HSUP B TCELES - Let's Play FF1! Again!

I do think Brick should be allowed to swap Whisperwind Cove with Lifespring Grotto, doing the Grotto last.


Shinryu & Omega are just a little too awesome to take on before ~level 60, and if we're going to make him grind a little then it certainly would render even more moot (besides all the phat uberloot) any other dungeon afterwards.

Plus, Whisperwind Cove is basically the opposite of fun. Those dungeon levels that look like the Water Temple... ugh.

Having slogged through each of those 4 dungeons for the first time on the iphone FF1 release not very long ago, I can completely agree with this. As bad a design as the Earth Cave may be it's better than the system they came up with for these "dungeons." I can't bear to get through each of them more than once, and if I don't get lucky and hit a treasure chest on a certain level with that awesome *insert here*, then, well, fuck it. Not like chaos doesn't go down like a little bitch by time you can actually finish these 4 anyways.

Thinking about it in more depth, I wonder if there are any well-designed dungeons in FF1. Maybe the (first) Temple of Fiends, the Water Palace, and the Sky Castle. Castle of Ordeals, maybe, because it's so short and the teleport maze is not the worst goddamn thing ever made.

This also makes me wonder which Final Fantasy has the best dungeons overall.

13, amirite???!?! Ha ha ha no.

I'll submit FFVI, for the floating continent, Kefka's Tower, Daryl's tomb (short but cool theme), and so on.

The ice cave is pretty well-designed. It's flaw is primarily in its monster tables.
And it's a pretty huge freaking flaw!

FFIX certainly had a bit of variety in its dungeons, I believe IV did as well but I've never gone beyond the underground so my actual knowledge is limited.

I dunno, almost all video game dungeons are pretty "blah" if you've ever played a good tabletop one. That said, I think FF XII felt the most like that, with hidden rooms, environmental interaction, and monsters and bosses that were fantastic without feeling out of place. Also going through a door and finding monsters that were far too dangerous. Barheim Passage, Henne Mines, Raithwalls Tomb, the Stillshrine of Miriam, Sochen Cave Palace, and the Pharos Lighthouse are all pretty wonderful.

If FF XII had edited the amount of space between it's best dungeons I think there would be a lot to gain.

This invalidates anything else you ever say, ever. I exaggerate, but not much.

Nah, the Pharos is a great final dungeon. People complain that it's too long, but between the teleport stations and the Save Crystals, if they tackle all 100 floors in one go (like I did) it's because they wanted to. The music, the difficult encounters, the ambiance, and even the Sealed Ability floors make for a tremendous experience.

Well, dungeons being too long is more endemic to the entire game, so you can't really complain about that one.

Anyway, enough about that - I was just pondering, are there any decent FF1 hacks out there? I don't want something as horrible as that Zelda 3 one in terms of difficulty, but you'd figure that this wouldn't be impossible to strip apart and re-assemble into a new game.

I wouldn't be that shocked if there weren't any, despite how beloved this game is. That specific scratch can be itched via RPG maker and the like with less hassle, and making your own RPG is more work than making your own platformer if for no other reason than all that freaking dialogue.

This just isn't true. Platformers have to worry about physics and collision detection and wonky stuff like that. RPGs are just a matter of getting the numbers balanced.

Writing is the easy part.

If there's anything that I've learned from your Final Fantasy LPs before, it is this:

I've heard this one is pretty good, though it's less of a "hack" and more of a "total conversion."

Do the dungeons first, and loot them fully. The game is easy enough as it is, it won't kill you to make it any easier. Plus, we'll get a good look at the broken equipment.

Also, you should take off all of your armor and equipment while in them (outside of bosses) to make the enemies something resembling a challenge more than a joke. I am mildly serious about this.

RPGMaker just can't quite capture the same goofy charm of NES FF1, though.

Yup. You could crap out the dialogue necessary for an NES RPG in a couple of days, easy.

I agree about the writing, but as a game designer, I can tell you I'd have a much easier time working with the programmers and making sure a platformer "feels" right before I'd have any clue balancing numbers in an RPG.

I'm just... not a math person and am completely intimidated by the idea of RPG mechanics design.

I'd definitely like to see you document the extra dungeons dude, though I do agree they bust the game's skull open so hard that its head explodes. They do have some interestingly Final Fantasy LegendSaGa 2-esque weirdness with their floors that needs to be seen to be believed.

Interesting thing there, definitely. Speaking of sprite similarities, while I lack a direct reference onhand, if you check out the sprite sheets for the NPCs from DoS Final Fantasy I and compare to Final Fantasy V, you'll notice the regular NPCs are very much sprite edits of FFV's, with some minor pixel tweaking and more shading. Hell, Bahamut's just Hiryuu with a new palette and extra scales and spiny things.

Posted this here some time ago.

That last one they didn't even try.

In their defense, the Tonberry and Magic Jars are the exact same enemies from 5. They didn't just scavenge the sprite for different monsters like the others.

Do what everyone else said, take on the extra dungeons as soon as they open and rip the game a new one as a result. We don't need to see Chaos and the regular bosses we've seen before be challenging this time around.

I am also on board with the "go ahead and promote first" line of reasoning as well.

Oh yeah, what this thread is about.

But yes, since the bonus dungeons are the main non-mechanical difference, I'd say hit 'em now. You can just pretend the rest of the game is difficult.

I've never played FF1, and this thread is really making me want to. So my question is... what's the iPhone version like? Anyone know? Good, bad, the same as Dawn of Souls hopefully?

Just a one-post update today! I know this will be boring to most, but there are a few of you who love reading about the inner workings of this crazy game. To those few people: this post is for you.


The four random dungeons in Dawn of Souls are Earthgift Shrine, Hellfire Chasm, Lifespring Grotto and Whisperwind Cove. These dungeons are characterized by the amazing treasure inside, and for each containing bosses from "future" FF games. The Shrine, Chasm, Grotto and Cove feature bosses from FF3, FF4, FF5 and FF6 respectively.

The first thing to understand is that neither the dungeons nor the treasures inside are really random. Every time you visit a dungeon you will see every floor that dungeon has to offer -- just not always in the same order. You'll likely get a completely different set of treasures as well, but there is a rhyme and reason to this. Here, I drew you a diagram:


This is what Earthgift Shrine looks like before you enter it. On the left is the actual dungeon, which is five floors long. The fifth floor is a boss floor, and boss floors are always hardcoded to appear in the same spots, so I've filled that one in. The other four floors are, as of now, blank slates.

Each floor of the dungeon has its own treasure set. These treasures do not change and there is nothing you can do to manipulate them. Each floor of Earthgift Shrine (except the hardcoded boss floor) has five treasures to find. If, for example, the first treasure of B1 is a Potion, you will always find a Potion in the first box on B1.

On the right side of the diagram are the dungeon maps you will explore. Each map contains a set amount of "treasure slots". The four maps in Earthgift Shrine are Cave 1, Cave 2, Desert and Forest. Cave 1 always comes with two treasure slots, Cave 2 with three, etc.

So: Earthgift Shrine is organized into four dungeon floors each with hardcoded treasure, and four maps with hardcoded "slots" for that treasure to be generated in.


Once you actually step into a dungeon, each floor automatically populates with one of the possible maps... which means the "treasure slots" on those maps automatically populates with that floor's treasure.

As an example, in this configuration, the Desert map was generated on B4. Desert has four treasure slots, which means one of B4's treasures has nowhere to be generated. When you get to B4, you will be unable to retrieve whatever item is in that fifth treasure box, since there is no fifth treasure box to find on the Desert map.

Typically, the best treasures to be found in these dungeons is found in the final box. In Earthgift Shrine, that means the fourth and fifth boxes. Since only one map has five boxes on it, though, you have to run the dungeon enough times to that map a chance to generate on each of the four floors.

Now imagine trying to get all the best stuff out of Whisperwind Cove, which has forty floors.

It gets worse though:


I don't think this happens in Earthgift Shrine, but in the later dungeons there is a rule which states that earlier floors randomly have treasure boxes removed from them. Which means if your one "good treasure map" (like our Forest here) shows up early in the dungeon, it still may not be generated with all its treasure boxes. How annoying!

The silver lining here is that there is simply no reason to want all the treasures from every floor. Even if your "good treasure map" is generated on an early floor and has some of its boxes ganked, the run as a whole is still likely to be really profitable. And even if it's not, the guaranteed chests on the hardcoded boss floors are really spectacular.

So that's how the random dungeons work! (In a nutshell, anyway.)

I suppose I'll be clearing these dungeons as I go, to the best of my ability. Up next: Earthgift Shrine!

Aww... I really thought Brickroad would say where that particular suggestion could go to at the end of that last post, but I guess it's still implicit.

Goddamn I hated the ninjas from FF VI.

I guess Madonna had a thing for untrimmed toenails. Ech.

I have to ask: how long did it take to figure all of that out? I have to imagine it would take a lot of tedious experimentation to see the pattern.

Brickroad doesn't have to stoop to tedious experimentation. A little known fact is that the jack that Neo uses to connect to the Matrix is based upon the cartridge reader that Brick has in the back of his neck. He simply plugs in the cart and then he's all like Whoa, I know Final Fantasy.

Well, that or GameFAQs. Because yes, honestly, who the hell has that kind of free time? I do not think less of him. Besides, cool infographic!