It's like chocolate in my peanut butter. Let's Play Final Fantasy V: The Ancient Cave

I forget sometimes that MMOs are less awful than they used to be.

Doing what?

Abyssea (new areas) has an exponential experience curve where you can get thousands of experience in a ridiculously short amount of time. I guess it'd take a bit more than 24 hours in practice if you're new since you'd still have to do limit break quests every 5 levels from 50-99, though.

An FF8 roguelike would be the Angband of Final Fantasy roguelikes. You'd be sitting there drawing as much as you could within the time limit to try to get broken junctions set up as quickly as possible.

Seeing as how quests are the fun part (or "fun" part) of MMOs, that was kind of a trick question. =)

I would play a FFVI or II rougelike, sure! II could be interesting because of the way the leveling system works. If you get Fire early you could grind it up, but then you will be burning through a LOT of MP a few floors down. Not having a ton to unlock would be a bummer, but you could do more with weapons. If you find a good sword early and work up that skill, but then later find a stronger ax, do you take the lower skill to use the stronger weapon?

For FF8, what if Drawing (in battle) was disabled, and you had to rely on random Draw Points and refining items to get spells?

This is basically the perfect idea. The very perfectest.

I have nothing to base this on but I was imagine that a 3D rougelike would be pretty annoying since everything takes longer and rougelikes are meant to be snappy, especially if you die a lot.

This is true, but there are still some 3D games that would be good contenders. The fighting in X is super snappy, if they could somehow speed the transitions into battle then it would work well. And XII obviously wouldn't have this problem at all.

But what about equipment licenses? That could be a terrible idea.

I would imagine a Final Fantasy 1 roguelike would be rather brutal and difficult (and not very fun) because of how much damage characters normally take and how nasty status effects can be.

Interesting but I had a different vision.

At the beginning you can select six characters from the list of Terra, Locke, Celes, Edgar, Sabin, Cyan, Setzer, Strago, Relm, Mog and Gogo (I'm not sure about the last one). You arrange those six characters into two groups and can switch between them to go through "inter-connected" dungeons. When you advance to the next floor the time bonus is added to the timers for both parties (up to the limit).

Along the way you can find and recruit Gau, Shadow, Umaro (if you have Mog with you) and Ghost. You would need meat to recruit Gau and enough cash to recruit Shadow. (Shadow would do his usually shtick of leaving whenver he damn well feels like it.) Every floor would be considered the Veldt so Gau can Leap anywhere and I think he could re-appear on that floor or higher for both parties.

The ideas for FFVI as very awesome and I hate that they are not real.

So. Awesome. I want to play that version. If Gogo's skills are limited to characters in your parties only, that could be fair. No saying "I don't want Edgar, but if I get the chainsaw I'll give Gogo Tools."

Oh man. Throw in Leo and Banon with the other starter characters and I'd play that a million times.

I'd probably give them join scripts like the other wandering characters. Banon's would be his "Will you be our last hope?" routine.

Found it elsenet (yay, Google). All that happened in it was the text got redone to be FF7-themed. There's no actual Materia-juggling.

That's just Rule 34 of the roguelike world in action: There is Angband of it.

I was mostly making a joke.

Umm... why am I just now seeing this!!!!

I second the idea of a FFVI rogue.

EDIT: well I started Skyrender's English translation and had a terrible start. Redid the same floor like 50% of the time. This would have been a good thing if it had more than 1 treasure chest that got progressively worse items D:

Eh... I'm not sure I like that idea. Maybe you have to pick Gogo's skills when you start and can't change them afterwards.

Yeah... I'm not sure about adding Leo and Banon. In FF6 has anyone ever played around with a character swap code to use Leo and Banon? Can they use epsers or use any other equipment? Also, I think they would both make the early game too easy (and I think Leo would continue doing so after that).

Another part of that idea - some stages would have the Auction House.

Banon and Leo have their own slots in the game's coding, so there's no conflict in having them on the same team as the rest of the cast. As for using espers and changing equipment... I think they have a flag set that prevents them from doing either, but that shouldn't be too hard to track down and fix if you're already skilled enough to turn a Final Fantasy game into a Roguelike.

I don't think either of them would be that broken though - at least, not when considered alongside Gogo. Being able to mimic any magic your team knows, as well as any commands they have, would break the game's balance over his (her? or should we ask?) knee.

EDIT: Personally: I'd say make the main twelve playable from the start and have Umaro, Gogo, Banon, Leo, ????? and Biggs/Wedge with full Magitek Armor unlockable via optional challenges.

No Kutan, no deal.

Beat the cave in under two hours, and you'll unlock the ability to turn your entire team into moogles.

I think my main objection to Leo, Banon, Biggs and Wedge is that they're guest characters who leave based on story events. OK, I guess that would also apply to ?????/ghost but I feel it would be appropriate to have it join during levels based on the Phantom Train (or on undead-themed floors).

I think Mimic would be less broken if you had less control over what magic your characters receive (however Terra and Celes would still learn magic naturally).

I was thinking there could be levels which have the MagiTek armor - like Cyan's dream world. And Terra and Celes would still have their additional armor abilities.

I was thinking maybe there might be a an optional challenge on some floors where you can play the "defense" mini-game and you would have moogles rounding out your additional parties.

Or you could do that.

OK, this floor here?


How do I get off this floor?

Go back to the entrance.

But the thought of finding characters that have been stuck in a chest is too awesome to pass up. And if it is done split party style, it is essentially playing two rogues at a time.

This FF6 roguelike conversation is depressing because none of us can make it happen.

Geez, we were all thinking it, but you didn't have to point that out.