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

FFIV DS was awesome and I loved every minute of it...

... is what I would say if such a game existed. But it sounds like it's still two sequels away! Personally I'm really looking forward to this FFIII game they announced. According to Nintendo Power, you get to play as a girl!

- Edward

FF4DS just frustrated me...the experience was too challenging to just relax and enjoy as a prettied up stroll down memory lane, but altogether too familiar to seem worth the struggle. The new and the old just cancelled out each others' virtues to me, and I dropped it pretty quick.

BUT, from my understand, the plot was the exact same throughout, yes? What they really should have done to toy with people's expectations was to have some jaw-dropping, insane divergence in the story just when you were settling in for the same old narrative. FF2/4 is remembered more for its story than its gameplay, anyway. Changing only the gameplay, and into something so difficult and esoteric,was kind of an odd approach, really. Having the moon blown up just before you're about to go there, leading to an entirely different final act would have mixed things up in a much more interesting and meaningful way. Proceeding to reveal that Edward was secretly the villain behind everything, feigning cowardice and weakness, and orchestrating his beloved's death just to throw everyone off his trail would have really gotten long-time fans talking.

Or, hell, go with that, but really hold back on it. The moon stays like it did in the original, you go, you do what you do, same final battle and such, but partway through the game's ending Cecil and Rosa are having their happy triumphant coronation when BAM! Rosa's killed by a professionally fired musical note! THE GAME'S NOT OVER YET! AS CECIL CHASES EDWARD OUT OF THE CASTLE, THE EVIL BARD CACKLING AS HE MOUNTS HIS PERSONAL BLACK CHOCOBO, 'ADMIRAL FELLFEATHER' AND FLIES OFF, CECIL ROARING AS THE VILLAIN DISAPPEARS OVER THE HORIZON, AT THAT MOMENT, THAT RIGHT THERE...the real opening text scrolls over the background of the castle in a green, oozing font while the prologue theme plays in an electric violin remix backed up by a children's choir. And the true FF4DS begins.

Or, actually cut to the credits then. That would be kinder to the notion of staying in-budget, and would most certainly provoke a reaction from the experienced fans.

I had a pretty decent time with it, all things considered. I really liked the visuals, and it was fun to shake up a game I had played many times before with the new stuff they put in FFIVDS. However, the implementation of some of those things (damn Augments!) also detracted from it a bit.

I think one of the reasons it earns the ire it does is because its not a walk down memory lane; FFIVDS is very much a different game. The jarring difference between expectation and reality probably turned more than a few people off to it (I know I put it down for several months after initially starting it up.)

Also, my first post in this thread, so lemme say: I greatly look forward to reading more of Brickroad's dissection of FF2! After reading what you've done with your FF1 LPs so far, I'm very excited to see your take on the game that got me into RPGs.

THIS. Somebody needs to make this in RPG Maker or something.

How about when Golbez captures Rosa he says he's going to kill her very soon so that when Cecil gets to Mysidia the player can choose to skip Mt. Ordeals and try to save Baron and take on Golbez as a dark knight. Cecil recruits a few wizards from the town of Baron and finds Yang before he gets brainwashed so the player can beat Baigan and Cagnazzo, but as he does so the dark armor feels increasingly heavy so that when Cecil meets Kain at the meeting of the airships, Zemus posses Cecil and Kain takes him to the Tower of Zot. Zemus finds that Cecil makes an even better dark servant than Golbez or Kain because Cecil has the most cares and relationships he can twist into evil. Zemus then abandons Golbez and Kain. Golbez decides he aught to make amends and goes to Mt. Ordeals to become a paladin, while Kain, who is not an especially "dark" character just tags along.

The player spends the rest of the game as Possessed Cecil, with the rest of the game's cast portrayed in a villainous light to reflect Zemus's effect on Cecil's mind, with the sole exception of Rosa, who Zemus still allows Cecil to care for, but he makes her increasingly distraught words sound like gibberish to Cecil's ears because Zemus can't control her.

Golbez becomes the hero of the story, although his terrible reputation slows his progress enough that he can't stop Cecil before Cecil causes the same death and destruction that Golbez would have done. Cecil takes control of the Giant of Babel, leaves Rosa in the tower for safety and when Golbez, FuSoYa, Kain, Edge and Rydia get in and stop him, FuSoYa decides that Cecil is beyond salvation and lets the party kill him without telling Golbez that they are brothers. The ending is Cecil in the afterlife watching his former killers go to the moon and take down Zeromus, hating the world but still wishing he could be with Rosa.

See how important Mt. Ordeals is?

I thoroughly enjoyed FF4DS, and have never understood the hate. I found its difficulty to be perfect for me, and I never had an absolutely terrible time trying to make my way forward in it. Also, I especially don't get the augments hate? Do people just hate that the bonus system isn't convenient, and that you can't tweak every character however you please after one play-through, or what? I had plenty of fun with it - it provided a very mild tweaking that made the game more interesting and fun. Cecil with Counter is outstanding, btw. Kain singing is great in its own way.

What frustrated me about the augments was that it had a "FAQ" feel to it. Just going into the game blind I felt like it would have been easy to miss a lot of the better ones, especially since the good blanket policy of "offload all the cruddy augments onto every new character so they cough up max augments when they leave" isn't intuitive, and by the time you figure it out its possible you've already missed some that you'll regret.

Also, the game's difficulty felt geared towards using the augments in clever/effective ways (and rightfully so, I think,) so it seemed like it'd be possible to make the game a fair bit harder on oneself by borking up your augment chain.

Also also, the fact that you couldn't remove the augments after you stuck them on a character made it feel a little too restrictive, and (because I'm lame) it made me nervous as to whether I'd make the wrong choice, so I agonized over assignments a lot more than I probably should have (especially since they alter stat growth; something I didn't even dip into.)

Overall though, it was a great idea, just somewhat clumsily executed. I fully agree that being able to shake up what your party can do was incredibly fun. Turning Cid into a songbird made him the most valuable member of my party at the time, and watching Kain bawl his eyes out always made me chuckle.

I feel pretty much the same way - the DS version is my favorite version. I hope that someday Matrix gets tasked to do a similar conversion of FF6.

DS was my favorite FF4 as well. Particularly since it was an FF4 designed to screw with the minds of people bored with FF4.

Which I was.

Pretty much this. It's a guilty pleasure of sorts.

while screaming "YOU SPOONY BARD!" at him.

Oh, it's so much better than that. From the screenshots it looks like you can play as a party of black mages, but they can totally use swords and stuff! Apparently there's some sort of system where you mix and match classes.

On second thought, it all sounds much too complicated for me. I could barely handle FFII, considering that the game's so rude as to simply dump you back to the title screen when you die. Why not ask me if I want to try again, so I don't have to go to the trouble of manually reloading the game? And why do ethers have to be so rare? It just isn't fair. I think I will write a letter to Square addressing my country's frothing demand for a simpler, more "American" RPG.

I've always been annoyed that you can't jump in Final Fantasy games! They need to put that in.

Yeah and maybe a hookshot and bombs like in Zelda! Oh man this game's gonna be so awesome guys

Got to the final battle, with all the gear in the Lunar Subterrain, in FFFIV DS and still got almost my entire party one-shot even at level 70. Suppose I should leave Kain on the ground, since it looked like I took a little more damage on the second one with just Cecil and Rosa up (more than Cecil's max HP). Could have just been having shell dispelled, though...

Guys, Lufia 2 is already pretty awesome, I assure you. Wait...

I'm not sure what you're talking about. Is it that RPG Taito's working on? Haha, imagine the Bubble Bobble guys putting out an RPG. Next thing you know they'll make a cooking simulator or something.

This should be fine, since the game has New Game +!


...Oh. Really? Well, never mind.

Hey did you hear they're making a Mario RPG? Craziness!

Oh, and get this! Capcom, the Mega Man people, are making an RPG. CAPCOM! Next thing you know the Mortal Kombat guys are going to start publishing RPGs or something.

You mean Breath Of Fire? I mean, if we're already talking about FFIII here, BoF would've already been released.

Guys, guys, guys! I just checked the mailbox and you'll never believe what I read in this month's Nintendo Power!!!!

dudically cruel

It's a good thing Matthew Bearup didn't return that still-shrink-wrapped copy of Wheel of Fortune that his grandma sent him for Christmas, or else he'd never have come up with a rhyme for "better".

If there's ever been a better expression to use for a user title change, I'd like to hear it.

And it's only gonna have two characters in the party cause, like, that's all the controller ports there are on the Super Nintendo and we can't have more characters than that.

Oh yeah? I heard there's gonna be a sequel to Final Fantasy Adventure where you can have three players! At the same time!

That sounds great! Do you know if the sickle is in this sequel?

You people and your crazy stories about three-player Final Fantasy Adventures and Capcom RPGs...

Screw all y'all. I'm more interested in that first-person RPG being made by those Adventures of Lolo guys where you have elemental allies that are cards, and humans and monsters are shown on cards, and you lose if one of your human cards dies.

I know we're like nine layers deep in some kind of take-the-gag-too-far arms race, but Arcana is rad and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.