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

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My main complaint about FF4 in Dissidia is a really pedantic one - the game says the FF4 stage is the Lunar Subterrane, but it is clearly the lunar surface, complete with FuSoYa's tower visible in the distance.
 
Omicron said:
the Cloud of Darkness (rather than Xande) for III, which gives an idea of which antagonists were considered huge duds in their own games.
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I mean let's be honest

There's totally another reason the devs went with Cloud of Darkness over Xande
...I mean, possibly also gender diversity since there's not a lot of female main main villains or heroes in most of the Final Fantasy games. Up to this point if you're picking the big centerpiece hero or villain of each game, there's what? Terra/Celes, Cloud of Darkness if you stretch it, and Ultimecia?
 
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McFluffles said:
I mean let's be honest

There's totally another reason the devs went with Cloud of Darkness over Xande
...I mean, possibly also gender diversity since there's not a lot of female main main villains or heroes in most of the Final Fantasy games. Up to this point if you're picking the big centerpiece hero or villain of each game, there's what? Terra/Celes, Cloud of Darkness if you stretch it, and Ultimecia?
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You could argue that, V being an ensemble cast story, any given choice is as valid as any other and pick Faris, Lenna or Krile instead of Bartz, but everyone would realize that this is stretching the truth - he's literally on the cover of the game.

Duodecim expands the roster with additional heroic characters (though no villains that I've seen), which does allow it to borrow additional female characters like Tifa, so that's neat. It has a very strong PlayStation bias though - you get characters from VII, VIII, and X, but the only nod to a pre-PSX era game is Kain from IV. I want Faris and Celes, dammit!
 
Omicron said:
You could argue that, V being an ensemble cast story, any given choice is as valid as any other and pick Faris, Lenna or Krile instead of Bartz, but everyone would realize that this is stretching the truth - he's literally on the cover of the game.

Duodecim expands the roster with additional heroic characters (though no villains that I've seen), which does allow it to borrow additional female characters like Tifa, so that's neat. It has a very strong PlayStation bias though - you get characters from VII, VIII, and X, but the only nod to a pre-PSX era game is Kain from IV. I want Faris and Celes, dammit!
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Yeah, I considered that argument, but even if it is an ensemble cast with all of them getting fairly equal screentime... the game still opens on Bartz specifically, and solo segments or party splits basically always follow his point of view.

And yes, Duodecim absolutely falls into ye ol "quick grab this specific era of popular characters for the appeal!" thing that manages to annoy me about big series celebration games like this. I will always have time to complain about Fire Emblem Warriors having a cast that consists almost entirely of characters from Awakening and Fates as the new big popular games, with a casual toss in going "oh yeah here's uhhh Marth because face of the franchise and I guess Lyn because she's popular".
 
McFluffles said:
Yeah, I considered that argument, but even if it is an ensemble cast with all of them getting fairly equal screentime... the game still opens on Bartz specifically, and solo segments or party splits basically always follow his point of view.

And yes, Duodecim absolutely falls into ye ol "quick grab this specific era of popular characters for the appeal!" thing that manages to annoy me about big series celebration games like this. I will always have time to complain about Fire Emblem Warriors having a cast that consists almost entirely of characters from Awakening and Fates as the new big popular games, with a casual toss in going "oh yeah here's uhhh Marth because face of the franchise and I guess Lyn because she's popular".
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Special shout out to XI, which they seemed to recognize when making the first Dissidia was not popular - it only has one character, Shantotto, rather than 2, and she basically has no plot presence whatsoever (though she makes up for it by being tied with Kefka for getting all the best lines)

It gets a second in Duodecim with Prishe, but she's basically the first insofar as plot is concerned
 
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Zap Rowsdower said:
Special shout out to XI, which they seemed to recognize was not popular - it only has one character, Shantotto, rather than 2, and she basically has no plot presence whatsoever (though she makes up for it by being tied with Kefka for getting all the best lines)
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I came into Dissidia knowing absolutely nothing about FFXI, and I still don't, but Shantotto was great in Dissidia and always stole her few scenes. I was distraught when they changed her VA for Dissidia NT.
 
If you wanted less obvious fan-favourite picks then you would've been in luck back in the day - Dissidia Opera Omnia added Desch, all three of Galuf's old party members and fucking Kadaj and Weiss before Rikku Finalfantasy10. The game was of course taken offline earlier this year which is very funny when the comically-inept Ever Crisis is still alive.
 
Dissidia is Nomura smashing his extremely expensive SE Bring Arts(TM) action figures together and writing crossover fanfiction about it.

I mean this in a very complementary fashion.
 
I was thinking that Final Fantasy VII may have spawned a whole bunch of other RPGs trying to copy or outdo it in scale and tone, e.g. Legend of Dragoon, Xenogears, and Final Fantasy's own VIII, what's interesting is that it seemed to spawn just as many bright and shiny anti-FF7s in its wake (intentional or otherwise, given development times). Skies of Arcadia, Grandia, Final Fantasy's own IX as Omi's already aware of, even the Lunar PS1 remakes could arguably fit into the anti-FF7 trend (though more awkwardly since, y'know, remakes).

It's kinda like if say Astro City and All-Star Superman had come out only a couple of years after Watchmen instead of much later
 
Amidatelion said:
In fairness, Bartz is not portrayed as a responsible and goal-oriented person in Dissidia—he's shown as world-wise, confident, and emotionally stable, but his tendency to wander off and get hooked on sidequests clashes with Squall's professional and to-the-point mission focus.

That's why his character arc is less about him wanting to be seen to be mature and cool and more about accepting that no, he can't just do it alone; he has to rely on others even if those people and their actions don't match with his philosophy. He learns this in his own game, but again, amnesia.
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I mean, it kind of fits Bartz as a character? I mean, Dissidia does engage in a bit of flanderization here and there, but Bartz did start the game going "Okay, you two going to the North Meteor crater? Cool. Good luck with that, cause Imma go on traveling the world."

It took Boco literally knocking some sense into him by throwing him off his back to stop, turn around and go back to help Lenna and Galuf. Bartz just wants to explore the world, man, he just got roped into this crazy "save the world" stuff.

Admittedly, he is the sort of guy to do the right thing, just that he's more laid back regarding stuff than the military-minded Squall or the other more focused heroes of other games.
 
Amidatelion said:
I came into Dissidia knowing absolutely nothing about FFXI, and I still don't, but Shantotto was great in Dissidia and always stole her few scenes.
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Shantotto stealing every scene she is in is canon accurate, at least according to the FFXI novelizations I (for some reason) read as a child. I couldn't tell you the name of any other character, but that gremlin definitely left an impression.
 
CeBrudras said:
Shantotto stealing every scene she is in is canon accurate, at least according to the FFXI novelizations I (for some reason) read as a child. I couldn't tell you the name of any other character, but that gremlin definitely left an impression.
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Shantotto in FFXI is very memorable, because she has a very easily understandable character type and verbal tic: she's the super-powerful archmage who is the Mad Scientist archetype, loves to be bombastic and theatric, and almost always speaks in rhyme.

The only reason it's "almost" instead of "definitely always" is I highly suspect it's an invention of the localization team, in their effort to differentiate the various notable Tarutaru NPCs, while sticking to Tarutaru being whimsical and childish; other ranking Tarutaru have speech tics like "-ethy" at the end of words, or going "diddly-doo". This ends up not being completely sustainable, and so occasionally Shantotto just used regular speech for short sentences.

In short, Shantotto is on the "Will Cause Problems On Purpose" axis of alignment charts, has a memorable speech pattern, and is powerful enough to both survive any problems she causes and demand the player character handle it for her.

Personally I think there are other, more memorable representatives of FFXI (Prishe, Zeid, Gilgamesh), but Shantotto gets to be the Default FFXI Representative, like Y'shtola for FFXIV. So she gets more exposure from that, without needing to spoil any part of FFXI's plotlines.
 
Aprops of nothing, Gilgamesh is also a linchpin for cross Final fantasy vs scaling for those crowds. "The actual crossover games are dubious cannon so should be their own thing, but Gil canonically shows up in X Y and Z games."
 
sitting up in my living room in the middle of the afternoon suddenly thinking "but if Squall spent his entire childhood continuously in the Kramers' care from the orphanage to Balamb Garden then that means there was a point at which he stopped remembering growing up with people he'd known his entire life, did Cid even notice Squall had forgotten his early childhood or did he just figure he was acting weird because teenagers are naturally broody, is Cid even aware that the memory erasure happened at all to these kids he's always taken care of"

final fantasy viii will never be a memory
 
Cid never mentions memory issues or talks about why they use GFs. All the 'ignore what people say about GFs' and the 'Everything is fine' comes from NORGs people or the classroom stuff.

This entire subplot may have completely gone over his head. He did tell Squall to find Ellone with no explanation.
 
RubberBandMan said:
He did tell Squall to find Ellone with no explanation.
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It wasn't just "with no explanation" - it was actually "you know her, don't you?", which is much stronger supporting evidence for your theory, I believe. So, the idea that Cid didn't realize the damage GF were doing to the children's memory holds some water.

He still trained them to be contract killers, of course, so, you know, your mileage on his culpability might vary.
 
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