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

I just want everyone to realize the fact that solo thief is the run that broke Brickroad. I hope that says something, folks.

*weeps*

These LPs are the Best Things Ever. Dude, thanks.



P.S. IKA + RUGA PLZ

Party of Monk, Monk, Monk, Monk, named MOO GOO GAI PAN.

Doooo iiiiiit

I agree with Pappy about what a monk should be named: Jean.

- Eddie

Let's play Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls


Welcome to Final Fantasy: Dawn of Souls! Even before taking one single step there are some important differences between this version and the original NES version to discuss. But first:

I can think of three good reasons, actually:

1. I don't own a copy anymore, and don't have the desire to go hunting one down. (I could dig up an .iso I guess, but... mnneehhh, I'd have to use ePSXe then.)
2. Origins is not appreciably different from the original. A lot of stuff that didn't work got fixed (I think LOCK/Focus works now), but some important stuff didn't. Most notably the INT stat is still bugged, which means black and white mages are still woefully underpowered.
3. There's nothing new to show off! Unlike the questionable superdungeons in FF4/5/6 Advance, the bonus content in Dawn of Souls is actually fun and worthwhile.

So let's get into the menu and meet our heroes, eh?

Unlike the NES version, DoS actually starts your heroes with some equipment. Nothing special, just Clothes and whatever the weakest weapon they can use is. I took the liberty of buying the best gear Cornelia has to offer since that's the real measure of the party's starting stats.

Right off the bat we can see some of the stat names have been changed. I'm happy to report that all five stats now function correctly. Thank god. This means a high INT will effect how powerful spellcasting is, finally making black and white mages as powerful as they always should have been. It also means LCK actually does govern things like the ability to escape from battle and (I believe) critical hit rate.

Below that we have our four derived stats, which are affected by a character's base stats and their equipment. ATK governs how much damage a character does with a single hit, while ACC determines how many hits the can dish out. DEF reduces the amount of damage a character takes, while EVA is their ability to avoid attacks entirely.

Zach in particular, like all Warriors, is defined by his ability to use a wide variety of equipment. Zach has pretty respectable stats for combat, notably a high DEF thanks to his ability to wear Chain Mail, and both his ATK and ACC are respectable. Otherwise he's pretty basic. Of the six classes, Warriors were altered the least... it's not so much they were nerfed, but more that the fixed game mechanics gave the other classes a noticable boost, as we'll soon see.


Percy is weaker but quicker than Zach: note his awesome EVA and ACC. And - lo! - an ACC greater than 32 means Percy begins the game with the ability to score two hits! This far and away makes him the best damage dealer on the team. I'll try not to dwell on how long it took poor FUKT to get that glorious second hit, except I guess I just did. Let's move on.


BlBelt starts off pretty weak. Actually, he starts of very weak. His ATK is higher than Zach's for now, but his ACC is awful. In the original game Bl.BELTs calculated their DAMAGE score differently than other classes while unarmed; for most classes it was a function of STRENGTH, but for Bl.BELTs it was simply their level doubled. So even though Bl.BELTs had a decent STRENGTH score, it meant precisely nothing.

I don't know how ATK is calculated for Monks in DoS, but for right now, he's better off with his Nunchaku. In the NES version you didn't want to take your Bl.BELT's weapon away until he got his second hit at L10. I'll keep an eye on BlBelt's ATK and ACC to determine the best time to let him go fisticuffs. At that point he'll stop being "Zach, but with less HP" and start coming into his own as a real powerhouse.


Ika gets two extremely important buffs over his forebear. First, he draws from a pool of MP rather than spell charges. This is meaningless at L1 (he still only gets two shots of Thunder), but you will very quickly see a massive increase in the number of spells a mage can put out in this game. A more subtle side-effect of this is that spells no longer fight for slots. Remember when IKA was EYE-grinding, and was unable to cast FIR3 because it consumed the same charge as WARP? Ika won't have that problem.

Second, look at his INT stat. Hardcore! It starts high and just gets higher, which really gives his black magic some pop. In the NES version a Bl.MAGE wasn't any better at casting damage spells than a RedMAGE or even a NINJA; their only bonus was an increased number of charges. In DoS you definitely can feel the power of a dedicated mage. I believe INT even affects the usefulness of spellcasting items, which will come in handy when I start needing that Heal Staff.

Also of note: instead of separate Weapon and Armor screens, characters now have a more streamlined Equipment screen. They still get one weapon and four armor slots... they're just easier to manage now.

Well, I'm feeling generous, so let's take a look at the two Light Warriors who got left on the bench, shall we?


Here's good ol' Skub. The increased (and actually working) INT makes White Mages much more powerful than the white-robed loser BOSS and EDIT had to drag around with them. Their ATK has also been increased a tad -- not so much that they're good fighters, of course, but just enough to make their Attack command worth the time it takes to select. If RUGA had had that kind of DAMAGE, it wouldn't have taken her 100 rounds to destroy GARLAND and ASTOS.

Skub's increased healing power plus the ability to cast more spells means he could take a more standard role as the team's medic. If he were to cast Cura, people would actually notice! White Mage usefulness is also increased by another of DoS's upgrades: boss HP. Every boss in the game has had their HP doubled, quadrupled, or quintupled... to say nothing of the new uberbosses. The name of the game on the NES was to get out of a boss fight before it could kill you. That's not possible anymore, so the ability to buff and heal becomes crucial.

In short: my team's lack of a White Mage is actually a weakness for them. I'll patch the holes as best I can with spellcasting items, but there's just no substitute for a dedicated White Mage in this version.


Finally we have Ikruga, who has been notably toned down. His high derived stats are a little deceptive: he can use Cornelia's best weapon and armor. But look at those base stats, especially that INT. The Red Mage now assumes the role it was always meant to have: jack-of-all-trades, master of none. They're still powerful in the early game, but they get outshined by their comrades pretty quickly. This is especially noticable in the bonus dungeons, where it's better to have a well-balanced party than a single well-balanced character.


Elsewhere in the menu we find a few more nice upgrades, such as the ability to dash. Yay! The dudes in FF1 NES walk so slowly.


Here we have the Bestiary, which keeps track of all the monsters we've killed. It's fun to flip through, and is actually pretty helpful in learning the game, since it keeps track of enemy stats and weaknesses.


HOT PINK WINDOWS, TALKING TIME! Whaddaya say?

Okay, I'm done screwing around. We can start playing for real now.

Well, okay, the first thing you do in Dawn of Souls is go kill Garland. So let's do that.


Whoops, this version doesn't let you do that. Uh, okay, back to town I guess.


♪♪ Shop ♪♪

The shop interface is noticably improved. I like the cute little shop maps, and I like that the menu not only shows you who can equip an item but also whether or not it's an improvement for them. The description box is nice too, since it clues you in to spellcasting items.

Zach and Percy both get Rapiers; BlBelt gets a Nunchaku. Ika starts with a Knife, but doesn't really need it, since he has his magic. You also get 100 gil more than in the NES version, and item costs are reduced a bit. Some people say this serves to make the game far easier; I say it helps bring shopping more in line with what we've come to expect with the rest of the series.


The improvements continue on the new equipment screen. It now looks like something from a modern FF game, where you get to see your stats change in real time as you swap gear around. You also get a handy dandy Optimal button! I don't like using this feature when I play games... nothing against it, just a personal preference. But it's hard to argue against a nice, easy "fire and forget" option for players who aren't as into dicking around with numbers as I am.


The magic shop is better too, although not by the same leaps and bounds. Even on the NES it wasn't possible to buy spells for heroes that can't cast them. Still, it's nice for new players to see a list of what classes can cast the spells for sale, and the description bar telling you exactly what each spell does helps mitigate nonsense like "FOG? LAMP? AMUT? What the hell do these do?"

I'm willing to bet cash money at least one new player got to this screen and said, "Ninja!? This game has ninjas!? Awesome! When do I get a ninja!?"


It's not possible to leave Cornelia once you're done shopping; the exits are blocked by guards who are tasked with railroading you into the plot. Don't worry, the game is no more linear than ever. You can still do crazy stuff like fight the big bads out of order and raid endgame dungeons hours before you're "supposed to".

I think I'll try to stick closer to the actual story for this LP, since the game's going to try and hold my hand through it anyway.


♪♪ Castle Cornelia ♪♪

The king tells his same old sob story about how mean ol' Garland spirited his daughter off to tie her to some train tracks or whatever. I don't have the heart to tell him just how many folks I've personally seen match Garland over the years.

In any case, conversations can be longer than one dialogue box now. This is a double-edged sword; on one hand there were some points that were sorely in need of expanding. DoS does a better job making sense of the whole Time Loop gobbledegook, for example. In other cases, though, the brevity of the NES version is preferable. Did we really need the king to tell us "please save my daughter from the bad man" in like six different ways? I submit we did not sir.

The weaselly bastard next to the throne is the Cornelian chancellor. Like every chancellor in every RPG ever, his job is to doubt our abilities and scoff at the notion we could do... whatever weird crystal thing needs doing. He therefore decides to send us on a suicide mission against this Garland fellow -- no doubt like the countless teams of "Light Warriors" before us -- to test our mettle. In the off-chance we actually succeed, he'll green-light the repairs to the bridge leading to Pravoka.


Not every change was for the better. Dawn of Souls doesn't feature an invisible woman. =(

Enough of this boring ol' castle. Let's get out there and monster it up.


♪♪ Battle ♪♪

As you can see, combat has been brought up to modern standards. Most notably the ITEM and DRINK commands have been combined into one screen, like every FF game from 4 onwards. I've never found inventory management to be a very exciting aspect of jRPGs; I much prefer to collect all my junk in a communal inventory where I don't have to worry about it.

One effect this has on FF1 is how spellcasting items are used. Now, instead of each person being limited in what they can carry, everyone has access to all my gadgets, all the time. Zach can use the Heal Staff one round and Percy the next, if that's what I need to have happen. Once you select an item to be used, though, nobody else can touch it that round. So you can't game the system by telling everyone to take turns waving your Heal Staff. (You could, though, if you actually owned four Heal Staffs.)


Each character also now has an Equip screen, where they can swap their gear mid-battle. This is instant and does not consume their turn. Weapons in the NES version didn't have elemental properties, so there was no drawback to keeping your fellas armed with the strongest weapons they could find. Those elemental attributes aren't bugged in DoS, though, and the Equip command allows Zach and Percy take advantage of various enemy weaknesses.


No more endless screens of messages popping up all over the place; we've got the standard bouncing numbers now. The "1 Hit" over BlBelt's head lets me know that 28 damage he just dealt out was the result of a single hit...


...whereas here we see Percy dealing 20 damage over the course of two hits. You might see this and conclude that BlBelt is currently stronger, but it's not true. If he misses, he misses entirely; zero damage. Percy, on the other hand, is very unlikely to miss with both of his hits. His "miss" will still do about 10 damage. Plus, Percy gets twice as many criticals as BlBelt does. Right now, unless Ika were to hit an elemental weakness, Percy is definitely my best damage dealer.

Well, onward to see this Garl-- hello, what's this? This cave wasn't here when FUKT passed this way earlier!


Hmm... Earthgift Shrine, eh? I'm informed by the cave's resident dwarf that the shrine has been blocked off ever since the earth started decaying. Sure enough, there seems to be a curiously Lich-shaped statue in the way. Well, nothing I can do here for now.


Whoa, level-ups already!? Well, yeah -- the next big change DoS makes is to smooth out the experience curve a bit. In FF1 you got only a few level-ups over the course of the game, capping out at L50. DoS caps out at L99, so you end up gaining a lot more levels over the natural course of your adventuring.

If your jaw is currently in a more-or-less dropped state, it's probably over the huge boost Ika received to his MP. He went from being able to cast two Thunders to five in a single level! His granddaddy IKA didn't get five shots of L1 magic until L7! This is slightly misleading, of course; at L7 IKA could also cast L2 and L3 magic, while Ika is still limited to L1. The total number of spells each mage had access to at any given time probably remains about the same... the difference is that most of IKA's spells were worthless to him.

I'm wording this poorly. Let me try again. At any specific moment in the game, a Black Mage really only has a few spells he wants to cast. LIT2/Thundara makes LIT/Thunder obsolete, right? The difference is that once IKA learned LIT2, his LIT charges become worthless and may as well not exist. When Ika learns Thundara, however, his old Thunder "charges" can just be used to cast Thundara instead.

(Plus, because Ika has the benefit of working INT, Thunder doesn't really become obsolete if he just needs to hit a single target. But that's another discussion.)

The argument against this change goes something like, "FF1's spell charge system was unique! It gave the game its own flavor! Boring MP is boring!" And I suppose that's a valid viewpoint, if you like to spend the game carrying around a bunch of worthless spells that will never do you any good. Enjoy all those charges of ICE, fatty! Meanwhile, my black mage will actually be doing something. IKA didn't have a team, but if he did, his job would have been to do absolutely nothing until the boss fight, then use up his few useful charges. Ika is going to be casting spells constantly.


The awesome upgrades just keep coming! DoS allows you to save anywhere you want, and gives you three files. FF1 NES let you save one game at a time, and only in towns or on the overworld. There's a reason IKA had to run the goddamn Ice Cave fifty-some times.

"But Brick! Doesn't that mean you can just savescum your way through those dungeons?"

Well, sure, if you want to look at it that way. I don't, though. The interesting part of solo challenges especially is figuring out how to win the unwinnable fights. The time you spend tweaking your gameplay so you can get through LICH is the fun part, not the time you spend replaying the first three Earth Cave floors because you got petrified.

Besides, if a game over doesn't mean having to replay an entire dungeon, the player is more likely to explore the nooks and crannies of said dungeon. Finding treasure is fun, even if it's not particularly useful treasure. And you know, the myriad other little gameplay tweaks mean you're far less likely to die due to bizarre random happenstance in this version.

In more general terms, though, I've just pretty much had my fill of losing an hour's progress in a game because I happened to die. It was always something I just put up with because that's how things were. Well, that's not how things are anymore.

You hear me, Persona 3? Final Fantasy is smarter than you.


Level-ups in the Chaos Shrine! Remember how Nintendo Power said to get to L3 before taking on GARLAND? Well, now the game is balanced so that'll happen naturally.


The good ol' Cap is now the Leather Cap. It's +1 DEF/-1 EVA trade-off makes sense for Zach, who tends to have a low EVA anyway. This is a trend that will continue through the game. As Zach piles on more and more armor it'll become easier and easier to hit him, but he'll take so little damage and have so many HPs that it won't matter.


♪♪ Mini Boss Battle ♪♪
I love it when translators leave in the old bad lines purely for old coots like me who appreciate them. I like to think there's a bit of spoony bard in all of us.

If you're keeping up with the music, you'll be delighted to find that while the NES version had one never-changing battle song, DoS adds a few original compositions for the various degrees of boss battles. When I first heard these I was very impressed with how well I felt they fit in with FF1's soundtrack overall. I wonder if anyone's tried to "de-make" them with NES-style chiptunes.


Nothing new to report about the Garland fight, though Percy here is showing off another DoS upgrade: useful Potions. In FF1 NES HEALs only restored 30 HP on the map screen, and usually less when used in battle. Now they're worth 50 HPs, guaranteed. Yet another thing that would have made FUKT's hellish fights against GARLAND and the PIRATEs bearable.


Whereas the NES version's magic was limited to differently-shaped blobs of brightly-colored fuzz, DoS features all new spell animations. Here's Ika showing off his Thunder spell.


Ika quickly burns through his MP, so it's up to Percy to bring the majority of the party's damage. Garland has no new attacks or tricks, but his HP was doubled, so having someone capable of two hits is a blessing.


Finishing off Garland is worth another level-up!

♪♪ Castle Cornelia ♪♪

As always, the princess helpfully warps us all back to the castle. She does this automatically after Garland crumbles away, which is a nice perk. No more embarrassing "welp I saved the princess but then a CREEP eated me" deaths.

The rewards are the same, though: a bridge and a lute.


The Chancellor seems to have come around on this whole "Light Warrior" idea, too, letting me know there's a helpful NPC in town to help orient me if I'm ever at a loss for what to do. Cornelia becomes the de-facto home base for the Light Warriors for much of the early game, so it was the natural spot for a hint machine. I already knew the game inside and out by the time I got around to Dawn of Souls, so I never actually kept up with the dancing girl, but considering one of the main complaints about FF1 is that it's hard to know what you're supposed to be doing I think this is a nice perk. I'll visit her from time to time and see what she has to say.

Meanwhile...



"Aren't the Light Warriors supposed to have flippers?"

The bridge-building scene is really cute. The soldiers pretty much stand in place waving their arms around while the bridge magically grows back. It reminds me of how airship repairs are accomplished in FF4. "What in sam hill are you doing? That's no way to fix a decoupled engine manifold! It's hop twice, spin once, you dunderhead!"


Back in town, the dancing girl indeed has been retooled to help keep me on task. In addition, the Inn is now full of tutorial guys to ease the troubled minds of newbies by teaching them how to equip weapons and use items etc.


Out of stuff to do in Cornelia, it's time to cross that bridge. Once we're subjected to the familiar old still image and flowery pep talk, we can put the prologue behind us. Though the world is shrouded in darkness, the futures of Zach, Percy, BlBelt and Ika are very bright indeed.

Next: "Ye've got cannon balls of steel!"

It is a great LP indeed when my only complaint is lack of capitals.

My only complaint about your avatar is that I don't have any complaints about it.

Even though I never took to the original FF (I'm working through it on my iPhone, though!), watching a Brickroad LP is like hearing a favourite song.

I had no idea the first-generation THIEF was so useless. None at all. I just...well, why did Square release a game wherein half the stats and elemental attributes didn't work?

I guess the company was on the brink of bankruptcy and probably beyond giving a shit. But if Nintendo was so desperate to help the first Final Fantasy "take" in America, why didn't they fix it? Part of the reason I disliked the first FF so badly as a kid was because it seemed way off balance compared to my baby, Dragon Warrior III.

Man, Brick, you're making me come around to liking DoS the most of all versions of FF1.

How did that happen? Stop being so enthusiastic!
Though it is the one I replay the most due to how breezy it is.

While mages have more "charges" per say in DoS, does the game make MP restoration fairly cheap/easy?

One of the things I really dislike in typical RPGs is that many of them balance "magic" characters around doing similar to slightly higher damage then the melee characters, but shaft them on MP restoration. I actually REALLY like that FF13 did away with all that entirely. It really lets each class stand out on their own without you ever worrying that they'll peter out too easially.

Dito on the FFXIII mage-thing. I always abuse the hell out of free-spell items because I'm cheap and like to save all my MP for boss battles. I'm also curious how I'll like the Four Warriors charge system.

The funniest thing about INT in the NES version is that it doesn't actually seem to be a "glitch" or a "bug" at all. With most of the bugs, it's a matter of the game calling the wrong value. Critical hits call the weapon index instead of crit rate, the FLEE formula calls another character's status byte instead of level, and so on. But the INT bug is not like that; nothing even tries to call it. None of the formulas have anywhere for it to go. There's no indication anywhere in the code what INT is actually supposed to do!

It represents how smart your character is, duh.
It's really pretty abstract.

I try to avoid casters altogether whenever possible. Did most of Tactics Advance with non-casters, and only used casters in A2 because blood price+doublecast+summoning is absolutely broken.

I have this unnatural love for "balanced" parties. Even when it would be better to go with all fighters and maybe one fighter, I prefer to take a fighter, black mage, white mage and something fun (usually a thief when they can actually steal). It's just more fun for me to have variety than to be powerful, and I always like to check out all the spell animations.

Well, there's always the Tactics Ogre system, where MP starts at 0 and ticks up. Better MP system or BEST MP system?

I've always avoided DoS because everyone has always told me it's gimped and broken, yet you say it's fixed and balanced.

I don't know what to believe any more.

There's no teeth to it anymore though, ignoring the remaining bugs that weren't fixed in the Origins version. Even with boss HP multiplied several times over, nothing's terribly challenging, even most of the secret dungeon bosses if you've been diligent about picking up all the magical gear and whatever.

Of course, most of the challenge of FF1 NES is in placing limits on yourself, knowingly or not. Just making the decision to put a THIEF or Wh.MAGE in your party increases the challenge by virtue of those classes being utterly terrible.

I don't think a brand new player would find DoS to be "without teeth", since at its core it is still Final Fantasy which means it still has a pretty tough learning curve. New players are more likely to stick with it, too, since the game is much friendlier overall.

Holy crap, dude. I'm the crazy nutjob who got sick of this game after 100%ing the Bestiary and murdering Chaos's face off with the new weapons from the bonus dungeons with an all Lv.99 party due to those gallons of EXP I got, and your words combined with all the "getting wiped out" I've done in the glitchy NES game makes me wanna pick up the GBA cart again. O.O;

Thief and Wh.Mage usually make up half of my choice FF1 group most of the time, the other half being Fighter and Blk.Mage. I'm very tempted to replay DoS FF1 Forever Red style to give it a difficulty boost when I get to replaying it, actually.

Well I know what I believe in: Brickroad. Time to pick up DoS in the near future.

I came back to these forums for this LP.

Me too.

I think Brickroad's point here is that the challenge in OG FF1 is because the game is buggy and broken, and if the bugs and poor design had been fixed it'd be a good deal easier. Do I have that right?

Why would you guys ever leave?

I don't think it's the bugs that make it harder, though they're harder on some classes (like Thief) than others (pretty much everyone else gets a big advantage from the crit as weapon index bug). Rather the MP system and working Int stat makes casters a bit more balanced.

I don't know that spell charges are bad design on their own, but since only about a dozen spells are actually worth using it does make the magic system sort of flawed.