"One to be born from a dragon..." -- Let's Play Final Fantasy II

Sorry, Brick, but FFXII does have character themes. There's a track explicitly called Ashe's Theme, and Basch's is called "Basch's Reminiscence." Et cetera.

This does not disprove your core point, though, because FFXII is awesome and I love its characters. To hell with the weak nancies who don't.

My deprived childhood graduated straight from Sonic 3 & Knuckles to Twisted Metal 2 and FF7 as my first RPG. My first exposure to FF4 was watching my brother emulate it to kill time during regen sessions on his MUD character; I had time to fall in love with, lose, and buy back FFT in Greatest Hits form, take my fighter-mage from the belly of Irenicus' dungeon to the Throne of Bhaal, and slice up Mundus with Dante's sword before I finally played through FF4 myself . . . on ZSNES.

And it was still one of the most magical anythings of anything I had ever experienced.

The sound effects for sword slashes and lightning bolts are awesome for being so coarse and harsh--even now they give a visceral punch that I find lacking in even FF6's cleaner sound effects. The use of music in this game is absolutely amazing; I pushed forward to the officers ambushing Cecil and Rydia in the Kaipo Inn before reading the part in the LP where that happened, and the opening strain of the Baron music immediately sent me into a fight-or-flight response. Those descending notes coming out of nowhere, that characteristic melody--you know instinctively that trouble is coming and that you're the only thing standing between the innocent and the bad guys.

One of the biggest reasons that FF4 was and still is a Big Stonking Deal, at least to me, is the way it so intimately intertwines storytelling with gameplay. When it cut to the battle screen to show Rydia summoning Titan on my scary-looking armored knights, I had to fight back the urge to issue rapid attack commands because what's wrong with you she's just a little girl we just burned her home to the ground. The fact that I had the instinct in the first place to start beating up Rydia like she's a boss creature, then fought it down because the story part of the game is engaging me to the same degree and in the same part of my consciousness as the game part of the game, is what makes this game so characteristically (S)NES and a unique experience that deserves its spot in the annals of great RPGs. The plot is silly if you analyze it while not playing the game, but it's a videogame--the plot isn't supposed to do anything more than give you an excuse to gallivant around the world, slashing and burning monsters and having bitchin' boss fights along the way. Yet when it comes time to go through heaven and earth to save Rosa, I'm not doing it because it's a plot trigger, I'm doing it because she's my friggin girlfriend. A generic white mage could never replace Rosa in the party because she's your friggin girlfriend, and a generic black mage or summoner could never replace Rydia because she's the little green girl whom you rescued at the very beginning of the game, as the first properly heroic deed you the player actually do.

I mean, I spent four years at a college where I learned how to appreciate books that make Dostoyevsky and Shakespeare look like amateur hour, and then read those two authors anyway. I'm not arguing that FF4 can actually compete with the story quality of western RPGs, and I don't think anyone else would either. This is the storytelling that speaks in the language of Super Mario and Contra. Everything it does beautifully it does as a videogame, not as a simulation or anything of that sort. Changing the plot to something more literary might drastically reduce its immersiveness, much like what Understanding Comics says about drawing cartoons more realistically.

I don't know anything western beyond Baldur's Gate and Dragon Age, though, so I'll just wait for a CRPG veteran to tell me how I'm wrong. I'm probably the only person on earth who loves the original Baldur's Gate, archaic engine and all, more than BG2.

On Thursday we'll find out if the creators still have the magic. I'm hoping for the best! But I'm still waiting for the NA version.

Synchronized swimming, obviously.

Gawd, we should like, start charging folks ten bucks a pop to register and post in Brickroad threads.

Unless it was changed around for the ports/remakes, I never really had that much of a hard time keeping hold of MP once I realized that Osmose/Psych was pretty damn useful for such things.

one time I was fighting Octomamm(oth) and I used Tellah's stupid Recall command and he used Thundaga and killed the guy in one hit!

I try to do it again every time I replay the game but it never happens :'[

I find it very difficult to listen to this song without my mind inserting in the various battle sound effects. I can't help but hear Virus and Fire3 and Cure2 in the background.

I meant what I said. The only character who gets EXP from that fight is Kain.

Kain is the Dragoon. You know, the one with the scrotum?

And I reject the idea that people gush about Galuf. He's a neat character and people like him, but he's not at the same level of popularity as Cid Highwind or the Figaro twins.

Hmm... maybe Balthier pokes holes in the argument though, because there is literally not a better FF character anywhere.

Freya is definitely not a squishy. She's one of the two characters who can use heavy armor. Really, FF9 doesn't have squishies... at least not in the sense that FF2 does, where mages can be dropped by a single unlucky monster attack.

Brick... are you implying (if not outright stating) that Balthier and Gilgamesh are the same person?

Gilgamesh is overrated.

There, I said it, and I feel better for having said it.

But Cecil is the one fighting! SENSE MAKE NONE!

Your confusion is delicious to me. It nourishes me.

As a long-time veteran of this game who quite frankly understands how it works far too well, I know exactly what he's referring to.

Also, if you're wondering, the magic and defense parameters with multipliers are a hold-over from the NES days too. FF2 (the Famicom one, of course) had a very explicit way of showing off how it worked: spells actually DID hit more than once, based on your level in that spell. And when an enemy had a magic evasion multiplier, they could outright dodge "hits" of the spell. Same with the regular evasion multiplier: it lets you dodge otherwise perfect "hits".

So how does that work in FF4? Well here's the thing: spells and weapons are still multi-hitting. It's just that hits are no longer tallied post-strike like they were on the Famicom/NES FF games (magic hits never were, but that's neither here nor there). Each spell has a point when it suddenly gets another "hit", which is determined by (surprise!) the Will and/or Wis. stats. And yes, the number of hits you get with your weapon also goes up according to your stats (I believe in that case it's your Str. alone that influences it, but Agil. might too).

And for all these years I thought I was merely missing something.

This is absolutely fascinating and I can't wait to hear the explanation.

Does Paladin Cecil ever crit? I would put forth the notion that if the game bugs out when the same character data is removed from the party and then readded, then it is likely that since Paladin Cecil is considered a different "character" from a data programming standpoint, he could be triggering the bug on himself just by upgrading.

I just want to be the first to say that Brick is taking a bit of liberty here. He's not necessarily incorrect so much as only giving you half of the story.

- Eddie

As far as the game is concerned, DKnight and Paladin Cecil are two separate, distinct characters.

FFIII.

FF3 never came out in North America.

Have you forgotten the overall theme of this LP, Kishi? For shame.

Still, I am intrigued. I've never really been the type to dig into the underpinnings of a game, but I still find such technical details fascinating.

He certainly was, before FFXII.

Agility does influence the number of hits, but not as much:

Tellah's Nintendo Power re-imagining actually isn't that bad. It's not great, it still doesn't look anything like the character, but when compared to the rest of them, it seems downright competent.

Of course, these days, someone would look at it and go "That's an okay drawing of Dumbledore, I guess."

Add me to the list of people who totally had no clue that Recall lets him learn the spell permanently, and who are also waiting for explanation of these "Kain getting EXP that does not rightfully belong to him" shenanigans.

I Get It! I think I know the explanation, but I don't want to steal Brickroad's thunder.

Oh hey, this song. This is an update late to the party, but back in grade 11, I actually transcribed this song in Finale Notepad and planned to play it as part of my final assignment when we were fiddling around with secondary instruments (my primary was flute, then oboe), because I felt the slow, deliberate build-up and delicate tone of the piece really brought out the most of the instrument (and also because I'm a huge dork). Unfortunately the teacher pruned the assignment when he ran out of time to actually go ahead with the project, so it never really got used outside of the odd practice session. :\

I still have the sheet music for it though:



(This was back before I found out about Talking Time, hence no "PapillonReel". This was also high school, so there's probably a ton of mistakes in there too.)

Anyway, loving the LP so far, this really brings back memories to when I first discovered the game. I remember one run where I hacked the experience curve to max out Dark Knight Cecil's level as quickly as possible: by the end he only had 5,000 or so HP and his defense was garbage but was also faster than Edge and hit almost as hard even with only the last dark sword. Crazy stuff.

NPCs don't count.


One of my co-workers daughters was playing this on the piano a few months ago when I was at a party there. It really stuck me as odd, given that the girl's about 4 years younger than the game.

Even if they didn't, guest characters would. Especially since they have more personality than the templates you actually play as.

Guys guys.

FF3 was the one with Terra and Magitek armor.

Onion kids NEVER HAPPENED.

Get into the right mindset here! I promise you, the Kool-Aid is delicious!

MIND BLOWN

The Internet, emulation, remakes of remakes, and monster closets have largely killed our part of the brain that gets into the right mindset.

Seriously though, I'm looking forward to other neat factoids about SNES FFII. There's a lot of stuff I've forgotten (like that shorter jump time) and didn't know about (broken critical hits).