These dungeons are all pretty samey at this point. Also, Rydia basically wipes any boss or tough mob with calls to Bahamut. Well, except for the last boss since killing both the nodes is apparently bad. I didnāt really pay attention to the enemy names, so I thought they both healed the main boss and killed them both, which obviously backfired massively. Very easy once I paid attention though.
Overall, Iām happy to get this game done next week. Iāve enjoyed it overall, but itās starting to overstay its welcome.
I unfortunately feel that way with most RPGs, even though I love the genre. Thereās always an expectation of huge scale and duration for those games, which often leads to padding. One of the reasons I found FF1 quite āfreshā despite its age is that itās a fairly short, focused game.
I really feel like FF4 could cut almost everything between the tower of Zott and the this week and be stronger as a result. Basically the whole underground stuff feels a bit pointless, even though the dwarves are pretty fun.
FF4 in particular has felt pretty snappy in its pacing to me and I honestly am a little surprised itās already ending so Iām not feeling it with this game at all personally.
However I totally get that feeling with RPGs but mainly newer ones. Like this genre was always the long game one, but that used to mean 20-30 hours. These days if a JRPG releases at that length itās considered relatively brief cause weāve ballooned out to 100. Iām late into Xenoblade 2 right now and just like Xenoblade 1 itās a big mix of positive and negative but wow this is the most bloated game of all time; Iām probably going to finish at 100 hours but thatās because I got tired of interacting with side stuff. Thereās probably 400 hours of stuff here. Then they made a DLC at least as long as FF4 if not longer on top of this for some reason.
Yep, it really shows that they were inspired by anime, and as soon as the tech caught up they just copied all of the worst aspects of anime without a second thought.
FF games are usually not as bad in this regard, perhaps because they seem to have been more āwesternā in their inspiration compared to something like Tales or Trails, or the unending morass of JRPGs weāve all forgotten the names of.
The boss rush against the Four Archifiends was painful, ooof, I definitely did not remember struggling with it so much in the GBA port so I wonder if there were some stats adjustments.
I like that it shows that they ālearnedā from our last encounters. Cagnazzo always has the water barrier up, Barbariccia is always in tornado form, Rubicante doesnāt do the cape thing anymore.
Scarmiglioneā¦ I donāt know what he did, his thing was doing a back attack on us lol
Barbariccia especially was hard, Iām not sure what you are supposed to do against her, couldnāt remember if she is weak to some element, and without Kain you are basically stuck throwing whatever at her hoping to do as much damage as possible. Thankfully Rubicante gave plenty of MP to keep Rydia and FuSoYa full with Aspir, but I still had some very close calls and had to use a couple of elixirs on Rosa with her and FuSoYa basically spamming heals (and FuSoYa the occasional Blizzaga).
Most difficult fight in the game so far. Maybe I was also a bit underlevelled, not sure, Iām in middle 40s I think.
The second boss was just a matter of understanding the gimmick and it was fine. I like that it punishes you if you do the thing JRPGs have drilled into you and kill both minor spheres first(and also makes it completely useless).
Itās nothing egregiously complicated in the end, but especially playing it as a kid I can imagine it would make you feel really clever and that you really managed to stop this enormous doomsday machine.
And thatās fun!
I like games that use gameplay mechanics this way.
Did Bahamuth after getting Kain back and it went exactly like I predicted: a bit boring, but he soloed him lol.
Who would win, the dragon god of summons
If all goes well I should be able to finish the game within schedule
Week 9
The giant robot stuff was straight out of a tokusatsu damn. Dungeon was alright. Moon was kind of interesting but quite barren. I guess it makes sense but maybe wouldāve liked a bit more there? I didnāt do the optional dungeon there yet, saving that for slightly later.
I do agree with this for the most part and I think itās because most of the dungeons are ultimately either a cave or techno-tower. Or a mountain I guess, but those donāt feel too dissimilar to a cave either. I think the optional dungeons from last week are probably some of the more unique ones even if they are both caves. Idk it feels like a lot of dungeons share tilesets here which makes them blur together, which is a shame because this isnāt a problem that FF2 or FF3 had and they made their dungeons fairly easy to differentiate
Iām choosing to believe the Sylphs showing up in the tanks with Yang is evidence of the headcanon I wrote in last weekās thread.
Meeting the man on the moon is interesting and continues the series tradition of revealing the true final boss in the 11th hour. I appreciate the melodrama of it all at least. Decided to wait until we come back before attempting Bahamutās cave.
The giant sequence is really cool. I agree with what others said about how itās nice to see everyone coming together to repel the planetary threat. I did get randomly destroyed by a dragon summoned by those eyeball enemies. That god Iām playing PR because I would have been back on the moon just before talking to FuSuYa. Instead I was about 10 seconds back and managed to beat the dragon in a rematch. I enjoyed the rematch with the Fiends but I also agree that we should have had a climactic final showdown with Golbez that led to the spell being broken on him instead of it just being a cutscene.
I remember being pretty surprised the first time I played this game by the brother reveal, even though itās just Star Wars again basically. I like the implication that it was a mere twist of fate that Golbez was chosen and it just as easily could have been Cecil in his shoes. I also like that Edge says what weāre all thinking about not trusting Kain and making fun of him probably getting possessed again.
My rewrite for this week is focused on the casual misogyny scene. Even when I was a young teenager, this scene bothered me. Other than his initial protest in the beginning, Cecil has no problem dragging Rosa and Rydia all over the place but now itās suddenly too dangerous for women. Even though they had already gone to the moon once. My version would instead lean into the melodrama. Cecil mentioned that he had hated Golbez all this time before the brother reveal. Heās so distraught that he doesnāt even move to escape the giant at first. All of that anger, confusion and hatred pushes him back toward the path of the Dark Knight. Heās not going to the moon to put an end to Zemusās ambitions, heās going there to kill a man. He doesnāt want the woman he loves to see him go down that path and asks her to stay, asking Rydia to stay as well to keep her safe in his absence. Then when they land on the moon, Rosa talks him off that ledge and her love redeems him once more and cements his status as Paladin.
Admittedly, itās not perfect but I think it maintains a bit more narrative consistency and stays on theme without altering the flow of events too much.
Just one more week to go and Iāll finally, at long last, be caught up.
Also I forgot to say it but Iām glad you picked this track to highlight this week. This theme has always stuck with me for some reason. It seems melancholic in a way thatās surprising for the areas itās played in but I really like it.
I didnāt really pay attention to the enemy names, so I thought they both healed the main boss and killed them both, which obviously backfired massively. Very easy once I paid attention though.
Iām late into Xenoblade 2 right now and just like Xenoblade 1 itās a big mix of positive and negative but wow this is the most bloated game of all time; Iām probably going to finish at 100 hours but thatās because I got tired of interacting with side stuff. Thereās probably 400 hours of stuff here. Then they made a DLC at least as long as FF4 if not longer on top of this for some reason.