💎 Final Fantasy 1 - Week 10

[simias]

reply

@VikingSchism

It seems like damage from these spells is still dependent on class stats,

It depends on the intelligence/知性 stat which is indeed higher for mages, naturally. In the original Famicom/NES versions this is broken and intelligence does nothing, meaning that no class gets an advantage for spellcasting from items.

[LazyWerebear]

That was me!

I grabbed the stone, didn’t realize that there were stairs down further and thought, oh, well I guess there’s another dungeon where the water crystal is and I can get there now that I have the stone.

Made it to a certain place above the ground and was like, “oops, I should definitely turn around.”

[shitsurei]

@simias

It’s also possible to do it the other way around

@LazyWerebear

oh, well I guess there’s another dungeon where the water crystal is and I can get there now that I have the stone

Doesn’t one of the mermaids say something like you have to go down to the basement save them. Are people not listening to all the mermaids?!?!

@VikingSchism

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.

While adventuring through the temple I had my white mage cast heal from the healing staff and my black mage cast thunder from the gauntlets. Then I went into every battle and used auto battle. Except for the time when they にらむed my Monk to death (I’m assuming that’s Kill?), and all the times they poisoned him (I don’t know why he got poisoned ~5 times and no one else did), it was some amazing cheese and it made all the backtracking way less annoying. It’s definitely going to be my go to going forward. When I don’t need the healing, I also now can give my mages thunder and either fire or dia spells with the other items from the temple. It felt super cheap, but way less cheap than turning off encounters, which I have been doing liberally.

[JupiterJesus]

@shitsurei

Doesn’t one of the mermaids say something like you have to go down to the basement save them. Are people not listening to all the mermaids?!?!

Yeah, ここは神殿の最上階です。水のカオス、クラーケンは神殿のいちばん下に巣くってます。- This is the highest floor of the temple. The Water Fiend, Kraken, hangs out at the lowest level of the temple.

[simias]

@shitsurei

Doesn’t one of the mermaids say something like you have to go down to the basement save them. Are people not listening to all the mermaids?!?!

Exposing @LazyWerebear’s skimping on Japanese practice smh.

[shitsurei]

Yeah I was commenting to @LazyWerebear who was clearly up there bc of getting the stone. I’m understanding if you went down first and missed them entirely.

[frequent4832]

@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.

For the first ~two weeks of playing I would always accidentally close the main menu by pressing B (on steam deck) right after opening it. For some reason even after I got used to using A everywhere else, the act of opening the menu with Y would reset my brain to PS1 FF7 controls.

[Voi]

I’m all caught up!

Anyways ribbons!!!

[Akashelia]

Nice job!

[simias]

@VikingSchism

Laid my hands on the Rosetta stone (wild that it’s called that in this world)

One thing I like about Japanese fiction is that they’re a lot less picky about what’s acceptable and what’s “immersion-breaking” compared to English-language fantasy. English high fantasy has become extremely codified: everybody speaks in a modern British way, but you can’t say “fuck”, and you can use words of Germanic and French origins but certainly not anything else. So you can have your Dragon Warrior wield a falchion but certainly not a katana! Also you can have all sorts of weird monster races but no black people .

It’s so goofy to me. I realize that it’s mainly just everybody copying Tolkien over and over again but it feels so stale to me now.

Meanwhile in Japanese fantasy you have people drop English and French expressions in katakana on top of all the Sino-Japonic stuff and nobody bats an eye. レッツゴー！

Pirates, Vampires, Masamune, Excalibur, Elves, Ninjas, the Christian Church and the Rosetta stone in the same universe? Don’t mind if I do!

[simias]

Also as I’m preparing next week’s vocab I have a language question:

Multiple times throughout the game (such as with the circle of wise men in Crescent Lake) the 4 chaoses/fiends are mentioned using ４匹のカオス. But 匹 is a “counter for small animals”. Surely I wouldn’t consider the fiends to be particularly small… The counter also works for horses, which aren’t very small, but the fiends don’t really have equine qualities either.

My only guess is that it’s meant to imply that they’re subservient to a greater power, but I can’t really substantiate this hypothesis.

[VikingSchism]

@simias

One thing I like about Japanese fiction is that they’re a lot less picky about what’s acceptable and what’s “immersion-breaking” compared to English-language fantasy. English high fantasy has become extremely codified: everybody speaks in a modern British way, but you can’t say “fuck”, and you can use words of Germanic and French origins but certainly not anything else. So you can have your Dragon Warrior wield a falchion but certainly not a katana! Also you can have all sorts of weird monster races but no black people .

As a reader of a lot of English fantasy I definitely have my opinions on this. I find that these days a lot of popular epic fantasy (as that’s mostly what I read) actually goes for more of a modern American speech style. Take Brandon Sanderson, for example (his dialogue and general prose is incredibly casual and modern American English). Being a Brit I certainly have a preference for more British styles of prose and dialogue. I also find that when the prose/dialogue leans more British there tends to be more of a tolerance of ‘normal’ swearing. I absolutely prefer that sort of normal swearing as opposed to making up silly sounding fantasy swears (“Storms” is absolutely awful imo). I think some authors manage to make cursing sound good, but half of those examples also do standard swearing (“hood’s balls” from Malazan is one of my favourites)

I also think it’s funny because Tolkien did have some anachronisms in his text - such as comparing some of Gandalf’s fireworks to a steam train in the pre-industrial Shire

[simias]

@VikingSchism

Being a Brit I certainly have a preference for more British styles of prose and dialogue

I don’t have an issue with it at all, but I do think it’s weird how many fantasy (and even sci-fi) worlds love to create complex and diverse cultures and languages without drawing upon our real world diversity. Star Trek has people speaking Klingon, but not Turkish or Wolof (as far as I know)

Similarly you could draw upon the diversity of English dialects to populate your world, but I think most English readers would deem it absurd and immersion-breaking if a character in a high fantasy book spoke in an Australian-English dialect. But when you think about it, there’s not really any reason for that besides the expectations of the genre.

Japanese fiction is a lot more willing to include Japanese and even foreign dialects into the mix of their made-up worlds, I find.

[JupiterJesus]

@simias

Multiple times throughout the game (such as with the circle of wise men in Crescent Lake) the 4 chaoses/fiends are mentioned using ４匹のカオス. But 匹 is a “counter for small animals”. Surely I wouldn’t consider the fiends to be particularly small… The counter also works for horses, which aren’t very small, but the fiends don’t really have equine qualities either.

My only guess is that it’s meant to imply that they’re subservient to a greater power, but I can’t really substantiate this hypothesis.

I think I commented on this in the notes section of the spreadsheet, weeks back. It can be used for “human-like” animals. Basically, humanoid monster types, or humanoid robots. Earlier in FF1, I think it is used to refer to goblins or trolls or something like that.

Ah, here’s where I learned it, from Tofugu (how appropriate).

This is where things get interesting. Fantasy creatures, particularly evil ones, are counted using 匹. The rule of thumb is that when they’re more animal than human, they are counted as animals. Think oni (demons) and the like.

But when a monster or creature is friendly to humans, or when they are more human-like, they may be counted with 人. In a traditional fantasy book, elves and dwarves would be counted with 人, whereas orcs, ogres, and goblins may be counted with 匹. An orc that is friendly toward humans, however, may change to 人.

[JupiterJesus]

@VikingSchism

As a reader of a lot of English fantasy I definitely have my opinions on this. I find that these days a lot of popular epic fantasy (as that’s mostly what I read) actually goes for more of a modern American speech style. Take Brandon Sanderson, for example (his dialogue and general prose is incredibly casual and modern American English). Being a Brit I certainly have a preference for more British styles of prose and dialogue. I also find that when the prose/dialogue leans more British there tends to be more of a tolerance of ‘normal’ swearing. I absolutely prefer that sort of normal swearing as opposed to making up silly sounding fantasy swears (“Storms” is absolutely awful imo). I think some authors manage to make cursing sound good, but half of those examples also do standard swearing (“hood’s balls” from Malazan is one of my favourites)

I’m working my way through the Cosmere (basically just need to finish out the Mistborn novels) and this is definitely my least favorite thing about Sanderson’s writing. Why is it that people across several planets, or hundreds of years on the same planet, all speak in a 90s-2000s western American dialect? Even between characters, the differences in the way they speak are subtle. Why is it that a boy who grew up poor, became a soldier and was enslaved, speaks IDENTICALLY to a girl from another country who grew up a noble? Dude needs to learn how to write different voices for his characters. edit: and, if you’ve watched his podcast or other stuff from him, IT’S JUST HIS VOICE

[JupiterJesus]

Agree, my favorite fantasy worlds have tons of diversity, and deviate from the Tolkien standard. If your book has an elf in it, at this point I’m probably not going to read it.

I’m not a fan, though, of anachronism generally. Make your world as crazy as you want, but don’t stick in random stuff from OUR world, unless it secretly turns out to be our world in (the future, an alternate universe, etc). I give this game a pass because it’s a game from the 80s, but I would probably put a book down right quick if it was this goofy and wasn’t written by Terry Pratchett.
(Actually, I’m not a fan of Pratchett, either). edit: More accurately, I wasn’t a fan of Pratchett when I tried to read his book when I was 16. For all I know, I might like his stuff now. I mean, at the same time I loved Wheel of Time, and I cannot stand that series anymore. Tastes change.

[VikingSchism]

@JupiterJesus

and, if you’ve watched his podcast or other stuff from him, IT’S JUST HIS VOICE

Hard agree, his characters really lack a distinctive voice sometimes. I read his book and just hear Sanderson

@JupiterJesus

I would probably put a book down right quick if it was this goofy and wasn’t written by Terry Pratchett

As a big fan of Pratchett I feel obliged to say that Pratchett’s world is a good way of doing it because it’s basically just a massive melting pot of all sorts of things. Often technologies get ‘invented’ or discovered via magic etc as a means of using the Discworld to comment on our real life. Doing it through the medium of fantasy has some major benefits in that it allows Pratchett to play much more fast and loose and also do magic stuff (like personifying Death). Whereas here it doesn’t feel like the anachronisms etc are done as an intentional thing. I don’t have a major problem with it here since it’s essentially doing a pastiche of fantasy tropes, and I enjoy those tropes, but it doesn’t produce the most distinctive-feeling world. Most of the identifiably Final Fantasy things like Chocobos and Moogles get introduced to the series later

[JupiterJesus]

Yeah, I brought up Pratchett as an exception because he writes satire more than he writes fantasy, it’s just on a fantasy backdrop. Or so I hear.

IMO Star Trek is (or at least was, back in the day) very similar. The original series was constantly bringing up things from the modern day, even though its set like 500 years in the future and some interesting stuff MUST have happened during that time. You forgive it because TOS was less a scifi show than a backdrop upon which to comment on current events.

[Kelsyy]

I keep trying to go into my magic menu and use Zoom. I like Final Fantasy’s use of automobiles and airships, but sometimes I just want to Zooooooooom.

This week we once again poked stuff to death. Prior to the stab-a-thon, I had spent a while organizing Yeet’s magic. I knew going in that Red Mages couldn’t learn all spells, notably level 8 spells, but I didn’t realize that also meant the highest level of party wide healing spell. That might be a bit of a pickle.

[Cruciarius]

I know I am not a very experienced japanese language speaker, but my japanese dictionary says this about 匹：獣・虫・魚などを数える語。Kemono also means ‘beast’, so I think they say something like ‘4 chaos beasts’

Or maybe ‘4 chaos hamsters, who knows’ =D