What Were They Thinking? FF 1-3 Edition

In one of my first posts, I recommended a video by the Angry Video Game Nerd character on YouTube, played and created by James Rolfe. Some of you probably thought, "Really? You're a grown man recommending AVGN?" Yeah, some of his humor is just juvenile and ridiculous, don't get me wrong, but I appreciate the nostalgia factor in his videos and the actual game review portions can be pretty entertaining at times. Watching somebody play through games and feel the same way about certain things I felt when I was a kid is affirming in many ways.

Anyway, my point in saying this is, one of my favorite things he does is bring up design elements in games that just make you say, "what were they thinking?" I've done some blog posts back on True Achievements in this vein before and now I'd like to do one for the first three Final Fantasy games. Since these are pretty early games and gaming concepts have evolved drastically since the late 80's, I'm just going to stick to my top 3 for each game. Otherwise this blog would go on for hours.

Final Fantasy

1. The Localization

To be fair, this is the early 80's and game budgets weren't exactly what they are today. Many NES games are famous for their awful dialogue. "I feel asleep" and "I am Error" are some of the more memorable. However, after playing Metal Gear, The Legend of Zelda and Final Fantasy, I can easily say, without any doubt, Final Fantasy is the worst of the bunch.

Can't argue with that.

Self-esteem issues?

To clarify that second one, this is the first time I entered this area and the first time I spoke to this person. There is no further context to this that I could figure out.

I could post a nearly endless onslaught of pictures of terrible lines but I doubt blogspot could handle it. Things like finding a house inside of a treasure chest, people becoming bubbles, all sorts of random nonsense that has no apparent purpose. I'm assuming that like the Legend of Zelda, these originally were supposed to be hints or context but something was obviously lost in translation.

      2.  The Stats

The first Final Fantasy was modeled after D&D to a massive extreme, which is fine. But they obviously didn't understand how to fully translate that into a game. In case you don't play RPG's, permanent death is usually something you try and avoid as that, obviously, ends the story. Some play the game differently and death is always a threat but stats usually play a larger role in determining where the story goes rather than in determining whether you live or die.

Translating this into a video game directly, doesn't work all that well, as it turns out. The stats are low, health is in constantly short supply and having to fight an endless stream of random battles with a max health of 60 doesn't make it an easy game. Now you could argue that this was the developers choice to make the game so damn hard. They wanted you to feel an ever-present threat of death looming over your head, making you terrified to enter each new dungeon. I'd respond with mission accomplished, throw the controller down and walk away.

     3.  Insta-Kills

The worst of the bunch! Getting to the end of a brutally difficult dungeon only to fight a party of nine monsters that can all cast insta-kill attacks against your entire party before you get a chance to move. Suddenly, you just lost two hours of your life. My first question, did they test this game at all? Second question, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU???

Final Fantasy II

    1.  Bombs

Guy's about to have a bad day...

After Final Fantasy II, these enemies became a staple for the series, appearing in every Final Fantasy game to date (to my knowledge), including XIII which dropped many of the other mainstays. Every veteran knows these guys. These are the ones that blow up in your face if you attack them the wrong way. Most of the time, you need to use fire attacks but sometimes they have different strategies depending on the game.

The problem with Final Fantasy II, these guys have a ridiculous amount of health! Essentially, once you attack them, on their next turn, they'll blow up on a random character. The only way to prevent this is to kill them first. Magic can only help you so much and only if you've leveled up each elemental spell high enough to deal with these jerks. With physical attacks, It's nearly impossible to kill one even with all four characters attacking unless you have late game equipment. I just had to hope they'd blow up Gordon instead of my other guys.

     2.  Level Ups

More accurately, the lack thereof. Seriously, levels have worked wonderfully for years even before Final Fantasy was ever a thing. But sure, we're experimenting here. Let's give it a chance, then. Cue rush of players beating on their own people and casting heal spells on the enemies.

RPG's are for role-playing. How can I possibly become invested in a game that has me beating up my own people just to get strong enough to take down the horribly unbalanced monstrosities each dungeon throws my way? Again, was this ever even tested? I'm all for experimenting but when something doesn't work, it doesn't work. Maybe try it again in about 12 years on a certain Playstation title...

    3.  Gordon

Seriously... what the hell were they thinking? Thank you, Squaresoft, for possibly the worst character in all of gaming. I'd rather take a million Navi's flying around my head than this useless moron taking up a slot in my party. Give me back Josef!

Final Fantasy III

    1.  PC guys...

Do I really need to say more?

    2.  Splitting Enemies

To be honest, I'm not sure how prevalent these guys are in the rest of the series. I don't remember them ever being an issue in my playthroughs so I'm going to say that these are the worst. They aren't quite as bad as full party insta-kill spells but wow, do they suck.

Basically, these are enemies that, whenever you attack them, they split into two, essentially making duplicates of themselves. You have to either use magic, use special weapons that can only be used by one job (at the time) or kill them in one hit. Not only that but they are usually insanely hard hitting and have a ton of health. It took my black mage about 10 shots of Fire 3 to kill one of them. The best way to kill them is to use Katanas with a D. Knight (or M. Knight depending on your translation/version) which don't let them split. Too bad the only way to know this in game is to talk to an NPC you don't meet until AFTER encountering splitting enemies on the seventh floor of an already difficult dungeon.

The worst part is, you don't know an enemy splits until it actually does. This means if you're caught unaware, you could wind up attacking the wrong monster with all four characters, suddenly turning the one monster into five. Without any doubt, these are the hardest basic enemies in the game. Beware, any of you playing along, the Cave of Shadows is insane. If you aren't going to look it up, it's safer to assume that all the monsters here split.

    3.  The Invincible

More like the slow and pitiful

Without giving too much away about the plot, you get multiple airships throughout the game. The last one you get, is this hulking monstrosity that has some really awesome features in it, not the least of which is that it's basically a portable town. It can also traverse mountains, the only ship that can do so. The odd thing is, it can only cross small sections of mountain like that part just to the right. It does so by doing a little thing that can only be described as a hop.

Isn't this an airship? Meaning... it flies? Why the heck would it be limited to small hops over mountains? If it can reach a high enough altitude to cross mountains, why would it not be able to stay at that altitude? That makes absolutely no sense. Basically, in the game, this results in these stupid mountain jumping sections that make you fight to get to a dungeon you should just be able to easily fly to. It was pointless, frustrating (because these are also the only sections in the air where random battles occur) and completely nonsensical.

To give an update, I am just preparing for the last boss in Final Fantasy III. I'll give my overview of the game, and the NES trilogy, soon.

Game on!