💎 The Beginner Final Fantasy Club (BFFC)

[trunklayer]

I should resume playing too…
Somehow, I’m never able to sync myself with the clubs properly…
I’ve preplayed FFI (GBA) two times as filthy preplayer…
And now, playing the third time (NES) – I am behind…
Well, this just shows what a clumsy cat I am

[simias]

Next week (week 11) is going to be relatively short, it could be a good time to catch up before the last stretch.

[Akashelia]

For people considering to join for FFI or for FFII soon, there are discounts right now! It ends on November 17th I think (but as you can see from the website, it happens pretty often)

Search - final+fantasy | Deku Deals

[simias]

With only two weeks left on FF1, the time has come to vote on the start date for FF2. Go vote here if you intend to continue our adventures:

Final Fantasy 2 Beginner Club - Home Thread

Ok let’s do this: poll You can select multiple options. For reference, we have two weeks left on FF1, I’ll post the final thread on November 21~22.

[Voi]

For anyone who missed the switch sale, the pixel remaster games are now on sale on Steam (at least for US)!

[simias]

I loaded the original Super Famicom Final Fantasy IV in an emulator to see if my memory failed me and it was in fact using kanji text but unfortunately I was remembering correctly and it’s still full kana. FFV is the first one with kanji.

Even though I’m usually a bit of a purist, I’m going to go with the Pixel Remaster for that one I think… Going through the 3 first Famicom games in full kana is annoying enough as it is.

It’s interesting how that’s a concern that doesn’t exist if you play the game in English. Latin alphabet #1.

On the other hand I’m pretty sure that the Pixel Remaster uses a very different English translation, the original was known for not being very good…

Anyway, that’s for 6 or so months from now, depending on how fast we go through 2 and 3.

[Daisoujou]

@simias

Anyway, that’s for 6 or so months from now, depending on how fast we go through 2 and 3.

If anything that’s faster than I realized, nice! Good to be in a club for shorter games like this now. I’m going to have to get a super famicom before long

Kana is a little more work but luckily I’m at the point I’m broadly ok to do it. Full katakana is WAY more annoying so I’m just happy to see hiragana.

[simias]

The thing is that I’ve been playing FF2 in full hiragana for a little while now, but I just booted up FF4 PR on my switch and all of a sudden it felt so relaxing in comparison… Admittedly that’s just more proof that I need to work on my listening comprehension, I’m extremely reliant on kanji to understand Japanese.

The good news is that, while the amount of text increases with the Super Famicom games, the level of language seems to still be relatively beginner friendly, at least in the intro sequence. Very much the same type of dialogue (and vocabulary) we have in FF1, just more of it. The hardest word was probably 幻獣討伐 which is pretty cool, admittedly…

[Daisoujou]

Yeah I totally get you, I remember needing kanji to recognize a lot of words and there are definitely some that’ll remain true for, it’s just a lot better than it used to be. It was specifically a problem I kept bringing up cause my listening wasn’t keeping up with reading but I think over the last year or so that’s gotten much better for me.

I’ve been having that sort of struggle in my own way with how I read things making it a little more draining recently – it might be less noticeable with kana only, but playing PS1 games on my CRT even though the fonts are only rarely truly mangled on very complex kanji, playing something like Xenogears I’m still just slower and getting worn down a little quicker compared to when I see these games looking more sharp somewhere. The contrast was larger looking at The Silver Case cause that one has a full on HD remake, but yeah. Some harder sections I’d be slowly working through word by word then if I looked at a video of it in smooth modern font it’s like “that’s all I was taking so much time and effort on?” It’s nothing insurmountable for sure but I’m still working through the low res Japanese adjustment period.

Oh yeah to add on also one annoying point is dakuten and handakuten tend to be indistinguishable so in those cases you’re totally just filling in the word yourself.

[simias]

I basically started with low-res PS1 fonts before I even tried reading manga so I’m thoroughly trained for this particular exercise. I certainly sometimes have to slow down a bit for rarer, more complex kanji (or uncommon words) but for the rest I hardly notice the difference. I do recall that it gave me some trouble initially. I remember that it took me quite a while to recognize 電 in the pixelated font the first time I saw it in FF7:

That said Xenogears is particularly kanji heavy, with stuff like 何故 and 奴等 spelled fully in kanji for instance. I remember thinking that this screen could be a graduation test for WaniKani:

I actually think that all the vocabulary is on wanikani too! At least if you consider 戦闘機械 as two words.

[Daisoujou]

@simias

That said Xenogears is particularly kanji heavy, with stuff like 何故 and 奴等 spelled fully in kanji for instance.

Funnily enough those two I’m quite used to seeing! But yeah, it is. Silver Case was very much as well, and its vocab was pretty broad and occasionally painful, haha. I’m not really getting tripped up by figuring out particular words very often, I can just feel that the level of smoothness of reading I’ve managed to reach in the styles of fonts I’m used to isn’t quite there while my brain is working to fill in the smudged, less detailed parts everywhere.

Starting with this stuff is its own kind of challenge so that’s impressive!

In my own way I like collecting giant blobs of kanji together to make images I think would scare someone early in WK to death, so the more ill-natured version of yours. Unfortunately the ones I keep getting recently have spoilers.

This in a weird indirect way spoils a plot point about The Hundred Line, but it's a fun one

Posted this in my study log recently, also spoils a kinda large plot point in The Silver Case. An 11 kanji long block is a sight to behold though

[Akashelia]

I could read it if I focused, but also I’m still at the stage that I can look at it without having my brain reading it, so not a spoiler for me

[simias]

If for some reason some people are monitoring this thread but didn’t care to play the first game, let it be known that we have now reached the end of our journey in Cornelia and our adventures are now on a hiatus until FF2 begins.

The poll for the start date of the FF2 club is still open, but January 3 seems to be by far the most popular option for now, so it seems that we’ll be back after the holidays.

I will ramp up the pace a little bit but I expect that it should still be fairly beginner-friendly, especially for those who have already the experience of FF1 since there will be a lot of shared vocab.

[simias]

@ChristopherFritz

This comment reminded me that I should probably explain this to avoid some possible confusion in the future:

The original Final Fantasy was released in Japan in 1987 but the English version only reached the North American shores in 1990, almost three years later. So by the time FF1 released in NA, FF2 and FF3 had already been released in Japan (in 1988 and early 1990 respectively) and Final Fantasy 4, the first entry on the brand new 16bit Super Famicom (Super Nintendo in the West) was in development and would release a year later in Japan in 1991.

Since FF1 sold well in NA, Square originally intended to release Final Fantasy 2 in the West, but somewhere halfway through the translation process they changed their mind and decided to skip FF2 and FF3, maybe because they feared that releasing NES games when the SNES was the hot new thing would be a bad business decision.

Interestingly a prototype with the unfinished official translation of FF2 for the NES got dumped and is publicly available. It’s obviously unfinished, but that’s a bit of videogame history for you:

Anyway the result is that, in North America, Square skipped straight from FF1 on the NES to FF4 on the SNES, which released in November 1991 (only a few months after the July Japanese release). But because they didn’t want to release “Final Fantasy 4” without having a 2 or 3 in between, they renumbered it as Final Fantasy 2 in the English version:

Note that they replaced the crystal with a sword, because Americans like weapons.

After that Square would also opt not to release 5 in the West (IIRC because they thought the game was too complicated and JRPGs weren’t as popular in America) but 6 did make it, renumbered as 3 to keep the continuity of the English versions. It’s only with Final Fantasy 7 on the PlayStation that Square decided to finally do the right thing and keep the Japanese numbering internationally, so it was released as FF7 in America (and for the first time, in Europe). I imagine an alternate reality where it’s called Final Fantasy 4 in the USA and Final Fantasy 1 in the EU…

So here’s a summary of the situation:

Game	Platform	Japanese release	English title	English release
Final Fantasy	Famicom	December 1987	Final Fantasy	July 1990
Final Fantasy II	Famicom	December 1988	-	-
Final Fantasy III	Famicom	April 1990	-	-
Final Fantasy IV	Super Famicom	July 1991	Final Fantasy II	November 1991
Final Fantasy V	Super Famicom	December 1992	-	-
Final Fantasy VI	Super Famicom	April 1994	Final Fantasy III	October 1994
Final Fantasy VII	PlayStation	January 1997	Final Fantasy VII	September 1997

Starting in the early 2000, Square would re-release remakes and remasters of these old games with English translations and using the Japanese numbering (which is also used in the Pixel Remaster versions for instance). Final Fantasy III stands out because the original (non-3D) version only got an official English version in 2021, 32 years after its Japanese release!

All that to say, be careful when you research for these old final fantasy online in English, because you’ll often get a mix of two games. For instance searching for “Final Fantasy 2 map” gives me maps of FF2 but also FF4 since it was called FF2 in English originally:

This used to be a lot more confusing in early 2000 English language forum discussions because many people still used the English renumbering since that’s what they were used to, nowadays I think everybody mainly uses the Japanese numbering in most places.

[Sisthra]

Sliding in to mention that there’s a big Final Fantasy games sale on both Steam and Switch, good moment to pick up various Pixel Remasters (or the whole package of the first six games at once) if anyone wants to join last minute or shop some games in advance!

[Akashelia]

Oh waw, I didn’t know. I was confused about the meme, thought it was saying that the story were too similar. Relieved by the explanation!

[VikingSchism]

We must do something about the Warship Empire is making in Bafsuk!!

Do they even into English good?

I guess it’s because it was abandoned partway through but this feels like it would be a pretty straightforward one to not get wrong in the first place

[simias]

I assume non-native English speakers were doing the translation, and presumably English natives would have done a proofreading pass afterwards.

Character limitations were also probably a factor, but overall it’s too clunky and broken to have been written by a native English speaker:

I always find it a bit comforting to see people making the language learning journey from the other side…

[Daisoujou]

But now, just a coward

I’m so hard on my own mistakes with Japanese but when I think about it I find “wrong” English really cool sometimes. I was playing a game with someone (Chinese native speaker) and when I was saying sorry for messing something up she hit me with “It is gaming for fun, not for sorry” and I still remember that cause it’s poetic! Zero insult meant there, genuinely, “wrong” English sounds interesting sometimes. Correctness is overrated.

The text at the beginning of Chaos;Head speaks to me too

[simias]

There’s also this primeval meme:

Zero Wing - Introduction

For great justice.