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

Yeah, the ability to break the game, weather intended or unintended, is one of the marks of a good rpg. You should be able to manipulate the system in your favor, as far as I'm concerned. That's supposed to be one of the benefits of digging in and learning what makes the game tick.

I'm a Final Fantasy guy myself, but I've still played a bunch of the Dragon Quest games and I don't think I've ever encountered a random group of enemies that has wiped out my whole party from full health. I didn't even know that was a "thing" with Dragon Quest.

Yeah, being instakilled the first turn or by an ambush isn't something that I've ever run into in DQ. Megaten, on the other hand...

Also, I don't really buy the argument that the randomness in DQ forces you to adapt on the fly and makes standard encounters meaningful. Damn near every encounter in DQIX played out exactly the same for me, just like in Final Fantasy.

Are you always at full health/MP/inventory going into random battles? (This isn't me being sarcastic or anything here, I honestly don't know the series.)

Enemies, particularly ones in random encounters, will quickly teach you how much HP is "safe". Anyone who suggests you need full HP/MP/Items for any encounter is a liar (or underleveled).

I think if you documented the potential situations where you could "randomly die" to enemies in DQ games you would find one of two things:

1) There are few very encounters out of the many you can get into that have such potential "random fuckage".
2) You've got tools (Spells and Abilities) that can reduce the chance of "random fuckage". Particularly as the series goes on, there are plenty of abilities that can stun or prevent such abilities from occuring.

I said it before and I'll say it again: the amount of bitching about DQ's randomness has been blown waaaaaay out of proportion. By the way some people here are describing it, death lurks around every corner and battles come down to coin flips.

I don't mind if someone dislikes the risk-taking nature of the DQ games (that's perfectly understandable) but don't blow it into something it's not. I challenge anyone to sit down and play a DQ game from start to finish and record each time they die. And when it happens, ask yourself a few questions:

1) Did I make a mistake?
2) Was there something I could have done to prevent that death? And most importantly,
3) Did I learn anything that would prevent such a situation from occurring a second time?

Count how many times you answer "no" to all three questions. It would shock me if that number was greater than three, and wouldn't surprise me at all if that number was zero.

- Eddie

You really don't know how my Anti-Luck works, do you? Any encounter where there's even the remotest chance that an enemy can use a super-powered attack that does far, far, FAR more damage or is infinitely more effective than anything else in their arsenal, they WILL use it on me. Every time. I have never gotten through a battle with an enemy capable of such 'rare' attacks without getting hit by them at least once in DQ games. I point you once more to my DQ5 experience with fights, where I was using the Sands of Time to reset fights that went south. That one fight that took 15 uses before the enemies opted not to be dicks wasn't even that far off the average; most fights I had to use it at least 7 times before I got an opening round that did not result in dickery.

I have the Anti-Luck. Get it ingrained into your head. Learn to accept it. If something can go wrong for me in a game where the randomizer is given control, it's going to go wrong sooner or even sooner.

Bosses aside, Megaten always gives you the tools to protect yourself from the RNG. It's just that, in order to use one tool, you might have to sacrifice another. Want that Hama protection? Sure! Humans are naturally immune! You'll just have to go without armor. How about an engine that lets you have first-strike whenever you want, by hitting the enemy on the field? Ok, but the enemy can do the same thing if it chases you down the map, instead.

And where Final Fantasy encourages dominating a battle via maximum number trading (damage dealing vs healing) in Megaten you dominate a battle via turn order flow -- obtained through stat, status, and added-effect manipulation. More so in recent games, where striking weaknesses does something else than just "do more damage." The only FF where controlling the turn order can determine victory is FFX; all others, from ATB to FFX-2 to XIII, are all about white numbers vs green numbers.

In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, you can win pretty much any battle via getting infinite turns in a row. (Against a single enemy, the simplest way is to get three or four of your characters casting Slow on it every chance they get. There are combos that don't rely on enemy interaction at all, too.) I'm not sure if you count that as an FF, though.

FFV encourages battles where you completely and utterly destroy enemies through clever (and by clever I mean look up online) use of the various Jobs to find and exploit enemy weakpoints. It also encourages AI abuse, but that's neither here nor there.

Of course if you don't want to do that, you can still totally beat the game by mashing A. That's what Freelancer is for.

That's only helpful if you go into every battle knowing what all the enemies are capable of. Why would you suddenly want to inconvenience yourself to get Hama protection if you haven't seen a Hama spell in a long while? Because something in that dungeon just killed you with Hama. It's nice that you can protect yourself from the cheap deaths, but it's only in retaliation. There are still plenty of cheap deaths to be had.

I think it was the worst in Strange Journey, where you literally know nothing about the enemy at the beginning of the fight due to not even getting a picture of them. It's always fun to have a party wipe because you have literally no information to base your combat plan on from the very beginning. I ran into a group of Oni early on, failed to kill them because some of my dudes used physical attacks, ate a bunch of Rampages, and died the first turn. Super. If I saw that I was fighting a bunch of big buff demon dudes, I probably would have gone with more magic!

God, did this really turn into three pages of inane Final Fantasy vs. Dragon Quest arguments? Talking Time, I thought you were better than this. I thought you were better.

Before FFTA, there was Final Fantasy VI. I figured out how to abuse that back in the SNES days, before I even really "got" RPGs. I went up against Kefka and didn't even bother healing from Fallen One -- I just abused Quick and Ultima with morphed Terra and won the final battle in a single "round."

I would just like to point out that many of you are complaining about the inherent unfairness of a game that, some two decades ago, was beaten by my mom.*

But more seriously, you guys have obviously been playing totally different game series that I have. Because I've never had trouble with any Dragon Warrior or Quest (except the original, when I was seven, and actually afraid of the Shadow Skeletons). But if I were tasked with naming the part of an RPG that sticks in my mind as the most difficult, it would be this very game here, and the final push to the boss, and especially the massive amount of HP and damage from said boss.

Perhaps it just comes down to grinding, because I've never been one to dislike grinding, or random encounters like so many people seem to hate.



* a noted hard-core video game expert and champion, and not, as it may have appeared, a middle-aged house wife and mother of two who had never played video games before Dragon Warriors I & II.

*shrug* We're not.

Isn't that true of every game, though? I was mighty surprised by my first TrapDoor, and I didn't know I needed First Strike on my weapons during FFX's Omega Ruins until I realized Great Maboros always ambush and always open with Bad Breath. SMT is no different in that regard.
The worst of this only happens at the beginning of a sector, while you're still near home base with its healing and save point. And really, you're only missing the portrait --you'd still be in the dark about its powers until it used them, like in any other game, and lots of games give beefy enemies good magic stats too.

In this particular scenario, the bad luck comes from getting multiple Rampages in one turn. But you can regroup, come back, and resist them now that you're prepared. The way I read it in Dragon Quest (since I've only played VIII's grind-heavy demo) you can't really prepare for a contrarian RNG because there's no way to defend from its whims.

Oh, right, the wonders of Quick/Gem Box/Offering I forgot about those. They made a challenge out of not slaughtering Kefka in a single round. Hell, I made a point of using all my pieces of Magicite (item) and whatever Espers I had equipped just to give the last, nonthreatening tier an interesting flavor.

But in any case, that's why FF has superbosses: because it readily gives players the tools to break the ordinary game progression, it also offers actual challenges to see if the player can use those same game-breaking tools in innovative ways. FFIV DS was a... misstep, but the bonus dungeon in FFV Advance was all sorts of awesome. The Dragon's Den in VI Advance was dull, but the revitalized Eight Dragons were excellent challenges for the seasoned, game-breaking veteran.

I've been shaking my head in disappointment so much that I threw out my neck.

For shame

I have never played a DQ game and never will, but FF games are not immune to their own quirks of arbitrary unfairness either.

Final Fantasy 6 had a boss, Magimaster, which, upon being killed, casts "Ultima" which will kill pretty much anything but an overpowered end-game, fully pimped-out party outright. Unless you had read a guide beforehand, there was pretty much no way you were walking out of that fight alive the first time, so this was a pretty cruel trick, especially given how outrageously annoying the preceding dungeon was. I do not like mechanics that punish the player for not being psychic.

Also, anyone remember the battle on the Riovanes Castle rooftop, with Rafa? I remember it. I remember it.

I beat that the first time I played it*. There's this great skill called teleport, guys.

*And I'm not particularly amazing at the game either

I thought the FFT Teleport had a decent chance of failing.

Depending on your party's speed and start formation, it is completely possible to lose that fight before you get to act.

Well, the chances of succeeding are 100%, but if you move an extra space past what your character's move is, then chances of success are reduced by 10% per extra space.

hahahahaha

Thing about the unfairness of those scenarios is that they're preset. They're not ruled by an RNG*. Once you've seen them in action, you can take steps to prevent them --and the Magimaster is an optional boss for an altogether minor reward, so it's not unreasonable to ask for similarly optional defense (Palidor or Phoenix) when fighting it. Just like an FFX Behemoth will always cast Meteor upon death, the Magimaster will always cast Ultima at the end of the fight. So you're never uncertain about whether its next action will be an unfair party wipe.

In the case of Riovanes, all you need is a high Speed-stat unit to block Rafa. Ninjas would be ideal, but a Thief works just as well. If you haven't unlocked the Thief job by that point, well... I dunno what to tell ya.

* Speaking of, there were instances where Strange Journey broke its own rules, and that was with three specific bosses (Ouroboros, Jack, and Mem Aleph) all of which have access to extremely damaging attacks (some of them multi-hits,) unblockable instant kills, group attacks (which may or may not insta-kill,) and, in one case, full debuff/healing. That's more of a challenge of outdamaging the enemy before its RNG lands on those abilities, seeing how quickly you can recover from them before it uses them again. They're not the three hardest enemies in the game for nothing.

So what you're saying is that it's time to nuke the boards again? But we'd come so far....

Wait until after my next update. I spent like an hour making a nice, smooth .gif of the glowy bits of the Tower of Zot.

Two-month hiatus then?

Meh, Brickroad's just being Brickroad. With the exception of IV, he's not a fan of Dragon Quest and how it does things. I can understand the series not appealing to everybody. Though IMO DQIII totally kicks 8-bit Final Fantasy ass.

I can agree with that, but I think it's a more common problem in SMT thanks to the larger impact of weakness and resistances. And the whole "MC death = Game Over" thing.

Basically, I've had sudden party wipes in just about every SMT game I've played, haven't come across any in DQ, and only came across them in FF during optional superdungeons.

This is because you either stacked speed boosts, or a random choice of the AI. Your NPC ally in this fight will sometimes choose "run" instead of "fight" for the first turn, in which case you get to act with your guys who have speed less than or equal to the bad guys (6 or 7? Help me out here, Eddie). If she chooses fight she moves into range of a 100% instant kill attack, and the battle ends before you can act. Every time.

When I first played it I didn't even figure out that gear increased HP instead of defense until sometime near the end of Ch 2, so knowing that I should have a fast class with one of the three or so items that can increase speed was clearly out of reach. But stacking speed is basically the most powerful thing in the game at a fundamental level (on a technical level there are things that are stronger, but more speed still makes them better) and there's gear before here to do it, so that's possible.

Or you got lucky.

That particular encounter is always a die roll if you haven't figured it out or already started gaming the system.

(I really want tactical RPGs with some sort of class/ability/item that lets you check out enemy placement and stats before the start of a fight)

People are pretty strongly over-stating the randomness of DQ, too. My only real issue with the randomness is that I want Zing to have a 100% success rate out of combat, because there's nothing interesting about wasting MP. I can deal with beat and goopis calling for reenforcements faster than they can be killed and all sorts of other bullshit. At it's core DQ is very much still a risk/reward system that encourages you to push farther than you think you can in dungeons and in tough overland areas, and without serious attrition that just does not work. At low levels this is simple loosing HP. At high levels when you can cast things like Healus and Healall HP damage looses it's teeth and things like instant death and breath attacks are pretty much required to challenge your party.

(DQIII is better than FFIII, but FFI still wins that race no matter how you cut it. Until you cut it in such as way as to look at portables so SaGaII gets to play.)

*cough* Fire Emblem *cough*

Also SRW and G Generation. And I thought at least one of the Tactics Ogres did.

The assassins, Celia and Lede, have a speed of 8, so due to a quirk in "who goes first" you need a speed of 9 to act before them. For some strange reason, the game seems to randomly pick one of the preset "AI's" you can choose for your own characters, and instead of "Run like a rabbit" she'll "fight for life".

The "Roof of Riovanes Castle" is the most common fight to simply lose on due to weird AI behaviour, but it's not the only one. For example, sometimes Mustadio decides to bite off more than he can chew as well.

- Eddie