It's amazing what a fresh coat of paint can do

So I've spent about three hours with the new Steam version of Final Fantasy IX and my first impressions are extremely positive. Square-Enix is not known for their ports on PC so I was a bit worried about what I would find here but so far I'm happy with it.

Look at those resolutions!

Something I wasn't expecting with this update were several decently substantial changes that came along with all of the modernization enhancements common with these types of projects. You've got your resolution settings going up to 1080 (what I'm playing it on thanks to my new laptop!), controller support (which actually changes button prompts this time which is incredibly useful during the quick time events this game has), and updated graphical sprites which were all expected but masterfully done all the same. If I have one complaint about the graphical enhancements it's that only the characters were redone in higher resolutions so they sometimes stand out against the lower res backgrounds or unrefined characters. It's not as glaring as the PC port of Type-0 but same basic idea.

The other changes I'm talking about are minor but welcome. In the original game, you could find things on the ground by walking around and hitting X a whole bunch in hopes that the character will find an item. Now, whenever there is anything of interest to your character, an exclamation mark appears above his/her head. While some may be irritated by this modernization, I won't miss running into walls constantly as I mash the X button. Also, on top of the standard controller support, they actually made sure that all controls are completely re-mappable. Finally, they appear to have added a few tutorial screens that I don't recall seeing in the original. This is something I could do without as tutorial screens have been a pet peeve of mine for a while but hey, that's the way the world is going and I know I'm in the minority on that issue.

Just in case I'm too dumb to figure out how cursors work.

 There are some other changes too like optional boosters (read: cheats) that work similarly to how Final Fantasy VIII on PC had it but with more robust options such as no encounter modes, maximum Gil and other things. I won't be using any of these for my playthrough but I know some will appreciate being able to blaze through the story quickly.

Otherwise, things are so far pretty much the same as in the original. Quirks and all. I haven't delved too much into the battle system so there is still a ton to see and I look forward to every second of it. I realized I haven't spent much time talking about the background of this game so I'll probably get into that in my next post. For now, enjoy this scene showing off some of the new character models. They're pretty great!

Game on!

Try giving him the wrong answer 64 times and see what happens. No joke.

Oh Hi! Fancy Seeing You Here

This may come as a surprise but as it turns out, I didn't play Final Fantasy IX! I know, I know. It's a major shocker to everyone. I believe I did turn the game on again once after my last post but I didn't get far. The thing was, that lag that occurred whenever battles started became just too much to handle. I couldn't take it anymore. Imagine playing any RPG with random battles but instead of the standard load times, it took 20 seconds to load. The game was playable but not in any fun sort of way. Then there was the promise of a better tomorrow.

You see, at the point of my last blog, I was fully intending on getting a new laptop. One with much more gaming strength than what I had. So, I quietly tabled Final Fantasy IX until I got my new laptop. Then that kind of got dragged out longer than I expected. But now, I have my new laptop and it's gorgeous!

My exact laptop against my perfectly white wall and table!

Not to gush too much about it, it's got an Intel i7 processor running an Nvidia Geforce 940M graphics card. Needless to say, it's much better equipped to deal with emulation than my previous laptop which used integrated video processing on an i3. However, by the point I got this, there was another new promise. One granted to us by the RPG gods on high from the fabled land of Japan. A Final Fantasy IX Steam port was coming! Screenshots would again be a possibility and thus, my blogs would no longer look like giant blocks of text.

Then it came out on Android/iOS but a Steam port was nowhere to be found. I asked Square-Enix and received the nebulous response of, "coming soon". Well... that was a bummer. But I didn't want to fight with those damned PSX emulators again, risking further problems since I knew that as soon as I managed it, the port would be released because karma.

And so, I waited... and waited... and waited... and looked at the viability of playing it on my Android tablet... and waited some more. But the fabled day has arrived for a notification on my phone that came in not 30 minutes ago has told me that Final Fantasy IX has finally been released on Steam! Needless to say, the game finished downloading about halfway through writing this blog and I am just about ready to jump in. I'll have to replay the first few hours but it should be well worth it for decent performance with the game.

So, even though it's almost a year later, nothing from my previous blog posts has changed. I still haven't read or heard any spoilers about this game's story and am still excited to experience this game for the (sort of) first time. You can look forward to my first post about Final Fantasy IX very soon.

Game on!

Super-Deformed Alexandria Time!

I sorted out my issues with Final Fantasy IX. I settled for using the PSX emulator (which I hate so much) and managed to get it working well enough. It still has serious slowdown when entering a battle which I'm sure will get irritating by the end of the game and it is having trouble actually taking screenshots so this may be yet another game without screenshots. Sorry.

I'm gonna rant a little bit about emulators here, stick with me. Every emulator I've used outside of PSX emulators are simple. You download the emulator, it has its built in features, and then you use it to play ROMs. Simple. For some stupid reason, PSX emulators have to be unbearably complicated. If you just download the emulator, it tells you it's missing the BIOS. The freakin' BIOS! So how do you get that? You have to google search for the specific name of the BIOS and download that to put it into the emulator. Is that enough? No, of course not! It may come with a built in plug-in or two but in order to get any games actually working properly, you'll need to download special plug-ins and configure them to, in many cases, work with your specific game and hardware. There aren't really tutorials for any of this stuff so it's sort of a trial and error system where you try to find what works the best for you. Since all hardware works differently, there's no guarantee and no easy answer to find for your machine. It all just seems completely unnecessary when compared to something like SNESx9, the emulator I used for FF4-6. It worked fine out of the box and it also came with a ton of extra graphics plug-ins so you could try whichever ones you liked the best but it wasn't a requirement like it is for PSX emulators. I'm not sure why they are the way they are since later emulators like my PSP one don't work this way.

Oh well, whatever. Anyway, Final Fantasy IX. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with anything Final Fantasy and grasped every little tidbit about the series that I could. Not owning an NES, SNES or Playstation, that wasn't much but I tried. Final Fantasy IX was the one game that, somehow, I learned literally nothing about. Everyone debated between Final Fantasy VII or VIII but I never heard a darn thing about IX at any point. Years later, when I got my PS2, a friend lent me Tactics and IX to boost my then middling library of games. I utterly hated it.

"That stupid art-style with their big heads and cartoon faces! This was blasphemy compared to FFVIII!" Still, I gave it a chance but for whatever reason, when I realized weapons had individual abilities you had to learn, I just couldn't take it. I shut the game off after leaving the Evil Forest and never looked back.

Until now. I still know nothing about the game's storyline or anything. I somehow managed to stay completely ignorant about this game up to this point and that has got me extremely excited. You see, even though I hadn't played most of these Final Fantasy games, I knew about a vast majority of them. Aeris dying wasn't a surprise to me any more than Cecil going to the moon was. Kefka was an intimidating boss but I knew the major twist in FFVI would be the World of Ruin so it didn't have much of an effect on me. But IX is new territory. Anything can happen.

I'm about three hours into the game now and just passed the point where I originally left off after the Forest of Ruin. Honestly, I slap younger me in the face. After the dark and brooding VI, VII and VIII, IX is a breath of fresh air. The art style is still goofy but now I'm liking it, rather than turned off by it. It feels light-hearted and whimsical, not so heavy as the last several entries.

I haven't delved too deep into the gameplay yet, having basically been hand-guided through to this point but it seems fun. The characters all have their own unique abilities and attributes which I am very excited about after dealing with cookie-cutter characters all through VIII. The weapons seem logical which also takes me out of the game less than VIII's ridiculous arsenal. Overall, it just feels like it's going to be a fun game to dive into.

We'll see if tedium rears it's ugly head again but for the first time in a while, I'm really hopeful.

Game on!

It Didn't Get Better...

Well, Final Fantasy VIII is done and no, it didn't get better from last time. In the end, you get to go to the future, a decimated world ruled over by Ultimecia, and fight her in her crazy, Resident Evil-esque castle before she gets pwnaged. Sweet scene commencing where Squall is lost in time, Rinoa brings him back with the power of love and white feathers transformed from flower petals... Tada! Happy ending.

No explanation about GF's ganking people's memories, no explanation of what a Sorceress is, really (there is a brief mention that may suggest they are simply descendants of someone from the past although it doesn't explain how they have special powers or what those powers may be), no resolution of any character subplots, if they even had any to begin with, no explanation of what Time Compression means. Just... nothing. Ah well, but Rinoa and Squall make the cutest couple, the way he constantly ignores her and she launches her dog-

But that's okay. Because at least I have Final Fantasy IX to look forward to, yeah? Well, maybe not. You see, I had downloaded an eboot rom which takes the PSN version of Final Fantasy IX and plays it from a PSP emulator. I wanted to do this because the PSX emulator I had gotten for Final Fantasy Tactics didn't work wonderfully and I wanted to use the smoother option. Problem is, PSP emulators don't play eboot roms. What the hell is the point then?! I have yet to find an answer to this but I will keep looking.

I have a couple of other options that may work out but I haven't nailed anything down yet. I may be able to use my tablet as a PSX emulator and play the original version of FFIX which would be the best option, barring using my laptop. Otherwise, I'll need to buy it for my PS3 at home which means I'll have significantly less time to spend on the game (at best, six hours per week) and won't be able to take screenshots. But anyway, I'll figure something out and get back to you.

In the meantime, here is my ranking for Final Fantasy VIII amongst all the FF titles so far:

Rankings:

Final Fantasy 2 < Final Fantasy VIII < Final Fantasy Adventure < Final Fantasy < Final Fantasy Legends (all three in order) < Final Fantasy III < Final Fantasy V < Final Fantasy IV < Final Fantasy VII < Final Fantasy VI

I know that may seem low but I honestly just didn't enjoy it much when compared to the other games. I feel badly about it because the system could be so much fun leveling up GF abilities and mixing and matching but when placed in this game, it just becomes overly tedious and not a lot of fun. It's still a lot better than two because at least you aren't beating yourself over the head literally but it still requires unnatural gameplay in order to succeed by constantly drawing magic from the same enemies again and again while getting the crap beat out of you.

As far as the version, I HIGHLY recommend the Steam version of Final Fantasy VIII. It's available on Steam so it's very easy to get and while it uses the awkward PC port from back in the day as its base, the new Steam version comes with both Chocobo World which may be a fun throwback to tomodachi days and also a Magic Booster. This is a system built into the launch window that allows you to boost all low to mid-level magics to 100 for any save as often as you like. It doesn't completely solve the problem since you still need to draw the high level magics for the end game but it means you don't need to grind for the vast majority of the game. If you want the pure experience, you can still play it like normal and it's more or less a direct port of the PSX experience but you can change your mind at any time. The version also has Xbox 360 controller support built in. It's awkward since button prompts only say B1 or B2 but it was manageable. Just remember you have to actually press X on your keyboard at the beginning to start the game. I don't know why this is but it's the only time you actually need to use your keyboard. For only 12 bucks, it is far and away the superior version of this game. An original boxed copy will run you about 60 dollars but is available on Amazon if you so choose.

Game on!

Squall Cast Disillusionment on Self

(To start things off, I realized after about 25+ hours with Final Fantasy VIII that I wasn't actually taking any screenshots. Turns out, Big Screen Mode has to be on in Steam to use the Xbox button + RT thing to take a screenshot. Epic fail on my part... Sorry, everyone. Just gonna be text right now.)

When I was a kid, Final Fantasy VIII was the granddaddy of RPG's. My buddy had it for PC and I was enthralled. It's what I thought of when I heard Final Fantasy. Collecting and training GF's sounded awesome and the graphics were incredible (for the year 2000), it just looked like the game to play. I still thank it for getting me interested in Final Fantasy but otherwise, boy, was I wrong.

I've always stood up for Final Fantasy VIII against anyone bad-mouthing it. Everyone online always either loved it or hated it and I fell firmly in the loved it camp. The problem was, I had never actually played through it. Later in life, I played up until the Garden takes off and you can fly it around but stopped shortly after that for... some reason I can't remember.

Now, despite being a firm supporter of the game to start, the more I play Final Fantasy VIII, the more I utterly despise this wretch of a game. Everything from the plot to the characters to the gameplay mechanics is broken as sin and it just keeps getting worse. Let me explain:

1) The Plot

Final Fantasy VIII starts off fairly well. You are a member of a mercenary school called the Garden and you have to pass your final test to be a full-fledged SeeD. Yeah, it stands for something but I don't remember what. Basically, you're a mercenary who works for your school err... Garden. On your mission, your rival Seifer goes AWOL causing him to fail the test. Failure eventually sends him straight into the waiting arms of Edea, the big baddie for most of the game.

Now, if this is what they had focused on, the game could have been great. An interesting dynamic between rival students, the struggle between your personal hatred of the guy versus your duty to your school to save him. Interesting, right? Well, here's where things go crazy. Instead of following Seifer's downfall into Edea's grasp, that happens off screen while you get a mission to help Rinoa (read: female lead because the script says so) and her Forest Owls! The Forest Owls are a terrorist organization made up of three people who want to free their town of Timber from the evil Empire of Galbadia, similar to AVALANCHE from FFVII. You spend a bunch of time helping them in Timber, hijacking a train, meeting the townsfolk and getting on TV. Seifer is met, battle ensues and Edea takes him and flees. Forest Owls are NEVER MENTIONED AGAIN. I'm not clear if we somehow saved the town or not. It doesn't seem like it since Imperial soldiers are still there. I have no idea. Anyway, Rinoa joins your party and no longer gives a flying fuck about Timber for the rest of the game...

Instead, she decides to join you and your mercenary team that she hired in the first place to assassinate Edea for your next mission! Even the party members seem confused since they introduce the rest of the team as fully licensed SeeDs and then Rinoa as... nothing. Anyway, main goal is now Edea which the team inevitably fails at resulting in Squall's death. Or not since he wakes up in the next disk with absolutely no explanation as to how he survived a giant ice spear through his heart. Team is now in prison and Rinoa/Irvine bust in to save you because apparently, in Final Fantasy VIII world, two people can break into a highly guarded prison with no problem at all. Hell, one of them doesn't even need to be trained in anything! Awesome.

Out of prison you get and here is where the story gets really bizarre. You find out that Edea is in charge of the Empire now and plans on shooting missiles at two of the Gardens, Balamb and Trabia. Half your team goes to the missile base to stop the missiles and half goes to Balamb to... die, I guess.

Balamb is Squall's Garden so obviously, Trabia gets nuked first. Too bad, Selphie, your people just weren't important enough to the plot. After watching the first wave of missiles get shot, they infiltrate and fail to stop the next missiles too. Great job, guys. Second half of your party gets to fix the mistakes of the first by trying desperately to debrief to someone who gives a shit without success. You find out that a fat blob thing is the financier of the Garden and lives in the basement for some reason. Squall and friends kill this fat angry blob and decide that pressing a mystery button in the lower basement is a good idea. Lo and behold, the Garden flies! And so, the giant building flies off, out of the way of the approaching missiles.

I may go into more detail later but the plot further devolves as we find out that none of the characters remember anything because of their GF's but they actually grew up together and Edea is their orphanage mother! I didn't even mention how you keep having flashbacks to a guy named Laguna who seems somewhat aware of you because Ellone, Squall's non-biological sister he didn't remember has some sort of power to send people back in time to other people's memories. There are people known as Sorceresses, who are somehow different from your team who uses magic regularly, who SeeD was created to fight against despite never fighting against the Sorceress they knew existed until Squall came around. Then it turns out the Sorceress helped create SeeD to stop herself when she'd go crazy from being possessed by a Sorceress from the future who wants to make a Time Compression which I guess is bad for some reason. There's a super advanced city who imprisoned the last Sorceress in space and you get to go to space too and then the moon is filled with monsters and a big plaque a la 2001: A Space Odyssey gets excavated by the Empire to create a space elevator for monsters from the moon... HOLY CRAP!!! MAKE IT STOP!!!

It's important to note also that I'm just about to enter the final dungeon and absolutely NONE of this has been explained at all. The game just keeps throwing twists at you with no lead-up or anything. Nothing makes any damn sense at all but the game just keeps going with its nonsense. Honestly, all of this could be tolerable if it weren't for...

2) The Characters

Oh, Lord, the characters in this game... You guys remember back to Final Fantasy V? When I complained that the characters were more or less all the same and didn't feel like they had personalities? At least you could forget about them, unlike Final Fantasy VIII which shoves it's flat, 2D characters into your face CONSTANTLY. In fact, it's basically as though the writers didn't know the difference between personality and backstory since that's really all you get.

Squall is the main character. If you thought Cloud was brooding, he's got nothing on Squall. This character is so boring and bland, all of the dialogue choices you get throughout the game actually start with ellipses. This guy is so horribly unlikable, it makes Rinoa, an already unlikable ditz of a character even more hateable since she for some reason likes this jack-off. Rinoa is the leader of the Forest Owls despite barely understanding how basic strategy works. She immediately falls in love with the equally incompetent Squall because of his utter loathing of conversation. Our two lovebirds are accompanied by such memorable characters as Zell, the overly-energetic punching bag who does literally nothing throughout the entire storyline, Quistis, the 18 year old instructor of soldiers who joins Squall because she also can't keep it in her pants. Selphie, basically Yuffie with even more incompetence, and finally Irvine, a sniper who doesn't like to shoot things.

These people are so boring with zero motivations of their own that I literally root for Seifer through the whole damn game. At least Seifer has some proper motivation for doing what he's doing. He's egotistical and allows himself to succumb to the Sorceress' manipulation that makes him feel like her Knight. Instead, you get these six numbskulls during the era when developers were trying to fix the problem of most characters in RPG parties sitting unused through the whole game. Their solution, to make you constantly switch between them in almost every dungeon. These switches are so contrived, one of the explanations for a character being unavailable is literally that she is taking a nap. Your base is under siege by an invading force and she's decided now is a good time to sleep. Great job... Fortunately, she wakes up in time to get possessed so, that's great.

As if the characters weren't bad enough, their weapons are completely ridiculous. Now, many people laugh at the famous Gunblade, wielded by Squall. This is a pistol merged with a sword. Honestly, I think it's kind of cool, especially when compared to the others. Zell literally punches things to death. When you are picking out weapons for weapons training, literally surrounded by choices, who says "Nope, I just want to punch the living hell out of everything!" Idiot... Quistis uses a whip. Heh, she's an instructor? Sexy librarian thing going on? Uses a whip? Get it? No? Moving on. Irvine is a sniper so he uses a shotgun. Obviously. Because those two are guns and otherwise are the exact same thing- STOP ASKING QUESTIONS! Selphie uses nunchaku which may make sense from a weapon standpoint but considering Selphie seems to be the most physically weak character other than maybe Rinoa, it's an odd choice of weapons since it's super close-range. Anyway, the best has been saved for last. Rinoa uses what can only be described as an arm slingshot which she uses to shoot a boomerang disk. I could not make this up. It's a disk thing that comes back to her and she shoots it like a slingshot from her wrist. Even better, her limit break is that she shoots her DOG from this wrist launcher. Yes, in Final Fantasy, there is a character who slingshots her dog at enemies. Wow... just wow.

3) The Gameplay

Here's the sad thing about the gameplay in Final Fantasy VIII. This system is not inherently broken by itself. In fact, it could be really cool. Basically, the system uses an evolved version of Final Fantasy VI where you equip summons to each character to determine their abilities. Except, instead of just giving them active abilities, this determines their stats and everything else as well. You can equip multiple GF's, as they're called, on one character or leave a character without a GF (although that's a really bad idea with no noticeable benefit) but however you do it, you will then need to junction (read: equip) magic to each individual stat that the GF allows. Different magics will benefit different stats differently and will increase it more if more magic's are stocked.

That leads us to the magic system. Anyone can use any magic at any time but they have to be stocked like items. Magic can't be bought in stores though, they have to be drawn from either draw points found throughout the world or drawn from monsters in battle. Different monsters have different magics that can be drawn and drawing will take several casts of a magic of your choice. You will need to wisely think out which magics you are going to junction to your stats and which you will keep for casting since they benefit your stats more if you keep a higher number of casts available. You can still use them in battle but it will lower your stats accordingly.

All of this would be cool if it weren't for the fact that they tried really hard to make you use all the characters by switching them constantly for the plot. This ultra-crunchy junctioning system quickly becomes tedious and painful when you have to spend half an hour every few hours just setting up your party and getting them ready to fight. There's thankfully an auto-feature for junctioning magic but it rarely gets things exactly right and really just provides a jumping-off point. The assumption was probably that people would equip one or two GFs to each character and would keep them there but this would be stupid in actual gameplay because you need to level up your GFs abilities which can only be done by keeping them active participants in battles. So what results is just constant tedium which makes you hate whenever they force you to change characters, further increasing your hatred for these already boring non-people!

Weapons also cannot simply be bought but instead, must be crafted. You go to a store like usual but you need to discover weapon blueprints, found in magazines, before you can do anything there. You then need to have the correct items found from monsters in order to actually make the weapons for each character. These raise their base strength and hit percentages to give you that extra boost to attacks for battle. The problem is that these items often need to be stolen from enemies as the drop rate for some is extremely low. If you were like me and never stole anything in previous games, this is a painful lesson in FFVIII since your attacks will be left woefully pathetic by the endgame when you're still using your starting weapons. Of course, there isn't anything that tells you this, you just have to figure it out.

This is something that's especially odd since otherwise, the game goes way overboard in making sure you understand the systems. Since you are a mercenary working with an organization, you actually get a salary throughout the game, given to you at time intervals. Your salary is based on your SeeD level which is mostly determined by the level of tests you have passed. That's right, this game has tests. You know, those things that kids take because they're fun? Oh wait, that's not right...

Anyway, at any point in the game, you can take tests up to whatever Squall's level is at the time up to a maximum of 30. Each test has 10 questions and you have to get 100% in order to progress up the levels. Doing the math, that means you need to answer 300 questions about the game before it deems you worthy of playing it. Since you get more money for higher levels, the game also doesn't tell you which of these questions you got wrong. Best case scenario, if you can't pass a test, you have to wade through menus of support documents to find the correct answer. Worst case scenario, they ask about an extremely specific situation that you actually have to go out and find before you can answer it. It's a pain in the ass that didn't need to be so opaque. The problems of this system are made even clearer by the fact that playing it today means you can just look online to find the answers. This is also way more helpful, allowing the test to actually teach you the game rather than just make you feel like an idiot.

Anyway, I'm near the end of the game, about to jump into the Pandora something or other and finish this bullshit so I'll save my final judgment for then. Perhaps some story threads resolve themselves but I'm not holding my breath. I'll finish this up probably this week and get back to you though. I've got a hold of a ROM of Final Fantasy IX which I can play through a PSP emulator (since it was released on PSN) so that's good to go also! I'm kind of excited to jump into that since I was immediately turned off by the art style back in the day but am told it's actually a really great game. It'll be fun to play a Final Fantasy game that I actually know nothing about. I don't even know the name of the villain going into it!

Game on!

The Many, Many Systems of FF VIII

Ooooo Final Fantasy VIII. This really is the big one, huh? I don't mean the most famous or the most talked about or anything like that. No, no, no. Final Fantasy VIII is the big one because this is probably the most divisive title in the franchise. Some will argue vehemently that this is the best Final Fantasy title of all of them while others will argue just as passionately that it's the worst. Let me tell you right now, it's not the worst. Opinions are one thing but there is no way anyone could convince me that Final Fantasy VIII is worse than Final Fantasy II by any standard.

Eh-hemm... anyway... The storyline, characters, etc. aren't the issue here. The thing people get hung up over is the gameplay mechanics. That is to say, ALL the gameplay mechanics. No matter what side of the fence you fall on FF VIII, you can't call it simple. In fact, this is probably one of the most complicated JRPGs to come out in any gaming generation. So many differing systems all working together, altering each other. It's a lot to handle. Hell, even the game thinks it's complexity is worthy of the games first tutorial mode accessible from anywhere and even tests to confirm that you understand the material. Let me try and break it down for you.

While there are a ton of systems in FF VIII, they are almost all actually just evolutions of previous games systems that you've seen before. Most of the games mechanics revolve around GFs, FFVIII's summon system. Remember the Espers from Final Fantasy VI and how you'd equip them to different people to give them different abilities? GFs are like a way more complex version of that idea. Each GF learns skills in the same way that Final Fantasy Tactics works. You pick one skill from a list to learn and as you win battles, you get AP which is EXP for skills. Skills can do various things like create skill junctions (more on that later), increase passive stats or give new in-battle abilities, amongst other things. As GFs level up, using traditional EXP and levels, and gain more skills, they help to improve the person they are equipped to.

That's simple enough, right? Well, the way a GF increases a party members stats is actually something the player controls through a system called Junctioning. You can Junction both GFs and Magic, both of which work in a different manner. Junctioning a GF just means you equip it to a person, like the Espers in VI or like armor or weapons in any other game. Once Junctioned, you can choose which active abilities you want to equip to the party member which the GF has learned. Magic Junctioning is where most people get tripped up. One of the types of skills a GF can learn is stat junctions. This basically means that once learned, you can junction magic to a specific character statistic like strength or HP. Junctioning magic means you pick one of the magic spells that the character has learned and you use that spell to increase the stat sort of like equipment specifically for one statistic. If that sounds confusing and complicated, it's because it is. Each magic spell can only be designated for one stat so while the beginning is fairly light, by the end, when most stats are junctionable, balancing which spells will have the best effect for which stat becomes a huge hassle. Fortunately, this can be automated by picking a priority like Attack or Defense. It wouldn't be as bad except that you rarely will be able to maintain one setup for very long whether because a character leaves your party, joins your party, etc. So even people who understand how Junctioning works still get annoyed by it because it requires near-constant upkeep and micromanagement.

Oh but that's not all, not by a long shot. So you've got your GFs equipped to people and you've got your stats all worked out but how do you get those magic spells you Junction to your stats? If you said "like any other Final Fantasy" I'd smack you and ask again how it works since that's no damn answer at all. If you then were to say "by leveling up and getting new spells" well, you wouldn't get smacked but you'd still be wrong. No, Final Fantasy VIII is the only game in the franchise to use as system like this. Basically, Magic is treated like an item but not something you buy in stores. Instead, it's found in enemies and throughout the world in special Draw points. In order to access it, you need to have the active ability Draw equipped to a party member from your GF. You then draw it out of enemies or the drop points sort of like pulling from a well. A successful draw may net you 8 Cures or Thunders. Every enemy has different spells which may or may not be known to your character depending on whether you have knowledge of that enemy or not. There is no MP either in this game, instead every time you use the spell, it uses up one cast of that spell. If you run out, no more casting it. Not only that but you also have to have at least one in order to Junction that spell to a stat for a party member. You seeing the complexity ramp up here? Not only do you need to maintain this magical stockpile but it's unique for each character so you have to spread the Draw love around and make sure everyone has access to the spells he or she needs for both Junctioning and casting.

Are we done yet? NO! Of course not! Next we get to deal with Limit Breaks. These work similarly to how they do in previous and subsequent Final Fantasy games where it's a character-specific super move meant to be used when you're in trouble. Unfortunately, like everything else in FF VIII, they decided these needed more complexity, too. Each character is different but all require some level of management whether it's a system choosing whether to automate or even activate a Limit Break at all or learning new Limit Break abilities in the same way GFs learn new skills, there's always some level of customization you can inflict on yourself.

Now, what else could they possibly make more intense? How about equipment? Actually, some people may consider it simplified but the fact is, equipment works differently than in other JRPGs so it's just one more thing to figure out. There is no armor or defensive equipment at all in this game. All of that is dealt with in Junctioning. Weapons, however, are upgraded through a crafting system. Before you even have the option to craft a weapon upgrade, you have to learn about it from a magazine. Magazines are located all over the place, sometimes out in the open, sometimes not. These give you new options for when you go to weapon stores. When at the weapon store, you can choose which upgrade you want but if you thought all you'd have to do was pay for it, well, you clearly haven't been paying attention, have you? Nope, you need special items for each upgrade in order to craft that particular enhancement. These aren't common items either, they all come from monsters in one way or another. If you're fortunate, the items come from a drop but if you aren't, you're gonna have to use that Steal action that you rarely ever touch in RPGs because it's a pain in the ass to constantly waste turns until you finally wind up taking a potion 20 hours into the game. And how do you Steal? Well, you have to get a GF that can learn that active ability, of course.

If, after all that, you've decided that the game just doesn't have enough depth for you, Squaresoft kindly added an optional card game that I JUST CAN'T FIGURE OUT!!! Basically, you can collect monster cards by battling monsters or GFs which have various stats like in a collectible card game such as Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic the Gathering. You can then battle various NPCs throughout the world at this card game. Here's the thing, they couldn't have possibly just made a simple card game. No. They decided to make it more realistic. You know how with popular games, people often come up with their own house rules? That's how this works too. Different regions, people will play under different variations on the basic rules. These can affect anything from the way you win to how many cards the winner takes from the loser. But wait, there's more! These aren't just static rules, either. In fact, the more you play under certain rules, the more those rules can spread throughout the world as they become more popular. Honestly, many players play FF VIII just to master this card game. It's absurdly deep and has actually been ported to several other devices as a stand-alone game. Final Fantasy XI offered it as a packaged option but also, it was just recently brought to the Japanese-only Final Fantasy mobile hub as it's own game.

So, where do you fall on all of this? Obviously that's a ton of stuff to take in but some players crave the complexity. The more inaccessible, the better as it enables constant learning of new tricks to eke out those extra few points of damage. These are the players who will thrive in FF VIII. Others would rather have simple mechanics that offer more general tweaking or just allow them to get on with the game without menu surfing every few seconds. Neither way is wrong but it's extremely polarizing, especially in such a main line franchise like Final Fantasy.

Let me know in the comments what you think and as always, game on!

Final Fantasy Legends 1-3

Hey everyone! Guess who's back?

I know, it's been an obscenely long time since my last post and, to be totally honest, it's because I haven't really done anything worth posting about. That's right, I haven't really played any Final Fantasy since my last post back almost a year ago. A lot has happened including: I got married, moved into an apartment, bought a house, moved into the house, multiple family members passed away... It's been pretty crazy lately.

Still, I have found time to game and decided I wanted to take a break from Final Fantasy to play through a series that I've always intended to do but never got around to, the Infinity engine games. namely: Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate 1+2. I modded both heavily with quality of life mods just to improve things like resolution, UI, text size, etc. but otherwise left the games as they were originally released. I loved all of them. Every second of venturing through the Sword Coast was a pleasure and while I wasn't a fan of the Planescape setting and it took me a while to get used to D&D rules (I've never played before), Torment was still one of the best games I've ever played. I also spent some time with Icewind Dale 1+2 and Neverwinter Nights although I didn't finish any of them. After that, I got a little RPG'd out and decided to play through Dark Forces. I'd played Jedi Knight, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy but never played the first game in the series so I played the DarkXL mod which remakes the game in a more modern engine. I had a great time with that.

So it's been an eventful year but, you know what? I'm ready to get back to my pilgrimage. I've been having some trouble with Final Fantasy Tactics and the untimely death of my PS2 has caused some hiccups for me but I decided that while I figure out a workaround, I'd jump into one of my first Final Fantasy titles I got to spend real time with, Final Fantasy VIII.

You may be wondering, after that super long introduction, why I titled this Final Fantasy Legends 1-3 then. Well, I am getting started (again) on FFVIII but I haven't really done anything yet so I wouldn't have much to say about that. So instead, I'm gonna talk about three games I didn't play on this pilgrimage, the Final Fantasy Legends games for the original Game Boy. I played all three of these games back in the day and they were actually the first Final Fantasy games I owned, personally, and finished. Since all I had as a kid was a Sega Genesis and a Game Boy, these were the only ones I could play on my own. Well, these and Adventure but I already went into that one. So I'm not playing them now but I'll give you guys the brief rundown on each.

The Final Fantasy Legend

So, you may remember from my post about choosing to skip these games that the Final Fantasy Legends games aren't technically Final Fantasy games at all. In fact, they're from a series known in Japan (and the US much later) as SaGa. The games were a hit in Japan but Squaresoft was still hesitant about throwing its weight behind a localization effort since JRPGs just weren't huge sellers in the US normally. Final Fantasy was a big hit though so they decided to just call them Final Fantasy games here and assumed we were too stupid to figure out the difference.

Players of the first game seriously noticed though that this wasn't quite the same as the others. Similar to the first few Final Fantasy games, The Final Fantasy Legend game didn't have named characters but unlike those, you don't even have a consistent party. You start off by picking characters of whichever classes you want but if one dies you just go to a shop and pick up new characters. Yeah, you likely won't finish the game with any of the people you started with. It's a lot more like D&D or other western RPGs in this sense.

The game sounds a lot like the more modern RPGs, Resonance of Fate or Sword Art Online. Your characters are living in a giant tower with the promise of wishes if anyone reaches the top of the tower but no one who has tried has ever returned. You gather up your party and up you go.

Honestly, this is easily the worst of the Legends games. The gameplay is absurdly difficult and harkens back to the first Final Fantasy in the worst of ways. If you do manage to reach the top, you'll get a storyline reminisce of something out Xenogears where you fight God himself. Otherwise, there is very little story to speak of in the game and no real attachment to the characters since they're just nameless, replaceable peons. At the time, it was great as a Game Boy RPG but after the next two came out, it just became meaningless.

Final Fantasy Legend 2

Known as Sa Ga2 in Japan, Final Fantasy Legend 2 feels more like a JRPG and is much better for it. The story follows a kid who's Dad leaves to discover the secret of the MAGI, a substance thought to be from the gods. Daddy never comes home though so it's up to you to collect all 77 MAGI and find out what's going on.

This game has a lot more to it and feels more fleshed out instead of the dungeon crawl that the first Legends game turned out to be. It doesn't break new ground, especially to players today, but it was great for its time. Honestly, not much more to say about it other than if you want an RPG on the original Game Boy, this was up there as one of the good ones.

Final Fantasy Legend 3

This was the best of the bunch, in my opinion, and it actually had an influence of the later game, Chrono Trigger, with its use of time travel as both a plot and gameplay gimmick. Basically, a large beast is destroying the world in the future, past and present simultaneously. Your group of adventures has to take down the monster by assembling a time traveling vessel called the Talon.

One of the cool things about this game was the class system. Basically, classes were constantly being changed for each character by using items received from monsters on them, somewhat similarly to how Golden Sun worked by equipping djinn on characters to change their abilities. Since this was in 1991, it was a reasonable evolution of Final Fantasy III's job system and, if SaGa had caught on more in the west, could have seriously changed the way we play JRPGs even today, considering how much of an influence III/V had.

So that's a little bit of an overview of the Legends games. If you are desperately craving some RPGs to play, they're worth a look although their age shows through painfully. If you do read Japanese, all the games have been remade, Legend for the Wonderswan Color and 2/3 for the DS, but unfortunately for us English speakers, the Game Boy titles are all we're likely to see for a while yet.

If you are into the SaGa games, a new title has been announced for the PS Vita to be released this year. No news about a localization has been released but if you all cry loud enough, a digital localization isn't out of the question. Hell, look at Final Fantasy Type-0.

Game on!

Disaster Narrowly Avoided er... Postponed

New developments on the Final Fantasy Tactics situation. Turns out that after a few years in my closet, my PS2 has decided to breath it's last and no longer works with controller inputs. You can plug the controllers in, start up a game but damned if it's going to do anything when you push buttons on the controller.

A nice ceremony was held for my fallen brother in arms. Words were spoken, songs were sung and we laid my longtime friend to rest for the final time. But alas, what would this mean for my pilgrimage? If you recall, I had no luck emulating Tactics on my computer and now am not able to play it on a console either. I almost threw in the towel when I decided rules must be bent in order for the pilgrimage to continue.

The good news, Final Fantasy Tactics will work fine and the pilgrimage will commence as originally planned (with Tactics first and then Final Fantasy VIII rather than doing them simultaneously). The downside is that I'm actually going to be playing the updated version Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions released for the PSP on a PSP emulator. It works on my computer at least through the first battle so I don't forsee any further issues with this. It does seem to be a pretty major overhaul including new localization, new cutscenes and I know it contains additional Final Fantasy characters and other bonuses. It's too bad that I can't go with the original but it just doesn't seem to be in the cards. War of the Lions is better than no Tactics at all.

The reason I say disaster is merely postponed is because while this will get me through Final Fantasy 9 (using a rom for the PSN release of 9), I don't know how I'm going to play Final Fantasy X or XII as I don't have a PS3 to play the X release on and XII is a PS2 exclusive. I'll have to cross that bridge when I get there. Perhaps I'll invest in a PS3 and get the X/X-2 collection, which I heard was quite good and would solve the problem of not owning X-2, and find some other option for XII. Idk. I'll keep you up to date. For now, I'm just excited to finally be able to start Tactics.

Game on!

PSX Emulation

After Sephiroth got ownaged by Cloud, we step aside from the core series and go to the undisputed king of Final Fantasy spin-offs, Final Fantasy Tactics. I'm happy about this since it'll be nice to have a change in genres but also because this is the first game on the list that I actually still own!

As it turns out though, emulating PSX games is not as simple as SNES or NES. I downloaded ePSXe, the most common PSX emulator on the market but it seems that it takes a more modular approach to emulation. Instead of coming pre-packaged with everything you need like SNES emulators do, you actually have to download a whole bunch of separate files to get it to work.

You first need the PSX BIOS file. This tells the emulator which region you want to be playing in. I'm in the US so I need the one for NTSC-U disks. You then need a graphics plug-in. For SNES, these were all built in so I got to play around with my different options and find what worked the best. For PSX, it's more a matter of downloading them all and finding which one sucks the least. There are several available so experimentation is not only recommended, it's required. Sound is thankfully built into the emulator already.

After spending about two hours mixing and matching softwares, I decided to scrap it since the only one that didn't chug along at 10 fps had frequent texture pop-in and skewed graphics. This means that I'll have to play it on my PS2 back home, significantly decreasing the amount of time I'll be able to devote to it and I won't be able to take screenshots from the game.

Because of this, I decided to work through Final Fantasy Tactics and Final Fantasy VIII at the same time (since I have FFVIII on Steam and it works just fine). Expect a lot of jumping around in the next few posts as I bounce between the two highly anticipated games.

Oh and I kind of half-assed my game rankings last time due to some time constraints. Here is the full list in order from best to worst Final Fantasy game.

Game Rankings:

1. Final Fantasy VI
2. Final Fantasy VII
3. Final Fantasy IV
4. Final Fantasy V
5. Final Fantasy III
6. Final Fantasy
7. Final Fantasy Adventure
8. Final Fantasy II

Game on!

Omnislashed

Final Fantasy VII is complete! Unfortunately, I was dumb and played the game without using Big Picture Mode on Steam. Because of this, none of my screenshots actually took since not using BPM uses different screenshot hotkeys than using it. I guess you'll just have to take my word for it this time. There isn't a fancy The End screen anyway.

Final Fantasy VII is a grand foray into the brave new world that is 3D gaming but like most early pioneers, it's flawed in many ways. I've mentioned the character sprites many times but I feel I have neglected to mention how gorgeous the rest of the graphics are. The environments are wonderfully drawn and have many little details scattered throughout. Sure, some of the finer details are extremely pixelated and thus, hard to see, but it all comes together to make a great whole. It's too bad that the sprites are such low quality. They stand in stark contrast to the world around them and diminish the picture overall. The eyes that look drawn on, their blank or cheesy expressions and the lack of hands all grate your nerves throughout and prevent you from fully immersing yourself in the dramatic storyline unfolding. Further evidence that the fifth generation of gaming consoles was a necessary but ugly stepping stone in gaming history.

The storyline as a whole is very impressive and marks some serious steps forward for the franchise. It's unfortunate that poor localization and incoherent dialogue mars several of the finer points. The characters often wander into overdramatization and psycho-babble when staying clear and concise would have been a stronger option. While the details can be nit-picked forever as I did with describing the characters a couple posts ago, the story has an interesting point and does feel relatable and personal.

The materia system is a great experiment from a franchise known for it's experimentation but it never quite adds up to Final Fantasy VI. Instead of furthering the trend of using the battle system to further flesh out characters, VII tries to go the way of V by making all characters more or less the same in battle but make them definable in the storyline instead. They take the limit breaks idea from VI but otherwise make characters all the same. Unfortunately, this loses the strengths of VI without ever feeling as exciting and involved as V and thus strikes an odd middle-ground between the two that simply feels as though it failed at both.

Still, the gameplay is fun and despite some antiquated gaming standards of the time, battles are interesting and there are plenty of places to explore and things to do, adding up to several hours of fun. The minigames are hit and miss which is fine because the ones that hit are great. Chocobo Racing was the highlight for me but snowboarding was quite fun as well. It's too bad that the camera can't often keep up, something common in that era of 3D gaming.

Ultimately, Final Fantasy VII's reputation has long since surpassed the actual experience but to judge it for this isn't fair to the game and overlooks many strong, positive traits that the game passed on to future games for years to come. Even if the game isn't as good as it's legacy, the legacy has provided an always raising bar that game developers can strive for and having a lofty goal is always good for the industry as a whole.

Game Rankings:
... Final Fantasy V < Final Fantasy VII < Final Fantasy VI

Game on!

Final Fantasy VII Fight Tactics

Small post today, I just wanted to share my personal strategy when coming up with a party/materia setup for Final Fantasy VII fights. This is my general strategy, although I'll give specifics as well. It isn't necessarily the best strategy and certainly isn't for certain situations but in general, this has gotten me through the game quite nicely.

My party has been made up of Cloud, Vincent and Tifa from the moment I got Vincent. Before him, I used Barret and when Cloud and Tifa were absent, I used Cid, Vincent and Barret. Here's why.

My general setup uses one tank character, one full magic character and one hybrid, leaning more towards magic. My magic character is the backbone of the party, in this case Tifa. As early as I can, I get her a Time materia and attach it to an All. This allows me to cast haste right away on the whole party. One of the things most newbies do is to ignore Haste. This is a HUGE mistake as Haste is easily one of the best spells in the whole franchise. Not only can you attack about 1.5x as much (meaning 1.5x the damage!) but you can respond to devastating attacks much more quickly by healing frequently. Later in the game, I also attach a Restore materia to another All which allows me to cast Regen on the whole party as well. Tifa can then heal as needed and otherwise use some incredibly powerful magic spells and summons as needed. Her Limit Break also rocks.

If my magic character is the backbone, the tank is the rib cage. The most important materia to place on this character is HP Up. This will increase their HP drastically as time goes on. Then, you want to place Cover on them. This will allow them to cover the other players frequently with their bonus HP. Finally, Counter Attack. This all adds up to a character with a ton of health who takes the damage from other characters and responds with a counter attack frequently. My other characters rarely get hurt from single attacks, making healing incredibly simple as well. Another helpful one is the materia that uses enemies attacks since that doesn't diminish this characters physical stats but still gives them some powerful magic, assuming you get it.

Finally, you want to make sure your two non-tank characters are in the back row. I give Tifa a long range materia and Vincent is naturally long-range. This allows them to take only half damage from attacks. Cloud is front row in my game but if you use a character like Barret as your tank, you can keep them all in the back and still do full damage in return. The last character is rather unimportant as to what you give them, as long as they can hold their own. I have Vincent equipped with Bahamut ZERO, another enemy move materia and some spells like Bio and Escape.

If you are having some trouble getting through portions of the game, check this out and give it a try. I haven't died yet in the game nor have I found any battle all that difficult. Results may vary so feel free to post your own strategies below!

Final Fantasy VII: The World is My Oyster

SPOILER ALERT!

Aeris dies! That's right, folks. That lovable girl who we brought along with us on our terrorist assassination mission got killed. I know, imagine that. But in her death, we received the Highwind, the airship that flies you around everywhere. A fair trade, in my opinion.

Seriously though, Final Fantasy VII has been an interesting trek so far. Not only do I have to deal with the monsters and threats filling the land but also my 17-year-bloated expectations for the title toted as the greatest game ever made by it's own box art. It is impossible to be a fan of RPG's in this day and not hold Final Fantasy VII on a pedestal, even if you've never played the game. Because of this unrealistic expectation of an admittedly old game, every joy is tempered and every failing is a massive disappointment, despite my own efforts.

Still, I'm gonna spout my opinions anyway, because this is my blog, dammit! That and if I don't have my opinions to throw around, what's the point? Basically, the game has been somewhat disappointing thus far. Despite everyone obviously being attached to Cloud and friends, I've found it difficult to care about any of the characters. Basically, they are a bunch of environmental terrorists blowing crap up to prove their point.

You know who else does this...?

You were born in the 90's if you remember this image.

So maybe Squaresoft was going for a more ambiguous protagonist/antagonist dynamic. I can appreciate that. But when they bring their kid into it, I simply accept that Barret is the worst parent in the world and have to move past any sense of caring. Yeah, remember Marlene? The little girl that they abandon in the slums of a mega-conglomerate city hell-bent on killing them at all costs? Obviously Barret and Tifa don't.

Cloud is the whiny middle-school kid who thinks he's too cool to be a part of anything and ends up just brooding in a corner, hoping everyone thinks he's thinking about smart things. Sure his identity crisis becomes interesting but then that quickly moves into resurrecting Sephiroth and destroying the world. In fact, his puppet identity is the most interesting thing about him. What is that saying? The fact that he isn't really a person, has no emotions and mimics memories from Tifa is the most interesting thing about him???

Let's look at the side characters for a minute. Aeris bounces around picking flowers and flirting with the puppet when she isn't busy talking to the dirt or getting stabbed. Barret is the worst parent ever and has managed to get all his team killed. Who the hell knows what Tifa is doing or why since she started in Nibelheim, learned martial arts and then went to Midgard to work in a bar. Red XIII is a talking dog raised by a guy studying the earth by looking into space. Vincent is a not-vampire who hates Hojo and turns into various Universal movie monsters. Cid, the emotional wife-beater who had no better options. Yuffie who steals their stuff and obviously cares nothing for any of them. Cait Sith, a robot controlled by a guy who works for their enemy but apologizes every time he betrays them. Why do we like these people???

The gameplay has taken a step back by being slower paced than Final Fantasy VI and restricting you to three party members. Some people may like this better but I find it restrained and less interesting. The materia may be fun but is it better than the individually unique characters from Final Fantasy VI or the job system from Final Fantasy V? No. Not even close. Aging design choices have also dampened the game's enjoyability. I recently slogged through the ice area which would have been great if it hadn't been for Marlboro's using Bad Breath, an ability that hits your entire party with frog, poison, confusion, silence and sleep. Thankfully, Cloud was equipped with ice absorbing materia so he managed to survive but if I hadn't done this before the battle, it would have been entirely impossible for me to win the battle. Even with it, it took a good five minutes and a Magic Breath spell to kill him off, an enemy spell that costs 75 magic (out of 300 total). Most of that time was spent staring at the screen, waiting for Cloud to wake up and hit himself so I could actually start healing and hopefully get an attack in. Did I get anything good from that battle? No. Less experience than most fights, a pitiful amount of gold and a battle item. This is just an example of the kinds of fights that still exist in this game, something that never should have been repeated after the first game. Six main series titles and two console generations later, this should be a distant relic of the past.

The game's not all bad, and I don't mean to imply that it is. The storyline is looking up since Aeris died as it finally feels like it has some focus. Up until about Nibelheim, the game felt grounded but then things started to get ridiculous and lose any sense it once had. I already knew that Cloud was a clone of Sephiroth with Zack's DNA and that Sephiroth needed the Black Materia to cast Meteor to end the world but playing the game, I still had no idea what was going on because the storytelling was horrendous. Now that they've stopped playing around with flying sprites and ridiculous leaps in logic, I'm caring more about the character's plights and am excited to start exploring the world with the airship. I'm hoping that there is as much to do in VII as there was in VI.

I'll update you when there's something more to say.

Game on!

Side Quest: Final Fantasy: All The Bravest + Bravely Default

I admit, I have been cheating on my Final Fantasy order a bit, playing other games here and there. Playing through a huge list of RPG's can be tiring, especially when you enjoy other genres also. Still, some of my dalliances have been relevant to this pilgrimage. Two such titles were Final Fantasy All the Bravest and Bravely Default.

Final Fantasy All The Bravest has become infamous in modern times for being one of the worst games ever made. While I'm not sure it quite deserves that glorious title, it's certainly a terrible game. Essentially, it's what happens when someone who has zero understanding or respect for Final Fantasy fans makes a Final Fantasy game using the worst of mobile game cliches. The upside, Square Enix dropped the entry price to nothing, at least on Android, so I didn't pay a cent for it.

The "game" basically works on the premise of using a huge amount of Final Fantasy characters (up to 35 if I remember correctly) in battle at the same time, all while using the ATB system at it's fastest. You move through maps representing the Final Fantasy titles, fighting classic Final Fantasy monsters in pixel art form, listening to the awesomely represented music. You get to level up by getting experience, gather Gil by defeating enemies and unlock new characters and weapons. It all sounds great, right? The problem is, all of this is purely window dressing. The game itself consists of nothing more than rubbing the screen of your mobile device. That's it. Battles use absolutely zero strategy and just is a game of attacking as fast as possible. You attack with a character by touching them. So, you could feasibly play the game as a glorified whack-a-mole but there's no reason to do this as rubbing the screen is the fastest and thus, most effective, way of playing the game.

But you get to unlock stuff and get Gil too, right? Well, yes, sort of. Gil doesn't actually do anything so it basically just represents score. You unlock stuff randomly by defeating enemies. The weapons serve as passive upgrades, providing bonuses to attack for various characters. Let me explain why this is ridiculous. Each weapon provides a bonus such as +3 attack for any characters that use that weapon type. The thing is, you can never see the stats for any of your characters. So what does this +3 attack mean? Who knows? It could be great or it could be next to meaningless, there's no way to tell.

But the game lets you get cool Final Fantasy characters in pixel art form, right? Sort of... see, the only characters you can unlock are the classes used in classic Final Fantasy games. If you want to use famous characters like Terra, Cloud or Titus, you have to pay money which gives you a random Final Fantasy character to use in battle. The awesome part is that beyond the artwork, these don't do anything new or different. Since the game provides no strategy, there's no reason to buy them rather than looking up their images online. In fact, you don't get to see any new content unless you pay anyway since the Final Fantasy maps available for 7 onwards (the games that don't use pixel art already) are premium content.

So does this game have any redeeming aspects? Yes, a couple. First is that for each weapon and monster you fight, you get a description in the game's menu. These descriptions are often hilarious and are a lot of fun to read. The other cool thing about this game is the music. It actually provides a soundtrack so you can listen to all the classic tunes on the go. Aside from that, the game is a complete drag. I didn't even mention how every time you die in battle, something that happens from one hit of the enemy regardless of how high level your guys are, you have to wait three minutes per character to keep fighting. You can pay to respawn all your guys right away but... why would you?

On the other hand, we have Bravely Default, a recently released JRPG for the 3DS. So why am I saying this game is relevant to Final Fantasy Pilgrimage? Well, while the game is it's own IP, it's actually the spiritual successor to the DS title, Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light. In fact, it's Final Fantasy in pretty much every way other than name. The game world is plagued by environmental disasters as the four elemental crystals worshiped for centuries are being engulfed by darkness. Sounds familiar, huh? You have to go around and save the four crystals to restore nature to it's proper balance.

To be blunt, the storyline sucks. Beyond being an obvious homage to Final Fantasy, the characters are all so bland as to be irritating, particularly Ringabel, an amnesiac womanizer who can literally think of nothing beyond banging every chick he sees. This stereotype is so cliche in JRPG's already that this extreme example proves the undoing of the rest of the story all by itself. I literally want to stop watching every time this guy speaks. Still, I have to respect the full voice acting and theatre-style cutscenes. Also, this is one of the only JRPG's outside of the Tales series that I can think of to use skits, mini-cutscenes that you can trigger at certain events throughout the game, expanding on the storyline further. (FUTURE ME UPDATE: I have discovered that Final Fantasy IX also uses a similar system. Didn't know that when I wrote this originally!)

That being said, Bravely Default is a ton of fun and I've been enjoying it immensely. While I believe the story is the most important part of an RPG, Bravely Default's combat and job system are so much fun, they make the game worth playing despite the monotonous story. The job system is directly taken from Final Fantasy V but with some slight tweaks. Each character can pick any of your unlocked jobs. This provides them with that class' special attacks, passive moves and special trait. You can then pick a specified number of additional passive bonuses from other jobs and the special moves unlocked from one other job. As you level up each job, you gain either a new special attack to use or a passive bonus. For example, leveling up a monk will provide you some special martial arts attacks or things like HP + 10%. The special traits of each job can spice things up a bit as these provide an incentive to picking your primary class.

One neat difference between Final Fantasy V and Bravely Default is the way in which you unlock new jobs. In Final Fantasy V, you got jobs from exploding crystals and after picking them up, you got the new job. In Bravely Default, you actually have to find people who represent each job and defeat them in battle to get the new job. So a side quest may have you fighting a Valkyrie which, after defeating her, will unlock the job for you to use. It's a small difference but it's very effective as this will force you to see the strengths and weaknesses of each job for yourself.

Combat is also mostly like Final Fantasy but for a not-so-small tweak: the ability to use Brave or Default. Each character has a BP count which represents the number of moves they can make. At the start of each player turn, every character gains one BP. This means that if you attack once with each character in one turn, you will always stay at 0 BP. If you Default, essentially a block, you will save up your BP. Pretty simple. Using Brave, however, will let you stack up to four attacks for each character which they will use all in one turn. While you can save up BP by using Default, you can also go into the negatives for characters by using several Brave's right at the beginning of a battle. This can provide a quick boost to attacks, killing off minor enemies before they get a chance to attack you. However, any character with negative BP at the start of a turn will have to forfeit their turn until they get back up to 0 BP. This means using Brave can be a risk but one that can pay off with massive damage when used correctly. Enemies also have to play by these rules so you have to watch out for enemies that save up several BP's as they may attack with a huge onslaught all at once. If you can send them into the negatives though, you are rewarded with several free attacks against a defenseless foe.

If you have a 3DS, don't be turned away by the lack of a strong storyline. This game is a blast to play and I recommend it to anyone who's fan enough of Final Fantasy to be reading this blog.

Game on!

The Failings of Final Fantasy VII

Fanboys (and girls), avert your gaze. I am about to do the unthinkable: criticize Final Fantasy VII. *gasp*

I know, I know. This could be a hard time for all of us but frankly, it needs to be done. Too long has the game been held up as the mark of gaming perfection when, let's be honest, it has it's flaws. I'm not saying it's a bad game, it just could have used a little more work in a couple areas. Well, just like ripping off a band-aid, it's better to do it quick and get it over with so lets jump right in.

1. The Sprites

Barret's super power: pronouncing symbols!

I've mentioned this before and people always respond the same way, the game was on the Playstation back in 1997, of course the graphics aren't as good as today. THIS IS NO EXCUSE! The game sprites don't look this way because of the graphical limitations of the Playstation. Look at the environments in the game, the pre-rendered cutscenes, hell, look at the in-battle characters. They look infinitely better than the chibi-designed sprites you see when exploring. Take a look at Final Fantasy Tactics or 8 to see what the Playstation was capable of. This was purely an artistic design and it failed, miserably. It can be hard to take the extremely dramatic story seriously when the characters don't have fingers, noses, mouths or anything else that makes them remotely human. 

2. The Battle Camera

Okay monster, let me turn to my left so you can hit my side.

The in-battle graphics looks pretty awesome, especially compared to older Final Fantasy titles. So what am I criticizing about this? It's not the graphics but the artistically shifting camera that I have a problem with. Not because it moves but because this can seriously impede functionality in battle. It doesn't happen all the time or even that commonly but more often than it should. What happens is that it positions itself so that two characters exist one directly in front of the other. This makes it entirely impossible to tell what character you're selecting. In one battle, I wasted three Phoenix Downs trying to revive my fallen comrade because I kept using them on the living teammate instead. The first thing is why the hell does the Phoenix Down not default to the fallen comrade but even without this, not knowing who you're targeting should NEVER BE AN ISSUE! Artistic camera angles are fun but they should never get in the way of basic gameplay.

3. Translation

Student... riiiiiiight..

The translation isn't as bad as Final Fantasy IV. In fact, it's not even that bad at all. It's more a localization issue than a translation issue. Whatever the case may be, the dialogue simply isn't as well structured as Final Fantasy VI was. People say very strange things frequently and sometimes reactions seem undeserved or exaggerated. It's hard to come up with a great example but everything just feels off, somehow. Characters just don't speak like normal people and it's noticeable. It makes it hard to care about the characters when it gives me dialogue choices that seem to invoke bizarre responses. When asked by Aeris if I like her, I can say "No, I don't." or "It's not that..." What does the second one even mean? Why would I say that in response to a yes or no question? It's not what? Yet, saying this makes Aeris happy somehow. Frankly, if I got that response from somebody I just confessed my affections for, I'd be pretty confused.

The conversation with Cait Sith in Golden Saucer after he betrays you is another one that's just beyond ridiculous. He throws the keystone to the baddies and then asks if you can just forget about it and let him come along. He makes an effort to convince you that he's not all bad by telling you that he's not all that bad. He then says his actions are all in the past and you should just let him come along. Cloud and Aeris have to think about this due to his betrayal about 30 seconds earlier... He then tells you there's no point in killing him because he's just a robot controlled by Shinra. If there was any question before, this is the moment when I would have taken the big sword and slashed this thing in two. Why would you continue to keep a spy around that's obviously working with Shinra? It makes NO SENSE!!! Sure, he says how he's got the kid hostage so they have to do what he says but he doesn't say this until about 2 minutes into the conversation. Why hesitate for that long??? I can only imagine that this is a translation issue or else it's some of the worst writing in the history of fiction.

4. Storyline Consistency

Throughout the storyline, twists and turns as well as character backstory tidbits pop up regularly but sometimes, I can't see how it all fits together. In the beginning, the game makes you think Midgar is the whole world, which is fine. The revelation that the rest of world exists is pretty cool, actually. But while we're in Midgar, we see flashbacks of Cloud talking with Tifa at a playground. Later, we find out Tifa and Cloud are from Nifelheim, on a whole different continent from Midgar. So, what was this flashback? When did these two kids cross the sea to vacation in the slums of Midgar? In fact, why did they go to Midgar at all? Many of the characters implied that they came to live in Midgar later in life. Who moves to a craphole intentionally? Barret took his friend's daughter, swearing to care for her and then takes her to the slums so he could become an environmental terrorist? Was this a sound parenting decision?

Vincent is another one that really bugs me. I know, there's more about Vincent later in this game as well as in Dirge of Cerberus but let's talk about the here and now. Vincent is chilling in some coffin where he can move things magically with his mind. He is obviously supposed to appear as a vampire when you first meet him. What's the point? Why have this obvious implication if it means nothing and has nothing to do with his character? Why does he move coffin lids with his mind and then never show this power again? Seems pretty useful if you can fling baddies around with your thoughts in battle. Also, his Limit Break has him transforming into a werewolf-esque character called the Galian Beast. Somehow, none of the other characters find this the least bit interesting. I've been playing with him for several hours and not once has it come up that this guy turns into a savage beast on a whim. Personally, I'd want to know what was up with this guy before falling asleep anywhere near him. At least the party is accepting, I suppose.

So is Final Fantasy VII all it's cracked up to be? Not really. The game's great, don't get me wrong. But the three character party, bad dialogue, ridiculous looking sprites and constant brooding are huge drawbacks on a game touted as the best game ever made. Frankly, halfway through the game and I have yet to see how this game is superior to VI in any way other than the environmental graphics and cutscenes.

Game on!

Onwards to Midgar

Yeah, that's right. 1997. Takes you back, don't it?

The Super Nintendo trilogy is complete, bringing us into the Playstation era. Some people wonder why Final Fantasy switched to Sony after six games with Nintendo. Well, many regard that as one of the biggest mistakes Nintendo has ever made in it's long history.

See, while Final Fantasy VII's graphics may not be impressive now, at the time, it was the most expensive video game ever made. $45 million US dollars were estimated to have been sunk into the three year project. Squaresoft went all out with an intense marketing scheme almost unheard of in video games to this day (save perhaps, Call of Duty.). The graphics were insanely impressive with Full Motion Videos (FMV's) being added to make the game even more life-like. That combined with the three years it took to make the game brought the cost up so high.

Originally, this project was intended to be released on Nintendo's newest console, then known as Project Reality, but obviously this never came to pass. Seriously, I recommend taking a look at some historical writing about the development of the N64 and Playstation, interesting stuff. I'll summarize for you. Sony and Nintendo were originally partners planning on releasing a joint console called the Playstation. There were a lot of early concepts for this, whether it was an add-on to the SNES, a whole new console or something else entirely. Anyway, Nintendo decided that their contract wasn't in their best interests anymore and decided to secretly partner up with Philips instead, going behind Sony's back to do so. This resulted in the Philips CD-i and some of the worst games in gaming history like the Unholy Triforce games and Mario Hotel. Still, Nintendo released their own console as well, deciding to forgo Sony's promised CD technology and stick with the tried and true cartridges. Sony, decided, screw Nintendo, we'll just release the console we had planned ourselves. Thus the Playstation was born.

Not only did this end up really blowing up in Nintendo's face but Square realized that their grand masterpiece, Final Fantasy VII simply wouldn't work on a cartridge-based console. After much effort to try and stay with the company that brought them up from the brink of bankruptcy, Square had no choice but to go to Sony with their new game. 

Nintendo may not like it, but Sony let's Square do what they want.

Final Fantasy VII changed a lot along with the switch to the new company. Nintendo's strict regulations on what can and cannot be in a game definitely impacted Final Fantasy in the past. Sony wasn't nearly as reserved and it showed early and frequently.

Oh Tifa, don't hide your true feelings.

Final Fantasy VII incorporated religion, death, sex, cursing, and all sorts of other things that Nintendo never would have let them mention, let alone delve into. This made for a much more adult game, allowing the franchise to grow up along with it's aging fanbase. It had been 10 years since Final Fantasy first jumped onto the scene and Squaresoft decided that their fans were finally old enough to hear cursing

Well... sort of...

All in all, what do we need to say about Final Fantasy VII. Many regard it as the greatest game of all time, even to this day. Others say it's the most over-rated game of all time. I'm determined to find out for myself how well the story of Cloud holds up 17 years later.

Game on!

Recap Fantasy Part 2: Tips and Tricks

So I realized that I did tips and tricks for the first Final Fantasy but haven't done any since then. Sure, the first game was by far the hardest but the other games are tough too. Here are a few tips that will hopefully help you out in your own Final Fantasy pilgrimage.

General Tips

-Status effects are the enemy. Many people underestimate these because they don't often cause direct damage. Seriously, status effects are worse than taking direct damage. Being hit with an attack causes a very known and very immediate effect. These are easy to plan for. Being at the culmination of a battle and having an enemy put blind on your heavy-hitter can turn the tide of a battle completely. Confusion statuses are one of the worst, especially in the late game, since your mage can suddenly cast Meteo on your entire party, wiping you out in one fell swoop. To counter this, make sure you always have a small stockpile of every status healing item you can get at that point in the game. I try to have at least 10 at all times. Seriously, these are more important than potions. When the shops start offering these items, it means you're going to be hit by that effect. Preparation is key.

-Always have a designated healer. Especially for boss battles, some people get over-confident and think they can take out that baddie without healing. This is a bad way of thinking. Don't do it. Even if you think a boss is going to be easy, always have a healer and make sure that healing is their first priority. If you can, have a second go-to healer if the going get's rough. It's better to have two attackers that can last forever than four attackers that die in a couple rounds.

-Upgrade equipment ASAP. Whenever you get to a new town, your first thought should be to check which new items are available. If you can't afford some of the heftier equipment, DON'T JUST MOVE ON! Grind some money until you can afford it. The only exception to this is a couple of towns in Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II have equipment that you aren't meant to buy right away. Still, you should be doing the best you can. III on, you should always have your people decked out as much as possible. There's simply no reason not to.

Final Fantasy II

-Seriously not trying to beat a dead horse here but get used to attacking your own people. The best method for leveling up is to go back to the first city and start finding goblins and imps and whatnot. The easiest stats to level up are your HP and MP. Pick one stat for each character. For your HP characters, start beating on each other. For the MP character, use spells to either damage your HP characters or heal, if necessary. Remember, the goal is to end the battle with less than half of your maximum HP or MP. Don't just heal when the health gets down and keep going, this won't help you. When you get down low enough, end the battle. Heal once you're outside the fight. Once you think you're ready, do this a few more times. Trust me, you aren't ready.

-Don't use the inns. Some day I'll talk more about these ridiculous inns in a post but for right now, just know that you can't treat the inns like you do in other Final Fantasy games since the inns charge depending on how much health or MP you're missing. It's way more efficient to use MP to heal up and then go to the inn only when you need an MP recharge. This is way cheaper and will save you a ton of money over the course of the game.

-Don't rely on magic. Having magic is great and will help you through a lot of fights but by the end of the game, it's nearly worthless. Magic just never becomes as powerful as your physical weapons. The best method for avoiding this is to have your magic user wield a bow in the back row. This will let them level up their attack power while you use magic as necessary. Note that you should definitely level up Cure and their MP since the more healing ability you have, the less risky dungeon crawls will be.

Final Fantasy III

-Switch jobs frequently. Yes, there is some cost to switching jobs but this will almost certainly not be a problem for you throughout the game no matter how much you switch. I'm not saying to switch frivolously since you do want to level up their job levels but don't feel attached to one job per character. Certain bosses will be way easier with four black mages or four warriors. One boss you will need to be able to use the Scan ability and need a Scholar to do it. By the end of the game, you're going to want to have two Ninja's and two Sages anyway so don't worry too much about leveling up each job prior to the end.

-Get Ninja and Sage! Technically, these are optional jobs since you have to go all the way to the end of Eureka to get them. These are by and far the best jobs and there is literally no reason to use anything else once you get them. Your fighting characters should be Ninjas and your magic users should be Sages. If you play the remakes of III, this won't necessarily be the case but if you're playing the NES version, do this.

Final Fantasy IV

-If you're playing the US version, there is very little need for tips and tricks. There is the occasional tough boss, don't get me wrong, but all in all the game is extremely easy. If you need help at a certain point, pull up a walkthrough for specific strategies but overall, just follow the general tips and if you get stuck, try leveling up a bit to pull through. Be aware that many of the bosses have special tactics required in order to win. Be willing to change tactics on the fly or you will suffer a few losses. Also, pay attention to the boss dialogue since it often gives clues to these tactics.

Final Fantasy V

-Grinding won't help you as much in this game. Levels are much harder to get and don't provide as much benefit as in other games. The more important thing is to level up your jobs. This is very important. Make sure everyone has certain basics before going too in depth on any one job. Making sure every party member has at least the first level of white magic can be extremely helpful later on. Third level is probably better.

-If you can, max out Hunter, Red Mage and Ninja. Their maximum skills are extremely useful for any job. Hunter's allows your character to do four attacks against random enemies with each attack hitting for about half normal damage. This has endless possibilities and should be obtained if possible. Red Mage lets you use magic twice per turn, devastating against many bosses. Ninja lets you wield two weapons at once. These are all extremely powerful and will help you substantially.

-Don't underestimate the base job. If you are willing to put in the time, the base job actually becomes the strongest by far. Any job you master, the innate skills of that job become available to the base job. That means if you are willing to master several jobs, your base job could have HP and MP +30%, dual wielding any weapon you'd like, using X-Fight on every turn, covering near-death friends... Basically, you'd be invincible. But only if you're willing to put forth the time. And trust me, this would be a lot of time spent.

-Be willing to change jobs. Just like Final Fantasy III, several of the bosses will be much easier if you forgo the traditional party arrangements. If a boss is weak against a certain kind of magic, try using four black mages and just bombarding it to kill it as fast as possible. This can help especially against bosses that use individually weaker all-enemy attacks. Three turns of Bolt 3 is enough to kill Leviathan right away, assuming you can keep your mages alive.

-The tower you go to in order to get Meteo and Holy requires you to split your party into two. Make sure the one on the right is two fighters and the one of the left is two mages. These bosses would be tough even if you had your whole party. Too bad you don't. Note that the mage boss will require some special tactics to defeat or he'll just reset your battle. You'll see what I mean.

Final Fantasy VI

-Use Gau. Several players don't use Gau and some even cite him as the worst character you get. This is far from the truth. They simply don't understand how he works. Basically, every enemy you fight will be available to fight again in the Veldt, the area you found Gau in. When you have Gau in your party, have him use his Leap skill to go with the baddies, ending the battle. Wander around and fight more enemies until Gau returns. When he returns, he will have the abilities of all baddies in the party you were fighting when Gau left and the enemies you were fighting when he returned. By using Rage, Gau can emulate these baddies traits and attacks although you don't get to control him. This requires a strong understanding of the games mechanics and bestiary but if you are willing to put a little effort into it, Gau can be an unstoppable addition to any party. Be aware that any World of Balance enemies you don't fight will be unobtainable if you get to the World of Ruin. Don't worry though, if you fought the enemies at some point in time, they will still show up in the Veldt even once you get to the World of Ruin.

-Check the auction house before the World of Ruin. There are two espers there that can be missed if you don't get them prior to the World of Ruin. It's spendy but it's worth it.

-Explore the World of Ruin. Basically, you can attack Kefka as soon as you get the airship but this would be a really terrible idea. Instead, check out the World of Ruin. There's a ton to do and almost every town has at least one side-quest to accomplish. Here's a basic checklist of things to do.
  -Get all your characters back
  -Get the two bonus characters (Gogo is in the monster's stomach over in the island to the northeast. Fight it and let it eat all your party members. Umaro is in Narsche, you need Mog to get him. He's not missable though so don't worry about fighting him without Mog, you'll just need Mog in your party when you go back.)
  -Fight the 8 dragons. Two of these are in Kefka's tower. The rest are scattered around. Not too hard to find but you'll have to do a bit of looking.
  -Fight the Doom Gaze. This monster shows up if you fly around in the airship long enough. Beating him gives you Bahamut. DON'T USE THE VANISH/DOOM TRICK ON HIM!! This will prevent you from getting Bahamut.
  -Climb the Magic Tower. This is the place you get Strago although you don't need to climb it to get him. Climb it anyway.

-The vanish/doom trick. The spell is called something different depending on your version. Basically, the two spells to know are the spell that makes you invisible and the spell that insta-kills all enemies on the screen if you're lucky. In the SNES version they are Vanish and X-Zone. Anyway, the trick is to use Vanish on tough bosses and then use X-Zone right away. If Vanish works on the boss, this will automatically kill them since being invisible means spells have a 100% chance of working. Note that this does not work on Kefka or several of the late game bosses. It does work on that annoying boss that requires you to kill your own guys, it works on the three statue bosses and several others. I don't know if it works on the painting boss but that would be awesome if it did. The only guy to NOT use this on is Doom Gaze per my note above as it will prevent you from getting Bahamut. Otherwise, you still get all the gold, EXP and items you would normally get.

If you are stuck anywhere specific, feel free to say so in the comments, I'd be happy to help however I can.

Game on!