So I think that I may be a little underlevelled at level 40 because that final boss absolutely destroyed me. As soon as he uses ćć¤ć¹ć twice he can oneshot anyone and you kinda have to prey he does weak middle level spells for a couple turns so you have time to resurrect people. (And then throw Elixirs when those spell slots run out).
āSurely that means I have to use Slow on him to counter it?ā
(Nope, or at least it missed when I attempted to do it)
It did made me realize that buffs stack so I will grind a couple levels and then attempt it again.
I remember really liking the twist of the final bossās identity when I first played it!
Alsoā¦ go talk with those five bats in the shrine again!
Anyway I should add, thank you for running the club! And congrats to all of you saying this is your first game, or one of your first. Youāll be catching up with me in no time
By the way Iām curious to hear everyoneās thoughts on the ending and overall story.
Personally I found it bold to have this ātime loopā concept in such a primitive format. I knew that we werenāt done with the Chaos Shrine because of that ominous dark orb in the center (and, well, itās called āthe chaos shrineā) but I didnāt really expect Garland to make a comeback.
Iām kind of glad that he did because it makes him a more interesting character, but also we donāt really get to know him so itās still a 0-dimensional villain at the end. Iām not surprised that most of the FF1 spinoff content focuses on Garland though, thereās a lot of untapped potential to this character.
The time loop itselfā¦ I donāt really know what to make of it. In fact despite having finished the game thrice over the past few months and manually copying the entirety of the script into the spreadsheet, Iām not sure I really understand it. To wit:
Garland, the proud knight of Cornelia, goes rogue, abducts the princess and uses the Chaos Shrine as a fortress, demanding that the king surrender the throne of Cornelia in exchange for the princess.
The Warriors of Light appear in Cornelia with the crystal shards. Itās unclear where they come from or how they got said shards.
The Warriors of Light face Garland in the shrine and kill (or at least mortally wound) him.
At this point the 4 chaoses 2000 years in the past manage to funnel the essence of the dying Garland back into the past, fusing him with Chaos itself and in so doing bequeathing him immense power.
Garland, now more alive than ever and 2000 years in the past, uses his newfound powers to send the 4 chaoses into the future, but each offset by 200 years for some reason.
The idea, as I understand it, is that those chaoses must drain the primordial energy of the crystals and power the dark crystal in the chaos shrine. This is this energy that allows the dying Garland to travel back 2000 years once defeated by the LV3 Warriors of Light.
This supposedly creates an infinite time loop from the point of view of Garland. Kind of. Not really.
Anyway the Warriors of Light manage to break out of the time loop by traveling back 2000 years and defeating Garland before he has the chance to send the chaoses into the future (since you defeat them in the temple, they havenāt been reverse-Terminatorād yet)
In so doing you completely nuke the current timeline, and apparently the ācorrectā timeline is restored, uncorrupted by Garland and the Chaoses.
But it turns out that in so doing, all memories of our struggles have been eradicated. In fact the Dragons, Dwarves, Lufeinians etcā¦ have all disappeared. They are only mentioned in tales and legends. (Are we supposed to assume that this alternate timeline is our reality?)
Now, we could spend a lot of time listing all the weird time paradoxes and contradictions that this story entails, but even beyond that itās a bit confusing IMO. Especially since this is all dropped on you at the very end of the game with very little foreshadowing or buildup.
Very annoyingly, another Final Fantasy game commits almost exactly the same mistake in its plot. But weāll get there eventuallyā¦
Ignoring this frustration with the āmacroā plot, I still found the pacing of the game reasonably enjoyable. If you donāt pay too much attention to the time travel shenanigans itās fundamentally just āgo beat the 4 bad guys, and then the big boss bad guyā and I think it does that well enough. Thereās good diversity in the dungeons, the various places have their own atmosphere (Uematsuās compositions helping a lot obviously). I wish they spent a bit more time building up Garland instead of having him be killed 5 minutes into the game and then he comes back 5 minutes before the end.
It feels very simplistic and a bit saccharine compared to the later entries in the series but I still enjoyed it quite a bit.
Time travel is tricky. Iāve read a Visual Novel thatās all about it and talks long and large about all the different paradoxes that can come with it. I try not to think too hard about it now and just accept the contradictions.
As for FFIās story, no strong opinion, it feels more like a DnD campaign than a FF, but it was fun! I liked that there were so many different types of dungeon and so many surprises even after you unlock the ship, and I also liked the different quests. I donāt think I have any complaints, except that I might not remember the story for very long!
It didnāt make the list of songs to vote on, but I want to give special recognition to the Menu Theme for absolutely crashing the vibe every time I had to heal up while dungeoneering. God I hope the idea of a dedicated menu theme goes away in FF2.
You say that the four fiends rescued him, but the script line says ļ¼ć¤ć®åćē§ćęć£ć. The game repeatedly uses the word å to refer to the elements (fire, earth, air, water). So, the elements themselves saved him, and he corrupted them and turned them into the fiends?Why did the elements ārescueā him? How did he turn them into fiends and send them off? With the dark crystal? Where did the dark crystal come from? has it always been there, or was it made from the other four? What does the script mean by the dark crystal and the four elemental crystals being āsuperimposedā? Why do you have the āemptyā crystals at the start?
Yeah I tend to take a similar enough approach to @Akashelia where ultimately Iām just kinda nodding along to what the story wants to do whether the mechanics truly work out or not, so I just kinda took it at face value. Iām blurring the lines in my head between plot details the way youād blur the pixels into a smooth image. The villain recurrence is cool but I do think a little more build up for the first encounter would help a lot. It was definitely a little more ambitious than I expected and I like that about it, even if itās certainly no storytelling powerhouse. The story for me lies more in what we did in the gameplay, this time.
I found my opinion on the game hard to vote on, ended up going with āokayā because I wanted to reserve āgreatā for a higher tier but what I want to say is basically āgood.ā Okay vs shrug feels close to me while okay vs great feels like an enormous gap.
Though while Iām nitpicking I should say Iāve really appreciated how high effort everything has been. The polls were a really fun idea and I loved the extra context stuff you wrote most weeks.
The chaos temple was alright - I did enjoy getting the boss rush, and the bosses actually felt a little challenging (just a little though). Garland wasnāt as much of a pushover as before, he liked to oneshot the monk a lot. Besides that, no one else died in the fight and we got through without much issue.
As for the plot, Iām a Doctor Who fan, Iām used to time travel making no sense in the slightest. Really if thereās some kind of emotional resonance thatās fine, and I think the ending crawl does inject a bit of that into things. Itās not the pinnacle of storytelling but it didnāt need to be - it was a fun RPG first and foremost. I really enjoyed my time with the game, itās about as close to RPG comfort food as I think I could find.
Thatās a good review. I want to say, having now played both the PR and the original Famicom version (without cheating with emulator options with the exception of fast-forwarding through combats a few times while I was grinding for DEATH MACHINE), the changes the PR has made regarding gil/XP gains donāt really matter much. Yes you have scarcer resources at the start of the original, but by the time you reach Earth Cave your gil income starts outpacing your spending, mostly because you quickly run out of interesting things to buy in shops besides spells.
In fact there is one thing that absolutely changes the dynamics of the game all the way to the end, but itās something else: consumables. In the original you only have 3 healing items at your disposal: potions (just the basic ones), Antidotes and Gold Needles. Thatās it. No Phoenix Downs, no Hi-potions, no ethers, no elixirs. In particular that means that, until you get the very high level Life spell (if you even have a character that can learn it), a dead character stays dead until you return to town.
That completely changes the risk profile of encounters and how the attrition works in long dungeons. Potions are ridiculously weak when you reach the late game, and the life wand and similar magic objects also only cast the weak Cure spell, so you have to use high-level healing spells during tough encounters, thereās no alternative.
And on one end I would argue that itās a big issue with the PR, but on the other itās all a bit moot because at the end of the day this isnāt a very difficult game. My spiel above probably makes it sounds like the original is a lot harder, and on paper it should be, but I still managed to kill most bosses first try in only a few turns. I think only Lich managed to kill me once. In fact I would argue that the original is easier because the only really tough encounter in the PR for me was the final boss because of its immense HP, and as I already mentioned in the original it only has 2000, making it almost impossible to lose the encounter even if you exclusively use ćććć.
Ahah yeah, thatās definitely one I rejected immediately. To my knowledge no other FF does that, fortunately.
Thank you @simias so much for holding this club and the all the effort you put into it!
I had an absolute blast playing it and enjoying together with the club!
While comparing FF1 to current RPGs might not be impressive, it amazes me that it was released in 1987 for the NES: Such a limited hardware holding such an impressive world, towns, characters, classes, enemies, equips, lore, music. Loved it.
That definitely explains why the White Mage is so generally useless in the remasters. Iāve played all classes now between the Dawn of Souls (GBA) and Pixel Remaster (PC) versions and it seems pretty clear that the most effective party is 3x Fighter 1x Black Mage. Every other class is either a worse version of those two, or in the WMās case, completely superseded by plentiful items.
Speaking of class design, monk was fun enough for the aesthetics but what Iād really like to see is that same idea done in a game where the resource economy is actually strict, so that you can even let the monk be a little weaker intentionally but theyāre reaching āgood enoughā status while saving you the ability to invest in the others in a more focused way.
Yeah I wanted something a bit more meaningful than a simple numerical rating but maybe my choice of epithet wasnāt the best (damn I feel fancy with my English vocab tonight. I am a bit tipsy in my defence).
Maybe I should have employed the IGN scale: you can give it any rating from 10/10 all the way down to 5/10. (Jokes aside, I donāt think thereās a truly bad FF before XIII so actually such a scale may be warranted).
The way the internet acts you need one āI hate this gameā option for Final Fantasy 2, though I have the feeling the pixel remasters and/or your guidance will smooth out a lot of that for most people, haha.
I have such high hopes that I can be someone who gets on with it.
Yeah 2 and 8 are rough spots for many people but I think with good coaching I should be able to make it reasonably smooth. I especially hope Iāll pull it off for 8 because itās one of my favourite ones, warts and all. I have already a rough outline in my head for how Iām going to introduce the Junction system. Itāll take a few weeks.
8 has such weird unique systems but Iāve never understood disliking it cause I feel like you can kinda muddle your way through anyway, or I managed to just fine as a kid. Like the game doesnāt hold up against trying to break it if you want to, but I also donāt think the systems get in the way so much unless you let them.
Speaking of 2 real quick, do you know how open progression there is or isnāt now? I was mostly pretty happy to just look at everything you said to do for 1 especially cause over the weeks my memory kept fading for where we had and hadnāt gone to, but I might want to try to take 2 more blind at least initially. Just wondering if I might wander into things early that way.
I havenāt finished my playthrough of 2 yet but, while the map itself is a lot more open from the start, everything so far is very linear and if you decide to stray away from the main path youāre most likely to end up with the only secondary ending: being ruthlessly murdered by overleveled mobs.
So yeah, you can very much go blind. The only annoying part is orienting yourself on the world map, for a reason that may surprise you.
Thanks, sounds great! I might not totally make it on my own, but I want to start that way and see what happens.
And yeah much appreciate you expanding on this as well. It slipped my mind you had mentioned how a lot of items were new. Those invisible changes that muddle what FF1 was or wasnāt honestly bug me most, things where itās made clear they changed something allow me to better place the experience without needing to play both. Maybe one day Iāll check out the original in the future. I will say the buff on the last boss, however intentional, is a good change that makes it a more meaningful fight even though I still didnāt really have any trouble on it.
