Greetings, Young Padawan...

So you want to learn how to maneuver your way through Final Fantasy II, huh? Well, the first thing to do is to throw out everything you have ever known about Final Fantasy combat, old and new. We're gonna start entirely from scratch.

Those are some mighty colorful pirates.

At first glance, the system looks like your traditional Final Fantasy. Sure you've got the good guys on the right of the screen vs. the bottom like the SNES games but you've got your MP, your HP in the hundreds, looks like you've got two rows for your characters to be in. It's the same, yeah?

No. The things I just described are basically where the similarities end. The first thing is notice the damage done: 0. You'll be seeing that number a lot, especially in the early game. If you aren't prepared for a dungeon (read: over-prepared), you'll get to the boss to find that all of your party members do 0 damage to them. This isn't a glitch, this isn't a trick to try and get you to find out their strategy, you just aren't strong enough. Even if you can butcher every other monster without taking a hit, you still may not be strong enough to do melee damage to the bosses

You notice I said melee damage. Yeah, usually on these bosses you can do some magic damage, but there's a catch. Magic has to be bought from shops, leveled up individually and then you have to have the MP to actually use it. If you run out of MP, tough. You're dead. Like the first Final Fantasy, there are no saves in dungeon so get ready to play that sucker over again.

Level ups also work completely differently, as I mentioned in previous posts. Instead of leveling up your characters like pretty much every RPG ever has done, you increase your stats individually based on their use. That means the more damage your guy takes, the more health he'll/she'll get. Use up your MP in battle and you'll be seeing an increase at the end of it. This sounds cool in theory but it gets brutal pretty quickly if you aren't careful.

Betcha can't guess which character gets attacked the most.

First of all, throw out any notions of playing this game legit. It just isn't going to happen unless you spend unbearable hours playing and hoping for the stars to align so that you actually get the stat increases you want. Every stat has it's exceptions for when it levels up. For HP, you have to lose at least half of your health in battle. MP works the same way. Note that I said, "in battle". That means using your spells outside of battle to heal and such will not help. While that will help to level up your spell, it won't increase your magic. Now, for every stat, if your character dies OR if you get inflicted with any status ailments, you can kiss your stat increases good-bye. That's not too bad when you're rocking 1100 health like my third character up there but when you've got a maximum of 30 hp? You have to carefully tread that line to increase your stats. Even when you've got a large amount of health, that means a careful assessment after every battle. Do you heal your characters and lose the chance for a maximum HP upgrade or do you risk that character dying? Then with MP, that question becomes, "do I heal them now and be safe or do I wait for a battle to start and try healing them all in battle to increase my max MP?"

I'm gonna answer those questions right now, DON'T RISK IT. EVER. The dungeons aren't as long as some Final Fantasy games but they are no less brutal than the first game. One party of monsters can come along, paralyze your whole team and leave you open to endless slaughter. If you're riding half health for your party members, you can just reload that save right now.

HP and MP aren't the only stats you get increased. You also need to increase your base PWR and M. PWR (power and magic power respectively). Even if you have a great weapon, if you're PWR sucks, you won't be doing that much damage. Same with M. PWR. Within M. PWR, you also have stats for INT and Soul for Black Magic and White Magic. The catch with leveling these up is that they often lower one of the other stats. Not all the time, but enough so that you can't exactly make a bunch of jack-of-all-trades characters. To add insult to injury there, the low MP often requires you to have your designated mage character use physical attacks, leveling up their PWR and decreasing their magical ability.

Recognize those enemies? I'll give you a hint, they blow up in your face.

Finally, you've got your weapon skills. Your agility increases too but that's pretty self-explanatory and just seems to level up as you go. Basically with the weapons, give Firion the sword, Maria the bow, Guy the axe and your fourth characters just can use whatever. Never switch these for any reason. Canes suck, knives are swords but worse, Javelins have good range but are worse than the strong bows and fists could never hit enough times to justify their weak attacks. The problem with leveling these skills up is that each monster has it's designated maximum skill level. If you have a higher level than the monster's skill, that means you won't get any points towards leveling that weapon. These numbers prevent you from getting too over-leveled but they are all over the place. Sometimes, just to level up your weapon skill, you have to fight monsters waaaaaaay too strong for you.

Now, you've mastered the art of exploiting your level ups by controlling these damages yourself. But wait, have you been paying attention to those screenshots? Notice how the fourth player keeps changing. Yeah, there's the rub. You get the top three players for the whole game but the fourth one keeps changing. There are a few characters that cycle in and out as you progress through the game. Sometimes characters stay for a dungeon, sometimes longer, sometimes they leave and then come back later like the pansy, Gordon, up there. Sometimes they... don't come back... *early spoiler alert*

Tonight, Josef vs. the Giant Rock! Live on pay-per-view!

*end early spoiler*

Leveling up these characters is not only tough, it's basically pointless. Because they keep switching in and out, you may finally get one fourth up to the same level as the rest of your guys, just to have them leave a few minutes later, replaced by another weakling. In fact, when the couple fourths come back, they have the same stats as when they left you the first time, even if that was 10 hours earlier in the game! Make no mistake, these guys are meat shields, nothing more. Level up your main three and use your fourths as fodder... particularly Gordon up there.

So we've gone over leveling but how does the fighting actually work? Well, this is pre-Active Time Battle system but the turn order is no longer random like Final Fantasy. Your turn order is dictated by your agility stats. There does seem to be some random chance thrown in there but it's minimal. This means you can actually strategize your character's moves! Yay! The downside is you still don't know where an enemy is going to end up in that order unless you've memorized monster specs which would be scar- I mean awesome!

Obviously, attacking is attacking. That's not really changing any time soon. Magic is the interesting beast. Basically, you buy your spells and they all start at level 1 which means they cost 1 MP to use. As you use the spells, they increase in level. Use Cure 1 fifty times and it becomes Cure 2, so it now doubles it's effect and costs 2 MP to use. Do you see the problem in this yet? Cure 3 then costs 3 MP, Cure 6 then costs 6 MP... all the while, you're never actually increasing the potency of the spell, you're just getting the ability (requirement) to cast it in bulk. Yes, you can increase your character's magic power and their intelligence/soul stats but the difference isn't all that substantial. My trained mage uses Fire 4 and does about 250 damage whereas my melee character who uses magic in a pinch uses Fire 4 for about 230. What all of this means is that your mage will quickly become your dedicated healer who can't waste any MP attacking because getting down to level 4 of a dungeon and running out of cure's won't end well. Not to mention you better save some MP to cast Exit because otherwise, you get to the bottom and then you have to hike all the way back through the dungeon to get out. Bad plan if you're out of magic. So now that you're saving MP for cures, what is that character doing in battle? Yep, they're physically attacking. Which means what? Their power is going up and their intelligence/soul is going down, making them weaker at what you want them to be doing. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Don't even think about replacing your healer with items. Apparently, the team decided for Final Fantasy II that items played too big a role in the other game so they decided to give you super-limited inventory space and items can't stack. So if you have a backpack with, say, 30 spaces, you can have a maximum of 30 health potions which cure about 40 health per use. Not only would that not get you far but that also leaves you no space for your key items that you need for your quest, your weapons and armor you find in chests, your status curing potions, your battle items (which suck, by the way. Just sell them.). It's nearly impossible to keep any potions at all in your inventory, let alone enough to get you through a dungeon. As if that all weren't enough, you can't actually use these in battle. No, you have to equip items to your characters in advance if you want to use them in a fight. Each character can equip two items and can only use them on themselves. So if you think you're going to get poisoned in a battle, unless you know exactly which character's getting poisoned, you have to equip an Antidote to each one of them. That's assuming that you know you're getting poisoned. How often do the monsters announce, in advance, they will be paralyzing your characters now? This is why magic is so necessary despite being so under-powered.

All in all, the battle system, like the whole game, is a time of extreme experimentation for Final Fantasy. Some of the advances were great, like the MP system versus a fixed usage, agility stat versus random turn order, significantly fewer insta-death monsters. But a lot of the attempts were epic failures like the stat-based level ups, completely unbalanced magic, and the needlessly difficult and restrictive item system. I'll write my full review of the game *hopefully* later today but possibly stretching into Friday or Saturday depending on how much more of the game there is.

Game on!

Upgrade My Final Fantasy!

Hey everyone! It's been a long week and it feels like an eternity since I was playing FF2 last. I was excited to have several hours to spend on it tonight and got through a few major dungeons including the ice cave, Kaljfkdjfkdsj Castle and the Warship.

Since I've still got a ways to go, doing a full review seems premature. I'm going to hold off on the battle summary for a while as well so that I make sure I fully understand the way the mechanics work. Yeah, it can be that complicated. Until then, I thought I'd talk a bit about the different versions of Final Fantasy that are available.

I'm doing this playthrough as a purist, playing only the original versions wherever possible but honestly, I wouldn't recommend following this route. Since many of these games have been out for over 20 years(!), the mechanics are aged brutally. In my posts on the first game, I mentioned how many of the systems simply don't work, like the spells. Thankfully, Square has created several high quality remakes of these games for newer audiences that fix these problems and rebalance the systems to reflect additional playtesting and modern game concepts.

Final Fantasy:

If you want to play the original version just as it was intended on the NES, the best way to do it is probably to go through the Wii Virtual Console. This won't have some of the benefits of emulators and it will cost you a bit of money but the Wii remote can have a distinctly NES feel to it, much moreso than most computer gamepads or keyboards.

A better way to go, however, is to get one of the ports of the Dawn of Souls version.

Sensory overload!

The most obvious difference is that it looks a ton better. They clearly modeled the Dawn of Souls version after the SNES games rather than sticking with the original NES graphical limitations and the game looks much nicer for it. Growing up in the 16-bit era myself, I much prefer this look to the pixelated NES images.

More importantly though, these versions are both fixed and upgraded from the original game mechanics. The original game is fully intact but spells work correctly and many of the brutally unfair aspects from the NES are removed. Many of the instant kill spells from monsters are either given much lower success rates, limited to one party member or removed entirely. Even if you're a gamer who loves a good challenge, I recommend going this route. Having your entire party brutalized at the end of a long dungeon without ever being given a chance isn't fun, it's just aggravating. Also, this version comes with four bonus dungeons that harken back (forward?) to several other classic Final Fantasy games. They aren't the best bonus dungeons you'll find in an RPG but hey, more content is more content.

Also, this version is packaged with the remake of Final Fantasy II if you get it on the GBA. The game is also available on the PSP or pretty much any mobile device (many pre-smartphone devices, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Sorry Blackberry users, you're out of luck). My only issue with the mobile devices is that you are limited to the touchscreen. Android users with rooted devices can put some effort towards getting a wired 360 controller or a wireless Dualshock 3 to work but this definitely takes some doing. While it may be possible to do on Windows phones as well, I can almost guarantee that Apple has got this ability locked down. Still, if you don't mind the touchscreen controls (which really don't impact gameplay that much since you don't exactly need quick, agile movements or anything), these are a good and cheap way to go.

Final Fantasy II:

Final Fantasy II has pretty much the same options as Final Fantasy since they were commonly released together. The Dawn of Souls version has been ported on all the same devices as Final Fantasy and features similar graphical upgrades. Oddly enough, this game uses more pastel coloring than the original though even though they were made by the same team.

The colored pencil drawing moves!

This remake provides an additional storyline after the game called Soul of Rebirth. Basically, you play as several of the side characters in their own "what-if" story. It's not really very meaningful but more fun than the bonus dungeons in 1, in my opinion, since there's actually a storyline.

Final Fantasy III:

Spoiler alert! This game goes back to the unnamed, silent protagonists like the first game! That's right, dropping bombshells over here.

Anyway, like many people, I found this completely off-putting and a huge step backwards for the series the first time I started this game. The unfortunate part is that the rest of the game is a huge step forward. More on that when I get to Final Fantasy III a little later.

This is what makes the remade versions so much better than the originals though. They make subtle changes to the game in order to give the characters actual personality rather than the silent shells they were in the original. Sure, it's still a little flat compared to other entries but it's a big upgrade and actually doesn't change the story too much. A few added scenes and some added dialogue. It all feels natural and they did a great job translating it.

Hard to imagine this came out of an NES game

They also completely changed the way the job system works from the original. Again, I'll go more into that when I actually get to Final Fantasy III but suffice it to say, they did a great job with this one. I spent a bit of time with the Android version and really enjoyed the upgraded graphics and cutscenes. It's a bit spendy for a mobile app but well worth it.

Apparently, the DS version of the game included some kind of weird mail system using the DS's wi-fi capabilities. If you have a DSi this may be great but having a DS lite myself, I can't find any wi-fi networks that are still compatible with it so I'd recommend going with the mobile versions as the associated side-quests have been retooled, removing this feature. As a side note, if you happen to be one of the ten people in the world who own a Ouya, Final Fantasy III was a launch title for that console in HD, which, I guess is cool having a remade NES game in high definition...

Final Fantasy IV:

Cecil's outing has held up a lot better than the NES games but that doesn't mean he hasn't gotten the remake treatment as well. One of the most famous, albeit unchanged, remakes was the Final Fantasy Chronicles for the Playstation. This game is almost entirely faithful to the original but like Chrono Trigger which it was packaged with, it got a few CG cutscenes that are kinda neat.

While there were a few remakes in between, I want to jump straight into my personal recommendation, Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection for the PSP. While I personally can't stand the PSP and will almost undoubtedly use an emulator to spite the PSP lying behind me at this moment when it comes time for Crisis Core, this is definitely the best version of the game. Not only has it been upgraded with some reasonably high quality 3D graphics, voice acting and gameplay rebalancing, but it comes with Final Fantasy IV: The After Years AND Final Fantasy IV: Interlude, a bridging chapter not released anywhere else. If you're like me and appreciate content above all else, this is undoubtedly the best package deal.

If you don't have/can't bring yourself to pick up a PSP for this game, you can also find this game on iOS and Android as well, but without the After Years and Interlude chapters.

Well, I'll leave it at that for now. There are also good remakes for V and VI but I want to talk a little bit more about those later down the line. For all of these games, I recommend checking out www.half.com. Obviously, you can't buy mobile apps there but they have the physical games for usually the best deals anywhere. Even some of the original games, you'll occasionally find people who just don't know what they have and will sell SNES cartridges of Final Fantasy IV and VI for dirt cheap. I got Shining Force 1 and 2 for the Genesis for 10 bucks total! I've never had a bad experience through the site and highly recommend it if you're looking to collect.

Game on!

War is Hell... and Slightly Tedious

I'm about a third of the way through Final Fantasy II, having just completed the Snow Caves, and thought I'd update you on my thoughts so far.

You watch your tongue!

Final Fantasy II makes a lot of huge steps forward in the series, not the least of which is actually having a progressing storyline. You wake up after having been saved by the rebellion and decide to help them in taking down the evil empire of Palamekia. After speaking with the rebellion leader, you are set off on your epic quest because, hey, obviously this rebellion has nobody better than three kids who literally just had their asses whooped by the very same empire only moments before. Good call, guys.

Well, you aren't exactly set off with the sole purpose of just "destroy the empire". They've got some missions for you to accomplish that will help them reach that ultimate goal. Thus, when you are released into the wild, you don't feel that vague wandering feeling that the first Final Fantasy had. On the one hand, it's nice to have a goal but on the other, being forced into a linear path becomes very old, very quickly. It wouldn't be so bad except after every mission you get, you have to go all the way back to the first town to report in.

"Hey kids, go find me some Mithril." Wander over to the next town, explore cave, go back to hideout.

"Hey kids, go get talk about airships with Cid." Wander over to another town, find Cid, go back to hideout.

Aww, our first meeting with Cid... and he swears at us!

This results in a crazy amount of backtracking. In my 10+ hours in the game so far, I've barely scouted the majority of the first continent (By comparison, Final Fantasy, I had already explored the entire southern hemisphere by this point and even some of the northern). That combined with the greatly increased encounter rates makes for some tedious adventuring. The game map doesn't seem to be any bigger than Final Fantasy, they just make you go to the same places more frequently.

That's not to say it's all bad. In fact, the storyline makes it almost entirely worth it. Sure the storyline is one of the simplest in the history of the franchise but it's kind of cool to see what they could do with the limited NES hardware. Twists occur, disaster strikes and characters die all within the first part of the game. More importantly, characters actually create a lasting impact with interesting dialogue. Since there are only three main characters, the fourth party slot is cycled in and out with secondary characters that range from placeholder to fairly interesting.

So far, the game isn't the most memorable in the series by any means but it's neat to see how far the game has come. Also, it's pretty amazing all that they managed to accomplish on the NES, a console where it seemed reasonably involved storylines were beyond its capabilities.

Next post, I'll talk more about the battle system. As it's fairly complicated and requires quite a bit more time than you'd think to explain, it won't really fit here. I've got a wonky schedule this week so I'm not sure when the next post will be exactly. Possibly this (actual) weekend but it may not be until as late as next Thursday. We'll see. I'm hoping to get more time with the game this week but I sincerely doubt I'll have the time to finish it.

Game on!

The Rebellion Begins!

The Earth has been saved! The four orbs have been lit, the fiends have been cast down and Chaos has been vanquished from the realm. The world rejoices!

In the real world, Final Fantasy has found a success of it's own. After Hironobu Sakaguchi convinced Squaresoft to ship 400,000 copies of the game, the game sold enough to justify a sequel. That's right, 400,000 copies of a game apparently justified a sequel back in 1987. Now, if a game sold 400,000 copies, it would be seen as a commercial flop but hey, different times.

Bonus points for anyone that can actually read the title!

Since I've started this blog, a few people have asked me, "Devin, what the heck is up with the Final Fantasy numbering system??? It makes no sense! Why were 2, 3 and 5 not released in the US?" I can't answer for 5 just yet but there is actually a good reason for 2 and 3. The year is 1988 and Final Fantasy II is released in Japan, just under a year after Final Fantasy hit the market. II is a success as well so they bust out Final Fantasy III early into 1990. Well a few months after III is released in Japan, Final Fantasy finally makes its way overseas to the US market in July of 1990.

So, right after Japan has finished up with Final Fantasy III, we finally get a taste. Now, other forces start to come into play. Final Fantasy II and III were obviously made for the NES but over in Japan, the Super Nintendo is about hit the market in a big way and it's even being eagerly awaited in the US although it wouldn't be released here for almost another year. Final Fantasy was great but fans were moving on from the NES and were ready for the 16-bit era. So, instead of translating and releasing II and III over here, they decided to skip over those and release the upcoming Final Fantasy IV instead for the SNES. Since that wouldn't make much sense for us to have Final Fantasy and then Final Fantasy IV, they decided to make that Final Fantasy II in the US. Would have made perfect sense if the series stopped there but on and on it went and that's why we have such screwed up numbering.

But we're starting to get ahead of ourselves. III and IV are still a few years in our future, it's time for Final Fantasy II! It's been a year, Final Fantasy has a way larger budget, this is sure to be a massive step up for the series!

Look at those next-gen graphics

Well, the city got walls but other than that, this looks EXACTLY the same as Final Fantasy. In fact, it uses many of the same textures and character sprites. It's a little zoomed in but otherwise, it's the same game.

Don't be fooled. The graphics didn't get much of a makeover but the rest of the game is a HUGE improvement over the first. In fact, I can't imagine a sequel like this even being made these days since companies aren't willing to take such huge risks anymore.

Basically, aside from the textures and sprites, everything about the game was thrown out in favor of bigger and better. Instead of one text box dialogues with silent protagonists, we now have reasonably long cutscenes, several named characters and talking protagonists. Not just that but the player actually gets to interact with the NPCs. While I can't say for sure that this was a first, it was certainly a forerunner in active dialogue. Basically, as you talk with people, you learn key phrases. You can then use these key phrases to initiate conversations with other NPCs. Along with phrases, you can also show them items in your inventory to gain additional information. I immediately think of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind.

The battle system also got a huge overhaul. I'm not too far into the game just yet so I can't speak much as to the difficulty of the game but the leveling system has changed completely. Instead of getting level ups for your characters, you receive stat increases and weapon proficiencies. Think Chrono Cross mixed with Elder Scrolls. Basically, the more you use or need something, the better it becomes. If your health drops below half, you can look forward to a health increase at the end of the battle. Using a lot of your MP, see a boost in that as well. Has your magic user been busting out Cure a ton, lately? They may see their spell upgraded to Cure2 as a result.

It's a fun system but I can already see why they scrapped the idea after this game. In a word, exploitable. Want your health to increase? Just start wailing on your own party members while fighting weak monsters to see some insane max HP really early into the game. Also, due to buggy programming, increasing weapon proficiencies isn't so much a matter of attacking enemies as it is selecting to attack them. Cue constant selecting and backing up to gain a weapon level every battle, if you're so inclined.

Bwahaha! Take that, Firion!

Frankly, after the buggering I got from Final Fantasy, I could use a nice exploitable game. Seems like I'll need it too. I've got a whole empire to fight. The game starts out with Firion and his three friends (I'm using a mash-up of the Japanese and English names for the characters, taken from direct translations, fan translations and official Squaresoft translations in later releases for the names. I tried to get the most accurate I could use: Firion, Maria, Guy and Leon) getting destroyed by some empire lackeys. As Firion wakes up, one of his friends is lost and they must battle the evil Empire to save their homeland and their friend. It's a much more involved story with actual characters so I'm excited to get started this weekend.

Oh, just for what it's worth, I'm currently using a ROM titled Final Fantasy II (Japan) [En by Demiforce v1.03] [Title Fix by Parasyte v1.0]. Seems like a pretty accurate translation with no typos or obvious errors; so far so I'm liking it. I have no way of confirming that nothing is changed from the original game so I just have to trust at this point. If you know anything about the accuracy of this ROM, please let me know and I'll make adjustments as necessary.

Game on!

Final Fantasy Tips and Tricks

That's right, everyone. I have completed the first Final Fantasy!

Accepting cheers and applause now

That's the first hurdle in this long journey and, wow, was it a tough one. For this blog, I figured, for all you folks playing along at home, I'd offer up some advice for this game. Although there are walkthroughs all over the place, I couldn't find any really good general advice for this game that wasn't just holding my hand. So, these are the things I would have liked to have known going into the game.

1. Choose your party carefully

This may be the only Final Fantasy game that lets you choose which classes you will have for your four party members with zero restrictions. If you want to go through the game with four white mages, go for it. Seriously though, it's very important to think carefully about these choices as they can never be changed. Nothing sucks worse than getting 20 hours into the game and realizing that completion is a near impossibility. My advice here is read up on parties. Back in '87, there wasn't really a way to share information en masse with people so you had to go with your gut and past experience. That isn't the case now and seriously, take advantage. I'd say with very little hesitation that the vast majority of you, with no prior knowledge, would pick a starting party of Fighter/Thief (or Black Belt)/White Mage/Black Mage. You will be able to get through the game with this party but it's gonna be hellish. My party was considered the easy mode party and it was still a tough game. My party was Fighter/Fighter/Fighter/Red Mage. This basically allows for three heavy hitters to massacre everything in sight while still allowing for support magic and minor healing from the Red Mage. There are certainly other options out there, all I'm saying is make sure you know the pros and cons of your choices since that will potentially save you many hours of lost adventuring and game overs.

2. Be aware of the glitches!

If you play an unaltered ROM, there are going to be some problems with the game. Nothing game-breaking or crashes or anything like that but some things simply don't work right. Check out a full list of these at most any walkthrough site but here are the really important ones you should be aware of.

The first thing is weapon abilities DO NOT WORK. None, nada, nothing. The Ice sword does not do additional damage to fire enemies, nor does the Rune sword hurt magic users more. Go purely off of stats for these or you may find yourself quite confused while fighting the fiends. Note that armor abilities do work as advertised, a helpful tip for the above mentioned fiends and anyone else busting out Fir3.

The next is several spells do not do what they're supposed to do. Here's a list *Thanks to Brian P. Sulpher from Gamefaqs for this list*:
Tmpr - Does not work at all.
Sabr - Does not work at all.
Xfer - Does not work at all.
Lock - Always misses.
Lok2 - Instead of decreasing Enemy Evade% by 20, increases Evade by 20.
Hel2 - Works outside of battle as designed, works like Hel3 in battle.

Most of these you want to avoid like the plague except for Hel2 which actually helps you more than it should. If you have a White Mage in your party, definitely pick up that one and try to save casts for during battle to maximize their potential.

The last one that is good to be aware of is that enemy spells that buff all enemies actually do not affect the caster. That means if a Wizard casts Wall on all allies, that Wizard remains vulnerable. Exploit this.

3. Spread the death. Don't focus fire.

The NES version of Final Fantasy does not auto-redirect your attacks if the enemy dies. This means if you have four guys attack one imp, when that imp dies, the other party member's attacks will miss. One of the most strategic aspects of battle in this game is planning who will attack what. Remember, your goal is to spread as much death as possible each turn. Damaging multiple enemies is not as effective as killing a few but wasting all of your attacks on one guy is even worse. Damaged enemies do just as much damage to you as full health enemies so if you are fighting a party of four monsters, killing two of them is better than hurting all four somewhat. You may still win the battle on the same round either way but you have the potential of negating an extra four attacks by killing two (two attacks on the first round and two attacks on the second).

In the beginning of the game, misses are commonplace. It's actually not unheard of for your entire party to miss their attacks. This happened to me on more than a few occasions. Horribly annoying, I've gotta say. Anyway, doubling up your attacks during this period is not a bad idea. This means that even if you can kill an enemy in one hit, it may be worth attacking them with two party members to ensure that monster dies.

4. Kill status effect-inflicting enemies first

This actually isn't always the case but should be taken as the general rule in Final Fantasy. One of the most annoying aspects of this game is that many status effect enemies can inflict their statuses on your entire party with 100% efficiency. Earlier enemies will attack one at a time but that's still a huge handicap. One early game enemy formation in the Marsh Caves has 9 enemies attack you that can all paralyze about 75% of the time with their normal attack.

Because of this, it's very important to kill these enemies before all others. Especially enemies that can stun you, if they can paralyze your whole party, it doesn't matter how much damage they do per attack because they can keep your entire party stunned and whittle you down to nothing without you getting a chance to respond. It's brutal and it sucks and sometimes, it can't be avoided. Most of the time, you can get a few swipes to take these guys down. Don't waste the attacks on the small fry.

Note that status effects such as Darkness or Slow are hardly worth being concerned about so don't freak out and decide to kill the Darkness enemies when the guys behind them can hit your party members for 100 damage each.

5. Go to the Castle of Ordeals and the Ice Cave BEFORE Mt. Gurgu

When you get the canoe, everything everyone says seems to suggest that Gurgu Volcano is where you need to go next. They are dirty liars! Don't listen to them. There are actually two other places that open up from getting the canoe that you should go to first. The Castle of Ordeals lies in the northern continent and can be accessed by going straight from your ship to a canoe. Beating this place is actually entirely optional and doesn't have to be finished to beat the game. However, this will prevent you from ever getting your class promotions, not to mention it's a wonderful place to level up before Gurgu owns your soul forever.

The Ice Caves are actually one of the hardest dungeons in the game. In my experience, it was significantly harder than Mt. Gurgu but this could be because I hit it first. The Ice Caves have several enemies that can kill your party in one hit. Mages and Sorcerers are the ones you need to watch out for, in particular. Running may be recommended if you can get away since these fights almost always result in dead party members. In fact, I'd say getting through the Ice Caves at all without any dead party members is a huge accomplishment. Still, getting through these caves will undoubtedly net you a few level ups and the Airship, with which you can fly over to the dragon islands and get your class promotions. After all this, Mt. Gurgu won't be quite so horrible and it'll help for the rest of the game as well.

6. Buy all the items you can

When you see that expensive set of armor and want one for all of your party members, it can be easy to ignore your healing items. Don't be fooled! I literally went into the last dungeon with 99 health potions and it wasn't enough. Not just the health potions though, you will also need a large quantity of Pure (cure's poison) and Soft (cures Stone) potions as well. Especially in the beginning, going through the Marsh Caves, you will need a ton of Pures and if you try going through without them, poison will rip through your party without a hope of making it back to town. Stone also has a way of ending your level up sessions far too early. Do yourself a favor and always keep a store of these potions on hand, even if you've never seen a monster that can give you that status yet.

7. Have patience

This game is brutal. All the advice in the world won't save you from insta-kills and horribly timed poisons on your whole party. If you try going through this game, you will die. A lot. There will probably be times you want to set it aside but if you have patience, you can power through. Despite how it may seem at times, all the enemies can be defeated with some patience and quite a bit of luck. Few things in gaming have been more satisfying than seeing that "Terminated" message on the last boss.

If you need any help with any parts in particular, feel free to post a message! I'd be happy to help however I can and I'm sure other people will be able to chime in as well. Next week, I'll start up Final Fantasy II.

Game on.

Final Fantasy 50%

Hey everyone, sorry about the long wait between posts. Seattle had a pretty major storm last week which knocked out my power. While the power company managed to get stuff back up and running within about 24 hours, Comcast apparently wasn't so lucky and I just got my internet back about two days ago.

So while I haven't gotten to post in a while, I haven't been squandering that time either and I'd say I'm solidly within 50% of completing the first Final Fantasy.

Really quickly before I start, this site is going to be the new home for the blog but the graphics are obviously placeholder. As much as I like working in photoshop, I have zero graphic design skills so if anyone's interested in making some artwork for this blog, I'd love to post it! Credit will be given, of course, and if I get multiple templates, I'll try and cycle them through. Graphics don't need to be from the Final Fantasy I'm on or even, necessarily about Final Fantasy but it has to work well with the games for obvious reasons. In the meantime, I'll keep looking as well.

You have no idea, buddy.

The first thing anyone would notice about Final Fantasy is IT'S REALLY, REALLY HARD! The next thing you notice is it's extremely different from every other game in the series and this is owed to a few things. In 1987 when the game was made, JRPG's existed but didn't really have any sort of identity. In fact, Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy, says his biggest influence in the series was Dungeons and Dragons, also noting western CRPG's like the Ultima series. Not only that but having an epic RPG on a console was almost unheard of for the time, especially from Japan. Because of this, Final Fantasy is undoubtedly the most "western" of the whole series.

Level ups are slow with a maximum level of 50, the plot is, well, plot-driven rather than character-driven like most of the others in the series. In fact, this Final Fantasy doesn't have any "main characters". Yeah, most of the characters don't even have names unless they're a bad guy. If you find this hard to swallow, check out Dissidia Final Fantasy. The two characters representing Final Fantasy? The Warrior of Light and Garland. Yeah, Garland, the very first boss in all of Final Fantasy gets a name but the main characters don't. Instead, you get to create a party of four characters of any class you'd like and give them a four character name. I'm sure this resulted in many a 1987 middle-schooler naming their party all sorts of foul things.

Since this is going to be a long journey for me, I decided I'd go easy on myself this first game and picked the so-called "easy mode" party. Three fighters and a Red Mage.

My favorite is the red guy!

Basically, through the majority of the game, you use the Fighter's ridiculous tankage to decimate everything in your path and for the most part, this has worked quite well. Now, I'm at a crossroads, however. I can pick between three dungeons that all butcher me like none other.

I have the pleasure of going to Mt. Gulug which is a giant volcano that is absolutely NOT inspired by Mt. Doom at all (insert appropriate level of sarcasm here) where I progress along a row of lava tiles that knock me down to one health before a party of mages comes and use four Fir2 spells on me to kill my whole party before I can blink.

I also have the famed Ice Caves available where I can go and find a 9-enemy party of ghosts that paralyze my character with every attack. Once all four of my guys are down, that's that. Cut to ending where my party has been taken from full health to nothing without me ever getting a chance to run away screaming.

My last choice is the Castle of Trials, a wonderful testing ground that I almost made it through before a few harmless looking cockatrices decided to turn my whole party to stone.

That brings me to the only real issue I have with Final Fantasy. It not only happens but it happens frequently where your party is literally killed without you ever getting a chance to make an action. Random battle events such as critical hits, surprise attacks, even the rare double hit have insanely high percentages of occurring. While this can feel great to get a series of triple critical hits against a monster, it also feels cheap when the monsters attack you first and paralyze you with every hit, effectively ending your dungeon run immediately. The worst part is, grinding will not help you. Sure in the average battle, you can always grind your way to success but if you run into a party of cockatrices, you have to hope that you get lucky and they don't turn you all to stone in your first try. There are no resistances to status effects that I'm aware of so leveling doesn't improve your chances.

Combine this with the fact that turn order is entirely randomized and strategy is nearly non-existent. Your characters can be 20 levels higher than the monsters with maxed out agility and still move last in each turn since the algorithm the game uses actually favors the monsters (functional random chance with four people in your party and nine monsters. Do the math).

So yeah, Final Fantasy is tough as hell and requires a fair amount of luck to progress but does that make it a bad game? Hell, no! In fact, there are several things I wish the newer Final Fantasy's would pick back up.  Like many CRPG's of the time, Final Fantasy is essentially an open-world game. While you're limited to the first island at the beginning, you quickly defeat Garland and open up a huge world that you can access. Skip ahead to about 30% through the game and you can literally access the entire world. There may be the occasional dungeon you can't reach yet but you can go to every continent, wander into towns about 10 levels higher than you and that's fine. The plot is driven by talking to the townspeople. That's right, this game has almost no cutscenes. In fact, I haven't yet encountered a dialogue box longer than one box of text, most are no longer than one sentence.

I now realize why fetch quests have been used in games for the last 25 years as Final Fantasy actually manages to do it right. You find yourself wandering from one place to another, following clues to fetch capitalized items to bring back to people and it's actually fun! Deciphering clues and reaching the next dungeon actually feels like an accomplishment in and of itself. Remember The Legend of Zelda and you'll have an idea what I mean.

The Invisible Woman makes a cameo!

The original Final Fantasy was a low budget affair where a team of seven people came together to make a game that Square had already written off before it had come out. In fact, the only reason they approved the project was to compete with Enix's Dragon Quest and as a last ditch effort from a company about to go belly up. No joke, "Final Fantasy" was chosen, allegedly, in part, because it was supposed to be Square's last game before they went bankrupt. The game was buggy as hell with several things not working correctly. Some spells literally do nothing and some even help your enemies. Weapon abilities don't actually work right and some monsters appear where they aren't supposed to, a vicious surprise when you're walking around the first area at level 3 and run into a pack of tigers from the third continent. But for all it's flaws, this is Final Fantasy. This is the game that started one of the longest running and most prolific franchises in gaming history and it's plain to see why. The game world is exciting and fun to explore, the quirks are funny and endearing plus just listen to that music! Nobuo is famous for a reason, guys.

If you decide to give this a try, I recommend one of the many altered ROMs out there that work to fix many of the problems with the original game. There are tons out there, actually more common than finding an unaltered version, and most attempt to only change the programming to what the developers originally intended such as making the spells actually work correctly, having the intelligence stat actually do something, and making the person in the above screenshot visible. I'm working through an unaltered version per my specified rules but it's really worth it to pick up one with fixes or, especially if you're a younger gamer, just grab one of the remakes like Dawn of Souls or the Android/iOS versions. They have secret dungeons too!

Well, that was a much longer blog than I initially planned so hopefully I'll have more updates as I get farther into the game. See you all next time.

Game on.

Moving + Setup

So the journey has begun and I haven't balked yet so I'm taking that as a good sign!

Feel free to check out my last post if you're just tuning in but to summarize, this blog series will be about playing through the ENTIRE English Final Fantasy library, in order, from Final Fantasy I all the way to present day.

While I love TA and would love to keep my blog here, I'm thinking I'm going to have to transfer it to another site. Primarily because the blogging system TA uses is extremely limited, not allowing pictures or other media that would probably make this a more interesting read. I'd still post links here as new blog posts but they would redirect to another website where I'm not limited by the type of media I can post. That will have to be a decision for another day, however, as it's 2:30 in the morning here and I have to be up by 6:30 tomorrow.

I have made some decent headway into Final Fantasy but I'll talk more about that tomorrow. I wanted to start off speaking a bit about the type of setup I'm using for these first few games. Since I am sadly lacking the original Final Fantasy games or even an NES to play them on, I am forced to use an emulator and will probably do so through VII when I can get them on PSN or Steam. I'm currently engaged and in the middle of wedding plans so money is also forcing the decision. As much as I'd love to drop a few hundred and pick up an NES/Final Fantasy, I just don't have the money to spend. I hope you all will forgive me my heinous crime.

For the NES games, I'm using Nestopia as it's the first emulator I found that really has all the features I'm looking for. It supports my Xbox 360 controller and allows full mapping so I can use the D-Pad which I like. It allows for simple taking of screenshots and recording of video if I choose to use that. Also, it provides a ton of video options which allows me to get a full-screen 4:3 ratio picture like what would show up on a physical NES. All in all, it's easy to use and shows up nicely.

For this journey, I will be using Save States only as a save backup since some ROMs can be finicky about their save files and I don't want to risk wasting 20 hours on a corrupted save. So each time I save in game, I'll Save State but otherwise, I won't use it since using it takes away some of the risk/reward felt by knowing you don't have a safety net in case something goes wrong. Not to mention that way, I won't feel suddenly crippled when I jump to FFVII on my PS3.

As for this blog as a whole, I'll try and blog each day I get some decent playtime in which, as of right now, will be Thursday - Saturday. Work schedules can always change, though, plus my wedding may not allow for that as a rule but I'll do my best. My guess is that this goal will go for at least a year, probably longer, so I'll have to adjust as life takes it's course. I'm excited to start the ride though and I look forward to hearing your thoughts as we go.

By their nature, these blogs will almost always contain minor spoilers but I'm never going to intentionally drop giant spoiler bombs on you, at least not without sufficient warning in advance. I figure if you're enough of a fan to be reading this still, I'm not going to be spoiling anything you don't already know but if something comes up, I'll warn you.

More news tomorrow on Final Fantasy and where this blog will be housed for the next long while. Catch you all later! If you think you know of an emulator that would work better than Nestopia or if you know where I can find some good English translations of Final Fantasy II, III or V for the NES, please let me know in the comments below!

NOTE: From this point forward, I'm going to stick to the Japanese numbering of the Final Fantasy games since the US numbering is hella confused by this point. If you don't know the numbering, it may be worth checking a Wiki page to figure it all out. AVGN has a pretty funny Chronologically Confused video that explains how this happened. Here's a link. Be aware, while this is tame for AVGN, there is mature language and it is not safe for work/school, at least without headphones:

http://www.youtube.com/v/OEVzPCY2T-g?autohide=1&version=3&attribution_tag=Uyq645pSWU7fqYfIm0ZesA&showinfo=1&autoplay=1&autohide=1&feature=share

- relevant times: 2:47-3:54

To summarize really quickly: Final Fantasy I is the same. II and III released in Japan but didn't come here till much, much later. IV then came to the US as II. V came out in Japan only like II and III. VI was then released in the US as III and then VII came out which universalized the numbering. Since then, all the games have been released in the US so any FF games after mid-2000's use Japanese numbers (ex. Final Fantasy III on Android or iOS is Japanese III, not VI)

The Journey Begins

At some point in every hardcore RPG fan's life, they must decide whether or not they can handle the ultimate test. It isn't easy, many hardships await down the long and winding road but it must be completed. People travel the path for many reasons: fame, glory, honor, pride, but regardless of motives, the path remains and only the truly worthy will make it to the end.

That's right, I have decided to begin my own quest through every single Final Fantasy game ever made, as close to the original versions as I can possibly get. My plan is to include, not only the main entries 1-14 but also any and all side stories, sequels, prequels or random games that got Final Fantasy stuck on it. Since I do not speak Japanese nor do I have the means to play any Japanese games outside of emulation, I have decided to stay purely within the realm of english-released titles. However, in the interest of sticking as close to the originals as possible, I will try and find NES/SNES versions of the early games that have been translated. If I can't find them though, I'll have to go to the GBA/DS re-releases. Here is the complete list of games:

-Final Fantasy (1987)
-Final Fantasy II (1988)
-Final Fantasy III (1990)
-Final Fantasy IV (1991)
-Final Fantasy Adventure (1991)
-Final Fantasy V (1992)
-Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (1992)
-Final Fantasy VI (1994)
-Final Fantasy VII (1997)
-Final Fantasy Tactics (1997)
-Final Fantasy VIII (1999)
-Final Fantasy IX (2000)
-Final Fantasy X (2001)
-Final Fantasy XI: Online (2002) + Expansions
-Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (2003)
-Final Fantasy X-2 (2003)
-Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (2003)
-Final Fantasy VII: Dirge of Cerberus (2006)
-Final Fantasy XII (2006)
-Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings (2007)
-Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII (2007)
-Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift (2007)
-Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates (2007)
-Final Fantasy IV: The After Years (2008)
-Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (2008)
-Final Fantasy XIII (2009)
-Dissidia: Final Fantasy (2009)
-Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light (2009)
-Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time (2009)
-Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord (2009)
-Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers (2009)
-Final Fantasy: Crystal Defenders (2009)
-Final Fantasy XIV (2010)
-Final Fantasy Dimensions (2010)
-Final Fantasy XIII-2 (2011)
-Dissidia 012: Final Fantasy (2011)
-Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy (2012)
-Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (2013)
-Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII (2013)

Unsure:
-Final Fantasy Legend (1990)
-Final Fantasy Legend II (1991)
-Final Fantasy Legend III (1993)
-Chocobo Series
-Final Fantasy VII Snowboarding (2005)

Please let me know if I missed any too. Remember, I'm only going with ones that have been released in English at some point in time. Let me explain the ones I'm unsure about for a moment. While the Final Fantasy Legend series (released for the Game Boy) are Final Fantasy titles in name, they actually were just given that title after development. In fact, in Japan, they have never been released under the FF name (instead being called SaGa) and they are no longer published under that name since the SaGa series became popular on the Sony Playstation. This combined with the fact that I have actually already played all three of these games in my youth makes me question the desire to play them again. The Chocobo series I'm more leaning towards do them as they are technically Final Fantasy games and I have no real reason to exclude them other than the fact that there are a million of them, they're crazy hard to find and most of them probably suck. VII Snowboarding I'll play if I can find a ROM of it but since it was released as a mobile game back before Android, iOS or any of that, I'm not holding my breath. Also, it's really just a port of the minigame from VII anyway so I'm not missing much.

I haven't decided yet whether I will play them in order of release or with their respective main series entry. I may mix and match these too. While it's not vital to play Dissidia and Dissidia 012 together, it'd probably be nice to play Final Fantasy IV: The After Years directly after Final Fantasy IV. I'm just not sure.

So is this an insane goal? Probably. But having been introduced to games in about 1995, I missed many of these games and the ones that I played, I played without any sort of context. For that reason, I want to go back and try appreciating these in the way I might have if I was really playing from 1987 on. Needless to say, this blog will just be the first of many. I may not make it all the way through and I reserve the right to call it quits at any time but I'm going to do my best to make it through. Look forward to my thoughts on Final Fantasy in the coming days.

Game hard!