flag more firmly into the bedrock than Tellah? Because that spell list is so obscene I can't imagine the game is going to let you keep him for long.
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To be fair, the Spell List of the Gods is balanced in gameplay due to the fact that Tellah only has 90 maximum MP, and that number never goes up. I think around this point the other party white/black mages are learning tier 2 spells, and the Tier 3 ones that Tellah has cost something like 30 MP a cost so while he does have access to the best magic, he also only drops 3 or 4 of them before he's completely pooped out and you have to start shoving some ethers down his throat.

Amazing utility though granted, I'm pretty sure at this point Tellah actually knows every single White and Black Magic spell in the game.
 
He does, in fact, know every conventional spell in the game!

But as stated, his cap of 90 MP means he gasses out very quickly, even if he's a walking apocalypse until then. He wasn't exaggerating about being DOOM ITSELF though while that 90 MP lasts!
 
I am DOOM ITSELF for up to 30 seconds at a time before I need a quick breather BEWARE MY MIGHT!
 
Zap Rowsdower said:
I suspect that's as much character limits as it is imperfect translations.
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Yeah, a lot of the SNES names clearly ran into character limits. I don't actually know what the limits are or why they apply inconsistently, but we do get Tellah learning the legendary spell "Meteo", because the "R" was apparently lost to the ages.

I also recall Twincast being simply "Twin", which makes sense for character limits, and Pyro being "Nuke", which makes less sense and is probably due to the translation being rushed.
 
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