Also Galuf and his "Local Man Too Angry To Die" routine, but yeah it's surprising the FF series hasn't done it more often.
Edit: and now that I think about it, Terra's Esper Form is somewhat along those lines as well. Guess the games have in fact done it decently often.
In addition to the examples that have been posted, remember pre-enhancement Cloud doing a Limit Break on Shinra's golden boy and dunking him into the lifestream!
It's rarely
explicit that an emotion-powered superpower happened, but it's cropped up now and then.
As far as I can remember, FF9 has a pretty good habit of purposefully avoiding characters doing stupid things to create contrived drama...but I'm only a bit further than you in my replay so my glasses might be a touch rose tinted still.
This is something I noticed in our two main scene of in-character conflict so far: Baku and Zidane disagreeing over whether to go save Garnet, and Steiner and Zidane disagreeing over whether to set camp and rest. In both cases, neither side is a complete idiot; they're both making sensible arguments. Baku is coming from a place of prioritizing the safety of his crew and not heading off into an area filled with unknown threats, while Steiner has very sensible concerns about the risks of setting up camp in the notoriously dangerous mists where they could be ambushed by monsters. Zidane wins both of these arguments, but he's not fighting strawmen, the other character is coming from a reasonable if incomplete position.
It's good writing!
Heads up though, IIRC you'll need to find and activate the "Add Effect" ability for weapon status effects to actually function. Which is kinda stupid, but w/e.
okay but why though
God, could you imagine if Baku was like Gaffgarion. "Listen, Zidane. We can either let the knight and the kid live, and rat us out to the Queen. Or...well, what's some more fertilizer in the forest?"
consider: ff9 but Baku is replaced by Gaff, Steiner by Agrias, Garnet by Ovelia, Vivi by Mustadio, Zidane remains the same
FFIX does also manages to have the "slow and relaxing" opening that FFVIII has by including the Alexandria section with Vivi; it's entirely possible to spend hours there, exploring and jumping rope and playing cards and making sure you didn't miss any treasure. I think the game's ability to synthesize FFVII "action-packed start with the hero team's on a mission" with FFVIII "take your time and get to know the setting" is one of FFIX introduction's strengths.
I think the one thing that VIII gains from its slower paced opening is that, while the Chill Alexandria Experience with Vivi is a great bit of early low-key exploration, the opening at Balamb Garden and the repeated visits to it are really good at selling that this is
your home, your school, a place where Squall belongs and will come back again, even after being separated for a long time. It's where you have classes, training, your dorm, your prom ball, your teachers, your friends. That's a vibe none of the other game has ever really captured to the same extent.
With that said, yes, IX has a very strong opening that knows to move fluidly between high action and low-key hangout in a very smooth and effective way, from a pacing perspective it's definitely the best we've had.
In Italian it was translated as "Foresta del Male", pretty much literally from Japanese.
In French it's
Forêt Maudite, ie "Cursed Forest."
I wonder if I should keep a running tally of the French translation differences like I planned to do with VIII but never ended up doing...
Like, so far, pretty much
every single character has had a different name. To whit:
Tantalus = Tantalas
Baku = Bach
Zidane = Djidanne
Blank = Frank
Marcus = Markus
Cinna = Cina
Vivi = Bibi
Garnet = Grenat
Brahne = Branet
Steiner is the only one whose name remains unchanged.
But there's an even more baffling change. In French, the Pluto Knights are the
Brutos.
That's not just missing the planetary reference (and the cheeky reference to the number 9).
Brutos isn't technically French, but it's close enough to brut/brutal/bruteaux, which are, that it clearly codes as meaning,
brute, rude, crude, rough, or more generally a kind of character who doesn't have much going on upstairs, a blunt instrument.
Which is... Kind of appropriate to Steiner and the Pluto Knights as we were first introduced to them... But also it's such a wildly different name from "Pluto Knights" that only one of the two translations can be correct, and I'm 99% certain it's the English one. Because I think what happened is that we had a typical case of translating from sight without context and getting consonnants confused, so P became B, L became R, and "Pluto" became "Bruto." At least that's my guess.
Similarly, the Plant Brain is, in French, called
Blambourine. That is a cool name, that's kind of like, fantasy sounding, it'd be a good name for some monster (notably it includes the word "Bourine," which is the female form of "Bourrin," meaning 'someone who likes to hit things a lot,' so you get the idea that this is a female plant entity that hits everything with its tentacles), but also it's... Incorrect. A casual look at Plant Brain's wiki page, not looking at anything but the name entry, tells us its Japanese name is "(
プラントブレイン,
Puranto Burein?)."
The French Translator looked at "puranto burein" and failed to realize it meant
Plant Brain and instead kludged together a weird fantasy name without any particular etymology, Blambourine.
I'm... Starting to wonder if we might not be in the very odd situation of a French translator who spoke Japanese
but not English and so failed to notice obvious English loanwords.
@Omicron Thought you might want to know, FF7 Rebirth is up for pre-purchase on steam.
(IDK if anyone told you already)
I have already finished it months ago o_o[/QUOTE]
