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I'm playing through all of Final Fantasy, and everyone is invited (Playing Lightning Returns now)
- Thread starter FelixSH
- Start date
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- final fantasy
I wonder if the devs were expecting you to use Yang's elemental claws here and if they overestimated how much damage those can do?
I guess you didn't review Brickroad's LP because those Ogres are vulnerable to some status spells which can (somewhat) easily win the fight for you.
They're maybe not that scary but the worst could be the flocks of vampire bats and the long drawn out animation for their blood suck attack.
I think that was a giant blade in the Japanese version but that was censored out of the US version. Either way it is still a pretty cartoon or comic book villain thing to do
You might be remembering the boss that comes right after it.
No worries. I read it as sincere.
Yep, on the whole FFIIUS is much easier than IV Hardtype. It's more than just stripping out a lot of the items and special abilities, enemy stats and AI is generally much friendlier.
I never quite understood why the translators changed the Four Fiends' names. Okay, so they didn't really change Rubicante's name, and they just anglicized Cagnazzo into "Kainazzo". Now that I think about it, Scarmiglione was probably just shortened; abbreviated from "Scar-Milon" to just "Milon".
...
Okay, so how'd they get from Barbariccia to Valvalis?
Unless the translators were working with Katakana, which they almost certainly were, and B syllables use the same kana as V syllables, and same with Rs and Ls...
...
Huh.
...
Okay, so how'd they get from Barbariccia to Valvalis?
Unless the translators were working with Katakana, which they almost certainly were, and B syllables use the same kana as V syllables, and same with Rs and Ls...
...
Huh.
FelixSH
(He/Him)
I wanted, but as mentioned, the pictures are gone. Made it pretty pointless, to read it. Considering that some of the pics are still there (like Deptfords version of Cids portrait), it's probably a case of pictures that are caught behind a paywall, at whatever site it was that made that change some years ago.
I was mainly scared of the Ogres, because I thought they were the same as the ones in the treasure chest in that castle. Didn't realize, that they had a special title and were therefore different, stronger versions.
No, I remember that one as a separate fight, because I definitely used a savestate after the evil puppets. I probably saves-stated my way through the whole fight - that only Rydia and Cecil were standing, scared me too much, and I definitely didn't want to repeat the battle against the puppet. I do remember, that it always has been a place were I had to grind levels, and try again. Maybe it will be different, next time.
Also, I forgot to ask: Did anyone think the game would be over, when you were brought the the Tower of Zot, on the way to rescue Rosa and meet (and ideally defeat) Golbez? I mean, it seems pretty obvious now that there would be more - there still were two Fiends left, it wasn't clear who talked to Cecil when he became a Paladin, stuff like that. But as a kid, I can imagine that this would have seemed like the final dungeon to me. Golbez has the four crystals, after all.
conchobhar
What's Shenmue?
I decided to play this too. I really wasn't planning to— I think I mentioned earlier in the thread that FF4 is the one Final Fantasy game I don't really care for— but I've been enjoying reading Felix's impressions, and, well, it just seemed like I ought to give it another shot. I've only played FF4 once before, several years ago, at a point when I had little experience with (or fondness for) the series as a whole… so, now that I'm a bona-fide fan, it became a prime candidate for a re-evaluation. I'm not expecting for it to suddenly become a favourite, but hopefully I'll come away with a certain appreciation for it. I'm playing the GBA version, since I enjoy its visuals and overall presentation the most.
I'll save my final thoughts until I'm done, but but some initial impressions:
I'll save my final thoughts until I'm done, but but some initial impressions:
- This is a very brisk game! Just over the weekend, I made it from the beginning of the game to Troia— encompassing Cecil's entire tenure as a Dark Knight and his transformation into a Paladin, battles against two of the Four Fiends, Palom and Porom's entire screentime, and several party shake-ups. I know the previous games were plenty quick too (I commented as such about FF3, even) but it feels even quicker here; I think it might be because this game devotes more attention to its story, so zooming through events is more noticeable.
- This game owes quite a lot to FF3. Some of that I touched on before: how the cast here are built from FF3's jobs, or how some of the key plot points here were presaged there; but there's also that "easter egg hunt" style of town design, and I think FF4's prospensity for shaking up the party composition has a lot in common with FF3's effectively forcing different jobs onto the player at different points— different method, but similar result.
- It's been twelve years and I still can't hear the Four Fiends theme without the lyrics
No, the pics are still there, and hosted on his personal site, it looks like. I viewed the page source and when I manually navigate to the embedded image URLs they work just fine. Ex:
@Mogri , any ideas?
I'm joining the FFIV-a-thon in playing my favourite version: the DS remake.
I'm one among those who in relative terms isn't all that hot on the game, but I make an exception for the remake which turns Final Fantasy IV into something I actually kind of adore. There are bigger and smaller reasons for why that distinction matters for my overall takeaway, so I'll just lay out some things that stick out as I become reacquainted with it, in addition to general blather about the material. I'm just past Mount Ordeals as of now.
That's most of what I've been thinking about so far. Maybe more will come to me later, and maybe not. This remake is just very special to me because I recognize my own preferences and those usually land on the side of original, older work when remakes and such are concerned, and here it's the opposite. They had to get something very right to pull that off.
I'm one among those who in relative terms isn't all that hot on the game, but I make an exception for the remake which turns Final Fantasy IV into something I actually kind of adore. There are bigger and smaller reasons for why that distinction matters for my overall takeaway, so I'll just lay out some things that stick out as I become reacquainted with it, in addition to general blather about the material. I'm just past Mount Ordeals as of now.
- if there's one thing that marks the remake and its reputation for good or for ill, it's its general level of difficulty. FFIV for all its limitations in party composition and customization met that high level of player direction with an assortment of stiff or novel RPG puzzle encounters (and thus FFXIII is its closest kin and successor in that respect) that afforded the restrictions in playstyle a constant feeling of stakes to be met, and so the game rarely had to spin its wheels to entertain with its mechanics; it's a setpiece rollercoaster as much as any game in the genre has ever embodied, and the challenges therein contributed to those thrills. The remake's insight in addressing those "solved" puzzles by legions of past players was simply to change the most complex questions posed by the bosses, and quiz the players on a more consistent and stricter basis outside of them for good measure. It's a meaner game, but not without cause, as the demands of play are met with interesting coping mechanisms in making full use of the repertoire of limited but quietly diverse options available. Previously superfluous status effects that the series traditionally ignores become crucial to survival, and ancillary support moves previously seen as flavour may now form the backbone of integral strategies. The stable character roles are allowed doubling-down on strengths or expansion into niche permutations through the Augment system, an obscure-to-acquire but pragmatically a very satisfying way to further define the characters as distinct members of the rotating party's functions. Even convenience features like the auto-battle have mechanical value outside of their surface premise, as each character can assign their own specific action to the toggle, and thus access one more verb during battle that may not have fit into the ability pool otherwise, through an interface loophole of sorts. There's nothing wrong with the original game being as breezy as it is to play, but I find equal and likely enhanced enjoyment in being pushed to interact with its compact systems to their limits through the balancing approach of the remake, and it's a very uncommon move for a mass appeal series and game like this to do, so I value it all the more.
- another big thing for me is the writing quality and tone thereof. FFIV is probably one of the most localized games ever just through sheer variety of script treatments available, both professional and fan-created, and the results vary hugely between them. I respect Kaoru Moriyama's work on the initial SNES release, for packing a lot of meaning and character into limited space, and side-eye some of the writing decisions in the PS1 and GBA scripts while appreciating the increasing clarity and coherence in storytelling, but for me it doesn't get any better than the work Tom Slattery did on the DS game's localization. I have heard the argument that because FFIV is a "fundamentally" childish game and story its language should reflect that, and while I can follow the reasoning in that rhetoric it stems from a reading of the game that I think both undervalues it narratively and mischaracterizes it. The breakthrough that FFIV represents to me in its series is that it's a hypercommitted melodrama to its core, like nothing before it and frankly, like nothing that would follow. The issue that kind of label can raise is that often in common discourse we're not conditioned to perceive "melodramatic" as a plainly descriptive term but as an inherent pejorative; something to avoid in storytelling and escape from lest it tarnish what makes up Good Stories to us and the rules set down in realizing them. In this context, we can return to that prior thesis that FFIV should be met textually on its level, and Slattery's approach to the writing is just that: grandiose, dramatic, and deeply fun its commitment to a theatric expression of language without approaching the deliberate self-seriousness or florid stylings of a Yasumi Matsuno script treatment (a distinction that's directly discernible through Slattery's work on the contemporary War of the Lions script). It's not linguistically broken, it's not crudely informal, and it's not peppered with referentialisms in pursuit of cheeky levity--it's just an emotionally intense adaptation of material that deserved nothing less.
- the visual presentation to me is really staggeringly accomplished in the remake. Pixel art tends to be shielded from a level of criticism that other video game art mediums and styles are subjected to, so even though FFIV probably isn't many people's favourite set of RPG visuals on the system or in its series, in relative terms it's probably more often given the edge between it and its largely polygonal remake, created for underpowered handheld technology. To me it's those very limitations that make the DS version so captivating to witness, as they maintain authenticity where they will--like in the scale of the battles scenes--while expanding the presentation's nature in others, previously unreachable ways that come off as overachieving for the platform. The cinematics especially are just stunning because they are very intimately and densely directed, with lively camerawork and framing, situational lighting to suit the mood, characters emoting via body language and animated expressions both, and every other directorial tool of the trade possible. Their almost incongruous level of craft might be explicated by who worked on them, as the storyboarding for them was done by influential animator Yoshinori Kanada, who had made his name in extremely well-regarded traditional animation for decades on, and had worked on Square and Square Enix projects usually in this very storyboarding capacity up until his death in 2009, with a credit in that role for Final Fantasy XIII remaining one of his last. Other aspects of the visuality that I find so compelling are minute and detail-oriented, so a short list of such observations may include:
- animated battle backgrounds, with clouds rolling by, water trickling down a cavern wall, or mist swirling about.
- a general sense of liveliness in the interface and how the characters themselves interact with it: characters pose and acknowledge potential equipment picks in the store window; they pick themselves up after being restored to consciousness or when cured of their ailments; the visible equipment changes are immediately presented on the screen through their models.
- the narrative significance of Tellah's stat-downs at level-up are better communicated here than in any other version as status changes are all clearly laid out in the results screen upon reaching a new level, thus improving the narrative potency of a character whose arc is highly wrapped up in the intersectionality between textual and mechanical storytelling.
- more of a personal fixation than anything but the DS era of video game text and typefaces is some of my most fondly regarded: razor-sharp pixelated fonts conveyed through the pleasing LCD pixel grid of the system not only results in sheer legibility but an aesthetical high-point for the written word in many cases, and FFIV is beautiful to just read along with on that basis. It wasn't so long ago that FF ports were known for their extremely attractive interfaces instead of the modern inverse.
- they totally kept the wave-form pop of the damage numbers in battle, one of the most distinctive visual signatures of the original game. Animations in general are very impressive as enemies writhe and gesticulate menacingly while sticking to the overall silhouette of their iconic frames; the player characters meanwhile have new nuances like unique critical hit animations. The decision to maintain the traditional side view during regular encounters while transitioning to an over-the-shoulder view for bosses not only caters to both preferences but amplifies the drama and tension of the battles most in need of it, complete with the slow zoom-out from the adversary in question.
- shifting the controllable character on the field screen is not only a welcome feature maintained from the original, but with it comes one of the game's most compelling narrative methods that it employs: that of the internal monologues communicated through thought bubbles for the character in question as the menu screen is entered. It's nowhere near the scale or verbosity of something like Dragon Quest's party talk conventions, but it befits what kind of story FFIV is and how its characters are best understood: as colourful, single-minded archetypes, and the brief glimpses into that interiority for each support such an uncomplicated view of them by highlighting and emphasizing their respective arcs that the immediate narrative word doesn't linger on, and neither does this supplementary material beyond literal stray thoughts. It's fleeting and evocative in the best and most apt way.
- while the general art direction including the character models themselves are credited to Akira Oguro, I feel compelled to highlight another part of the equation in background art director Airi Yoshioka. Yoshioka's career at Square spans at least a decade, nearly all of it in creating background art for some of the studio's handsomest games, from SaGa Frontier 2 to Final Fantasy IX to Final Fantasy XII. After her departure in 2009, her name's popped up in similar conceptual creative capacity in works like Ever Oasis and The Alliance Alive. In addition to her environmental art duties, she created a number of spectacular promotional pieces for this remake, showcasing her aptitude in capturing the essence of the cast as well as the world they inhabited. All of the art throughout this post is by her.
- I know some can't bear to skip the stirrings of Prologue as heard in the opening FMV title screen of FFXII, or maybe they're into the subdued melancholies of FFVII's rendition of Prelude--the point is that there are plenty of attention-grabbers through mood, music or anything inbetween in this series as a game is booted up. This remake provides a definite high point in the opening cinematic montage that it concocts to showcase what is to follow, and best exemplifies the series-codifying thrills that make this game as beloved as it is through the sheer strength of the imagery involved. Sometimes people look down their noses at the Square Enix style of CGI pizzazz but I've been and remain a proponent of the dazzle, especially when applied to anachronistic contexts like this. The reveal shot of Golbez and the Four Fiends is just money.
~~~
That's most of what I've been thinking about so far. Maybe more will come to me later, and maybe not. This remake is just very special to me because I recognize my own preferences and those usually land on the side of original, older work when remakes and such are concerned, and here it's the opposite. They had to get something very right to pull that off.
Rydia and Rosa equipped for Wisdom/Will? She knows what's up!
- while the general art direction including the character models themselves are credited to Akira Oguro, I feel compelled to highlight another part of the equation in background art director Airi Yoshioka. Yoshioka's career at Square spans at least a decade, nearly all of it in creating background art for some of the studio's handsomest games, from SaGa Frontier 2 to Final Fantasy IX to Final Fantasy XII. After her departure in 2009, her name's popped up in similar conceptual creative capacity in works like Ever Oasis and The Alliance Alive. In addition to her environmental art duties, she created a number of spectacular promotional pieces for this remake, showcasing her aptitude in capturing the essence of the cast as well as the world they inhabited. All of the art throughout this post is by her.
Fyonn
did their best!
Extremely agree that Slattery's localization was the best one. Literally the difference for me is that I find FFIV GBA tedious and generic and find the DS (and now Steam version, which cuts the difficulty down) to be a compelling enough narrative to push me through the majority of the game despite suffering through its difficulty less than gracefully.
Wild what a little drama can do for a story.
Wild what a little drama can do for a story.
4-So
Spicy
FF4/FF2US is my favorite FF game and it absolutely read like Shakespeare to an 11-year old me. If I put my Critics Hat on, sure, I think holistically there are better entries in the series but you always love your first. (Technically, FF1 was my first but that's a story for another time.)
conchobhar
What's Shenmue?
Slattery's translation is undeniably the best take on the game, but I don't have a problem with the references in the GBA script. If I were a translator and on this project, I don't think they're ones I'd make, but they're integrated into the script well: they're only detectable as references by people who get the joke. Putting aside the joke it's making, "I'll bet you and your goons wrecked them [my airships] up something awful" is still a pretty good line on its own merits: it's idiomatic and fun, and establishes the sort of guy Cid is and the relationship he has with Cecil. I don't think anything was hurt by that inclusion there.
FelixSH
(He/Him)
Thanks for taking a look. That's weird, but maybe I'll take a look through the sourcecode later on.
Glad to have you on board, again (and also that you like my write-ups, thanks
). It's nice that you play the GBA version, that means you can talk about differences in difficulty (if you like, of course). Just in general, I'd be interested in points where the game gets hard.As I mentioned, it's also not one of my favourites. But even then, there is a lot to appreciate about this game. It's a very well done game.
Totally. I'm probably in the last third of the game, haven't even played ten hours, but a crazy amount of stuff has happened. There is so much packed into it, and it seems so fast because there are so many little things to remember.
I did not know that there were lyrics. I wished they had them in the Theatrhythm version of the song, it's great. Thanks for showing me.
Cool, glad to have you here, too.
Thanks for the excellent write-up. The pictures are all great, I especially like the last one with the whole group.
As I mentioned, I thought some time about which version to play and learned through Legends of Localizations about all the different versions. If anyone doesn't know about the site, check it out, there are a ton of articles about translation decisions. The linked article is about the different versions of FF IV.
If it were purely about the best translation, I would have chosen the DS / Steam version, but that one fell out because of the gameplay differences. But, and this might be my lack in deeper English skills, I have a hard time reading this translation. The flowery language sounds good, but it is hard to decipher for me.
You are certainly not alone with this. One of the things I find so off-putting about the Steam versions of the FF games is the ugly font. You have these fantastical adventures, with a text font that looks like from a business letter, or something equally boring. It clashes too much for me, more than it probably should. I'm always surprised, how much of a turn-off it is.
Thanks for commenting and doing write-ups, everyone.
------------------------------------
Where was I? Oh, right, going underground, on my way to kill a bunch of horrible dolls.
The first thing that happens is, that we get into a battle between the dwarfs tanks and the Red Wings. And suddenly, we are without an airship again.
Using different vehicles and taking some of your mobility actively away, is another thing that this game really shares with FF III. There is technically no reason, not to let you keep the airship. Sure, you would need to invent another reason why the Tower of Babel is off-limits, but that should be trivial. No, here it is just something that happens to serve the story. I appreciate that, even though it made me save in a different save file, in case I am too weak to survive here.
Or maybe not. I remember losing against the doll, and having to grind slowly one or two levels down here. Which surprises me - neither the battle against Calbrena, nor the one against Golbez, was particularly hard (though I had a bit of luck in the latter case).
But first things first - dwarfs never felt quite right with me in these games. They have their own spin, with their invisible faces and creepy, shining eyes, but, considering that it's the only Tolkien race in these games, they always felt a bit too generically fantasy to me. Not much of a problem, it felt just a bit weird.
I do love how there is this little line about the princess missing her dolls gives you a small hint about things to come, and than you see that doll jumping behind the wall of the throne room, like it is mocking everyone. It helps that I find dolls creepy in general, so I always get a small horror vibe from this. It's obvious, that something isn't right here.
The battle, as mentioned, wasn't hard. But it has one of my favourite scenes, with the return of Rydia who just kills Golbez' dragon with one spell, after said dragon nearly killed us all. Rydia was always my favourite character of the game, and I do like her design (well, the version in my head that is not so weirdly revealing. Sigh). Just these long sleeves look so cool to me. The whole second part of the battle feels really intense and cool, and it makes her look like a badass, when she comes, kills that horrifying dragon and then makes us able to defeat our mortal enemy.
I had a curious thing happen to me. When Calbrena forms completely, she can charm characters. Which she did, Yang was charmed when she died. Then, Golbez came and killed everyone. I was able to revive everyone, and they all had only a small amount of HP left, like it's normal in such a case. Except for Yang, whose HP were nearly full. So, the charm somehow made him not lose HP, when the dragon killed him.
Golbez was actually really easy. I think there was a scary time right at the start, but it wasn't hard to revive Rosa, slow him down and then revive the others. I think no one else died, and especially with the Mist Dragon (a great summon, by the way), the battle was over pretty fast.
We get a nice reunion. And then, the Hand happens. It was great.
I wonder why Rydia lost her white magic. She doesn't seem driven by vengeance or hate, and she clearly has the capability to cast all three types of magic. I guess she focused solely on offensive magic, as she learned during her travels that you needed to actually defeat your enemies, to survive. And, I guess, she didn't want to feel so helpless again, as she did when her mother died.
I do find it funny, that Golbez can just teleport into the Crystal Room. So, is this like that Dragonball teleportation technic, where he just needs to feel one person he knows, and he teleported to...Calbrena...? But these are dwarfs, they use tanks, I guess there is no magical field around the room, to keep magical enemies away.
Then, we actually do something clever. Instead of going to get the last crystal (which is supposed to be absolutely save), we try to get the unguarded Crystals back that Golbez already has. I like that. I mean, I know we do the "Get the McGuffin, so that the enemy can steal it" later on, but still. It's nice that they tried to go for something a bit more clever.
I remember the Tower of Babel as another hard dungeon, which it, again, wasn't. It actually was super easy, because everyone in my team was a monster at this point, and killed everything in one hit. Especially Yang, double especially if he is berserked, does tons of damage. I just wished Rosas bows were stronger, but at least she is a super-good White Mage. And Rydia is a badass, who has the best spell (Virus).
At the top, we see Rubante for the first time, but only fight against Dr. Lugae. For some reason, he never felt like he belonged in this game. He feels too much of a sci-fi character, and actually felt a lot like a proto version of FF VIIs Hojo. Considering what he does to Edges parents, I feel like that can't be a coincidence. The battle itself is goofy and fun (can anyone tell me what Gas is supposed to do? It never did anything), but that guy really rubs me the wrong way, he feels too dystopian-creepy for me.
Appearantly, Rubicante has already brought the Crystals above ground, and we now have to stop a super-cannon from completely wiping the dwarfs out. Which leads to another sacrificial scene. Seeing Yang go made me very sad (even though I don't quite understand why he pushed us outside the room. Did he expect the controls to blow up, when he destroyed them?).
Yang is an interesting case, in that he feels fully formed from the get-go. Like, this is not his main adventure, even if he starts of by having lost a ton of his men. But he has no development on his own, and still SEEMS like he is already developed. I really like that he has a wife, who seems pretty cool, and that there is no drama between them. Dunno, I really like Yang, it just feels like he is only a guest character, whose own story just touches on this one. Similar to Hercules, who traveled for some time with the Argonauts, but whose own story was a different one. At least I think that happend, it's a long time since I read about Greek Mythology.
When the bridge at the end of the tower explodes, we are captured by Cid. A chase scene happenes, and that one, too, strikes me as interesting. I guess I just have the feeling that, when we are in an airship, we are save. When we get attacked there, it feels like the enemy can get us everywhere, anytime.
Cid also sacrifices himself, and it's pretty great. I really like this one, he seems kind of crazy and not-caring for any sort of danger. Also, I really love the little line, that he would have wanted to meet Cecils and Rosas kids. Great guy. I really like, how these three were good friends before all this happened, at that it never changed. He also was way better in battle than I remembered him. Maybe that's just a function of not running away from battles. Which was a thing that I did very often, when I played JRPGs as a teenager.
I remember having trouble finding the hovercraft, after the hook is attached. I'm glad that I remembered it this time, but the game might have thrown a line out, to help the player find it.
At this point, my playtime was 7:18, which is insane. As mentioned above, a ton of stuff happened, it feels more like 15 hours. If nothing else, this game can really be complimented for moving so fast.
We go to the Cave of Eblan, I think because it connects to the upper part of the Tower of Babel. How does this tower work? Is the upper part not connected to the lower one? Weird construction.
Also, I know that it's called Babil in game, but I'm just guessing that this is just a translation issue. I just now realized, that I wrote it wrong, and I don't want to go through that wall of text and correct it.
We find the inhabitants of Eblan in the cave, who fled from Golbez. The king and queen were abducted, the prince is on his way to defeat Golbez, for vengeance. I think, I forgot the small details about this part.
The scene were Rubicante defeats Edge is nice. I know, Rydia is just used as a motivating factor for Edge. But I think it fits that, after having lost Cid and Yang (please note that she doesn't mention Palom and Porom, because she never met them, nice work Square), she can't bear to see another person die for no good reason.
Then Edge opens his mouth, and I wished I could get my Karate Man back.
The "fight" with his parents is great, and I just couldn't make myself attack them. Except for Kain, who I made jump before they started talking, which seems fitting. Kain seems like someone, who would hit first and ask questions later.
It's a good, touching scene, and seeing their monstrous forms make Lugae seem incredibly evil. Again, feels like something Hojo would do. This might be messed up, but I guess I'm a bit numb to death in video games (especially with these cartoon graphics). But doing horrible experiments to actual people feels so horribly terrifying.
It's nice that Rubicante has some kind of honor, and that he hates what Lugae did to Edges parents. Plus, he heals us before the fight. But still, he works for an Evil Overlord, so not too much sympathy there.
That fight was probably the hardest so far. I did tons of damage, but so did Rubicante, and his HP are pretty high, too. I never got too close to dying, but if the fight hadn't ended soon, it would have been easily possible.
I do love that he learns about the power of friendship from us, and will later on use it against us. That alone makes him one of the most competent antagonists I have ever seen.
Then the trapdoor happens (I couldn't help rolling my eyes, at this point), and I continued playing until I got the new airship. I stopped, where I started this report - near the castle of dwarf king Giott.
Not officially; he's talking about composer Kenichi Maeyamada (better known by his pseudonym Hyadain) remix of the theme, as heard here on his channel (or subtitled and illustrated here, if you can suffer worse audio quality). In a professional capacity he's done a lot of anime opening themes and such, but these video game remixes he was deep in thirteen years ago or so were a breakthrough for him and something of a fixture of that era of Internet nerd and meme culture--the same kind of environment that brought forth similar VG remix parody works like Air Man ga Taosenai, IOSYS's anthem to Etrian Odyssey's FOEs, or however many of the uncountable Touhou examples one cares to highlight. Not all of it really lands, especially if you look at something like Hyadain's Mega Man 2 remix series that's largely predicated on the notion that gay people are hilarious, but this stuff was all over nerd spaces in its time.
Most browsers disable http:// hotlinks by default, as they're not secure; so it may not be a forum software issue.
I can see Brick's screenshots and his own gifs just fine in the Archives, it's many other people's image responses that are long gone. (And also I wish I could quote those responses because the photoshops got magical.)
It amuses me coming back to IV knowing that II and III were a thing, because waaaay back then when it was a "sequel" to FF1, these dwarves felt like a natural addition taking after their channel-blasting, Adamantite-loving counterparts, even though technically they were absent for two whole games.
Their unique theme, "Dancing Calbrena", adds to the vibe. I want to think of it as the direct predecessor to Kefka's Theme.
I just absolutely love that a Paladin, a High Summoner, a White Mage/skilled Archer, a Karate Man, and a Dragoon, all stand and stare as a disembodied hand crawls all over the place, vaguely approaching the Crystal, and then actually snatches the Crystal, and not one of them thinks of grabbing it by the wrist and stuffing it in a bag.
Also what exactly about Golbez's nature allows him to be reduced to a HAND and still regenerate from it.
Is he a starfish
It amuses me coming back to IV knowing that II and III were a thing, because waaaay back then when it was a "sequel" to FF1, these dwarves felt like a natural addition taking after their channel-blasting, Adamantite-loving counterparts, even though technically they were absent for two whole games.
Their unique theme, "Dancing Calbrena", adds to the vibe. I want to think of it as the direct predecessor to Kefka's Theme.
I just absolutely love that a Paladin, a High Summoner, a White Mage/skilled Archer, a Karate Man, and a Dragoon, all stand and stare as a disembodied hand crawls all over the place, vaguely approaching the Crystal, and then actually snatches the Crystal, and not one of them thinks of grabbing it by the wrist and stuffing it in a bag.
Also what exactly about Golbez's nature allows him to be reduced to a HAND and still regenerate from it.
Is he a starfish
FelixSH
(He/Him)
I tried Firefox, and you are right, everything loads just fine there. It was just Chrome. Thanks!
Regarding the dwarfs, they ARE in FF III too. They don't even feel that way to me there. It's just here, where they just feel out of place to me.
And you are right with the dolls too, that song is weird and creepy. And totally sounds Kefka-esque. It's a great song.
conchobhar
What's Shenmue?
It's interesting you say that… I've actually been having a somewhat tough time in the game. Nothing too bad, but enemies deal a lot of damage and generally outpace my healing, so random mobs are surprisingly threatening. The Magnetic Cave was the most difficult part of the game so far: partly because Cecil has no way of attacking so my offensive capability is dramatically decreased, but also because the enemies within are mean: ogres hit for an obscene amount of damage (and take way too long to go down), while the porcupines counter each attack they receive. Just a huge drain on resources, so I ended up running from most encounters in there.
That said, I think the root cause here is that I'm somewhat underlevelled. Peeking at some walkthroughs, they all suggest grinding out a few levels at certain points (namely when a character joins), which is something I haven't done. The resulting effect is that, for where I am in the game (Tower of Babil), these walkthroughs recommend a level of 40… and my party is down in the mid-twenties! 40 seems utterly excessive to me but I can easily believe that I'm 5-10 levels below what I should be at this stage. But I've been managing just fine, so I'm not about to change my approach here.
Oh yeah, sorry; like Peklo said I was referring to the Hyadain fan song. I figured it was well-known enough, particularly amongst a certain era of nerd (of which I count myself) that I could be a bit vague in how I alluded to it. That's my bad.
I have a similar feeling, and I think it's because of the gulf between their importance in the setting and their importance in the narrative. FF4's dwarves are the sole inhabitants of the underworld, have a sophisticated civilization with their own technologies, and are the guardians of their crystals… but they have no real role in the game other than to just be another town to roll through on your quest. There's something odd about that, like there's an entire aspect of this world and its history that's left unexamined and unexplored. In contrast, FF3's dwarves (and gnomes, for that matter) don't have any of this going on— they just have their own little town— which makes it easy to accept them as just a funny little aspect of the world and nothing more.
4-So
Spicy
My playthrough of the DS version of FF4 stopped at the final dungeon (Lunar Subterrane), and on the first floor to boot. The regular encounters started kicking my ass. Mobs doing way too much damage and also moving very quickly. I couldn't keep up with that was happening and kept getting one-shotted. Otherwise, yeah, great version. (I heard that Steam version "fixes" the difficulty so I might try that one if I ever go back to it.)
It's hard for me to be critical of FF4 because I was young when it came out, it was a breakthrough for its time and because I was unfamiliar with a lot of the things it ripped off.
In the scene when Golbez's hand gets the crystal, I interpreted that as Golbez's entire body crawling on the floor and the game being somehow unable to show that. Maybe it's because at that time in my life video games were basically the only thing I knew so I had some ability to recognize a game's technical shortcomings but not its creative ones.
In the scene when Golbez's hand gets the crystal, I interpreted that as Golbez's entire body crawling on the floor and the game being somehow unable to show that. Maybe it's because at that time in my life video games were basically the only thing I knew so I had some ability to recognize a game's technical shortcomings but not its creative ones.
FelixSH
(He/Him)
For the record, my party is around level 31 at this point, and the tower of Babil is behind me now. I was probably at your level, and it wasn't much of a problem. I assume the GBA version is harder, but level 40 seems excessive. It can't be that much of a difference.
In general, up to now I never had to grind at any point in the game. Again, might be because the SNES version is just very easy.
jpfriction
(He, Him)
I'm an entire game behind at this point but I finally stuck with a Final Fantasy III playthrough (translated famicom rom). I think this is attempt number 4? Always seem to drop off somewhere around the second crystal. Heading into the crystal tower now, though, I think I may actually power through this time.
It's a good one!
It's a good one!
A bit late, and it's not much, but Cecil can use a bow.
Running from most battles in that cave is a perfectly valid strategy, and the one I prefer lately.