- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
That or someone on the dev team really internalized their Bebel.
Let's Play Every Final Fantasy Game In Order Of Release [Now Finished: Final Fantasy Tactics]
- Thread starter Omicron
- Start date
- Let's Play
A ruined castle in the south of the map, utterly empty, its name one I have never heard before. Wild guess: this was the first place Golbez rose out of and destroyed in his quest for power. It's full of treasure chests, one of which is trapped and full of monsters that instantly kill me.
There are three monster in a box chest in there. Here's the thing; you can get those now with a bit of luck. Tellah knows Break. and Break can actually be Multicasted like an elemental spell. If you get lucky enough to that Tellah gets the time to cast it, entirely possible with three other party members to take the blows, Tellah can petrify all of the with one cast instantly winning the fight. One of the chests contains a rather powerful sword for this part of the journey that Cecil can use.
Here is another tip; Don't sleep on Bio. It's only slightly weaker than the Ga spells, but has a very fast cast time.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Tangentially, I was talking with @YOLF and we were thinking that it's like... Really interesting how (again, similar to its namesake's FF1 role) the Dark Elf appears... completely unconnected to the broader plot of the game? He is a powerful fairy wizard who commands monsters and great sorcerous power, and he is completely uninvolved in Golbez's plans. He just stole the Earth Crystal for his own goals, to further his own quest for immortality, and, like-
The real punchline here is, what are the two chief visual design components of Golbez and Kain? Golbez is a XBoxhueg man fully clad in black metal armor he never takes off. Kain is a Dragoon who's entire fighting style is based on spears and armor.
They can't set foot in the Magnetic Cave. This joker, this one magical asshole, just temporarily hijacked the battle for the fate of the world by stealing a crystal someone else was supposed to steal and hiding it in a magic cave the main bad guys can't set foot in without getting clowned on by a cheat hax environmental hazard. Golbez and Kain can't beat this random asshole. This is like the Joker taking a brief stint interrupting a Darkseid vs Justice League plot that everybody has to take time to actually address somehow.
Sure, I assume Golbez was workshopping a means of sending the last two Elemental Lords to do the job, but it might not have worked, yeah? Better to just play it safe and going with Kain's suggestion to trick Cecil.
For one, brief moment in time, the Dark Elf proves to be a monumental pain in the real big bad's ass and to derail the whole plot, and I love him for that.
- Location
- Columbus, OH
I completely forgot about casting time! I don't think you see that mechanic regularly until... IX and later(?), though it integrates well with the introduction of ATB. I think the easier versions of FF4 greatly blunted the longer casting times, but I have no idea if the Pixel Remaster is using the longer or shorter times, and the wiki does a bad job of documenting that stat.
Anyway, welcome to FF4's encounter design! I really appreciate that aspect of the game, where even random forest creatures might make you think about how to deal with them.
Have you started picking up a lot of single-use magic items yet? I don't remember if that mechanic shows up around here or if that's a bit later, but it was another thing I found to be surprisingly well-balanced in FF4.
Kuja
I'M A SQUIIIID
- Location
- AZ
- Pronouns
- He/Him
>>KAIN
>>KAIN
>>KAIN ANSWER THE GODDAMN LINKPEARL
"Yes m'lord?"
>>KAI- KAIN SOME FUCKING GREMLIN JUST GRABBED THE CRYSTAL
"A...gremlin, m'lord?"
>>I DON'T KNOW, SOME LITTLE WIRY FUCKER
>>UGLY AS SHIT
>>I SPENT HOURS WILING MY WAY PAST THE SIX CLERICS AND THIS LITTLE BASTARD JUST UP AND SNATCHED IT OUT OF NOWHERE
"Deeply frustrating, I can imagine, but I presume you could just kill it, m'lord."
>>THAT'S THE THING
>>I CAN'T MOVE
"Are you paralyzed?"
>>NO IT WAS LIKE ALL OF A SUDDEN MY ARMOR GOT TEN TIMES AS HEAVY
>>I HAD TO BANG MY HEAD ON MY SHOULDER TO TURN ON THE LINKPEARL
>>THE LITTLE SHIT WAS LAUGHING AND DOING CARTWHEELS
>>FUCKING CARTWHEELS
"Oh, you must have run afoul of a dark elf, m'lord. They have spells to hamper men in iron."
>>OH, A DARK ELF, OF COURSE
>>WHY DIDN'T I GUESS
>>PROBABLY BECAUSE SOME FUCKING ASSHOLE DIDN'T WARN ME "BY THE WAY MY LORD, WHILE IN TROIA BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR A RANDOM FUCKING DARK ELF THAT MIGHT POP UP OUT OF NOWHERE"
"M'lord, Baron and Troia have not warred in ag-"
>>KAIN, YOU KNOW WHAT, I DON'T CARE
>>JUST COME GET ME OUT OF THIS FUCKING CAVE
"M'lord, as a dragoon I, too, bear weapons and armor made of metal."
>>THEN GET SCARMIGLIONE HE'S GOT NOTHING BETTER TO DO
>>WHAT DO I PAY YOU PEOPLE FOR
>>THIS IS THE DUMBEST SHIT IN THE HISTORY OF STUPIDITY
>>I'LL HAVE CAGNAZZO FLOOD THIS ENTIRE CAVE I SWEAR
>>NOW GET DOWN HERE BEFORE THAT LITTLE SHIT COMES BACK WITH A CRAYON OR SOMETHING
As the linkpearl popped and communication ended, a sibilant hiss reached the dragoon's ears. "You know," said Scarmiglione, "if you leave him there, we could run this operation."
Kain thought about it.
ZerbanDaGreat
Daemon Noble of D E M O G R A P H I C S
- Pronouns
- They/them
I hope you went back there eventually, just for everything else if not for that one trapped treasure chest, because it's full of insanely good loot for where you are. And also a lance which I'm sure is for some hitherto unknown party member and not an indication Kain is coming back.
A ruined castle in the south of the map, utterly empty, its name one I have never heard before. Wild guess: this was the first place Golbez rose out of and destroyed in his quest for power. It's full of treasure chests, one of which is trapped and full of monsters that instantly kill me.
Apparently this was some kind of localisation hurdle, as what Edward gives the party is technically supposed to be a plant with this whole folklore surrounding it in Japan as being able to transmit your voice a long distance, so because of the context it's used in and the fact you technically never see it they decided to simply imply Edward gave you a magic radio-receiver harp. However it makes an appearance in 3D-modelled form in FF4: The After Years, revealing it is literally a potted plant you can talk through like a radio. Allegedly you ever get to use a whisperweed yourself during Shadowbringers but fuck if I recall that at this point.
But hark! What excuse to use Focus through yonder window breaks!! Also to my recollection you can get away with single-casting Fira or even Fire with Tellah, as his INT is so juiced that that will be enough to blast through a hedgehog. And naturally once you get Kain back Jump is the natural solution to autocounter enemies like this.
Yeah it's a shame Cid has so little to really make him stand out, conceptually it's fun that your buddy the airship engineer and series mainstay legacy character Cid actively joins your party but he's mechanically so underwhelming I straight-up forgot he was in there last time I went over the party members in my head.
I mean hey, he did hand the party a magic walkie-talkie, whether it be harp-shaped or potplant-shaped, so technically he can hear everything that's going on right now. Imagine your FF14 character forgot to take their linkpearl up and suddenly woke up to the sound of their friends getting pasted by a member of Insane Clown Posse.Even though it doesn't seem to make sense - even though he's miles away, cripplingly injured - Edward by a tremendous act of will drags himself out of bed, pushing aside the healers insisting that he return to bed, muttering "I don't care what happens to me, I am the only one who can save them," driven by singular focus and determination - to get his hands on his harp.
A point of order here - 'once we find him again' is both completely optional and somewhat unlikely due to the speed at which the story picks up and directs you elsewhere after the magnet cave. Not to mention that between the cutscene of Edward going "OURGH MY BONES MY ORGANS BUT I DON'T CARE WHAT HAPPENS TO ME", the harp music suddenly and rather ominously cutting out once it's time for phase 2, the solemn way Cecil expresses gratitude after the fight, and the fact that the game already deep-sixed a pair of children, everything aligns to make you think that Edward just collapsed and died in the process of saving the party. The only reason that I went and checked on him was because the game had tried so hard to convince me he dropped dead mid-song and I wanted to call it on its shit. The fact that you can just take a detour to check on him and get an "oh nah bro I just needed to go back to bed lmao" is hilarious for this game.
If there's one thing I'll always praise this game for, despite my other misgivings, it's how many ways it uses its battle system to do something raw and kino. They really cared about making sure the game had a story in the fights as well as in the dialogue boxes which is something too many devs miss the mark on even today.As you'll recall, the reason the Dark Elf needed this magnetic field bullshit was because metallic weapons are specifically his weakness. Which means, now that his control has been disrupted, it's time to swap everyone back to their optimal equipment, including the legendary sword of Mysidia. The entire time, the sound of Edward's harp is playing in the background…
…and still playing as the fight begins. While Edward is putting his life on the line and the entire party has a resurgent moment of fighting with their full power, instead of the normal combat BGM, the soundtrack is still Edward's harp, emphasizing how he is right here, with us, making this fight possible in the first place.
The Dark Elf's triplecast flounders against my armor dealing only a tenth of the damage it did earlier, although I am pretty sure these are script-adjusted values rather than an 'organic' result of equipping my best gear.
It's incredibly fucking raw, you guys, is what I'm saying. Like, I encourage you to take a look for yourself (footage not mine):
Also you forgot to flip your formation back so there were three front-row slots for all your melee attackers you fool, you stooge, you buffoon.
Last edited:
I really love it when fantasy worlds have multiple moons.
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
"To all of my children, in whom life flows abundant..."
In the 3D remake, there's a special item in this club area that you can only get by paying that 10k gil. It's an Augment, which is basically a learnable extra skill.
Because the 3D remake devs are trolls, the Augment in the club is Gil Farmer, ie increases the gil you earn in battles. (It's also one of the "optional" Augments even for a completionist playthrough, because you can easily be completionist without having it.) So you pay the money, you get something that might (or might not) earn you that money back, and no other benefit or point. Well, apart from the cabaret dancing.
Now I'm curious, if this game had something like Pokemon XY tip counter (you could tip some specific NPC's and there was an online counter for both the biggest tippers and the total if I remember correctly) how much would have been spent on this?
- Location
- Singapore
- Pronouns
- Singular They
Probably quite a lot; in this specific case, 10k gil was pocket change to me, because I'm the sort to grind in RPGs simply to trivialize the combat, so by the time I reached Troia I was flush with cash.
Tangentially, I'd be more interested in another potential statistic: how many times in total, out of all the players of the game, has Cecil put his hand in the fire.
- Location
- California
I think one of the Viis from Rak'tika gives you one before you go into Quitana Reval. Since they don't have Linkshells.
Vocalist
Verdant Maiden in Violet
- Location
- By a Cedar Tree
Well, Troia does have male citizens. Dragon Quest 4, on the other hand, includes a nation called Femiscyra. As I recall, the only men allowed to live there are eunuchs.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
Edward is a MVP and I'll hear nothing to the contrary.
Baron's fauna is mostly shitty goblins, and these ladies manage to survive and feel safe surrounded by these assholes. Airships aside, I dunno why they might be worried about the possibility of fighting Baron soldiers.
I take that is an Endwalker spoiler (*hurries up to open up the Bloodstorm LP again*), but if instead you wait to just one gen after the SNES...
Last edited:
Egleris
Vagrant Dragon
- Location
- Italy
I think it should actually already be accessible right now? I'm not sure, however.
Also, the Magnetic Cave is one of the most iconic things from this game for me; it's such an unusual gameplay challenge, and of a type that is rare to see. And yeah, the fact that Golbez and Kain can't go take the crystal because they wear armor too is always amusing. FFIV gameplay is limited by their choice to use fixed classes who only learn new abilities by leveling up with no choices allowed, but they really do squeeze everything interesting out of that decision that they're able to. It speaks to how much effort went in making this a great game.
Which makes the fact that, as far as I'm concerned, this is almost certainly the least good of the three SNES Final Fantasy a pretty wild situation.
Yeah, it's pretty easy to tell which of the critics of that particular title have no idea how deeply referential some of the "confusing" aspect of it are. In fact, it's often a good rule of thumb that, if something seems strange or out-of-place in a Final Fantasy, is because it's referring a previous titles; see the Dark Elf as an example. Of course, the best titles manage to integrate the references better, so there's that.
And speaking of references:
You can probably thank Star Wars whenever that particular trope comes up, because it's almost always a reference to it for any story that was created after it. That scene is so iconic that it spawned plenty of imitations. Which is why, of course, it had to feature in at least one Final Fantasy, with the series' constant efforts to reference Star Wars whenever possible.
Last edited:
cB557
voOOP
No, just the intro for A Realm Reborn.
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
It's true that each story is technically self contained, but sometimes I get the sense that it's almost like people forget this is a series.
I know that's from the Answers intro song, but I mean in the context of talking about the moon and Endwalker being abo-... Right. Dalamud. You know what, I said nothing.
- Location
- Brittany, France
- Pronouns
- He/Him
For those who may be confused about the reference, the world of FFXIV used to have two moons, but during the now-defunct 1.0 storyline before they massively revamped the game the evil empire of Garlemald attempted to crash the lesser moon, Dalamud, into the continent where the game takes place as a means of turning it all into free real estate. Nowadays when you begin the game, the first thing that welcomes you is a gorgeous cinematic introduction in which you see the moon's approach, then it blowing up and revealing Bahamut, who had been trapped inside the whole time for complicated plot reasons. The game opens five years after that event, and the lasting consequences of the moon-shrapnel scattered over the landscape alongside Bahamut's brief bombardment of the continent form a major aspect of the background of the game's early storyline.
The plan to crash the moon into the earth was called Project Meteor, and was conducted by the VIIth Legion, because FFXIV loves that kind of cheeky reference.
The plan to crash the moon into the earth was called Project Meteor, and was conducted by the VIIth Legion, because FFXIV loves that kind of cheeky reference.
A few. I just wasted several of them on Barbariccia, annoyingly enough.
Hall of fame post. This is canon now.
Well I'm going back there now, mom.
You know what, I can't actually fault the localization team on that one. I'm usually all for not watering down cultural references in the process of translation but god knows I'd be confused as hell if Edward just handed me a potted plant that inexplicably turned out to save the day
I didn't forget about Focus shut up
"Final Fantasy XIV is a medieval fantasy setting," I say, while Minfilia hands my character a smartphone
Yeah, going back to visiting Edward to make sure he was/wasn't dead is the first thing I did after the Magnet Cave, and I was genuinely surprised that he didn't keel over the moment we were done thanking him and telling him he did a good job.
shut up, it's actually a very smart plan where i minimize physical damage for my most important physical characters i totally planned this the whole time
I forget that's a thing every time I boot up the game, so whenever I approach an open flame I'm like "oh, an interaction prompt!" and then burn myself, so like, probably five or six times on my end.
I will try to remember!
- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Never let it be said that Final Fantasy only references Star Wars, or itself. Here we have a classic Lex Luthor plot.
FourthWall
Love & Destroy
- Location
- Chiraq
A fucking referenchilada it is
- Location
- Florida USA
All caught up now @Omicron . And you're at a fun point in the game.
All of the remarks of the ATB system have caught me a bit by surprise, but then again, this was very much my first JRPG. For me, ATB was just... normal. Aside from FFMQ, I had it here, FFVI, Chrono Trigger, FFVII, FFV when I got the PS1 port... it was just normal for me, and while it does sometimes add a sense of urgency to fights, I suppose I never felt rushed because I had it. Heck, playing FF2 on the PSP, FF1 on GBA (emulator), or FF3 PR always felt jarring because it has the turn system and doing things one at a time. FFX (and that Lord of the Rings RPG "Third Age" with a clearly-borrowed system) likewise felt unique and different with its turn-based system and move order. But it makes sense that for those used to being able to take their time and methodically plan their upcoming battle strategies, the introduction of real time to the battles would potentially be jarring and unsettling.
It also sort of explains your unwillingness to ever bother with the "change row" command in a fight like the second Scarm fight. That old turn based system makes you feel like you're "wasting" a turn that could be used for damage or healing or some other useful act, I just see it as making a relevant adjustment. (Though I sometimes just cheese that fight by swapping rows in the menu so I start with Cec in front and the magi in the rear).
Anyway, looking forward to your next update, though apparently you've gone through the upcoming content already. I trust you had fun?
||Also, should be clear why I was almost literally squeeing on December 3rd 2021 when I got to that dungeon and heard its remaster of the familiar BGM, plus the boss fight.||
All of the remarks of the ATB system have caught me a bit by surprise, but then again, this was very much my first JRPG. For me, ATB was just... normal. Aside from FFMQ, I had it here, FFVI, Chrono Trigger, FFVII, FFV when I got the PS1 port... it was just normal for me, and while it does sometimes add a sense of urgency to fights, I suppose I never felt rushed because I had it. Heck, playing FF2 on the PSP, FF1 on GBA (emulator), or FF3 PR always felt jarring because it has the turn system and doing things one at a time. FFX (and that Lord of the Rings RPG "Third Age" with a clearly-borrowed system) likewise felt unique and different with its turn-based system and move order. But it makes sense that for those used to being able to take their time and methodically plan their upcoming battle strategies, the introduction of real time to the battles would potentially be jarring and unsettling.
It also sort of explains your unwillingness to ever bother with the "change row" command in a fight like the second Scarm fight. That old turn based system makes you feel like you're "wasting" a turn that could be used for damage or healing or some other useful act, I just see it as making a relevant adjustment. (Though I sometimes just cheese that fight by swapping rows in the menu so I start with Cec in front and the magi in the rear).
Anyway, looking forward to your next update, though apparently you've gone through the upcoming content already. I trust you had fun?
||Also, should be clear why I was almost literally squeeing on December 3rd 2021 when I got to that dungeon and heard its remaster of the familiar BGM, plus the boss fight.||
Connelly
As useless as a penguin with mittens
- Location
- Salamanca, Spain
A fucking referenchilada it is
I apologize for the low effort shitposting, and would have done more but just the reference page in TVTropes made me dizzy and I gotta scram.
Last edited: