I was recently seized by the desire to play some Final Fantasies so I went back to the beginning and played through I in a couple of days, and then I started II. Now, like Pike when she started it a couple of years ago, I had never played FF2 before now. And like Pike I had heard a lot of polarizing talk about the game, especially with regards to its somewhat unconventional character growth system.
See, in FF2 you don’t gain experience points to level. Instead, much more in the vein of western RPGs like The Elder Scrolls, your characters grow according to what they do in battles. If they take a lot of hits they’ll gain HP and Stamina. If they cast magic, MP and Spirit or Intelligence, depending on whether it’s White or Black magic. Dodge and you gain dodge and agility. You get the idea. This doesn’t just apply to stats though, but also to your weapon proficiencies and magic. Use a particular class of weapon more and you’ll get better with it. Use a particular spell more and it will grow more powerful and more accurate, though also costing more MP.
I’m playing the PSP version which has enjoyed some years of refinement and polish over the original so it’s quite possible that the original’s balance was all out of whack. But I can safely say this system is one of the most engaging I’ve encountered in a JRPG in a long long time. I’m enjoying it tremendously and I cannot even begin to fathom what the complaints are. (I mean, I know what they are because I’ve read them, but if I hadn’t read them I’d never have figured them out by myself.) It’s deeply satisfying to get such feedback and results to how you play and it feels like there’s a lot more freedom here than in typical party-based RPGs.
wow very hate much dissent very opinion
But this goes, in my eyes, further than just being a system I am enjoying. What I’m finding is that I’m very naturally finding roles for my party members and that it’s not based on preset things but rather what feels sensible when a role needs to be decided. For instance, at the start of the game Guy, a big dude, seems like the obvious choice for heavy hitter. And he is a pretty heavy hitter. But he’s also loaded with the exact sorts of spells that have moderate, occasional, or intermediate use. I don’t need to stick Teleport on a dedicated mage, and I’d rather have Life on someone with a ton of health. The thing that makes this work is that you can level your spells as well. Guy doesn’t need to spend much time on his magic to still be useful with it. On the other hand Firion is carrying my offensive spells and because the spells grow as you use them, I find myself ensuring I do some casting regularly. I’m still early in the game but it already feels like a much more natural and sensible system than many RPGs manage. It’s a system which influences how I play without dictating it, and a system which rewards investment without being too malleable and having characters end up being very easily swapped because their abilities are tied completely into equippable items. It’s pretty simple to turn Barret into a mage and Aeris into a heavy hitter once you’ve got the materia to do it.
Ultimately what I’m enjoying is that character development fits into this wonderful niche of being freeform and not constricting without simply turning the characters into identikits of each other. By the standards of Final Fantasy this was a highly experimental game and I’m very glad Square made the choices they did with it because it has resulted in a real gem.
What about you guys? Do you have opinions on FF2, or perhaps you’ve come across interesting leveling systems in other games? Feel free to share your opinions, and remember we’re as interested in hearing about games that tried and failed as much as those which succeeded! Not every experiment will succeed, but learning about why one failed is at least as important as why another succeeded.
So let’s talk about Bravely Default, aka Final Fantasy But Without The Name For Some Reason. I haven’t seen any chocobos yet either, come to think of it.
Now this is a bit of a backwards case where the rest of the known universe managed to get this game before us Yanks did, much to our chagrin and to the rest of the world’s amusement. There is a free demo on the Nintendo eShop, however, and I recently downloaded it and then proceeded to spend the next four hours playing it nonstop.
As I said at the beginning of the post, it’s basically Final Fantasy, right down to most of the jobs and their roles as well as item names. If you’ve played any old-school Final Fantasy game before, you will jump right into Bravely Default with zero issues. Specifically, Bravely Default is a lot like Final Fantasies III, V, or in a way Tactics, because the focus is on jobs and doing fun things with job combinations. Then you go around and beat on things with a dragoon (“valkyrie”, but it’s the same thing) dual-wielding lances just because you can.
Cooler than you. And everyone else, for that matter.
There are a couple of new twists thrown in that are rather unlike previous Final Fantasy games. For starters, the first random battle I encountered included a cat in a wizard hat who promptly one-shotted one of my guys. (This resulted in me immediately exclaiming to Mister Adequate that “You need this game because it is the Dark Souls of JRPGs.”) Secondly you have a nifty little mechanic where you can either “Default” – hunker down, defend, and earn a sort of combo point – or “Brave”, where you spend those combo points to attack/cast something/heal/whatever multiple times. Timing these right can be part of your battle tactics, or alternatively you can just have your dragoon use up all his Braves and then destroy everything at the start of the fight. You know, it’s up to you.
It all sounds so simple, and yet it’s somehow very addictive, and anytime I’ve picked it up recently I’ve wound up playing for a lot longer than I expected I would. In short, if you like grindy JRPGs and giving your nondescript Heroes of Light all sorts of fun class combinations then this might be the game for you. Give the demo a try and see what you think. As for me, I think I’m picking this up when it comes out next month.
Yesterday I beat Final Fantasy 2, which means I’ve got two down in my quest to play all the major Final Fantasy games (barring the MMOs) in order. This is one of the games I haven’t played before, so it was all completely new to me. It was also a game that a lot of people gave me advance warning on because it’s so polarizing. Apparently FF2 is the game that will make or break a planned Final Fantasy marathon.
Well, I’m pleased to report that I actually quite enjoyed this game. It did have a couple of unconventional ideas and mechanics, which made the first hour or two probably the most difficult to get through, but once I got past that it was smooth sailing. I found this to be an immensely enjoyable RPG with a lot to offer in terms of being able to customize your party to fit your playstyle.
Did someone say "party"?
The last couple of dungeons– the Jade Portal and Pandemonium Castle– were deliciously difficult and had me worried that I was going to run out of the 99 ethers I’d brought along with me (not to mention all of the potions.) Every random encounter felt like a mini-boss. Running into a group of Abyss Worms was always utterly terrifying and yet so thoroughly delicious to struggle against. It was wonderful. And due to the unique way in which you “level” your characters in this game, I really felt like the final boss fight was the moment that I’d been training for this whole time. I loved it.
All in all I had an awful lot of fun with this game and I really do recommend pushing yourself through the first couple of hours and warming up to the playstyle if you’re looking for a solid and challenging oldschool RPG.
Now then: on to Final Fantasy 3! This is another game I haven’t played, so I’m excited to dig into this one!
Guys, I’m here to tell you a story about this nasty little bugger called a Hill Gigas:
This guy.
They’re in Final Fantasy 2 and they are not pleasant customers. See, I was doing a dungeon the other day and not just one, but two of them popped up as a random encounter. Expecting your typical random fight, I started wailing on him.
A couple of turns later, two of my party members were dead and the others could hardly put a scratch on the monsters, because they’re immune to Mythril Axes or something.
It was a good ten minutes before I managed to defeat these guys. It was a battle more difficult than any boss fight in the game thus far and I used up probably about 75% of my party’s total mana, but I did it. Feeling pleased with myself, I healed up and continued through the dungeon.
About ten steps later I ran into them again.
See, these guys are a recurring enemy in this dungeon.
I had figured out a method, though. It involves casting first Blink, and then Protect on my entire party, and hoping for the best. The battles are then long and slow, but manageable.
Slowly I inched my way through the dungeon, fighting these Hill Gigas monsters left and right. When I finally got to the dungeon’s boss, a chimera, I prepped up for the fight in the same way I’d prep up for a Hill Gigas fight and was then shocked when the boss went down in about a quarter of the time it took to fight the common Hill Gigas.
Then I teleported out of the dungeon and felt grateful to be alive. What a dungeon. What a monster!
What are some deliciously difficult monsters that you’ve encountered in your gaming journeys?
Between publishing a book, writing a new book, and working, I’ve been slowly working my way through Final Fantasy II (note that I mean the original FF2, and not what was actually FF4.) Despite going into it a bit apprehensive because people had warned me about it, I’m LOVING it thus far. I’m a good few hours into it and having a blast.
Yeah, it's something like this.
I love the weapon and spell leveling system. I’ve love the keyword system, which seemed gimmicky at first but was quite ahead of its time and still works nicely once you get used to it. I love the plot, which actually reminds me a lot of the aforementioned book I published. Really the only thing I don’t like about it thus far is that the character I have dubbed my mage has basically no mana points and ethers are pricy as heck. Fortunately, she can whack a mean punch with her staff.
All in all I’m having a lot of fun so far. I’ll admit that the first hour or so of the game was a bit of a rough wake-up call if you’re coming into it directly after FF1, but if you can get past that then this game is a real gem. We’ll see if it stays that way!
As I’ve mentioned before, I recently decided to marathon as many Final Fantasy games as I could. FF1 was my kickoff game, and yesterday I defeated Chaos and saved the world.
To say that it was the most fun I’ve had playing a retro game in months would not be accurate– that title goes to Sonic the Hedgehog 2. FF1 was, however, still a good deal of fun. Grindy and occasionally frustrating fun– this is an oldschool JRPG, afterall– but fun, nonetheless.
One of the things that really surprised me about this game was the story. Most people do not think of Final Fantasy I when they think of games with good stories. And obviously, the story is pretty simplistic. But the simplicity is largely what made it solid and endearing. You really do get the sense that you’re helping to save the world here. And you grow somewhat attached to your team– characters who show absolutely no snippets of personality throughout the entire game, allowing you attach whatever personalities you wish to them.
Another thing I liked was the ending, in which the game breaks the fourth wall and points out that, you know, the Warriors of Light weren’t the only ones saving the world. YOU saved the world. Everything the heroes did in game was orchestrated by the player, thus, the player is the true hero. It’s a personal touch that you don’t see in games all that often, and I thought it was neat.
Overall, it’s easy to see how this game spawned a massively successful series of games. It’s a solid piece of video game history well worth playing at least once.
Onward to FF2! I’ve heard that this is a game that will either make or break one’s desire to continue with an FF marathon, so that’ll be interesting, but I’m quite determined.
I’m currently playing Final Fantasy. Just… Final Fantasy. The first one. The one with no numbers after it. It’s my kickoff for a goal to play (or replay, as the case may be) all of the FF games that I have access to, since I haven’t played most of them in ages.
It’s slow but steady going, for no other reason than the fact that I’m trying to squeeze my FF time in between things like writing, drawing, working, and playing other games. Still, I’ve reached a comfortable point where I’m playing for an hour or two a day, and having a whole lot of fun.
I actually named my white mage Rarity, but this picture will have to do.
And now for the Android’s Topic of the Day: Have you ever decided to “marathon” a game series, and how did that work out for you? Did you finish?
To the chagrin of FFVII fans everywhere, Square-Enix yesterday announced that they are remaking Final Fantasy X for the PS3 and PSV. Me though, I’m overjoyed. I might even get a PS3 one day now that it has a game coming out for it.
I love FFX. I wrestle over whether I like VII or X more, but I really think I have to say the latter is the better game. I love everything about it (Except certain moments of voice acting). The aesthetic, the setting, the architecture, the battle system, the Sphere Grid, the music, the characters, everything. So I’m pretty excited to see what they will do with this.
Though all these FF rereleases and such make it kind of hard to mock Nintendo fans.
It’ll be a delicate balance. FFX isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot easier to mess it up than to improve it. Of course we want more than just graphical updates; FFX has aged fairly well for a 3D game anyway. I must presume the stuff from the European/International edition will be included, but hopefully there will be more besides this, more monsters, more areas, just MORE FFX, without changing the core game.
I also hope they redo Blitzball. I don’t care what anyone says, it was the best FF minigame ever (With the possible exception of Mog House). But there needs to be MORE of it. Two dozen teams, thousands of players (Make every single person IN THE WORLD a potential Blizter), and make it into underwater FIFA in terms of gameplay, where the stats are hidden and things are more dynamic.
Also add a whole bunch of endgame content and more summons and change absolutely NOTHING about Wakka because he is truly a god among men.
What do you hope to see come out of this? And what games do you want to see remade, for that matter?
Yesterday I had a really weird, specific gaming urge. Namely, I suddenly felt the urge to gather up a party of stereotypical fantasy characters and go around and hit monsters in the face with swords and fireballs.
…you guys DO know what I’m talking about, right?
Aww jeah.
The original Final Fantasy is straightforward and to the point. You don’t pick up new party members as you go along, you get all of them before you even start. The “story”, as much as there is one, is pretty much laid out at your feet in the first three minutes. Oh, and there’s grinding. There’s a lot of grinding.
Playing the game yesterday went something like this:
“Oh hey, I can buy all this armor and magic spells. It’s going to cost a few thousand gil. Kay, guess I’ll go grind monsters for a bit.”
Spend about a half hour grinding monsters. Buy all the armor and magic spells I want.
Spend about three minutes traveling to the next town.
“Oh hey, I can buy all this upgraded armor and new magic spells. It’s going to cost a few thousand gil. Kay, guess I’ll go grind monsters for a bit.”
Spend about a half hour grinding monsters. Buy all the armor and magic spells I want.
And it was at that point that I’d filled my oldschool JRPG grinding quota for the day and I saved and quit for the time being.
Now, you’d think that a system like this wouldn’t have a whole lot of appeal. I mean, if you’re gonna spend the game grinding, you’d might as well pad it with some story and character development, right? That’s how most later RPGs work, right? I mean, if I was gonna play some classic FF, I should’ve picked IV or VI or something. Right?
Maybe.
But there’s something deliciously simple about forgetting all of that and, just, I dunno… throwing lightning bolts and fireballs around for no reason at all, other than to buy some Potions.
I actually made these, a long time ago.
And besides, who among us can listen to this song with dry eyes?
Following on from Pike’s post I shall also provide some musings on the games I consider to be the very best. But unlike her, I shall actually deliver a list of five games! Just to briefly note that I’m not trying to say this is a definitive list of “best games ever” or something; just give that I’m most fond of and have a lot of personal regard for.
5) Final Fantasy X
Well, it’s always a toss-up between this and VII, but every time I play through FFX I find something else to love about it. This is, for my money, the best game Squaresoft/Square-Enix have ever put out. It is massive, richly detailed, I love all the characters in their own way (I didn’t used to like Yuna at all, but I’ve totally come to love and respect her as I really thought about her life and how she deals with everything), the battle system is immensely fun, and it’s got the best bonus content of any FF except, perhaps, XII, but then I don’t like XII so I’ve not seen much of that!
Also, blitzball is the best minigame ever.
I think most of all I love it because it’s so beautiful. Not in the purest sense of eye-melting graphics, but in the aesthetic sense. Not too many games have a South-east Asian style setting anyway, but FFX feels so hot and tropical, is so colorful, so thoroughly alive in every scene, that I can’t help but get completely sucked in. And this is not mentioning the soundtrack; I listen to this and I am transported to Spira, feeling the heat and the water, it’s so wonderful.
X-2 is great as well, I don’t care what anyone says.
4) X-Com
Ah, X-Com. You’ve heard Pike talk about this lately, and just think about what that means for a moment. A game that’s nearing 20 is more compelling to a new player than almost anything contemporary. Just so! X-Com is vast, ridiculous in scope, encompassing a global geostrategic component, base building, research, economic management, manufacturing, and of course the insanely deep, detailed, addictive tactical combat against the alien menace. Why so good? Like any classic, because it’s immersive. It sucks you in. You are the Commander, you have to simultaneously care about your troops and deal with it when they die in droves. You have to juggle a number of competing concerns, and the aliens will usually throw a wrench into your plans. It might be an isometric pixelfest today, but it’s still more engrossing, and often more terrifying, than anything that has come since.
Pictured: An actual nightmare. Not pictured: You, never sleeping comfortably again.
X-Com came out in 1994 and the game has probably never been improved upon. I own four separate copies (Along with two copies of TFTD and a copy of Apocalypse). I really can’t recommend it strongly enough to anyone who hasn’t played it. This is why we got into gaming: Experiences like this are what it’s all about.
3) Deus Ex
Games like to talk about having multiple and diverse solutions. They rarely do – This one does, and oh man does it ever show how short the rest of the industry falls in that regard. You can be Snake, you can be Dook, you can be a l33t haXX0r and turn the enemy’s guns and robots against them, all kinds of stuff. And all backed up by two separate, synergistic methods of advancement, namely experience points on one hand and nano-augmentation on the other. All wrapped up in the most delightful dystopia I’ve had the pleasure of setting foot in, reveling in every conspiracy theory you can imagine (Except birthers, because that didn’t exist in 1999, obviously).
If you think this is an exaggeration, you'd be wrong.
Yes, the graphics have aged badly and yes, the gunplay is a bit clunky, and yes, it has voice acting that can veer right into the comical. Not a single one of those things matter, because this game is how you make games, and the few flaws it has are completely overshadowed by the vastness of scale and ambition contained here.
2) Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri
There’s no shortage of 4x games around, but if you’re listing the best, you’re probably going to talk about either Civilization or SMAC. There is a reason for this. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri is the 4X game par excellence, the apex of the genre, not matched before or since. What makes it so great, I hear you ask? Where to begin. Name an aspect of videogames and SMAC does it brilliantly or better. The implementation of the gameplay, the mechanics, all of that stuff, is essentially unimpeachable. There is little realistic way to say it could be better except, perhaps, to say there could be more of it. What elevates SMAC from merely a brilliant game to an all-time classic and a brilliant experience is the atmosphere.
This game has quotes from Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Marx, all kinds of stuff. And these quotes are usually the less impressive ones. The really impressive quotes are the ones written for the game’s various faction leaders. Every time you research a tech you get a quote from someone, every time you build a wonder, and the first time you build any given building. The end result? A 4x game with stronger, more detailed characters, who undergo more evolution, than the best RPG. As things progress their opinions change; compare these two quotes from Sister Miriam Godwinson, leader of the Lord’s Believers faction.
“The righteous need not cower before the drumbeat of human progress. Though the song of yesterday fades into the challenge of tomorrow, God still watches and judges us. Evil lurks in the datalinks as it lurked in the streets of yesteryear. But it was never the streets that were evil.”
“And what of the immortal soul in such transactions? Can this machine transmit and reattach it as well? Or is it lost forever, leaving a soulless body to wander the world in despair?”
Also there are cyborgs, which is extremely hot
The final enjoyable factor is that the game goes for the ‘high balance’ route. All factions can achieve a position of particular strength, often wildly divergent from each other, but they can all become immensely powerful. When you can wipe out continents you really feel like you’re in charge of a future society, not to mention gives a palpable sense of reward for building up your empire. It was an excellent design decision which goes somewhat unnoticed, but contributes a lot to the game.
1) Suikoden II
So there’s some predictable classics on this list. Nobody is surprised to see X-Com or SMAC on a “Top games list”. But what’s this? Soo-wee-ko-den? What’s that? It’s a Playstation JRPG. It’s the best game I’ve ever played.
Suikoden, now up to entry V (All are exceptional except for IV), is a game where you lead an army. You generally start out on the side of an empire, and the corruption of it is soon revealed. Willingly or not you are caught up in a revolution or war to oppose it, and end up being the leader of the army. Yes, as a JRPG it means teenagers end up leading tens of thousands of troops. Yes, it has essentially silent protagonists, which is usually an immense pet peeve of mine. No, there is essentially no way to diverge from the prescribed plot (Though there are more chances to do so in SII than in any other JRPG I can call to mind). And yet here it is, number one on my list, a game I replayed around Christmas and loved as much as ever.
It’s a little hard to really explain what I love about this game, but that’s sort of the point of this post, so I’ll do my best. It has charm. It has grandeur, but it keeps things believable. You’re not saving the world from an ancient evil that has recently awoken, you’re fighting for your country, usually by fighting on the side of your country’s historic enemies. And you fight people on the other side who believe in their country, or believe they have a duty to serve it at any rate, who are for the most part thoroughly human. Except Luca Blight, who is the only ‘Murderous lunatic’ villain I have ever seen who makes me feel anything other than derision.
Viktor and Flik - most severe badasses to ever kick ass.
There are 108 characters to recruit in each Suikoden, sometimes recurring from other games in the series. They all form part of an overarching story of the Suikoden world, a plot not yet all revealed, but one which is engrossing in the extreme. Every game has fascinating characters and locations, gorgeous visuals, and absolutely stunning music. Forget Nobuo Uematsu, forget Yasunori Mitsuda, Miki Higashino is an unsung genius. I don’t think anyone has ever made better videogame musicthan she has.
