Last week you should have encountered the king in West Castle who asked for your help fetching the crown from the swamp cave to the south. Surely it canāt be that hard?
You will be rewarded with a unique item for your troubles. If you paid attention to the NPC dialogue these past few weeks, you should know what to do with it.
This week contains our first proper dungeon. Take your time, donāt hesitate to leave the dungeon to rest at the city and replenish your items, HP and spells before diving back in.
The swamp cave is infamous for being quite difficult despite being the first real dungeon of the game. At this point you only have access to a limited inventory of spells and gear, and some of the monsters that dwell in there hit pretty hard on top of inflicting various status ailments.
The Nintendo Power guide told players to bring ā99 Heal Potionsā, which is frankly a bit overkill but shows that this dungeon needs to be taken seriously:
Yesterday, I nearly finished week 3. I just need more money and more consumables and higher level before jumping on the boat. My entire party got massacred by scorpions last night. I havenāt fully figured out spells and potions and stuff.
ā¦When I see my guys lagging, I donāt know how to find out what the debuff is, so I would understand how to counteract it prevent it.
ā¦I also donāt understand WHEN I can use consumables, or how to let one party member apply a consumable to another party member, etc.
ā¦I feel like figuring those two things out will make me more able to battle and roam, without constantly running back to a hotel.
PS, I got frustrated when I got murdered by a bunch of undead, and looked at a Final Fantasy wikiā¦ And that REALLY made me appreciate how nicely non-spoilery you are running this club! 1000 times gratitude, simiasćć!
Swamp cave is fun! Iām impressed how well some good resource management is forced for such an early JRPG. It took me two dives into the cave, once to search the north bit and kinda poke my head into the 2nd floor before my black mage got nuked, then a second trip with a little more specific preparation. I like how poison asserts itself so aggravatingly in this game. The genre often trended towards status effects being more minor, but if youāre gonna have them, make me remember and hate them.
Looking at that ābring 99 potionsā thing it really reminds me of how I think people grind their way out of the fun in this genre. Because you can invest time to super overprepare itās seen as the way to play, but you just donāt have to. This is the era notorious for that and I probably walked in with about ~10 potions and antidotes, a couple tents and high potions, not a moment of intentional grinding done, closely splitting up my money to balance what spells I could afford (even post-dungeon I have a few empty slots) vs a reasonable amount of consumables, and then we limped out of the cave in a fairly tense sequence where my black mage got nuked by the crown fight and supplies were down to nothing. Was a breath of fresh air to get out and pop the tent to make the rest of the journey to town. Memorable, fun, exciting, good design.
I have experience with the genre, quite a lot, so donāt feel bad about grinding to prepare a lot! Or if youāre here more for the story, etc, do your thing, Iām just talking more about people who are longtime gamers who even play JRPGs but just imo engage with them in a way that sucks the intended excitement outā¦ and then complain that that is ānecessary.ā Being able to grind, if you have fun with that, as another option is great; I just donāt like it getting reduced to only that. The balance isnāt always right and it might be needed sometimes, but itās needed way less than you hear. Then again, quick edit, I remembered pixel remaster might have experience and everything increased, so itās very possible in the original you did need to do some level grinding to have even the kind of experience I am. Thatās still pretty far from doing it until you can mindlessly smash through the content, but I have to keep in mind this isnāt quite original FF1.
Alright thatās my rant, thanks for attending. Dungeon fun. The boss was an interesting case too, very fragile but he hit us with instant death right away and those statuses hit hard. Luckily I had previously purchased exactly one phoenix down to rez with. I think I overcommitted to haste buffs and stuff preparing for a battle of attrition when the best answer would have been to rapidly burst him down. But I did feel nicely rewarded for putting the evasion buff spell on my black mage because he dodged (nearly? I forget) all the sleep spells.
Honestly I had a hard time remembering I needed to go back to the cave, which I donāt think is the gameās fault cause it tells you back then, but I think Iām just in the middle of too much so my memory starts slipping during these week breaks. Iām holding the Chrono Cross world in my head so this world isnāt staying well enough, haha.
Yeah even knowing exactly what I needed to do and where to go it took me two tries to clear it last week. Itās surprisingly hardcore but itās still shallow enough to be forgiving I think, youāre never too far from the exit. The hike from the dungeon to Elf Town is the annoying part IMO!
I think the Chaos Shrine being so minuscule and underwhelming also lowers your expectations for what dungeons are going to be like in this game. So itās easy to underestimate whatās going to hide behind this unassuming hole in the ground on the world map.
Especially given that in the original version you have to buy the potions one by one in shops! It must take about 5 minutes just mashing A to buy all these potions, assuming that you have the gil for it. Ridiculous and completely overkill, especially if you have healing spells too.
āThis isnāt quite the original FF1ā is an understatement. I think gold and exp rewards are doubled. The original absolutely required grinding, as did many contemporaries. 95% of my time with the original Dragon Warrior was spent grinding - first grinding slimes until I leveled up to be strong enough to walk 10 spaces to the east and fight slightly stronger monsters, repeat. Ys was notorious, because you basically did NO damage to an enemy just one or two levels higher than you were, so you had to grind until you were strong enough to fight them, then grind THEM until you were strong enough to fight the boss.
I canāt think of an NES-era JRPG that was balanced in the way youāre speaking of - where, if you donāt grind, you are of the appropriately level to have a tense and difficult experience. That doesnāt mean they donāt exist, but Iām not sure I ever played one. Compared to its contemporaries, FF1 was actually pretty kind, though.
Later JRPGs (especially by square) went way too far in the other direction, with no required grinding AND no difficulty or tension. Atlus RPGs, OTOH, have done a good job of forcing resource management and tactical thinking to make difficult, tense dungeons that donāt require grinding. Iām currently playing Metaphor on hard every challenge can be overcome with strategic thinking rather than grinding, even when the enemies seem to be much too strong.
I mean, maybe? Iām doing some research now into what people online say about the original NES FF1 and there are two competing views repeated a lot, one that grinding is required and one that there is no need to grind. The thing to concede is, the latter is viewing dungeons as a couple trip affair, where you dive in, grab what you can and learn some basics of the layout, maybe pop out for a tent a time or two, make a trip back to town to spend the new resources you gained, and use that on top of your newfound knowledge to make a more direct trip straight to the dungeonās real end.
For some people maybe thatās just grinding by a different name, but I honestly think viewing the dungeons as a big expedition you do a scouting trip or two for is interesting in its own way and it, personally, sure beats running back and forth in a patch of grass outside town to then make the dungeon more palatable. Like I said, I did one of those not fully successful dives myself still. If the expectation is to be able to fully keep moving forward, progressing all the way, then yeah that might not go over well. But admittedly Iām just reporting secondhand things now and having my easier experience. Itās fun, anyway. The more broad point I wanted to make is how people treat the genre across the board which I think gets less and less true the further we are from the NES, but I am admittedly lacking enough experience with some of the games from this era so I donāt want to make too many definitive claims. Will wait til I explore more.
This post is the kind of thing Iām talking about, itās a sentiment I saw echoed elsewhere too.
I think Iām likely to play Final Fantasy 2 on the original NES version, so if I do Iāll definitely get back to you on how my experience goes.
Anyway all this is why people act like Iām crazy when I say I donāt like remakes overwriting how the original worked, but here we are mostly having cross conversations about two different games and anyone not doing a bunch of research will essentially think this is what FF1 was exactly! Just learned phoenix downs werenāt even in the original so I guess when the boss today hits you with death youāre just out all fight. Thatās a radical change to sell as a visual update to the original game, with them only explicitely calling out things like autobattle and the cheat options but not the many rebalances when they sell it to you. We really need a toggle to let you set it back to original FF1 across the board tbh.
I agree wholeheartedly that any remake that changes how the game work should let you change the mechanics back to āvanillaā.
My big problem with the guyās advice is that, like you said, dying means youāre OUT. So, now you have to make it back to town down a guy while youāre in that dungeon pretending not to grind (but doing a dungeon a dozen times is still just grinding). Now that youāre down to three, your next weakest guy gets pummeled. And so onā¦ The tents and cabins were only usable outdoors, and Iām not even sure if they revived people back in the originalā¦ I think they were primarily for saving the game.
Many of my original NES FF1 memories were of trying to do a dungeon, barely making it out with only my black mage at 10 health (or getting a game over and losing all the progress Iād made), and refusing to go back in because the experience was so bad. So then Iād grind until I was high enough (or had enough money for consumables and equipment) that I could actually survive a trip to and from the dungeon. THEN I would make multiple trips in and out of the dungeon.
Not reading all the comments yet as I havenāt finished this weekās assignment, will come back to them later.
But this week Iāve been pushing new buttonsā¦
Week 5
I am a bit overleveled so I ended up turning encounters off and using the running function, both things for the first time.
I also found the button to display the map of the current dungeon (here ę²¼ć®ę“ēŖ), Y on the Switch
Well, I read your post and the entire time I think āyeah, thereās the excitement and thrill, and sometimes you donāt make it back so thereās a real risk!ā So thatās where our disagreement is coming from. The thing that makes grinding tedious for me is how it is mindless and safe, and everything you described is everything but.
Anyway though, most important thing is I had a really good time with it how it was in the pixel remaster today! May or may not have with the NES version seeing how much has changed, but I like to hope itās not too unreasonable.
Some people say they enjoy grinding straight up, itās a relaxing chill thing to do, or they just like watching numbers go up, and Iām glad theyāre able to do that! I just think for those of us who donāt like to, sometimes it can be a self fulfilling prophecy, and if you work with a game, you can find a way to have a little more fun. In a lot of games, what I think is best, is where you can just change your strategy and donāt need to numerically do anything. In this sort of case maybe the best you can do is just mask it, turning the grinding into beating your head against a dungeon wall and getting a little further each time. Personally I think the latter can still be fun because itās a lot less repetitive and monotonous to still be making SOME progress, and youāre always having to make decisions and weigh risk if you canāt get out instantly.
What youāre describing is basically an Atlus game. Youāre meant to do multiple dungeon dives, and they discourage grinding by limiting your MP. The most fun Iāve had in those games is figuring out how to get through the entire dungeon in Persona 5 or Metaphor in a single night without multiple dives, just by playing really smart. That is not something you can do in FF1.
I HATE grinding, and if there is a way to play the game without doing it I absolutely will. These old school games often lack enough strategic options to get through anything but brute force. And yes, I still consider doing the dungeon over and over again to be grinding. Still, FF1 is absolutely kinder than many others.
The new one got rid of the grinding requirement by simply jacking up the exp and gold rates. Now I can focus on practicing Japanese, and do Anki reviews during the autobattlesā¦
I had a realization before, and have been working on changing my whole mindset around āprogressā in games, and it has personally made me quite happy. Essentially, if I spent the time playing the game, and the game is enjoyable, then nothing was lost. I had an interesting, fulfilling hour of time. Now I get to go back and try it again, but in this case I know the layout better and whatnot. If I like the game, I get to play this game for a whole extra hour now. If I am dreading repeating something to the degree that it makes me unhappy about it, well, maybe I donāt like this game so much. For me, the risk of ālost timeā can be what adds actual stakes, and sometimes the fact that we DIDNāT make it is exactly what I remember fondly later on when thinking about a game I played previously.
Iām not sure if youāve noticed, but my name is a demon from SMT, so I am quite familiar with and fond of Atlus games, heh.
You mention Persona 5 and Metaphor which are great, but on the easier end for Atlus. Have you played some SMTs? Or Etrian Odyssey? Donāt mean that in a condescending way at all, rather, I think youād enjoy the strategic depth in them if you havenāt!
Fleeing is fairly reliable in this game though. You have to be risking pretty hard to get your entire party wiped out. As long as you manage your healing you should be able to limp back into town.
Now Final Fantasy 2 on the other handā¦ (But you can save more easily there at least).
I think thatās a weird side effect of staying true to the original: in the famicom version all rooms become similarly āunroofedā when you enter one of them, but also you canāt just freely scroll on the map view (which does not exist) so you can only just peek at immediately adjacent rooms.
Smt is basically on my to play list, but it takes me like four years to finish an atlus game.
How would you compare, say, smt5 with the difficulty of metaphor on hard while perpetually ten levels below the recommended level? I agree that p5 was easy, but metaphor has been pretty rough but satisfying under those conditions.
I did play most of the way through etrian 1. I remember it being more punishing than difficult. I almost quit after losing everything and having to grind for enough money to rebuild the party.
Honestly IIRC I ended up only playing Metaphor on normal, so I canāt confidently say honestly. Itās possible it gets harder than I think at that level because Iām mentally grouping it with Persona for what a Persona-adjacent type release it feels like, but on normal it was mostly a breeze. Itās hard for me to know how to trust Atlus difficulties, so I often run more normal for playthrough 1 because sometimes games like Nocturne have a hard mode where lots of random attacks just make you lose the first fight before you have an option to do anything, at all.
SMT5 is very fun (pick up the Vengeance version for sure for the better story and etc) but probably a little easier than the previous ones. Or some spinoffs that were really hard imo like Devil Survivor. Maybe Iām just worse at SRPGs. The thing with 5 besides being entirely not punishing by letting you save everywhere and etc (which it sounds like youāll prefer), is with each entry they keep giving you more and more tools to customize everything you / your demons can do easily, and by now I feel like itās a little too extreme. But itās still great. As a result it kind of suffers from that inverse difficulty curve where things slap you around hard early on but you can get too well set up if you understand what itās asking. Highly recommend the game because the strategic decision making is still great, but itās probably on the slightly easier side. Can confidently call it harder than Persona 5 though.
Nocturne remains by far my favorite, but you may definitely find it annoying because thereās a lot of trying to stay zen when you run into enemies that like to use instant kill moves while wandering through a maze with floors that teleport you around, on a more classic save point system. When you write it out it sounds terrible but I love it dearly
I liked a lot of things about Metaphor, but got disappointed about feeling like the strategic space was shrinking a little over time as everyone has sort of preset correct classes once you start unlocking the later game stuff. Like it has a job system but ends up with systems that feel counter to what Iād want out of a job system. That may or may not apply yet depending on how far you are, though. Glad to hear youāre enjoying.
That was a fun trip. I quickly realised that my four antitodes were not going to cut it, so I explored a bit and limped back into town to splurge on supplies with the mountain of Gil I made through the dungeon. I had run out of antitodes and had to resort to pumping my poisoned monk full of potions to survive the trip back.
Looking back on it, if I had explored less and went straight to the bosses, I could have done it in a single trip. Those chests didnāt have much stuff that I didnāt already have.
Alsoā¦ I only realised that the level 4 white spells had Poisona after doing the dungeon, because thatās when I decided to spend the money from my successful trip.
The dark elf barely managed to put my monk and black mage to sleep before my monk woke up and wrecked his shit by doing a whooping almost 400 damage. He was buffed up, but still, nice.
It took me a moment to realise what ę°“ę¶ć®ē® was.
āCrystalā¦ Eyeballā¦? Like a fake eye made of crystal??? OOOOH ITāS A CRYSTAL BALLā
