💎 Final Fantasy 1 - Week 10

[simias]

Final Fantasy 1 Beginner Club W10

Week 10	2025-10-31T15:00:00Z
Previous week	💎 Final Fantasy 1 - Week 9
Next week	💎 Final Fantasy 1 - Week 11
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Vocabulary sheets, transcriptions etc.:

Final Fantasy I Club

Stopping point

When you restore the water crystal to its former glory.

More details

Now that we have received a steroid injection from Bahamut, we can return to the main quest.

There’s going to be a lot of fetch-questing going on:

Last week I told you to avoid the town of Gaia, in the mountains. We can now pay them a visit. You should find you that a person there is missing! And that a certain caravan may be involved. If you paid attention last week in Onrac, that should sound familiar.

It may not be immediately obvious what you can do about it however, since there’s no caravan visible on the world map. It turns out that it is here however, and if you follow the directions of one of the NPCs in Onrac you can find it: you have to walk to the northern side of the desert near Onrac, where you’ll find an oasis.

There you will be able to buy something that you can bring back to Gaia. As a reward you’ll get a key item that you can finally bring back to Onrac to access the Sunken Shrine. From that point onward you should be able to figure out what you need to do, although do note that the layout of the shrine can be a bit confusing and fantastical. There are many valuable treasures down there, including a key item we will need next week in order to continue our quest: the Rosetta Stone.

Map

Miscellaneous

Cute ribbons for cute warriors

This week we should encounter our first ribbon, a piece of headgear that will return in most Final Fantasy games.

While it would seem to be a poor choice of equipment given that we have access to high-tier helmets by now, the ribbon is actually a very powerful defensive item that grants immunity against almost all status ailments as well as high elemental defenses.

The invisible airport

You may have noticed that this game likes to have you walk on the world map, even with the airship in your possession. Last week we had to hike to get to the Castle of Ordeals, this week we are forced to land a bit far to get to Onrac and the desert caravan.

There is however a weird glitch in the original Famicom version that lets you land directly on top of the tile where the caravan is, saving you some time:

This is clearly a desert tile which should prevent you from landing, but I guess due to the caravan being hidden there the game treats it specially.

Also in the Famicom version you can buy the fairy bottle multiple times. It just wastes gil… You also can’t revisit the caravan later to rebuy the fairy after having freed her in Gaia.

How Can Dungeons Be Real If Our Legs Aren't Real

The witch in Onrac says a strange thing in the Pixel Remaster:

あんたの足は、自分のものかい？

In the original Famicom version, the line reads:

Which assuming that it’s meant to be あんた足は生えているのかい isn’t much clearer.

The NES version has this:

Meanwhile the English version of the Pixel Remaster has:

Are those legs REALLY yours?

I presume this has something to do with the person in front of the submersible who probably is the merfolk sent to the surface to help and got legs somehow? Did the witch help her? Maybe a reference to the Little Mermaid?

Inconsistent encounters

The top level of the Sunken Shrine, where you can still encounter merfolk, has no random encounters in the original release. I do get encounters in the Pixel Remaster on Switch however, but the wiki says:

While an encounter set exists for 5F, the encounter rate for the floor is set to 0 in pre-pixel remaster releases, while in pixel remaster the set exists but is not assigned to any map; in both cases, no encounters occur on 5F.

So… I’m not supposed to get encounters even in the PR? I’m curious to know what your experience is with the various versions out there.

Participation

• I’m playing along
• I will catch up later
• I’m still playing but I haven’t reached this section yet
• I’m a filthy preplayer but I’m here for the discussion

[JupiterJesus]

Man, that insane witch’s leg dialogue really stumped me. Its hard to translate something when the original text already seems to be nonsensical. The possibility that mermaids can have fake legs and the witch knows it is a cool hypothesis.

[JupiterJesus]

If 5F is the floor full of mermaids, I definitely had 0 encounters on that whole floor on the PR version.

Note: this is the last week that I’ve preplayed. I stopped just after this week’s endpoint… like two months ago.

[simias]

I just checked again and I didn’t get any encounter either… I may have hallucinated it.

[Daisoujou]

I finally swapped my buttons to be B/Circle to confirm because I’m spending so much time with PS1 games I mix it up with the older Japanese style of confirming and cancelling over and over.

水の泡

One point where old style font betrayed me a little. It took me a moment, but I did figure out it was 鷹, so my practice with older games is paying off!

The monk just looks to me like an 80s rock guy now, and he’s even playing the air guitar when we’re supposed to be fighting.

This dungeon was fun enough! It’s a little mean to include 2 different necessary progression triggers in the same dungeon though, especially because the screen wrap thing is easy to overlook for the stone. Overall I think the aesthetics go a long way to selling this one, crumbling little paths over the water have a nice aura to them. We’re still curbstomping monsters these days; my hasted 20 hit monk doing like 800+ damage at once made the Kraken fight really short. And now with more status protection on someone we’re getting even more unstoppable.

[Akashelia]

Week 10

I really liked this week, because as soon as we got the airship I thought “oh well, what you see is what you get I guess, now we can see everything there is to discover for the rest of the game”.
Turns out I was wrong! Was a super nice surprise to have to find the caravan and then a sunken temple.

@simias

I presume this has something to do with the person in front of the submersible who probably is the merfolk sent to the surface to help and got legs somehow?

Interesting to link the quote about the legs to the mermaids, there could be something there.

[Daisoujou]

Legs

You know I took a screenshot of that last week cause I thought “what a bizarre thing to ask someone” but I forgot to include and comment on it after going through everything else for the week. My guess, with no context, was that asking our characters if their legs aren’t their own was a random 4th wall breaking reference, but this makes more sense, kind of. It’s a little weird and obtuse for sure but there does seem to be a connecting thread with the mermaids.

[simias]

@Daisoujou

I finally swapped my buttons to be B/Circle to confirm because I’m spending so much time with PS1 games

But this the same layout with JP PSX games, O validates and X cancels.

Dreamcast, Xbox and EU/NA PlayStation are the other way around. I tried emulating some Dreamcast the other day and it was a constant struggle…

[Daisoujou]

@simias

But this the same layout with JP PSX games, O validates and X cancels.

Yeah that’s what I mean I changed it to. Pixel Remaster had me on X to confirm (A on this Xbox controller) until I changed it now.

[simias]

Oh that makes sense, I’m playing on Switch which uses the normal Nintendo layout with A on the right so I didn’t have to deal with that.

[Daisoujou]

Oh yeah true! I’m doing it on PC so it’s different. It’s interesting how you end up processing this stuff kind of unconsciously. At the same time I’m playing stuff like Shuten Order and it’s using a standard modern control setup where A advances, but that feels fine and normal to me. Same when I go to the Switch, I’m used to its controller wanting me to press the button on the right, its A position. But something about FF1, the more that I play the older games, is tripping a flag in my head telling me it’s gotta be a circle to confirm kind of game. It’s either an association with turn based games that I’m making or literally just how it “looks old.”

[simias]

maps

@Daisoujou

especially because the screen wrap thing is easy to overlook for the stone.

I would say that the #1 think that makes the original game harder is not combat-related but rather the lack of minimaps in dungeons. Being able to plot a route ahead by opening the minimap trivializes most dungeons, especially since you can view inside all rooms as long as you’re inside one of them.

In the original if you want to find all treasures you really need to have good memory to make sure that you haven’t forgotten a branch, and when you are low on resources and decide to flee a dungeon you have to hope that you remember the shortest way out (assuming that you can’t use a spell to teleport to the exit).

[VikingSchism]

Playing with a PS5 controller and O is confirm for me! The game uses Steam input for my controller but I think it uses the API since it is able to recognise it as a Playstation controller. I think that means they put that in for Playstation controllers specifically, but for Xbox controllers they just used the ‘standard’ control scheme for that controller (the confirm button has always been A on Xbox, unlike Playstation which had the weird confusion between the West and Japan on which button it should be)

It does kind of mess me up when I then go back to a modern game like Silent Hill f or Pirate Yakuza and suddenly X is confirm haha

[JupiterJesus]

Yuck, the first thing I did was go in and change it to cross to confirm (also dualsense on PC).

[JupiterJesus]

There is this line: 私たちの仲間のひとりが、上の世界を見に行ったまま、帰ってこなくなちゃったのよ。
It seems to confirm that the lady with the sub is also a mermaid, because she “went up to the surface world”. If she hangs out down there on the reg, she must be able to breathe water and is likely a mermaid herself. The sub must be for whatever heroes she finds to help, not for her, and her legs must be little mermaid legs or an illusion.

[JupiterJesus]

Finished this week’s translations.

[shitsurei]

this week

Well the Rosetta Stone room was just mean. I saw that I couldn’t make it there, assumed that there was going to be some go down to come back up nonsense and moved on with my life. Then only after I beat the boss did I realize that it wasn’t going to take me back to that room..

On the bright side the music was great. I was also amused that the toughest enemy this week for my team was ウォーター

Is there anything preventing you to going to the stairs down from the 3rd floor first, beating the boss and then fully missing the mermaids? Other than you’d have to eventually go back for the Rosetta Stone? I could see making that mistake and then just being lost in the game forever back in ye olden days.

[Daisoujou]

It’s absolutely possible, because I did go that way first. There’s certainly nothing being like “whoa hold up there” when you finish it, either.

[simias]

It’s also possible to do it the other way around: find the stone, leave the dungeon and continue your adventures for a while before getting hard stuck and unable to progress.

[VikingSchism]

Week 10 Play Report

This week started with the party already possessing the fairy in the bottle since I’d done that last week - which is the second time so far I’ve accidentally gotten the key before finding the lock. And it’ll presumably happen a third time because I followed up on leads in Onrac. Anyway, I did have to figure out where to take the fairy, but heading to the town I hadn’t been to yet did the trick. I got the 空気の水 and headed back to Onrac - not before picking up some shiny new heavy ordinance for my wizards.

Heading down into the temple showed the power of the new classes and the magic items. I got new gloves for my knight which freed up the gauntlets, which meant free サンダラ for my mages. It seems like damage from these spells is still dependent on class stats, so the knight can’t really effectively use them. Along the way I also picked up a light axe that allows for free アディア, and another piece of equipment that gives free ファイラ. I enjoy that this allows me to give the other wizard some access to spells of the opposing type, or lets me save spell slots on the respective wizard.

Upon getting to the boss fight, I made use of the sword that gives my knight ブリンク to increase his evasion, gave the white mage increased attack with セーバー and buffed both the knight and super monk with my black mage’s spells (ヘイスト and ストライ meant that the Kraken stood no chance). Boss fight wasn’t too hard, but at least managed to last a few rounds of walloping.

I did enjoy this dungeon overall - it had some fun aesthetics.

I then headed back into the dungeon to explore the upwards pathway and came across the mermaids. Laid my hands on the Rosetta stone (wild that it’s called that in this world) and left it there for this week.