💎 Final Fantasy 1 - Week 9

Japanese Language Book Clubs
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Week 9 Play Report

The party set sail in the airship, headed to northern lands. They landed near a town where no one spoke their language, and left shortly thereafter. Their next stop was a mysterious castle, which turned out to be the 訓練の城. They sat in a chair and got teleported up to the next floor, and then realised they couldn’t go back. So they had no choice but to press onwards. This led them through a teleporter maze (Dungeon design? In my RPG? It’s more likely than you’d think) that mostly had enemies that they had no trouble dispatching. One fun one though was yet another iconic D&D monster ripped straight into Final Fantasy: The Mind Flayer

Also if D&D wasn’t enough we’ve also got Dune going on in here because they fought some sandworms on the way to the castle:

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Anyway, within the castle they found the staff of healing - which 真白 the white mage equipped, entering fulltime healer status. Free uses of heal is nothing to sniff at, even if it does completely nerf all attack power

They reached the top of the tower and found the mouse tail. What is this for? Who knows! They didn’t, at least

They then finally made it to the town to the west, where they proceeded to rest up and ask around. They got some interesting leads, such as there being a dragon somewhere who asks other dragons to go to the castle and bring something back. Also that there’s something behind the waterfall. And that there’s a caravan in the desert selling something odd. They first investigated behind the waterfall and found what was hiding behind there. They then went across the archipelago and found the dragon caves. There they met Bahamut and upgraded their classes (I already miss the black mage design). Finally they went to the caravan and bought the mysterious item. After this it was a rush of going around and picking up the magic that I’d wanted to buy but couldn’t previously (such as teleport and dateleport)

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Did some quick research, there was this reddit: Reddit - The heart of the internet
Mostly japanese resources, but this hinative post was helpful:
🆚What is the difference between "群島" and "諸島" ? "群島" vs "諸島" ? | HiNative
「群島」は多くの島がかたまりになっているもの、「列島」は島が線状に並んでいるものを言います。
「諸島」は「群島」と「列島」を総称した言い方です。

Sounds like しょとう is a general term for archipelago. If you want to be specific about whether they’re in a line or cluster, you can use 列島 or 群島.

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Ah, and don’t forget 半島, which also shows up in Melmond I think. For some reason, half island is a peninsula.

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You can use the cure spell without equiping it! It’s actually better that way too because other party members can do it too if the white mage is busy doing something else (such as being dead).

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By the way I like how in the English version the ascended version of the Monk is the Master, but in Japanese it’s the Super Monk.

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Halp!

Am I missing something? I feel like I’m caught in an infinite loop in the teleporters.

I get to the one where there’s a door and an empty room in the center, then there are two on a row where there’s no choices, and then regardless of if I go up or down in that next room it takes me backwards.

Edit

I figured it out..I didn’t realize that you could go all the way back to the beginning and make progress that way.

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I have done this puzzle thrice now over the span of a couple of months and I always manage to get stuck in an loop for a cycle or two.

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How forward-looking of them to design a maze that is still annoying when you add a map decades later.

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Come play Strange Journey with me next! :grinning_face:

Megami Tensei club would go hard but the early games would probably hurt people. I haven’t even dug into the oldest ones honestly. But games where you need to do reading in combat to do the negotiations with enemies are pretty cool from a learning perspective.

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I’d join a MegaTen club so quickly

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Using my club to advertise inferior videogames smdh.

Parasite Eve is pretty great for language learning I think, although there are a couple sequences where you can’t pause the text IIRC. It’s a pretty fun game overall too, I played it for the first time a couple of years ago and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I ignored it back in the days because I thought it was a Resident Evil clone and I’m not a fan of survival horror.

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Parasite Eve is also on my list to get to eventually to be fair

But MegaTen are some of my favourites RPGs so I may be a bit biased

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It’s a series that completely passed me by, but I’ll definitely give it a try some day. I did play a bit of Persona 4 (it’s an offshoot of Megami Tensei, right?) but didn’t go very far because my Japanese was too weak at the time and that game had a so much text…

I don’t know why it made me think of that but I just remembered that I also still have to play Shenmue. That would be fun to play in Japanese I think.

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Yes, Persona was a spinoff of Shin Megami Tensei - they’re commonly thought of under the MegaTen umbrella (MegaTen tends to refer to the wider franchise including all the spinoffs). They’re a lot easier and more story focused than the standard Shin Megami Tensei games

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You probably thought PE was an RE clone because PE2 was ABSOLUTELY an RE clone. It was still pretty fun, though, but very different.

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Reported for psychic damage.

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I haven’t played PE2 yet but I heard that it uses a real time combat system instead of the Vagrant Story style gameplay of the first so it makes sense that it would resemble RE more.

That does make it less interesting to me conceptually however… I actually really enjoyed the combat of the first game.

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Week report

Caught up for the week, will chat with those dragons again just to reread some dialogue better.
A lot happened! The more I’m playing this the more I realize that I remember absolutely nothing of my first play through decades ago except the Fiends, Garland’s meme worthy quote, the final boss and of course the music. That one definitely stayed.
It doesn’t help that I probably binged the GBA remake in… One week or whatever.
So, this week definitely had a lot of surprises for me! From remembering how the airship worked, (“Wait why can’t I land?”) to Bahamuth’s trial. I remember the class upgrade being a thing so I was actually pretty excited to see the Pixel Remaster designs.
My first thought was:
“OH NO Everybody has become a Jojo character”
My honest first thought was “Why’s White Mage suddenly a hot redhead? Also wait are they supposed to be a dude??? I’ve been headcanoning her as the only lady in the party that somehow has the second highest health of everyone”
Why is Black Mage suddenly sporting that hairdo AND NO ICONIC HAT??? Did the hat limit their now unbridled magic potential???
They all look ready to suplex the fiends into submission like my Monk gave everyone private punching lessons in that tower.
It will take a bit to get used to, even knowing they were the original design.
Definitely like the GBA remake class upgrades more, I loved how the Warrior becoming a Knight would look a bit like what the Paladin class in the series’s future would look like.
(Also lol at the red Mage barely changing. Can’t improve perfection!)

One thing I want to bring up is… Why is the proof of your courage to bring Bahamuth a ネズミのしっぽ? I feel like there’s maybe some cultural or mythological reference I’m missing… Or maybe Bahamuth just asks them to bring him whatever they find at the top, and if you know what it is, it means you made it there. One of the dragons in the caves does mention that the proof of courage is always “something you can hold in your hand” or something similar…

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The most relevant dragon line is:

勇気の証は、時としてその形を変える。見た目には惑わされないことだ。

I think the line you reference however is:

勇気の証は、真に勇気ある者のみが手にすることができるものだ。

But I think here 手にする is not used completely literally but rather to mean “to obtain”. As in, only truly brave people can obtain the 証.

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Me for a good 5 minutes :sweat_smile:

I am still not over the absolute CHAD my poor little Vivi has become :sob::sob: