Pacing felt fine to me but Iām a bad person to ask since Iām definitely not in the beginner camp. Was able to knock it out in an evening with some distractions
Water park episode:
First week took me 2 hours and 15 minutes, with a little grinding and wandering and exploring setups.
Week 1 + jobs discussion
I played most of the section a few days ago and the ship graveyard tonight. Overall itās good so far. I like the very different setting and tone compared to FF4.
Regarding the ārevealā @simias, I vaguely remembered from my original playthrough about this, so I wasnāt surprised.
For the jobs, Iāve been ācheatingā a bit with double ABP. Iāll probably turn it off later, but I like the little bit of a head start since I generally donāt like the job system and donāt want me struggling to ruin the game. So far hereās what Iāve done:
- Iāve given a few people mage abilities so I can have them on the extra ability slot when in a stronger job
- Rena is level 2 monk, meaning now even when sheās a mage she can attack with her fists like a monk. So thatās handy!
- Iāll probably skip the blue mage. I know it can be great if you get the right abilities, but I absolutely hate blue mages.
- Not much else to say so far. Iām not really sure what jobs to focus on, but I doubt it matters this early.
Alright, first week is done! And aaalmost within the weekly time slot. Thatās about 4 weeks earlier than my first week for the FFIV club!
Progression Speed for beginners
I think I can very much count my self as part of that camp. I think this section is mostly relevant to @simias
There was quite a bit of reading packed into the first week. I feel like overall the language was a bit easier to understand than the start of FFIV, but it was quite a bit more.
This week took me about four and a half hours. Sadly I didnāt really put attention to how that time was divided between reading and just going around and fighting monsters. But since I breezed through all of the encounters I think its mostly the reading that inflated my time so much.
In any case, I think this week was pretty from a story progression perspective. But if it was even longer I might not have time to keep up every week.
Faris reveal
Reading through the comments I think I am the only one here, but I was actually surprised. Thanks to her hair color I associated her with the designs of People like Anasui or Diavolo from Jojo part 5 and 6 so I didnāt think of the design as necessitating Faris to be a woman.
So when I watched the scene where the party gawks at Faris while she sleeps I thought the joke was something like ālook, a beatiful man. That isnāt how men are supposed to beā. Or, being more favorable, I thought that maybe Faris might be a (especially for the time) progressive element, a showcase of unusual gender presentation.
Having Faris be a woman is the more boring choice in my opinion and as was discussed here it makes the gawking scene retroactively worse.
Thoughts on the game so far
Story direction
This one gave me quite the tonal whiplash. FFIV was actually the FF I played, so it kind of set my expectations for what the series is. Yes, there were a lot of comedic elements, but I felt like it wanted to mostly tell its story with a straight face.
At the moment I donāt know if I can see that in this game as well. FFV seems to use a whole lot more sprites to animate its characters, and it seems to be very fond of the goofy āshockedā sprite. But in general I like that the sprites are more expressive. They can do so much now, like peek at the enemy from behind a ledge!
Other than that it is probably way too early to say anything about how I feel about the direction.
Gameplay
I think I donāt like the job system. In FFIV I really enjoyed the connection between the characters and their class. The most obvious example is the transition of cecil to a paladin. But even just from a gameplay perspective I liked that the party automatically cicled through different class combinations. And since the party composition was always prescribed I never had to worry about what would be āoptimalā.
On the other Hand I can see how a job system can greatly help replayability. Trying out different combinations, maybe doing some sort of challenge run with only one type of job or something. There just are more options with this system. I appreciate that, but it doesnāt really do anything for me. And it is still very early in the game, so maybe I will even warm up to the system once I find a combination I really like.
On a more basic note, I am playing the Pixel remaster version and felt like the game up until now was extremely, and I mean EXTREMELY easy. I have spent the whole time in auto-battle mode. Not once have I had to use healing during a fight. I watched a lets play of the original SNES version of the game and there I noticed boss phases/behaviours that seemed to make them more difficult and that I didnāt see in my own playthrough where I just plowed through them.
Is there a significant rebalancing in the pixel remaster version or did I just somehow get lucky?
Art
Holy shit, this is such a step up!!!
FFIV felt mostly like a NES game to me. Apparently this is because it was originally actually developed for the console and was only changed to run on the SNES mid-developement.
But in this game you feel the power of the new console generation! Mostly just in the vastly improved amount of sprites, but honestly that is all it takes for me.
Someone mentioned it already but even in this first week we had at least as much dungeon variety as in the whole last game. I really hope they keep this up because I am excited!
reply
For me I see this as an opportunity to play ādollsā. You can decide what job every character would use. In (original) FF3 the characters had no backstory, so they were all fully interchangeable but this time we can decide if Princess Lena is going against the stereotypes and decides to become a dual axe wielding berserker.
But it is true that the gameplay and story are fairly disconnected in this one, especially compared to IV where there was such a strong synergy between the two.
No itās just that it starts very easy, I actually find this game harder than IV overall.
Speaking of balancing and luck, I somehow got two elixirs from enemy drops this week.
Yeah elixirs are pretty bountiful in this one.
Iām up to 5 currently. lol 3 from drops and 2 from random barrels.
Oooookay, I finally finished week one..I got stuck when I started playing the first day to not see the right path forward in the canals and then just never picked it up again. But now I am! On to week 2!