Yeah I saw your comment about party composition last week and didnât know if I should warn you or if itâd be a spoilerâŠ
You just wonât survive the last boss without a class that casts high-level white magic. On Famicom most people use 2, but I got by with 1 in the PR.
Yeah⊠found that out the hard way lol
I was never going to bother reaching level 90 for the Onion Knight anyway, but I got two of those bastards to spawn almost back to back simply walking through and one even dropped an Onion Sword.
I think they have increased the spawn rate on PR. On the Famicom I did the Crystal Tower in two tries, the first time collecting the chests, reaching the top and walking the way back down, the 2nd time going straight for the boss. I only encountered one dragon one time when I was coming back down from my first ascent, so after a huge series of fights.
On PR it still took me about an hour of running around the floors where they spawn to get all three dragons for the bestiary. But I also saw comments of people saying they got one every 5-10 encounters which was way above what I saw. One of the quirks of this being âthe long lost FFâ that never got translated for so long is that data on spawn rates and encounter tables is really hard to find.
Yeah, the two jobs you get in the âoptional dungeonâ really make a huge difference. The final final boss only spamming a single attack was an interesting choice, but basically the entire dungeon after Zande is a huge boss rush (even if you do get healing between) so I consider it all part of the âfinal bossâ.
It was⊠intense.
Again, I could have never completed these games on the original Famicon with how long that final stretch was, so huge respect to those that did.
Speaking of the game itself⊠Iâm a bit conflicted. I liked how they had all the various allies you helped through the game come in to help you so they were not quite completely filler, but still the moving from place to place part of the game could have been handled better, as I already said last week.
I liked the general theme of the game, that light and darkness have to be kept in balance and darkness is not inherently negative, but I wished that we could have seen more of it?
The warriors of Darkness stepping in was basically just a tease, I would have loved to see much more of them!
However I appreciated seeing the scope of the game grow compared to FF2. Weâve got two âworld mapsâ, that great twist of the âworldâ being just a tiny floating continent on a much bigger world, lots of NPCs, a plot going back thousands of years in the past, and for the first time in the series, actual side content/sidequests!
I had absolutely no idea that so many iconic elements of the series were first introduced here: Odin and his æŹéćŁ, Chocobos, Moguris, the classic summons, the jobs that will codify character archetypes and classes going forward⊠It was really really cool to see. So while some parts of the pacing left me a bit âlostâ, I still had a lot of fun and really liked taking part in this club.
The final dungeon for music and spectacle was definitely my favourite of the first three games, it looked quite cool!
My favourite part of the ending cutscene was
ăăă·ă„ going back to his girlfriend, it made me smile.
And teaching me the japanese equivalent to the word âpussy-whippedâ.
So far this final dungeon is pretty intense, but for the first damn time in the game Iâm judiciously using my spells. I feel like the game is saying âYOU HAVE TOOLS, USE THEM. YOU HAVE FIFTEEN ELIXIRS OMG!â And Iâm like⊠I donât use those you crazy? Why am I dead?
Oh and if youâre not using Dragoon⊠well I havenât gotten Ninja yet, but Dragoon was how I first hit 9999 damage. Guy regularly jumps for 6k while healing for 2k.
Yeah itâs hard to get reliable technical data for it before everything is so muddied between the Famicom, PR and 3D versions which all differ pretty drastically from one-another.
Itâs definitely very foundational for FF as a whole. Itâs the first game that really feels Final Fantasy to me in tone and world design. More so than 2 (maybe that one is foundational⊠for SaGa). The fact that thereâs so much great stuff and immense technical and artistic skill on display for the time makes it harder for me to really excuse all the other issues, paradoxically. You have all these NPCs, this massive world, and you canât telegraph a story correctly? Come on! Build on top of this wonderful foundation!
Itâs frustrating because itâs a fine game, but I feel like with a few tweaks they could have made this an 8 bit masterpiece.
Overall I ranked FF1 higher than 3. I think 1 does more with a lot less. The world feels more cohesive, the quest more focused. Even the Bahamut side quest in FF1 is better than the FF3 counterparts, both from a storytelling and gameplay perspective.
Never have I popped Elixirs more liberally than in the final part of this dungeon on Famicom. Itâs basically the only way to replenish spells at that point. It feels almost decadent to use them like some random Hi-Potions.
But yeah Iâm also the type to finish those games with all my Megalixirs untouched in my inventory, so the game actually putting me in a sort of roguelike mindset where failure means a full reset (at the bottom of the tower in this case) is interesting.
After going through this final dungeon on the Pixel Remaster, I was really concerned that it was going to be a massive chore on Famicom but it was actually pretty enjoyable. If youâre methodical itâs not very hard (the ninja and especially sage jobs are completely OP on Famicom), you just have to take your time and play defensively.
The low point of the game is truly the Cave of Darkness or whatever it was called, that was hugely frustrating and I canât imagine not cheating with a guide for that one.
I watched a playthrough of this game (famicom version) the other day where the rules were: no buying anything, onion knight only, one character only (all others had to be dead). He made it through⊠he was farming elixirs and popping them constantly. No inns, because he canât spend money, only drinking from ponds. He plays through the entire game having to power level just to survive basic enemies, only using the mithril sword. Then he finally gets his onion knight up into the 80s and 90s and gets all the onion gear, and heâs dealing 15k damage from the back row.
At several points, he has to use a glitch in the game to make the item he needs to become mini - and even the dead characters have to be mini or he canât get in the dungeon. Ya know, since onion knight canât cast spells.
I donât remember how many resets he had, it was over 5000 at least.
They may have made white mage too strong in this game. Itâs the only character I basically never take out of my party. Curada nearly heals the entire party with select all, and over 5k on a single person. I donât even use Curaga - maybe Curaga is for whackos who want to level up to 99, but thereâs nothing in the game powerful enough for that!
Then, they can use staff spells, haste, protect, etcâŠ
Conversely my black mage was a bit crap for a good chunk of the game. At the very start they have no spell so theyâre useless, then theyâre really good during the mini dungeons, then they fall behind pretty quickly because the damage and spell charges donât really keep up with other jobs like the Geomancer.
Then you unlock the devout and itâs fine again, although by the end the summoner and Bahamut would deal a lot more damage than a black mage casting flare or quake, and the ninja does more damage with simple physical attacks and endgame weapons.
Also, my devout + sage right now are dual staffing mfâers to death with basic attacks. I donât know if one of their abilities has death on it, or if theyâre stacking stone, but theyâre instakilling enemies in the final area left and right.
Itâs shockingly real!
Uuuhhhhh Iâm honestly not sure Iâm going to be able to do this. I ended up going with my level 50 file (they are around 53 now). I did run back through Eureka and buy 20 shurikens. I checked Cloud of Darknessâ HP and
gulp
Hereâs the NES for comparisonâŠ
Maybe thatâs balancing? My guys are doing between 3000-9999 per hit so I dunno. Iâm in the world of darkness and had to reset a few times against the two headed dude already. It may be so over bros.
I have a deadline on this because Iâm going to Japan on Sunday. WE SHALL SEE IF WE CAN WIN
I think I already mentioned that a few weeks ago but the bosses are not too scary in the Famicom version, the difficulty is usually to get to them. I posted a video of me defeating the final boss above if you want a comparison, as long as you heal consistently it goes down fairly easy.
Speaking of the main theme polls, I have to say that while I like Eternal Winds a lot more as a track per se, I still find myself with the FF2 World Map Theme popping up in my head randomly. It must have left a pretty strong impression since I must have it associated subconsciously with this club.
Funny how those things works.
FF3 meanwhile had some nice tracks (the main theme, and I especially loved the Forbidden Land using little snippets of the Final Fantasy Prelude), but not much else stood out to me, at least not to the point of me going âWow, I NEED to find the name of this trackâ. I probably need to relisten to some of them.
I feel the same regarding the FF2 main theme. Thereâs something so surprisingly wistful about it when you would usually expect some epic theme to play as you get on the world map. It matches the mood of the game very well.
I really like the flooded world of FF3 for the same reason. It adds to the impact of suddenly leaving the flying continent and ending up on a massive ocean.
I liked this week a lot. The structure worked pretty well, with the final gauntlet being split up into distinct sections. Eureka being fully optional is a confusing choice - really seems like theyâre just giving you enough rope to hang yourself. I spent a frustrating hour or two walking back and forth, autobattling everything I could find to get the last few Bestiary entries for the dragons and king behemoth, but you canât really blame the original devs for that - the PRâs achievement system was added 30 years after the fact, after all.
Iâve long since been spoiled by Dissidia that Zande was not the final boss, but I imagine thatâd be a cool (if slightly frustrating) twist for an unspoiled player. The World of Darkness was suitably different from everything that came before. Cloud of Darkness was a weird final boss design-wise, just spamming one attack and invalidating most of the jobs in the process.
I do think the PR was a bit too generous with a full recovery from every dark crystal. I was just spamming flare and holy on every random encounter because they were so easy to refill. Just getting healed after Zande wouldâve been more than enough for me to get to the end, especially since I still had about 10 elixirs.
I really donât like the way the Sage and Ninja are handled, but that ties into my issues with the job system as a whole. Thereâs never really anything in the game encouraging you to diversify your party. It almost feels like youâre playing a different cast of characters in every dungeon. Iâll probably write another post about the game as a whole later.
My final party was Karate master, Ninja (formerly Knight), Devout, and Magus. I changed the Devout to a Sage for about half of the WoD, but I missed the higher spell slots of the specialized casters and he wasnât really getting many opportunities to use non-white magic anyway because everything hit too hard. The character designs for the specialized casters are just a lot more interesting, too.
One element I didnât bring up but thought was very cute is that every job has a different death pose, and many are quite unexpected. Many of the âbaseâ jobs have the same faceplant animation as FF1:
The éćŁćŁ« becomes a hollowed suit of armor:
The éäșș just leaves the iconic had behind:
Iâm sure there are more but those are the ones I found in my screenshot directoryâŠ
Yes, this was one one of my favourite little details! I mentioned a couple weeks ago really liking the death animation for the Dark Knight because it kinda raises some funny lore questions: does the body literally disappear once they become a dark knight? Are they corrupted by the darkness?
Thereâs lots of little fun details even in the hurt/victory poses.
The Ranger waves his hat after every battle.
The Devout has a little crying face when theyâre low on health.
