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

[FelixSH]

Thank you! It made me very happy to read this.

I do get more verbose, as the games go on and have more of a story. I do hope you keep getting something out of my writeups, but I understand if it becomes too much.

Anyway, if you decide that you do want to add something, feel free to use this thread. I always like reading reports of peoples experience with FFs, especially if it's their first time with a game (or parts of it). Just saying, I'll certainly read it then.

 

[nataeryn]

I played 1 thru 6 on Pixel Remaster, which I greatly appreciated the frequent autosaves.

I will say FF2 was the game of the first six that I appreciated more than I expected. I guess just because of public opinion, i thought it was not good. I went in with the intent of not standing around punching myself and while I didn't optimize the team quite like I could have, so several of my spells were under leveled, I beat the final boss on the 3rd attempt. I didn't realize right away that buffs in 2 can be stacked until way late in the game. So I needed some lucky misses in order to get enough casts of an under leveled evasion buff to make a difference.
I also thought the story of FF2 was pretty impressive for a NES game. It has a good cast of characters and the world state changes frequently. Compared to FF1, i thought FF2 was a nice improvement.

Conversely, FF3 was I think my least favorite. The job system isn't fully baked yet, but I did like the parts that essentially make you change jobs like the mini dungeon. I appreciate 3 for breaking the ground that later games will refine into better systems. I ended up going Dragoon, Devout, Viking, Magus. I didn't get Sage or Ninja. I generally don't mess around with anything in the final dungeon as I generally assume it is a super boss that will crush me.

FF4 was fun to have a big cast and really no decisions to make. Just follow the path. I ended up being under leveled for the moon though. I tried to use a speedrun strategy to use Kain to jump over the big bang move on the final boss, but I could not figure it out, which meant a little bit of grinding, but that was the only speed bump. Between 4 and 6 on the SNES, i liked 6 better for the big cast.

FF5 is just so much fun. I like how much the characters laugh. I like all the animal friends. I like Gilgamesh and Exdeath. I like the sprites for each job and character combo. I like how no matter what jobs or combo you create, there are probably bosses that can be trivialized by something in your kit.

FF6 impresses me with the variety in the cast and how fun all of them are to use. I like the linear structure of the first half, with just a few party building choices that opens up in the second half. I missed Gogo and only used Umaro once, but all the other 12 had spots on the team for a good chunk of the game. I found all the dragons and only missed I think 2 espers. I didn't get the one that turns into a sword in narshe and I don't know where Alexander was. My plan for the final dungeon was to build 3 parties that have an ace magic user (Celes, Terra, Strago) a heavy hitter (Setzer w/ fixed dice, Sabin, Mog in dragoon mode), a healer (Relm, Gau imitating a Magic Pot, Locke) and a backup (Edgar, Shadow, Cyan). My final team was supposed to be Setzer, Terra, Celes, Gau. One of the parts had a retaliation attack or something that wiped Setzer and Terra, so Relm and Strago subbed in, but I forgot to equip them with any relics. Gau didn't have a ribbon because the idea was magic pot is immune to everything. Gau and Relm kept getting KO'd by Kefka, so it was a long slow fight, but we still won. I think 6 is my favorite final dungeon so far just because i got to use all the characters.

One thing that I didn't see you mention on the first 6 games, other than in passing was the series relationship to the technology level of the world, but maybe this conversation happens more when you guys get to 7. I knew from reputation that 6 had the Magitek sort of steampunk type of tech, but I was surprised how many of these games have some level of technology. FF1 has a floating castle. FF2 has the Drednaught. FF3 has a floating continent. FF4 has the whole moon and giant death robot. FF5 has the Ronka Ruins. 7 gets a lot of credit for its diesel/atom punk setting, but i was surprised how frequent technology shows up in the first 6 games.

I need to read through the thread further to see what you all had to say about 7. I'm looking forward this next part of the thread quite a bit.
And I'll be starting on FF8 this week, which I have never played before.

 

[FelixSH]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It's always nice, when people find FF II better than expected, and have fun with it (despite its problems). It's just such an interesting, ambitious game, that went a bit over its head with all the new stuff it tried. But yeah, I like the story we get quite a bit there.

I am glad, that I'm not the only one who always ends up underleveled for the final dungeon in IV. : D Also, always glad when people like the joy of FF V. It's such a fun game. Also, also, well done on the party planning in VI. You put more thought into it, than I did. Sounds like you had a fun, tense battle with Kefka.

Yeah, technology wasn't that interesting to me in the early games (to be honest, I forgot how I talked about it in the later games). The idea of abusing it, having it change the nature of people and society, leading it astray, is there early. At least FF IV has a line early on, about how the kingdom we start in changed, after it had its powerful airship fleet. And it has, of course, Dr. Lugae, who feels very much like a proto-Hojo. That part, how it corrupts people, was my main interest.

But you are totally right, what is done in VII is very much present from the get-go. Technology that shouldn't be there, maybe because the society that invented it fell apart, or that it's too much to handle, is a part of the series, from the very first game on.

 

[Second Duke Revier]

...That is the part that I don't agree with in the least as VII's world design, the very communication of its expressed ideals and themes is entirely reliant on the presentation of the world outside of Midgar's borders, where Shinra's encroached but hasn't always fully subjugated. You need to be able to walk the land through its mountain paths, frontier villages and isolated homesteads to build a counterpoint and reason for the resistance given; personal investment in what's being fought for, and a sense that some of it can still be safeguarded or reclaimed. There are many reasons for why I haven't been able to emotionally connect with a game like FFVI, VII's most frequent comparison, and while some are writing considerations one of the most relevant is in how it treats its world: I don't think it cares one bit about its setting aside from a stage for its principal actors to play out their drama on; it's a game so utterly devoted to its ensemble cast that nothing else has room or reason to exist in its worldview. By contrast, VII is so enamored with its own setting that it frames it as the fulcrum--emotional, spiritual, material--of its own storytelling and something to be protected by the cast on a deeper level than the place that holds all their stuff...

This. I know I'm responding to a rather old post, but I can't agree any more about the critiques lobbied at FF6's world, and how it all feels too set piece-y. The Kingdom of Doma? Oh, just a small castle that gets poisoned and then overrun by the evil empire. Zozo? Just home to a bunch of criminals that constantly lie(oh, and also the place where Maduin decided to stash Terra because...reasons). The Opera? A place to bait Setzer and hold a mock romantic opera, which, for some reason, is distant from all known human inhabitation.

Compare that to...well, this:

The screenshot speaks volumes by itself.

 

[Sarcasmorator]

You are aware that mid-1990s games have a certain level of abstraction involved in their settings, yes? That the nodes of population you visit represent significant locations but perhaps not everywhere that may exist? That one may infer that the population is greater than the few dozen or hundred NPCs you actually encounter over the course of visiting each town?

Midgar is a neat visual for sure, and a larger place than what you visit directly, but it is likewise abstracted.

 

[Daikaiju]

You are aware that mid-1990s games have a certain level of abstraction involved in their settings, yes? That the nodes of population you visit represent significant locations but perhaps not everywhere that may exist? That one may infer that the population is greater than the few dozen or hundred NPCs you actually encounter over the course of visiting each town?

Midgar is a neat visual for sure, and a larger place than what you visit directly, but it is likewise abstracted.

This why I didn't raise a fuss about Skyloft in Skyward Sword

 

[Second Duke Revier]

That is certainly a fair point, I(and Peklo) may be too harsh on FF6's worldbuilding, considering it was released on a still very limited piece of hardware, and also because towns existing for the sake of plot/shops/quests and little else was practically series tradition at that point - not only wasn't there space to write convincingly lived in towns, but it also wasn't really necessary, given where these games focused.

But I will say, even as a wee teenager, I found places like Zozo and the Opera House weird, probably because they stick out more than Yet Another Generic RPG Town, which these games have an abundance of and which are often more digestible given genre conventions.

 

[FelixSH]

The comparison to VIIs world seems a bit harsh. It has one of the best worlds of the series, imo. It's essentially a character that you rescue, but that also fights back.

Considering that the scenarios in VI were written independantly, iirc, it's also no surprise that its world isn't the most connected. I still think it works well. My only problem with the Opera House is, that it is in the middle of nowhere, but even that doesn't seem completely unacceptable. And that a steampunky world like that has operas seems perfectly fine. Dunno, I think it's better than the worlds of IV and V.

 

[4-So]

The location of the Opera House is slightly strange but in a world of chocobos and airships, maybe it's fine. I also think the proximity to Jidoor, which is a pretentious and wealthy town, makes it a bit more believable as a kind of precious, upper-crust location than if it was on a lone island somewhere (as an example). Zozo works in large part because, again, it's meant to be compared and contrasted to Jidoor, which it is also in relative close proximity to. Jidoor and Zozo both have "shitty place" vibes, but they are shitty for different reasons.

 

[RT-55J]

In all of the 2D FFs worldbuilding (especially in terms of graphical variety) was highly constrained by the various memory limitations* of the time. Additional maps for each particular setting, optional dialogue, one-off establishing vistas, and other sorts of bespoke assets were a very precious commodity, and naturally used quite sparingly. FF7 represented a tremendous leap in terms of storage capacity, the likes of which the industry has never seen again, so it stands to reason that its world is presented in a more detailed, variegated, and holistically-produced fashion than prior titles.

Personally, I think FF6's gambit of having a huge, thinly-sketched** ensemble cast to evoke the sense of world-spanning crisis paid off, though the creaks in its production constraints are quite evident in retrospect (though without them, it's hard to imagine it being the same game). For me, part of the appeal of an FF6 remake is not just having the characters more fleshed out (however much I'd love to see Gau wax poetic about industrial society and its consequences), but see the world diversified as well --- I'd love it if the vaguely Italian-coded Figaro and Japanese-coded Doma weren't just palette swaps of each other, for instance.

*FF6 was 3 megabytes, and Chrono Trigger was 4 megabytes, to help give a picture of things. Also, beyond ROM limits, the SNES's VRAM limits were also a stumblingblock --- all the SNES FF overworlds used Mode 7, which could only use 256 tiles with no flipping, which greatly limited the amount of variety they could have relative to the expected level of fidelity. On the other hand, CT used the normal SNES video mode for its overworlds (and split stuff between time periods), making this limit a non-issue for it.

**Rhetorical simplification, please understand.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

You are aware that mid-1990s games have a certain level of abstraction involved in their settings, yes? That the nodes of population you visit represent significant locations but perhaps not everywhere that may exist? That one may infer that the population is greater than the few dozen or hundred NPCs you actually encounter over the course of visiting each town?

Midgar is a neat visual for sure, and a larger place than what you visit directly, but it is likewise abstracted.

System limitations might have necessitated a certain level of abstraction. But like, me as a player doesn't have to give FF6 a golf handicap in my estimation of its worldbuilding, and it doesn't change the fact that it's just not as good at that versus later franchise installments. And I think it's also fair to say that while there were certain system limitations, it also didn't really make worldbuilding a core emphasis either vs some of its other contemporaries that did a much better job like Chrono Trigger, or the Mana games, or Earthbound. It's still a really good game, especially for its time. But it's not like it's perfect.

 

[Issun]

This discussion about worldbuilding in Final Fantasy games has been mystifying to me, as I am not personally arsed about worldbuilding in Final Fantasy games (or most JRPGs in general). As long as it's cohesive enough for neat characters to have cool adventures in, I'm golden.

If it's important to you, no shade, but for me, above average worldbuilding in the genre is like the cherry on top of the sundae. It's nice, but I'll still enjoy everything else if it's not there.

 

[Peklo]

As the person whose three-year-old thoughts being invoked kicked off this discussion, I would appreciate if the context for said musings was preserved, at the very least quoting the complete paragraph. Even then, I'm not certain if it's all that useful for the purpose since inferences have been made in response that I didn't intend, so I guess I can address some of them.

I do not (or try not to) criticize a game like FFVI in a retroactive, ahistorical context against later-developed games when such comparisons would be pointless in the light of technological or other practical divides so great that the mediums might as well be entirely separate. Talking about VII, as the quoted chunk was about, it was just a personally useful counterpoint to highlight one game's appeal against its close kin's very different character as a piece of media, despite the two being pitted against one another so often, for understandable reasons. I've made no secret in this thread or many others of my frustrations with FFVI--a good game I just do not like--but in terms of assessing its setting and world it comes from a place of seeing it in context of its predecessors and contemporaries, and not just favourable examples far in the future, and that it falls short in estimation in that context is what makes it remarkable for me in just how disinteresting I find it.

Within the series alone, all five games preceding it contain much stronger map design that's more distinct to interact with, with better integration of distinct locales and geographic barriers, utilization of different modes of transport, and that all-important sense of a spatial narrative that I talked about back then that I do not find that exists in VI in a meaningful capacity in either half of its worlds. VII had that in spades, again, because the narrative facilitated if not necessitated it, for highlighting the Planet as an entity and for the plot-driven need of chasing down the shadow of Sephiroth--as a result, the travelogue that the game presents is one of the most memorable in the series. After that, the pendulum swung in the other direction once again, where it's difficult to find an emphasis on the world as a topographical narrative in a game like VIII despite its developing technological edge; the priorities simply aligned differently to allow for it with its attentions preoccupied elsewhere. There are many RPGs of older vintage than FFVI, on the same platform or elsewhere, that I think are more interesting works in these respects than it, so I don't want the impression to linger that it's some kind of predisposition to inherently hold newer works to higher esteem simply because of the development realities that made them.

 

[RT-55J]

For the record's sake, I am hardly a technological march-of-progtess teleologist. It's just that different limitations with technology, production, and directorial choices produce different local minima and maxima where things Just Work. FF6 and CT aim (roughly) for comparable levels of fidelity, but CT's extra megabyte served it very well in terms of creating a diverse, believable world. On the other hand, GBA games, which were even less encumbered by these limits, rarely seemed to have the same proportional benefits. And on the flipside of that, the 8-bit games benefit tremendously from the impressionism inherent to the format.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

This discussion about worldbuilding in Final Fantasy games has been mystifying to me, as I am not personally arsed about worldbuilding in Final Fantasy games (or most JRPGs in general). As long as it's cohesive enough for neat characters to have cool adventures in, I'm golden.

If it's important to you, no shade, but for me, above average worldbuilding in the genre is like the cherry on top of the sundae. It's nice, but I'll still enjoy everything else if it's not there.

I think it's mostly a subjective, to-each-their-own kind of thing. Some people are happy with Classical Greek theater where it's all about characters and interpersonal relationships and the setting is nothing more than a stage for those things. To me though, the world/setting is a character in and of itself. It can have personality, it interacts with the cast, and can even have a certain level of agency. A well made world doesn't just give context, it gives reason. Motivation. Purpose. Especially in a story-driven game, where we're supposed to care about a world-ending threat - it helps if I know something about this world and care about it, for me to really begin getting invested in the stakes of the narrative. You can have a good game/story that doesn't care one bit about its setting, but for me a truly special experience will always treat its setting like a member of the cast. And that goes for just about all media, not just FF games/JRPGs specifically.

For the record's sake, I am hardly a technological march-of-progtess teleologist. It's just that different limitations with technology, production, and directorial choices produce different local minima and maxima where things Just Work. FF6 and CT aim (roughly) for comparable levels of fidelity, but CT's extra megabyte served it very well in terms of creating a diverse, believable world. On the other hand, GBA games, which were even less encumbered by these limits, rarely seemed to have the same proportional benefits. And on the flipside of that, the 8-bit games benefit tremendously from the impressionism inherent to the format.

It's a matter of emphasis/choice on part of the developers, as well as potentially a skill-issue. If the only difference was graphical fidelity/technical limitations and the march of time, then a game like FF13 should have way better worldbuilding versus games that came out over a dozen years prior. And while visually the levels/environments in FF13 are jaw dropping, Gran Pulse feels completely lifeless and the setting as a character is never sufficiently developed. The lack of interactivity and the overly simplistic level designs leaves the world feeling empty and devoid of life - despite us ostensibly being in densely populated areas many times. All of those feelings are compounded even further by how FF13 discusses the features of its setting. The diction of proper nouns in this world are so hard to keep track of that it's hard for most to follow the events of the plot, nevermind gain any appreciation for lore of Gran Pulse.