Yeah you basically have to use a guide if you really want to get the Good Stuff for your blue mage.
It’s unfortunate, and it’s especially unfortunate that they didn’t bother improving this in the Pixel Remaster for instance. They always just do the bare minimum, add cheat options and call it a day. I still haven’t forgiven them for the travesty that was FF2’s gutted progression system.
Simply having a small icon or something like that next to the name of learnable abilities when the enemies use them in combat would improve the situation dramatically with basically no drawback.
Overall there are other jobs which I think are hard to play without a guide, and some jobs that have “hidden potential” that you’re unlikely to discover without a guide. I’m trying to bridge these gaps in a spoiler-free way in my 募集 sections in the top post when the jobs are introduced. It is certainly one of the biggest issues with the system IMO, but I can still give the game a bit of a pass because there are enough “easy” jobs that you can ignore those tricky ones and still have a satisfying playthrough.
I agree it sucks you need a guide; that said, Blue Magic is the strongest and most interesting magic in this game.
I didn’t even equip black magic past the few hours. Most bosses have some kind of effective blue magic that helps a lot or straight up breaks them, and you can always fall back on Aero. Time Mage has buffs, debuffs and meteor. Black Mage who?
The text so far has been pretty easy for me with only around a dozen words I didn’t know. The script has gotten more complex since FFI but it’s been a gradual buildup and I feel playing the other games was adequate preparation. Some of the text boxes in the opening scene did auto scroll a little too quickly for me but the content itself wasn’t too difficult.
I’m not quite sure how I feel about the arranged BGM yet. Some of the tracks, like the world map theme, took a bit of time to grow on me but I think I like the soundtrack overall. I have been enjoying how the arrangements for the PRs have been using different instrumentation to try and give each one its own unique feel. So far, I don’t plan on switching to the original version yet.
I have also enjoyed seeing the series’ writing evolve and experiment with different styles. I was a simple, lighthearted adventure. II tried to have a more serious tone. III tried to be more comedic and have more character interaction. IV was a mix of II and III with a more ambitious scale. Now V actually achieves some decent comedy while keeping some intrigue and drama throughout. Bartz initially being this cool guy, reluctant protagonist is a different angle than we’ve seen before which I appreciated.
Regarding the comedy, III mostly just got some smirks out of me but I’ve chuckled a few times during V already and actually burst out laughing once. Humor is, of course, subjective but I feel like they’ve gotten a better feel for setup and timing. When I told the lady at the Beginner’s Hall that I wasn’t a beginner and she jumped up on the counter and hit me so hard I flew out of the building and crashed into a tree, it definitely surprised me. lol
My party lineup is currently Monk/White Mage/Blue Mage/Thief. I did some backtracking to get all of the available Blue Magic and I found a scene I don’t remember seeing before. Going back to the cave, we find Boko is missing and we think he went into the cave after us. The pirates mention a strange bird is in bed receiving medical treatment and sure enough, we find him tucked into a bed. I love it.
So far it’s been working out pretty well for me. I don’t remember how long it is until the next set of job unlocks but I’m planning to stick with this setup for now unless the game throws a curveball. I feel like it’s better to commit to certain jobs and level them up rather than jumping around too much but the game also does a good job of making sure you have immediate access to the tools you need when you do switch.
“Mordre” means “to bite” in Fr*nch, so I fuzzy-parsed the name as “biting wind” even though it doesn’t really make sense phonetically or semantically. Still feels cleverer than “moldy wind” though.
This exchange made me curious so I looked up the English name. In the PR at least, it’s called Moldwynd. I imagine it is supposed to indeed be indicative of decay with a Y thrown ye olde English style.
Did anyone figure out what a カルキュルスル is supposed to be? The fan wiki offers a few theories that don’t seem very convincing:
lit. “Calculuser” (lol)
The name may be a mistranslation of Carcohl[sic]. Carcolh is a creature from French folklore said to be half serpent and half mollusk. (sort of thematically similar, but the name is way off)
Their name could also be a deformation of カルキ (calchy), another name for calcium hypochlorite, used to disinfect water. (only explains half the name, but seems more likely than the others)
Caracol means snail in both Portuguese and Spanish, that seems less niche than the French Carcolh which I never heard of despite being a certified French person. That said I could imagine a niche European legendary monster appearing in some reference book that would be used for inspiration in a videogame studio.
The Japanese kana reminds me more of the word Calcaire though which means limestone (and has the same root as “calcified” in English). カルキュル feels close enough to the pronunciation of Calcaire although that assumes that the Japanese person coming up with the name knows how to pronounce French correctly, which feels immediately implausible. It also doesn’t explain the remaining スル.
EDIT: oh it’s also the same root as “calcium” of course, so rejoins your “calchy” explanation.
We can see that they are also a bit puzzled by the name and bring up the Calchy (晒粉) origin (is it a commonly known word in Japan? I have never encountered it before, I think people would talk about bleach or chlorine for that stuff usually in English).
I think the bit about the alliteration is a good point too, ka ru kyu ru su ru, it’s possible that one of the reasons the word is hard to parse is because it’s been purposefully modified to make it sound more interesting.
I think the “Circulus” hypothesis may be the least unconvincing to me. It both makes sense from the shape of the enemy, it’s a reasonably common word and the phonetics line up reasonably well.
Yeah I think that’s my main issue, every time we get to a new town or whatever, I remember how it was for me 3 years ago and how I would have to pick every sentence apart to make sense of everything. Now I can usually fairly quickly blitz through towns while chatting with everybody, but I worry that it makes me underestimate the workload for something that’s supposed to be a beginner club.
Week 1 was perfect for me, noticably shorter than the last few weeks of FF4. I’d rather you go longer than shorter.
The town in FF3 that was divided into 4 separate quadrants was the worst I’ve ever had this feeling. I must’ve spent over an hour just talking to NPCs.
It was fine for me. Cleared it in just over two and a half hours. I definitely struggle a lot less with the reading compared to when I was starting out in FFI. If anything, I say just drop whatever you have planned on us and if it turns out we really need to break it up, we can say something.
icon or something like that next to the name of learnable abilities when the enemies use them in combat would improve the situation dramatically with basically no drawback.
