I ended up a week behind, so I barreled through both part 2 and 3 today.
My thoughts so far
It’s such a relief to have short, linear, straightforward mini dungeons, rather than the massive mazes filled with empty rooms that FF2 had!
For now, I think the FF2 guests were more interesting…though I believe that’s primarily because (at least in the PR), these FF3 guests don’t actually do anything! You don’t even get all the dialogue unless you specifically choose to talk to them! (And after a two week break, I honestly forgot you could do that, much less how, so I probably missed a decent portion of Desh’s possible dialogue…) What I did see from him personality-wise was interesting enough, it just didn’t pan out as well as I would have liked…
I’m in the camp of seriously wishing they’d do more foreshadowing of things. I was very glad to have the ‘More details’ sections as a guide (thank you Simias!), because I don’t particularly enjoy wandering open worlds aimlessly without a known goal…
Really? I had the exact opposite experience… FF1 and 2 I had no issues at all (at least early game) with running out of magic. This game, I actually had to leave Nepto’s temple (despite it being so short), go heal, and then run from almost every fight til I made it back to fight the boss, and I still almost ran out of magic in that fight…
I mean right now I’ve got something like 16 uses of level 1 spells, 5 for level 2, and 2 or 3 at level 3
I can’t find much information about spell slot gains online so I can only talk about feeling, but even without having my mages be using melee a lot I’ve not managed to run out of slots yet
When I talk about a character and their arc, then the plot kind of matters for analysing the narrative (quick sidenote on terminology: plot = the literal sequence of events, narrative = the story, inclusive of how and when information is presented etc). The plot in Joseph’s arc contributes to the narrative told, that of a grumpy dad who softens up and dies a hero. That is an arc, the character starts out in a certain state (grumpy, living out in a remote town, unwilling to help because his daughter is in danger) and then because of something (in this case the party’s intervention) he changes his stance and ultimately chooses to sacrifice himself. Now, you can critique how quickly he goes from one to the other and so on (the heroes have no real reaction to his death, which is something I’ll absolutely criticise) but there is absolutely an arc there informed by the sequence of events (in other words, the plot). Yes, this does require reading a bit of subtext - but this reading is supported by the text in the game and I don’t think anything I’ve said is a leap from that text. Personally, I feel like I understand Joseph as a character and his personality much better
Whereas in 3, I’m not sure what デッシュ’s personality is. Him being in the dragon nest at the start suggests he’s maybe a crazy risk-taker, but that’s not really supported by anything other than maybe him jumping into the fire (but then that’s tangled up in it supposedly being his destiny and seemingly the only way to save the tower and everyone on the continent). His lines when you talk to him are pretty much just him giving out rumours so there’s not really anything else there. I don’t even remember if we find out he’s an amnesiac until the tower. (edit: remembered we do learn this so retracting this statement. I don’t think this changes my overall point though). If you analyse the plot, there’s not really any cause and effect here, you’d find a series of and then statements
I mean every story is composed of tropes, it’s pretty much impossible for a story not to be. Tropes are that for a reason, they’re elements of storytelling that work. But I still take umbrage with the idea that there’s an arc for デッシュ, his character doesn’t really meaningfully change from the start to end of his sequence. Yes, he regains his memories but what does that mean for his character? He was still clearly willing to take risks before. And we’ve been told by an おじいさん that his sacrifice is basically preordained. There’s not really a meaningful cause and effect, just a sequence of events
Maybe there’s more in the 3d version, but I’m not playing it and I would consider it a meaningfully different game for the sake of this discussion
I decided to look a bit more into the progression system since it’s not really explained in detail in the game.
I assumed that the number of spell slots would increase with the job level/熟練度 but it’s not the case, it’s based on the character level instead, and so are the basic stats like strength/speed/intellect/etc. Here’s the table for the White Mage class:
So it increases the effectiveness of the attacks/spells/skills.
How much of a difference this makes in practice seems to vary a lot between classes, this page shows that for a black mage the damage difference between 熟練度 1 and 99 is only 1.3x damage when casting Flare on a goblin, but other classes show more dramatic damage differences:
Overall the 熟練度 seems to not matter a huge lot, which makes sense I suppose since otherwise you would have a disincentive to ever change job.
I was wondering the same thing, and I looked it up a week or two ago so my memory might be a bit fuzzy, but apart from dealing more damage or healing more damage, I think I read that for example if you throw “blind” or “silence” on a monster or a group, it had higher chances of success if you had a higher 熟練度
What this data tells me, is that it’s definitely true that you get more spell slots and more quickly in this game
From what I’ve found (might need double checking) in FF1 the maximum amount of charges per level is 9. We nearly start at that amount for level 1 here!
Yeah absolutely, and given that the dungeons aren’t really huge so far I can’t say that spell capacity has been much of an issue for me either, especially for low-level spells. I did run out of cures once or twice, but I can just use potions instead.
I’d say my biggest problem re spell slots is that my red mages have to decide if they will be mainly healing or damage dealers.. although now that I think of it, I didn’t have a red mage in FF1, and that’s more of a class specific than a game specific issue now that I think of it..
I appreciated that the white mage got some way to attack occasionally! Annoyed me more that that is specifically sharing a level with the mandatory statuses though, heh.
The funny thing here is that Aero was not classified as black magic until FF9. This is its first appearance, as WHM. It’s blue magic in 4, 5 and 6. FF 7 and 8 don’t have a black/white magic distinction - it’s all just magic. In FF9, Aero became black magic. Ditto FF12.
I played a fair bit of 14 a few years ago (to the end of endwalker), and played every class. I can confirm Aero was a conjurer (white mage) spell there.
IMO black magic gets enough damage spells, it doesn’t need another one.
White Magic also gets a ton of status spells in future games - mini, toad (this went to BLM in 5, then disappeared), silence, confuse. Black mage is a murder hobo while White Mage is support, so it makes sense that you’d support by using status magic. It seems like they got rid of a lot of the useless spells no one used in 1 & 2. This leaves white mage without too many options, so they reshuffled some of those spells.
I mostly caught up on the 3d version. Just to see if I could, I didn’t do any class changes for the mini areas. I didn’t rest or reverse my mini condition until after I was finished with the Nepto Temple, and made sure to pick up all bestiary entries in both mini areas while I was there, which required some grinding. I only used my black mage while defending with everyone else, except on the boss where I also used antarctic wind and aero. I also used no inns until I got the boat, and no running! It wasn’t too bad at all. My mage never seemed to run out of casts.
I also figured out how to loot the castle. There was a hidden room in there. There were also two locked doors that I assume aren’t in the PR version, but I guess if I class change to Thief and put them in the head of the party, I can open them.
I didn’t pay close attention, but I thought it was odd that my mage just kept going and going, never running out of charges. I bet if I paid attention at next level up, or looked up the info, I’d find that the game restores your stats on level up. The 3d version has a reputation for being much harder than the original FC version, but if that’s true then it’s a big leg up. I also noticed that my white mage died during the battle with the rat, but she was alive after the battle and every single character had full recovery. I can’t explain it.
Here’s a textbox from this week that I could use some help decoding. From a dancer in the “viking” (pirate) hideout:
そこにいるのがボスよ。
もう！だらしないったらありゃしない！！
The first line is obviously “The one over there is the boss.” and “もう！” is basically “ugh,” right? だらしない apparently means sloppy, and Yomitan has “ったらありゃしない” as “as … as it could possibly be”. So she’s just saying “he’s the grossest!”? Could anyone break down that structure?
I think you got it!
そこにいるのがボスよ。-> That one over there is the boss.
もう！Come on already!
だらしない Sloppy
ったらありゃしない (used after adj.) nothing more … than this (<- I got the meaning you wrote from Yomitan but also this one)
So in natural English something like “well, this is the boss. I can’t believe it, someone as gross as him!”
