The Ultimate Final Fantasy Thread: This Guy Are Knock You All Down

[Daikaiju]

I remember really, REALLY hating Blitzball. I'm terrible at sports games. Having it loom so large in the game felt like a stereotypical jock hi-jacking your D&D game into a dodgeball fracas.

 

[balder the brave]

I remember really, REALLY hating Blitzball. I'm terrible at sports games. Having it loom so large in the game felt like a stereotypical jock hi-jacking your D&D game into a dodgeball fracas.

Tidas and Wakka are definitely jocks. A lot of towel snapping going on in the Aurochs locker room.

 

[YangusKhan]

The Dark Aeons weren't originally part of the postgame and their inclusion really does inconvenience a lot of stuff in parts of the world.

I will say that you're really not gonna have a good time grinding for levels the "normal" way because the stats you need to even touch the Dark Aeons are in the 200+ range. All of the postgame sphere grid stuff is most efficiently accomplished through the monster arena. There's essentially 2 pieces: getting enough sphere levels to fill out the grid, and getting the item drops to fill in empty nodes on the grid with +4 stat nodes instead.

 

[Mogri]

The Dark Aeons aren't uniformly difficult, and there are ways of defeating many of them at lower levels. I'd look up some challenge runs on YouTube if you're interested.

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

That’s wild. Did the developers assume you’d find an AP exploit like that, or did they intend for you to grind 1,000 AP at a time for days from the fiends in Zanarkand?

I've been seeing built-in cheats more and more into retro games. I think devs are beginning to learn that their primary demo is looking for a nostalgia trip, but don't have the patience or time to sit and grind for dozens of hours anymore. Might as well make these games friendly to their audience so people keep buying them instead of firing up an emulator and then they get no money.

 

[R.R. Bigman]

I feel like a weirdo for getting all the fully powered up celestial weapons now…

 

[balder the brave]

Tried to grind again in Omega Dungeon and got wiped. I think I’m just going to beat it and move on to Fire Emblem.

My imagined ending to Final Fantasy X

Sin is defeated. Eh... double cast and Hastaga made it pretty easy. He explodes in a white flash. Cut to: the people of Spira sing a hymn and throw a party.

Tidus gives Yuna a big smooch. They get married and Wakka is the best man at the wedding.
Yuna: wearing that cool white dress from earlier.
Tidus and Wakka: in yellow jorts, hemp necklaces, leather man-bracelets, tribal tattoos, and lots of buckles.

Rikku is a little jealous and cries a little. Brother and Cid cry a lot.

Jecht and Braska appear at the wedding as force ghosts.

Auron smirks but is kind of also smiling. After the ceremony, he moves to disappear into the sunset riding a Chocobo, but Lulu appears and decides to join him. Grumpy old guy and sarcastic jaded woman. They make it work, although Auron can never get into Lulu's gloomy synth-pop audio spheres. They rent a hut in Besaid and adopt a moogle.

Kimhari moves in with Tidus and Yuna and solemnly assists with lawn care and home repairs. It's a little awkward.

Cut to: Seymour in the far plane. He's still alive somehow. He has a sphere in his hand and places it in a stone hole in a wall, and a pedestal slides across the floor in a direction that could only have been determined by sheer trial and error. A portal opens back to Besaid.

Advertisement for Final Fantasy X-2. Seymour is back, and Yuna's got guns and hot pants.

 

[Positronic Brain]

... While I like your version, X has, like, the best ending sequence. And the ramp up to the first boss is *chef's kiss*

 

[WisteriaHysteria]

If we pretend the FFX-3 radio plays don't exist, we can basically still imagine that scenario happening, just post X-2. Just need a few tweaks like, them going to go visit Auron in the Farplane, and Lulu/Wakka's kids being there at the wedding, and Paine getting wasted at the wedding reception minibar

 

[balder the brave]

Watched the real ending - very good. I guess the sign of a great game is that I kind of want to play it again, and this time make some more bold early choices on the Sphere Grid (maybe there's some way to make Kimhari actually useful?), pick up those stupid Destruction Sphere treasure chests in the cloisters, and be careful not to trigger the cut-scene that populates the Dark Aeons until I explore the world for the stuff first.

 

[balder the brave]

The Dark Aeons weren't originally part of the postgame and their inclusion really does inconvenience a lot of stuff in parts of the world.

I will say that you're really not gonna have a good time grinding for levels the "normal" way because the stats you need to even touch the Dark Aeons are in the 200+ range. All of the postgame sphere grid stuff is most efficiently accomplished through the monster arena. There's essentially 2 pieces: getting enough sphere levels to fill out the grid, and getting the item drops to fill in empty nodes on the grid with +4 stat nodes instead.

Interesting. I still don't quite get it. Here's my impression.

Seems that when you're at Zanarkand and about to trigger the final level - that's the opportunity for this kind of grinding.

The enemies in the world are giving only 2,000 AP max. And those same enemies I caught are the ones I can fight in the Arena. Still only 2,000 AP.

The bonus monsters you unlock in the arena all seem like mega bosses to me and well beyond my power level. There's a lot more AP to be had in Sin, but that's going to be more of a point-of-no-return. So, I still don't understand how to bridge the gap between Zanarkand-caliber monsters and the Dark Aeons / Arena Bonus Monster caliber mega bosses.

 

[Mogri]

Just doing the regular, easier arena stuff gets you a ton of nice items, which goes a long way to bridging that gap.

 

[Positronic Brain]

Yep, arena enemies are in tiers, and lower tier enemies are beatable with just some strategy (easiest is to use Summons as walls) - that should get you strong enough for the next tier.

Or you can do what I did - forge your own weapons with damage to AP and autophoenix, use a Tonberry as a damage -> overdrive -> AP engine and use the zillion free levels to go to town.

 

[Mogri]

If you decide to bench some of your guys, be aware that there is a late arena fight that's underwater, meaning your party is forced to those three.

 

[jpfriction]

This Stranger of Paradise game is exactly Nioh, isn’t it? Not complaining, Nioh is fun times, I just wish these games had an auto-optimize toggle where it would just decide which of these 9000 weapons you picked up in the last 30 seconds are the best ones and just keep them equipped. Farting around in the menus after every fight and treasure chest is not that fun to me.

 

[YangusKhan]

There is an optimize equips button. I've never used it so I don't know how it picks stuff. On PS5 it's the touchpad button I think.

 

[jpfriction]

Oh I know, I’ve pressed it approximately 10,000 times since I started the game. It just puts the highest attack/defense on everyone. I’m assuming starting with Jack but not sure how it decides who gets to go second etc. That’s all fine and good but if it is going to give the option to not think too hard about equips, I’d like it if there was an option to automatically apply it as you pick stuff up.

 

[ozacrot]

I've come to expect FF DLC collabs with a number of other games, but Power Wash Simulator was not on the list.

 

[Positronic Brain]

I, Garland, will knock you all down (thanks to the amazing water pressure of this baby)!

 

[Patrick]

I just found that Final Fantasy for 3DS now has an English patch, and there's another patch that adds in the Pixel Remaster soundtrack. Sounds like a neat way to play the game.

 

[FelixSH]

What is up with the later FF XII spells? When some are cast (like Flare, but also enemy spells I can't remember), no other spell can be cast at the same time. Which is really bad. I just found this out, when Fran cast the pretty long Flare spell, which made it impossible for Penelo to cast her healing spells. This problem doesn't exist with stuff like the level 3 elemental spells. Is this how it always was? Or is this some kind of bug, that happens to be on my copy of the game? This basically makes Flare unusable (it's worse than the level 3 elemental spells anyway, not being multi-target, but still).

 

[YangusKhan]

It is a bug/unfortunate consequence of the game engine. When a spell animation is playing, no other spells animations can play. But attacks and IIRC items too can still go off just fine. I also can't remember if it's ALL spells or only ones with longer animations, but maybe that's splitting hairs.

 

[Mogri]

It's the "spell animation queue." It's in all versions of the game, and it's one reason attack magic was pretty bad in the original release. Basically, the strongest spells are so resource-intensive that they need all of the engine's animation power.

 

[estragon]

It's the "spell animation queue." It's in all versions of the game, and it's one reason attack magic was pretty bad in the original release. Basically, the strongest spells are so resource-intensive that they need all of the engine's animation power.

Expanding on this a bit, while it's technically in every version of the game, it's tweaked so much in TZA that it's effectively gone for most party setups and in most enemy counters. There's a value called Effect Capacity that determines the limit of what can be shown on screen. In the original the max is 8, but it's tripled to 24 in TZA. In practice, in my most recent playthrough, to me this meant I never noticed any drawbacks to having Penelo set up with a gambit to spam Collapse (the most powerful black magic spell) over and over.

In the original release, because Collapse has an Effect Capacity value of 8, that meant Collapse could only go off if it was the only thing happening. So, effectively, using the best spells severely restricts every other characters actions in the original release, for better or for worse. (My understanding is that you could theoretically exploit this strategically to your benefit, although I never did that.) In TZA, to run into problems, you'd have to have three characters using Collapse at once to cause any issues. So, while it's true that you can theoretically run into Effect Capacity bottlenecks in TZA, in practice it only affects a few specific party setups or a handful of encounters with enemies that cast a lot of high level spells.

In the original game, Effect Capacity bottlenecks are the rule and stand out to nearly anyone who has cast an endgame spell, but in TZA they're an exception that you might not ever notice.

 

[FelixSH]

I assumed it was something like this, thanks for the explanation. Well, that's great. I guess I'll stick to the elemental spells, then, or just not use Fran anymore. I just...why would you do something like this? If your engine can't handle these animations, make them simpler. I mean, that's a pretty critical thing to ignore. It's not like Flare looks that great.

Ok, whatever, I guess I won't need Flare to beat Vayne. Made it through the triple boss at the top of the Pharos without too much difficulty, so I guess that should work out.

 

[Juno]

I assumed it was something like this, thanks for the explanation. Well, that's great. I guess I'll stick to the elemental spells, then, or just not use Fran anymore. I just...why would you do something like this? If your engine can't handle these animations, make them simpler. I mean, that's a pretty critical thing to ignore. It's not like Flare looks that great.

I mean, this is the same company that would, 4 years later, release FFXIV in a state that even decent hardware specs would struggle to run the game at a decent framerate because there was so much obsession with graphical fidelity and animation quality. There were flower pots that had as much graphical fidelity as a player character! They couldn't even release the PS3 version until 2.0 came out 3 years afterwards because the PS3 flat-out could not run the game in the state it was in.

So yeah, that was a warning about how things would go in the future.

 

[Issun]

The official console release for the Pixel Remasters is the 19th of this very month. They went all out, too, with a Bravely Default level of QoL additions. And yes, they fixed the font.

 

[Peklo]

It's still not a great font.

 

[Issun]

It's readable at least. And being able to switch to the OG soundtracks is a pretty big deal.

 

[SpoonyBard]

It's better than the original one they went with, at least.

Though I'm mostly surprised by the EXP and encounter settings, those are some nice QoL features. Wonder if this means they tweaked the default difficulty to be a bit tougher since I remember the PRs on PC being a bit on the easy side.