Finally finished! I too was totally annihilated my first time trying to fight the last boss…and I was high enough leveled (62) that the fight lasted close to a full hour before I finally lost… He healed himself twice in that time, for 9999 each time.
Then I came here and read through all the various posts, including spoilers. To those of you who shared your strategies for the final boss - Thank You!!! I have no idea how long it would have taken me without you guys!
@simias, thank you for organizing this! It was my first game played in Japanese, so I’m very proud of my accomplishment! I’m looking forward to starting FF2 with everybody soon, and hopefully this time I don’t have any real life events interfering and getting me behind the group!
As you should be! I’m happy that many first time players seem to have made it through.
I’m curious to see if the difficulty progression from game to game will be gentle enough to keep everybody on board. I worry a bit about the generation gap when we get to FF4, but we’ll think about it when we get there…
As I mentioned elsewhere expect FF2 to be a bit intense Japanese-wise during the first 2~3 weeks and then shift to have relatively little text as we get deeper into the game.
I’m really looking forward to FF4 (and 6), since those were my intro to video games way back when they were released on SNES. Though I do wonder how much harder the language will be… I’m going to focus on enjoying FF2 and then 3 first, though!
I don’t expect that the language will be much harder, there’s just going to be a lot more of it…
Overall I would rank FF language difficulty at average shounen manga difficulty levels, something like level 22~25 in Natively terms. Dragon Ball-tier basically. There are spikes here and there but it’s not like Xenogears or Trails in the Sky (to cite two ongoing clubs on these forums) that don’t hesitate to reach for “fancy” Japanese to add color to the dialogue.
I’m looking forward to starting FF2 with everybody soon, and hopefully this time I don’t have any real life events interfering and getting me behind the group!