Yeah, I had to wait until I had finished the game to watch it in full because it spoils major plot points*, but as usual the New Frame Plus video on FFIV is fantastic and a great companion piece to this Let's Play. And at this rate, I might be done by the time he releases the FFV video!
*Kind of by design, because it's demonstrating how FFIV is using its new tech to carry its plot.
I think the fact that one of FFIV writers wanted to work in theater was the most interesting tidbit from that video - not that the rest of it wasn't nice to know, but that particular piece of information really explains so much about the game's sensibilities. Both the good and the bad.
Incidentally, speaking of technical achievement, FFV has one of the greatest soundtracks in the series, enough so that music from it has been repurposed in many of the following titles, so you might want to make sure to listen to it when you play, as it makes the experience that much more enjoyable. Some of the songs are truly iconic.
I think Cecil gets his redemption too soon. It's not that he should be doing more evil stuff or anything, it's that he spends the huge majority of the game as a Paladin - he gets the upgrade on Part 6 of this 20-part Let's Play; and at some point the player, and the game, kind of... forget about the whole past wrongs thing? And I think Rydia never bringing up Mist Village again is because by the point she joins the group again, the writers are firmly treating Cecil's atonement as a done and past thing that doesn't need bringing up anymore.
Which is a bit of a shame, because for me, where Final Fantasy IV really starts is when Cecil is alone with child!Rydia, swears to protect her, and journeys with her for a while in a kind of bittersweet Lone Wolf and Cub scenario where they're both labouring under the weight of what he's done to her and the fact that he's the only person who can protect her. It's a really good dynamic, which is why it's unfortunate that it lasts about five minutes before Tellah joins the group, much as I love him.
As a corollary to that, it's wild how we only hear that Cecil would be totally screwed if he tried to fight Golbez as a Dark Knight and he should definitely become a Mormon if he wants to stand a chance. Like it just seems like the obvious move, right? To have Cecil try to defeat Golbez with the power of darkness and trip and fall and shit all over himself because you can't fight evil with evil, unsubtle point to the Wrestlemania sign hanging from the moon. Forget Leviathan headbutting the ship and almost killing everybody onboard just to kidnap Rydia, why couldn't the party make it to Baron successfully only for Golbez to floss on them and, idk, Rydia has another Gohan Momento once everyone else has been defeated and summons Leviathan herself? Then you could frame the fight with him in the underworld as Golbez going "hmmm you didn't shit your pants like all your friends this time Cecil, you've grown stronger, but not strong enough fucker" and then Rydia comes in like "you're not the only one who got stronger!!!" and then she pulls out Golbez's ribcage like a Mortal Kombat fatality.
It's funny to me this talk about Rydia as a Dangerous Motherf[glomp]er, not that I dislike it. The times I've seen her being discussed is as if people thought somehow she was this demure shy wildness baby teen.
It's funny to me this talk about Rydia as a Dangerous Motherf[glomp]er, not that I dislike it. The times I've seen her being discussed is as if people thought somehow she was this demure shy wildness baby teen.
It's typical stereotyping; a lot of Final Fantasy characters buckle stereotypes quite strongly, but even people who actually played the games tend to forget about the details. Rydia is the pretty girl of the team, so in people's mind she shouldn't be assertive and willful; I'm sure there's plenty of people who think Rosa is a traditional damsel in distress waiting for her man to save her, whereas as we saw, despite the fact she was kidnapped and held hostage, she's actually headstrong, fearless, and even a bit kinky - definitely not the type of person to wait for somebody else to save her, if she had any other choice.
FFVII also suffers from this - Tifa, unlike what the various spinoffs, remakes and most people would want to make you believe, is actually the shy, dutiful and somewhat introvert girl that you'd expect a main love interest to be, but since she's a fist fighter and bartender, has a look that is intentionally exaggeratedly sexy, and does occasionally shows agency (which she does by trying to help people, usually, rarely acting for herself), people picture her as far more extrovert and tomboyish than she is. Because that's just the stereotype associated with girls who work in bars and punch people, and the fact that Tifa is nothing like that flies over people's head.
So... yeah. Final Fantasy has actually an exceptional track record in creating original characters, especially among the women and girls, but most people either fail to notice, willingly forget, or just assume it doesn't because, without playing, that's the expected assumption to make.
In Tifa's case, a large part of it is probably because she spends most of the game wondering what the hell is going on with Cloud. Like, we see how she acts in the flashback to the Nibelheim incident, and she's very much a rambunctious tomboy as a teen. It's only once you see that basically everything Cloud's been saying about his past is a lie that you realize Tifa's trying to learn why he's been lying, something that naturally alters how she acts around him.
I disagree with that; she's not very effusive, she's just excited at having a chance to prove her skills, was my reading of it. But I suppose we'll see what everybody's take on that is when we get there; I know I started it, but discussing spoilers in detail is probably not a good idea in this particular thread.
It's typical stereotyping; a lot of Final Fantasy characters buckle stereotypes quite strongly, but even people who actually played the games tend to forget about the details. Rydia is the pretty girl of the team, so in people's mind she shouldn't be assertive and willful; I'm sure there's plenty of people who think Rosa is a traditional damsel in distress waiting for her man to save her, whereas as we saw, despite the fact she was kidnapped and held hostage, she's actually headstrong, fearless, and even a bit kinky - definitely not the type of person to wait for somebody else to save her.
FFVII also suffers from this - Tifa, unlike what the various spinoffs, remakes and most people would want to make you believe, is actually the shy, dutiful and somewhat introvert girl that you'd expect a main interest to be, but since she's a fist fighter and bartender, has a look that is intentionally exaggeratedly sexy, and does occasionally shows agency (which she does by trying to help people, usually, rarely acting for herself), people picture her as far more extrovert and tomboyish than she is. Because that's just the stereotype associated with girls who work in bars and punch people, and the fact that Tifa is nothing like that flies over people's head.
So... yeah. Final Fantasy has actually an exceptional track record in creating original characters, especially among the women and girls, but most people either fail to notice, willingly forget, or just assume it doesn't because, without playing, that's the expected assumption to make.
In a similar vein, Aeris dresses pretty conservatively and in pink of all things and is the designated white mage of FF7, but once again her personality has been flipped in peoples memories - she's genuinely the extroverted tomboy people think Tifa is, just like how Tifa's real personality is what people think Aeris is.
In a similar vein, Aeris dresses pretty conservatively and in pink of all things and is the designated white mage of FF7, but once again her personality has been flipped in peoples memories - she's genuinely the extroverted tomboy people think Tifa is, just like how Tifa's real personality is what people think Aeris is.
She's some guy who are sick, or something like that.
...Really that's going to be dependent on what version of FFVII Omni plays, isn't it? I've no idea if the original game ported to PC has any fixes to the script or something from the original PS1 translation, once we get to FFVII and beyond there's no longer the easy "here's a collection of recent remasters that stay fairly faithful to the original games" like with the Pixel Remasters. And that's not even getting into the potential choices of things like finding a copy of/emulating the actual PS1 version, or saying "fuck it" and playing the Remake. (which while totally fine, does change a lot from the battle system to extra details in the story, so it's an important choice to think about especially considering none of the other FF games around it have full-on remakes in that style).
She's some guy who are sick, or something like that.
...Really that's going to be dependent on what version of FFVII Omni plays, isn't it? I've no idea if the original game ported to PC has any fixes to the script or something from the original PS1 translation, once we get to FFVII and beyond there's no longer the easy "here's a collection of recent remasters that stay fairly faithful to the original games" like with the Pixel Remasters. And that's not even getting into the potential choices of things like finding a copy of/emulating the actual PS1 version, or saying "fuck it" and playing the Remake. (which while totally fine, does change a lot from the battle system to extra details in the story, so it's an important choice to think about especially considering none of the other FF games around it have full-on remakes in that style).
For what it's worth, the way I see it FF7R is a completely separated entity from FF7, and both should be played (explaining why is definitely a spoiler, though)
For what it's worth, the way I see it FF7R is a completely separated entity from FF7, and both should be played (explaining why is definitely a spoiler, though)
Speaking as someone that hadn't heard a thing about the game and just noticed it in a store one day, I was actually rather entertained by it. I didn't get super far in it, given the combat felt a bit meh, but all the character stuff was fun.
Speaking as someone that hadn't heard a thing about the game and just noticed it in a store one day, I was actually rather entertained by it. I didn't get super far in it, given the combat felt a bit meh, but all the character stuff was fun.
Combat has been improved dramatically in patches, and there's infamously a point where it goes from open world to linear as they ran out of time (and the character stuff decreases as a result relative to plot).
How did they run out of time with a decade of development time? Yes.
Yeah, the biggest problem with XV (besides the absolutely garbage combat) was that it kept veering away from the good writing bits (the character interactions and fun road-trip open-world 'shit we're out of money for petrol, let's grab some monster bounties' stuff) into the bad writing bits (the rest of it).
"I've come up with a new recipe!" - amazing, 10/10, no notes
"plot plot plot blah blah fridge all the women" - 0/10 will not recommend
War? Monsters everywhere? Forget all that, there's a cool landmark over there to take selfies at and some cool fungus we can forage so our chef buddy can cook us delicious meals.
So, @Omicron
Lets say Sqaure put you in charge of a FFIV remake and you could change what ever you wanted to make a better game and story. What would you do?
Don't worry, he doesn't. And I don't think that's a spoiler considering how unrelated he is to anybody else's plot.
Even by the time of the sequel. He never marries, and 17 years later he's still carrying a torch for her... and him being older and wiser but unfortunately still characteristically him, she still shoots him down.
Literally shoots him down. They have a combo move where he blows her a kiss, a heart floats towards her, and she shoots it down with an arrow, causing an explosion that damages the enemy.
So, uh, is Edge supposed to be creepy? Because, uh... It's one thing to still carry a torch a bit for your first crush, but him not having moved on nearly a couple decades later is actually kind of bothering me!
Very early on, Cecil has a few lines about how the nature of a Dark Knight is to do terrible things, and that soon he will no longer even feel remorse about it.
And you know what made me start going "hey, wait a minute?" When they first appeared, it sounded like the Red Wings were supposed to be an elite group. Yet once the party's on the other side, it feels like "Red Wings" has become synonymous with "Baron's military". Even if stopping the party is a big deal, surely they should have been busy elsewhere some of the time, right?
But it's kind of a frustrating bit, yeah? It requires all three male characters to spontaneously develop a case of Rapid Onset Sexism (Patronizing Variant) and it flies in the face of all the trials they just went through together.
I think I could see Edge busting something like this out, since, well, he's an immature git AFAICT, but with Cecil's experience I feel like he should definitely know better than to go for Standard Sitcom Plot 1.
I thought it was interesting how the weapon guards sounded genuinely pissed at the party in one way or another, while the ribbon guards don't seem to have anything against you, it's just their job to stop you and so you're getting stopped.
(I got weird looks in the FFXIV Novice Network for commenting that I had stacks of curing status items like antidote, because apparently NOBODY buys/craft them there. I could not compute. :_D )
FFXI had issues with that too. To be fair, most of the time it's really not worth carrying a lot of consumables around, but when you need them, you really need them, and people don't always make the swap gracefully. (I'm still a bit irked by a tough fight in CoP that my group lost but probably could have won if people had used the items I'd personally crafted and given to them free of charge before we went in.)
In that room there is a small, small chance that you will encounter an enemy called the Flan Princess - the most powerful member of the long line of slimes, oozes, puddings and mousses that have appeared in this game before.
I have to object on behalf of all the hard-working slimes et al of the world, who are *much* less freaky looking than these things. (Though flans might be one of the few examples I can think of where FFXI's models come off as more freaky looking than the sprites in this game.)
That means leaving the Subterrane, walking all the way back to the Lunar Whale, touching down in the far west corner of the map, picking up the Ship and the Hovercraft, touching down on the coast off his island, taking the hovercraft, and then doing it in reverse. It's a chore.
The way the Underworld is mentioned here bugs me, because from what we've seen of it, the people there are actually pretty chill and not a good metaphor for the evil that lurks in the hearts of men!
And I think Rydia never bringing up Mist Village again is because by the point she joins the group again, the writers are firmly treating Cecil's atonement as a done and past thing that doesn't need bringing up anymore.
I can kind of understand it from Rydia, because for her it's actually been a really long time. It wouldn't be weird if she barely even remembers Mist Village. But it doesn't feel like the story really explores the impact that Rydia's personal timeskip would have on her relations with everyone else.
Eh, occasionally. More like I raced the enemy to 0 HP and healed up afterwards. Under Temper, Saber, and Haste, the two masters were doing 2200+ damage to Chaos in the end, and everyone was averaging 900-1100 against mooks. Of course, the first time I found the WarMech it dropped three nukes on me in a row, but I went back and settled the score right before the end boss. The difference a few levels (and Excalibur) can make.
Something about the relevance of certain one/two dimensional elements that we've seen here. I just got through Endwalker, and (besides "I cri" and "I want to give them all a hug"), I'm legitimately surprised by how much mileage they ended up squeezing out of FFIII. Not only the Crystal Tower, but Xande and even Amon. It's an interesting comparison to make, the same way as when a fanfic author takes a footnote information from an original work and writes an epic out of it anyway. Somehow ends up retroactively making the originals feel a bit more important in a meta sense, even when a bit disappointing by itself.
(I'm still a bit irked by a tough fight in CoP that my group lost but probably could have won if people had used the items I'd personally crafted and given to them free of charge before we went in.)
Reminds me of raiding in WoW, and the many times I announced I was putting down a repair bot (not the cheapest thing in Vanilla, and later versions had a cooldown), and people asked for another just a wipe later.
I thought it was interesting how the weapon guards sounded genuinely pissed at the party in one way or another, while the ribbon guards don't seem to have anything against you, it's just their job to stop you and so you're getting stopped.
Some "chest encounters" can be made a lot more interesting with a normal business vibe, like the guards just being punch clock jobbers. The better example of this that I remember is the Spectator beholder in Baldur's Gate 2, where you skip a fight by pocking holes in a contract.
I'm also reminded of FFIX where plenty of loot and progress is hidden behind the routine of NPCs, like waiting for someone to stop using a ladder. Not as interesting, but helps making the loot feel naturally placed in the world.
Eh, occasionally. More like I raced the enemy to 0 HP and healed up afterwards. Under Temper, Saber, and Haste, the two masters were doing 2200+ damage to Chaos in the end, and everyone was averaging 900-1100 against mooks. Of course, the first time I found the WarMech it dropped three nukes on me in a row, but I went back and settled the score right before the end boss. The difference a few levels (and Excalibur) can make.
