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

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Zap Rowsdower said:
Fun fact - the bonus dungeon in the GBA remake, dropped again from this one, revealed that souls split in two when they die. The evil part of the soul goes to hell, and the good part goes to heaven.

The good part of Emperor Bowie's soul was ALSO evil, conquered heaven, and had to be defeated by a party of the allies the Wild Roses lost along the way; Minwu, Ricard, Josef, and Gordon's brother Scott.
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I rated this funny at first because it's ridiculous, but a moment later I decided it's just awesome and changed it to like.
 
One of the things I respect most highly about FF2 is indeed its body count. Over the course of its runtime it's axed:

3 supporting party members: Josef, Minwu and Ricard
3 supporting NPCs: Scott, the king of Fynn, and Cid
An absolute shitload of offscreen minor NPCs and entire towns thanks to the rampages of the Dreadnought and the Cyclone

There are not a lot of games that go this hard. Add into this the sheer hair-metal insanity of a plot point like 'local Emperor too angry to die, conquers Hell instead' and it's a bloody shame we had to wait until the PS1 era to play it on this side of the pond, a double shame that it's a story bolted to a combat system almost designed to break itself over its own knee.

Adloquium said:
"Tell me, for whom do you fight?"
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For the world of man to mean anything, man must own the world. To this end, he hath fought ever to raise himself through conflict--to grow rich through conquest. And when the dust of battle settles, is it ever the strong who dictate the fate of the weak.

Knowing this, but a single path is open to the impotent ruler--that of false worship. A path which leads to enervation and death. Only a man of power can rightly steer the course of civilization. And in this land of creeping mendacity, that one truth will prove its salvation.

Come, champion of Fynn, face me! Your defeat shall serve as proof of my readiness to rule! It is only right that I should take your realm. For none among you has the power to stop me!
 
For the life of me, I shall forever wish for a scene of Emperor Dave meeting Satan in Hell and the second realizing he was not the devil in the deal. It's criminal that we don't get to see the beginning of Emperor Dave B. Mateus Ziggie Stardust Bowie the First bitchslapping down higher beings and showing them the pecking order.
 
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Zap Rowsdower said:
Fun fact - the bonus dungeon in the GBA remake, dropped again from this one, revealed that souls split in two when they die. The evil part of the soul goes to hell, and the good part goes to heaven.

The good part of Emperor Bowie's soul was ALSO evil, conquered heaven, and had to be defeated by a party of the allies the Wild Roses lost along the way; Minwu, Ricard, Josef, and Gordon's brother Scott.
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I have to wonder if that was something that was planned but dropped due to lack of resources or if that was thought up for the remake.
 
Despite the lackluster presentation, the plot is absolutely metal.
 
Thus starts another fairly common trend in Final Fantasy games - the end of the world you don't/can't stop but can maybe come out the other side of albeit with 99% of the world population dead. It's not in every game but it's common enough I'm confident calling it A Thing.
 
Omicron said:
So this is it. The final confrontation. The Emperor has been defeated, but his legacy of evil and brutality, embodied in one of its very victims turned into another tool of its self-perpetuating machine of conquest, remains. Brother against sister, friend against friend, it's time for the final showdown.

Which is when Final Fantasy II decides to go into Final Fantasy gear.







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Oh yeah, baby.

The Emperor is back and he has all the powers of Hell now. His refusal to die was so strong, so stubborn, that he simply crawled his way back out of the Underworld and came back even more powerful. His sprite has changed, and the spooky fireworks show he's putting on here clearly signal we're dealing with something way out of step with whatever we've fought before, and nobody is prepared or ready for this fight.
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Omicron said:
The name 'Coeurl' is taken from the 1939 short story Black Destroyer by A.E. van Vogt. In it, a proto-Star Trek expedition of scientists on a spaceship exploring the universe for the purposes of science comes upon a desolate planet, once inhabited by a technological civilization that appears to have been wiped out. The story, however, is not told from the point of view of the scientists - it's told from the point of view of the Coeurl, a sapient, cat-like creature with two tentacles and a powerful ability to control energy. The Coeurl feeds on phosphorus which it apparently can only draw from organic beings, and it approaches the scientists, who are all too happy to encounter alien intelligence and to take the creature on their ships to study it with its consent and cooperation. However, the Coeurl's actual intent is to kill everyone aboard, take over the ship, and head to Earth where it will have an unlimited supply. Thus begins a hide-and-seek game between two highly intelligent opponents, one with advanced technology and one with superpowers.

Black Destroyer is the ur-source of the 'trapped in space with some kind of alien monster' trope, long before Alien. In fact, van Vogt successfully sued Fox over Alien ripping off his story. It's considered by some to essentially having kicked off the Golden Age of Science Fiction. It's huge, and most people have never heard of it.
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Minor nitpick: van Vogt sued over the claim that Alien resembled Discord in Scarlet, not Black Destroyer; the alien in Discord in Scarlet did the whole "implants eggs in people" thing. It's only a minor nitpick since both are stories in Voyage of the Space Beagle.
 
Omicron said:
The adult survivor of Deist trying to convince herself that Ricard died a good death while obviously nearly breaking in tears is probably the saddest bit in the whole game.
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If you have a save left before Ricard's death, you can go to the dragoon castle and see their reaction to you having found the last of their people, it makes his following death hit that little bit harder; the game really fakes you into thinking he'll be alright.
 
FF2's plot may not be particularly deep or complicated, but the Emperor taking over Hell certainly makes it memorable.

Well, that and the absurd body count.
 
It's funny because when the Emperor shows up someone suggests that he sold his soul for the power to come back; it only becomes clear that he kicked out the devil and took his throne when you meet him on said throne in Pandemonium.

Game done, LP chapter soon.
 
Are you planning on playing Mystic Quest? That was one of my favorite games as a kid, and I would love to see your take on it. Either way, I'm really enjoying the LP so far. I have no idea what 3 even looks like, but I'm looking forward to it!
 
nihartma said:
I have no idea what 3 even looks like
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Well, if its the Pixel Remaster it's got sprites, for one thing

Its also where a lot of series traditions come from, like the class/job system, moogles (although as I've said they almost appeared in 2 before being changed to beavers before release), summons, and optional bonus dungeons for the good summons/weapons.

Its also one of the games most heavily mined for XIV worldbuilding, although as with II and IX they "mined" by taking ideas that show up in the last chunk of the mined game as 11th hour revelations and expand those ideas into entire plot arcs.


Don't expect as much characterization for the protagonists as 2 though - 3 went back to 1's "no names, no characterization" protagonist model (they don't even have defined genders - they change sprites when they change jobs, meaning they can go from masculine fighter sprites to feminine white mage sprites and back again). The DS remake gave 'em names, unique appearances, and unique dialogue in the first few hours to establish personalities, but the pixel remake walked that back to generic-land.
 
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nihartma said:
Are you planning on playing Mystic Quest? That was one of my favorite games as a kid, and I would love to see your take on it. Either way, I'm really enjoying the LP so far. I have no idea what 3 even looks like, but I'm looking forward to it!
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Uh, I had no idea the Mana series started out as a Final Fantasy spinoff (or more probably I used to know it and forgot). I never played Mystic Quest, though I have many, many hours logged into Sword of Mana, of which I have started multiple long playthroughs and never finished a single one.
 
Is it related to Mana? I had no idea. It's a pretty solid game, better than the reviews or even the wiki article present it as. It's got a decent, if relatively simple plot, better characters than what you've seen so far, and in my opinion, a well balanced and challenging combat system. Awesome music too
 
nihartma said:
Is it related to Mana? I had no idea. It's a pretty solid game, better than the reviews or even the wiki article present it as. It's got a decent, if relatively simple plot, better characters than what you've seen so far, and in my opinion, a well balanced and challenging combat system. Awesome music too
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this is mystic quest. They just didn't originally localize it as a Mana game in the west.

Sword of Mana is the plot expanded and feature fleshed out GBA remake, to be more precise. With alternate female character to play. Well, the ability to play the female lead, more accurately.
 
nihartma said:
Is it related to Mana? I had no idea. It's a pretty solid game, better than the reviews or even the wiki article present it as. It's got a decent, if relatively simple plot, better characters than what you've seen so far, and in my opinion, a well balanced and challenging combat system. Awesome music too
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Yeah, you can tell from the fact that Mystic Quest and the Mana games have Seiken Densetsu in their Japanese names.
 
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