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I'm playing through all of Final Fantasy, and everyone is invited (Playing Lightning Returns now)

I mean, not everyone, no. Phantasy Star was certainly the first thing that sprang to mind for me, as a game that was very much ahead of its time and towers above its contemporaries. Basically everyone I know who finally experienced it via the Sega Ages release on Switch* was surprised at how well it holds up today. It and PSIV are both all-timers.

Then again, I think basically every old RPG that I play is great, if approached with the appropriate mindset. I filled out a bunch of gaps in my retro RPG history over the past decade or so, and I was rarely disappointed.

* - Like the FF pixel remasters, I think this version sands off too many rough edges, frankly, but I'm a sicko.
 
I've enjoyed the pixel remasters that I've played so far, but they're definitely their own thing and not representative of how the games played originally. The FF1 PR fixes a lot of the bugs from the original, which is good if you actually expect half of the stats to do things, I guess.
 
Yeah, as much as we disagree on FF4, I'm with JBear here. Most old RPGs I play are great and hold up just fine (saying FF5 or FF6 don't hold up and only Chrono Trigger does is wild to me lol). Phantasy Star 1 and 4 are fantastic, and I'd make a serious argument Phantasy Star 2 is great as well (if a bit rough in spots, mainly due to a too high encounter rate imo). Earthbound works even with it's strictly limited item system (a twitch streamer I watch who mostly plays Pokemon and Animal Crossing fell in love with Earthbound like in 2022, and she's like 15 years younger than most of us here, assuming most of us here are near to/approaching 40 lol).

As for the Pixel Remasters... I really enjoyed playing through them all, but I find myself still going back to the original versions of the games for the most part when I want to replay them (or the GBA versions of V and VI, I like the extra content in those). They're great introductions to the games, and I'm glad they exist, but... yeah, I'll just take the originals, I think.
 
WisteriaHysteria said:
[FF4] ...a lot of old school grinding.
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This is, like, patently false though. FF4 is fastidiously balanced in this regard --- as long as you actually finish each fight you encounter, you can just take the critical path and never be starved for Exp or Gil (except at the points when the world maps open up, there will be a few locations that will trip you up if you're unprepared). And unlike FF6 or CT, you don't ever have to worry about bringing benched party members up to speed.

Really though, in terms of recommending 16-bit RPGs to younger players, it feels weird to rag on FF4 for being (allegedly) systemically threadbare, when kids under 25 love their Undertales and Deltarunes and such. The real weakness of all these classic RPGs in comparison is the relative lack of flavortext when examining random objects, and not even our beloved Chrono Trigger is immune in that regard.
 
I still haven't played Undertale or Deltarune, but if they're also threadbare mechanically, I probably won't like them lol
 
RT-55J said:
This is, like, patently false though. FF4 is fastidiously balanced in this regard --- as long as you actually finish each fight you encounter, you can just take the critical path and never be starved for Exp or Gil (except at the points when the world maps open up, there will be a few locations that will trip you up if you're unprepared). And unlike FF6 or CT, you don't ever have to worry about bringing benched party members up to speed.
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I have played through Final Fantasy 4 a bunch, and depending on how much I decide I do not want to deal with the encounters in that damned tower with the hot dogs, there are about 50/50 odds on reaching the underground caves that require Float to survive and actually having learned Float. I know you said "actually finish each fight you encounter", but I can say from experience it is not hard to miss that mark and thus have to grind to make progress Same for Asura/Reflect. Never lost to a boss because I was underleveled! But I remember Rosa's spell list as one of the most obvious level gates in the franchise.

(And, that said, I recommend Final Fantasy 4. It is fun and surprisingly breezy.)
 
Kazin said:
I still haven't played Undertale or Deltarune, but if they're also threadbare mechanically, I probably won't like them lol
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They don't really belong in this conversation. It's like complaining Mario is threadbare mechanically. Most of the gameplay is in the action part.
 
gogglebob said:
I have played through Final Fantasy 4 a bunch, and depending on how much I decide I do not want to deal with the encounters in that damned tower with the hot dogs, there are about 50/50 odds on reaching the underground caves that require Float to survive and actually having learned Float.
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Those caves are optional, though. If you don't have float, you can come back later (probably after the Giant), or even not at all (the top summons are fun and flashy, but nothing in those caves is required to finish the game).
 
Why don't you just tell me the sunset is optional? Or the mewls of a newborn kitten? I ask you, what is best in life? To crush those summons, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of Yang's faeries.
 
If you play RPGs because you like engaging with complicated systems, you won't enjoy FF4, but FF4 is a sequel to a game that is much more ambitious mechanically -- it is not by accident that they went from the very broad, customizable FF3 to a game that locks down your party composition. The things that were most ambitious about FF4 -- ATB and the story -- are not so impressive nowadays, but the encounter design is really solid: we wouldn't see such mechanically distinct and clever boss fights again until Chrono Trigger. Think Magus Sisters, CPU, Asura, the Fiends re-fight -- they went ham on the battle scripting in this game.

FF4 is RPG comfort food. It absolutely holds up in that regard.
 
Also, if we want to talk about mechanics in the franchise as a whole, Final Fantasy 4 is the only Final Fantasy that meaningfully switches up your party configuration constantly and just says "You got a party of one knight and three mages now, deal with it." As much as I love the Advance versions of all the Final Fantasy games, FF4 Advance really missed the mark with a customizable final game party. If it wanted to continue the tradition of how you literally do not have your "real" final party until the final dungeon is unlocked, its bonus content should have been a dungeon where, like, halfway through the third floor, your entire party is variations on Edward for no reason. Final Fantasy 4 is a game where, complete with Cecil's class change modifying him right down to his level, you can never rely on one party strategy to see you through from the first area to the last.
 
gogglebob said:
Also, if we want to talk about mechanics in the franchise as a whole, Final Fantasy 4 is the only Final Fantasy that meaningfully switches up your party configuration constantly and just says "You got a party of one knight and three mages now, deal with it." As much as I love the Advance versions of all the Final Fantasy games, FF4 Advance really missed the mark with a customizable final game party. If it wanted to continue the tradition of how you literally do not have your "real" final party until the final dungeon is unlocked, its bonus content should have been a dungeon where, like, halfway through the third floor, your entire party is variations on Edward for no reason. Final Fantasy 4 is a game where, complete with Cecil's class change modifying him right down to his level, you can never rely on one party strategy to see you through from the first area to the last.
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Hear hear. All of this. I've been wanting other games to do this pretty much ever since, and it's one of my favourite things about it. Every character in that game is cool and unique and the game is constantly remixing your party and challenging you to optimize. I find that way more engaging than most of the other games, where everybody can, broadly speaking, do what they want and be what they want.
 
The only thing I don't care for in Phantasy Star is the combat - I don't love the stacks of enemies and not being able to target individual enemies. It makes things feel quite random in combat. That being said, my understanding is that this is very much like Wizardry, so I can see why it was done that way. The cool attack spells are stupid expensive. If not for that, I'd have it right there with Dragon Quest III/IV in the 8-bit era. (Those games also have groups of enemies, but the AI does a good job of taking out threats instead of letting enemies linger as opposed to random in-group targeting. Plus multiple enemy types in encounters.)

One I didn't mention (been a while since I played through it, so I don't know if it holds up) is Destiny of an Emperor. There are some pretty nice concessions to speed in that game - movement is snappy, and random battles have an auto-battle system to speed things up. I also find the "HP thresholds affect your attack power since they're your troops" mechanic to add a nice layer of strategy, too. Plus the ability to recruit enemy generals all over the place like a Three Kingdoms version of Pokemon. I still need to play through the sequel, which has been fan-translated for some time.

Back to Final Fantasy... if I were to replay FFVI (which I have beaten many times when I was younger), would I be better served to play through the SNES version again or give the Pixel Remaster a go?
 
As someone who is on the side of "No I do not play computer based RPGS to deal with more and more systems, THAT'S WHAT THE COMPUTER IS FOR.", I very much enjoy FFIV.

No need to swap jobs? Cool.
Party members leave and join at the story's pace? Nice!
I don't have to worry about optimal builds or unplayed characters being underleveled? SIGN ME THE EFF UP.

I'm sorry but Job systems, for the most part, give me choice paralysis. FF6 and it's esper system may be Jobs system Lite, but I can deal with that. Maybe it's the way I'm wired.
 
Job systems don't give me choice paralysis but I do find them boring, usually. I can take them or leave them and the more complex the job system the more likely I am to leave it. The more a game expects me to dick around in menus, the less likely I am to engage with it. Less is more and all that.

Which is to say, I prefer FF3s job system to FF5s.


Sarge said:
Back to Final Fantasy... if I were to replay FFVI (which I have beaten many times when I was younger), would I be better served to play through the SNES version again or give the Pixel Remaster a go?
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PR largely streamlines some of the combat in ways that I feel are unncessary but largely innocuous, like Cyan's SwordTechs/Bushido (there's no charge bar) or Sabin's martial arts (it shows you on screen how to do the move, you don't have to remember the button sequence). The famous opera scene is now HD-2D. Again, I don't think it really adds or detracts from anything.

Like the other PR games, there's an auto-battle option and you can play around with Exp, AP, and Gil gains. (4x AP is nice. Learn magic very quickly.)
 
Mogri said:
we wouldn't see such mechanically distinct and clever boss fights again until Chrono Trigger.
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Are you forgetting FF V here? I assume not, but I find that omission curious. That game has a ton of interesting boss fights. Iirc, nearly every boss has something (more or less) interesting going on.
 
No charge bar probably improves Cyan quite a bit - I almost never used his higher-level SwordTechs because the time it took generally didn't feel worth it.
 
I do tend to enjoy FF4 a little less than the rest of the cart based games if I'm honest (and if I'm playing any version of 1 that isn't the original) but like a few people have said, having to make the most of whatever terrible party you have at any given point works on the same level that Fiestas work.

Also as far as other older RPGs go, every Dragon Quest game that isn't the first one is really great, honestly. Lufia 2 has never really gotten its due. Pokemon 2 has a lot going for it if you can deal with the bubble sorting. Pretty much all dungeon crawls are timeless. Everyone should play Ultimas 1 and 4. Most SaGa games are actually quite rad. Square's non-Final Fantasy output in general is way too slept on. And there's a lot of Japan-only-at-the-time stuff likely worth checking out.
 
Purple said:
I do tend to enjoy FF4 a little less than the rest of the cart based games if I'm honest (and if I'm playing any version of 1 that isn't the original) but like a few people have said, having to make the most of whatever terrible party you have at any given point works on the same level that Fiestas work.
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Aye, and this is why the fiesta is my favourite way to play FFV! It really unlocked that game for me. Prior to that, it was one of my least favourite entries, but optimizing under the restrictions of the fiesta really makes it sing.
 
FelixSH said:
Are you forgetting FF V here? I assume not, but I find that omission curious. That game has a ton of interesting boss fights. Iirc, nearly every boss has something (more or less) interesting going on.
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It's on par with FF4, sure. The major difference is that 5 makes sure you can beat every boss with any complement of jobs (Berserker aside), whereas 4 really tunes its challenges to the party you're locked into.

But it's a good call. I'm not giving 5 its due here.
 
I prefer Final Fantasy V over any other RPG I've played with a job system, as it's the only one where you don't have to grind a new job just to have it perform its basic function. Like, if you never touched the Black Mage job and found yourself far into the game, dying to a boss with low magic defense and a fire weakness, you could just reload, make someone a Black Mage, cast Firaga a few times and that would be that. In FF Tactics or X-2 or Bravely Default, you'd have to grind for a while to be able to use Firaga. Even job system games unrelated to Final Fantasy, like Dragon Quest VI and Yakuza: Like A Dragon, are like this. FFIII at least lets you use the job's abilities right away, but your stats will be terrible until you gain a bunch of job levels.

It's also one of the best games in the series and one of the best classic JRPGs in general IMO. I don't think it has the same kind of reputation as FFIV, FFVI or Chrono Trigger since it wasn't released outside of Japan in its own time, but it is a game from that era I would recommend.
 
Kazin said:
I'm assuming this is a typo but I cannot for the life of me figure out what you're talking about here lmao
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The biggest and most significant change to the Pokemon games when they hit the GBA was changing the boxes on the PC to a nice visual 2D grid where you can just put Pokemon in whatever position you like. The first two games Did Not Do This, so if you wanted to, say, do the "living Pokedex" thing, you had to switch positions in an otherwise fixed list like you're running a bubble sorting algorithm.
 
gorha said:
I prefer Final Fantasy V over any other RPG I've played with a job system, as it's the only one where you don't have to grind a new job just to have it perform its basic function. Like, if you never touched the Black Mage job and found yourself far into the game, dying to a boss with low magic defense and a fire weakness, you could just reload, make someone a Black Mage, cast Firaga a few times and that would be that. In FF Tactics or X-2 or Bravely Default, you'd have to grind for a while to be able to use Firaga.
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So how do you feel about how FFTA handles this?

Now I do see your point but I can't remember anywhere in Tactics where a specific class with a specific skill is really required like that. And even if you can't use class abilities at first you can still use a secondary skill set.

Purple said:
The biggest and most significant change to the Pokemon games when they hit the GBA was changing the boxes on the PC to a nice visual 2D grid where you can just put Pokemon in whatever position you like. The first two games Did Not Do This, so if you wanted to, say, do the "living Pokedex" thing, you had to switch positions in an otherwise fixed list like you're running a bubble sorting algorithm.
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That sort algorithm is very inefficient!
 
Purple said:
The biggest and most significant change to the Pokemon games when they hit the GBA was changing the boxes on the PC to a nice visual 2D grid where you can just put Pokemon in whatever position you like. The first two games Did Not Do This, so if you wanted to, say, do the "living Pokedex" thing, you had to switch positions in an otherwise fixed list like you're running a bubble sorting algorithm.
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Oh, you're talking about the PC boxes lmao. I'm sorry! I'd not heard of bubble sorting or it's associated algorithm before!
 
Torzelbaum said:
So how do you feel about how FFTA handles this?

Now I do see your point but I can't remember anywhere in Tactics where a specific class with a specific skill is really required like that. And even if you can't use class abilities at first you can still use a secondary skill set.
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Oh man, I guess I forgot about FFTA. It had a system like FFIX's, right? Where you get abilities from equipment and can master them to keep them when you change equipment. I guess that does avoid the problem I usually have with job systems, yeah. Now that I'm thinking about FFTA, I remember grinding a bunch anyway, without even really meaning to, because it had a lot of sidequests and running around the map trying to do them all would lead me to fight the other clans over and over. And when I did the main story missions, they were always too easy... yeah, those things were probably related. Maybe I should revisit that game and try to just ignore the side content.

There isn't any time in FFT where you absolutely need a single specific ability, but it's definitely possible to arrive at a fight that you have no good answer for. Wiegraf at the end of chapter 3 is the big one I can think of.
 
That and the duel with Gafgarion are the game's major chokepoints.

On a tangent, I really hope the remake has more enemy variety. You've seen enough Knights and Archers by the end of chapter two to last a lifetime.
 
In FF14, I finally get dispatched on my next primal mission. The Kobolds are trying to summon Titan to attack Limsa. Apparently this happend before, and a mercenary band, the Company of Heroes, defeated Titan. We need to talk to them to figure out how to find Titan and stop him.

What follows is, to me, the most annoying set of quests yet. You talk to a fake hero who just has you do his chores, then the real guy sends you to every corner of the world to talk to a guy and do some of their chores. This includes a dungeon, Breyflox's Longstep.

We learn how to access Titan by using a kobold aethernet. I think this is a neat detail with the implication that the kobolds have a massive cave network under your feet.

We fight Titan. He's got a big jump attack, where you have to get as far away from the impact without going over the line to minimize damage. I like how the dungeon bosses keep introducing little wrinkles on the AoE symbol on the floor. Nobody explains how they work, you just have to intuit from what other players do, or get hit by it and learn the hard way.

Titan's defeated. the Garleans and Lahabrea continue to plot and scheme. That includes raiding the Waking Sands while I was gone and capturing the Scions.

Other than the Titan fight, I don't like this section. The Company of Heroes are annoying. The longstep dungeon seemed pretty bland, just fight monsters. The story feels episodic. Its like i'm in an anime and the CoH arc was a filler episode.
 
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