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

Thanks for the report, that was interesting too read. Very glad you enjoyed your time with it (or still are - what is left to do?). Are you planning to play XIII-2 and Lightning Returns?

I just find the themes here to be so effective, stuff that you mentioned - how you are helpless victims of the gods, and no matter what you do at that point, it all sucks; that Cocoon as a place doesn't make sense, but it still fits, as the gods here just don't get it,...

Sorry, don't want to rephrase what you already wrote, just wanted to mention that I like that about the game. Love the groups arc, how they hate each other at the beginning, and slowly start to become a team.
 
I didn't enjoy FF13 when it came out. I don't remember a lot other than not quite understanding the battle system and not really vibing with the characters. I went back to it in 2020 and I was much more receptive to what they were putting down, at least in terms of combat. I'm a "gameplay is king" person, even with RPGs and narrative-driven games, and I'm a fan - apologist? - for the Paradigm system. I'd love to see it make a comeback in something.

Fang, Vanille, and Sazh are great company. Snow and Hope, far less so. Lightning is my least liked FF protagonist in the entire franchise. I think I like her even less than Zidane, and my Zidane disdain is considerable.

Underrated soundtrack. I was listening to it a few days ago as background music while working, and the speaks to the strength of the music - I almost never listen to video game music outside of playing said games.

Game still looks incredible and if they ever make a "Compilation of FF13" or whatever, I hope they touch nothing about its presentation.
 
I would be receptive to tweaks like are already possible in the PC version through modding, like using the highest-detail cutscene character models in playable sections.
 
I'd never really considered the trans reading of FF13, but holy crap yeah, it fits. I love that game so much and really need to replay it one of these days (and finally finish out the trilogy - I've beaten 13-2 but bounced off Lightning Returns a couple times). Thanks for the post, it was a good read. Texted bits of it to a trans friend of mine who I don't think has played it yet (without your name visible, if you're concerned about that).
 
i don't really worry about that, ha. i'm definitely not the first to remark on this (or other funny details like a certain retcon in the sequel or vanille "forgetting" how to attack after chapter 2). though i can't find the first essay i read on this.

but yeah, the scene where hope comes to his dad reluctantly, expecting to be rejected, has pretty much destroyed me since i first saw it. and snow's indignation that people would think he'd suddenly want to become an enemy of the world, sazh fearing the future of his relationship with his child, vanille worrying she's going to get clocked at an inopportune moment...

and lightning just can't handle it. as a 20 year old i thought she was so cool. show that stupid snow what's up. i can see why someone wouldn't really like her though. she's emotionally stunted, and reacts to everything with pessimistic anger at first. she's blind to everyone else's feelings and needs and even though she's the one who readies up first to fight it's because she doesn't know anything else to do. i think she does grow a lot, but it's largely depicted in relation to other characters. that she develops some emotions and comes to recognize everyone else as her equals is also a core of the story but one that's a bit understated by comparison. not to mention...all the stuff from the sequels

i'll probably replay them eventually. following with 2 right away sounds terrible though. i played it lots when it was new, and there are things i love about it too (especially the music) but overall i do think it's a similar but worse game. that probably won't change. LR i've always been fairly positive about, it's got a lot of core stuff i really like
 
So I just played through 3 for the very first time (Pixel Remaster version). Before I share my thoughts would like to know what other people think of 3 in general and what your preferred version of the game is.

(I did get all of the achievements which did change my playthrough experience somewhat. My total play time was around 22 hours.)
 
I think 3 was an interesting experiment that I could barely follow through the jank-as-hell unfinished translation hack I tried to play back in the day, then quit in frustration when it crashed and corrupted my save file about 2/3 of the way through. (This experience is probably not helpful at all, you’re welcome.)
 
I've played through PR version of Final Fantasy 3 twice now and it's probably my favorite version of the game, although my only comparison is to the DS version, which I thought was a slog and never came anywhere close to finishing. The PR version is a just a good time, and I prefer FF3's job system to FF5's.
 
I enjoyed the PSP version, which was just the DS version with fast forward added. FFV is probably the better game, because you have a lot more freedom in choosing jobs, but I remember enjoying FF3 for what it was.
 
3 is great; it's a proto-4. The job system is a lot less flexible than any of the later iterations: jobs are less "options in your toolkit" and more "keys for your current lock," which means it's not nearly as replayable or beloved as 5.

The DS version deviated from the original in ways that did not improve the game.
 
NES FF3 rides the line between impenetrable abstraction and intuitive design in a really weird and fun way. You can see the strengths of the series really start to emerge, and then something just inexplicable occurs and you have to take it in stride the way only 8-bit gaming could expect.

A point in favor of this version of the job system is how it is often cohesive with the plot. The party has to shrink down and enter a mouse hole? Well, at least one of you had to be a White Mage, or else nobody can cast Mini! It may not offer the freedom of FF5, but it kind allows the tailored approach to battles of FF4 by effectively restricting your job selection. Or you can play Hard Mode by using the jobs you choose instead of the ones the game pushes you towards.
 
Famicom III's the go-to. Best aesthetics, best mechanics. The later revisions tend to come at the nature of its job system as something to "fix" (read: make more like later spins on the concept) instead of highlighting the very things that make it unique in retrospect. It's totally fine that a job is only as relevant as the demands of the current specific scenario; it's fine that they become "outdated" compared to later feature-sets even outside of specifics; it's fine that everyone's supposed to be a Ninja or Sage at the end. None of the remakes commit to the school of design the game was built on, and as a result have to introduce game-spanning rebalancing efforts to the entire thing, which historically have been awkward, either in the 3D remake's long-term grind to power and harsh cuts on enemy parties, or the Pixel Remaster's inelegant core balancing with both lulls and spikes where they don't behoove the experience.

At any rate, it's a wonderful game. Totally different design sense than its predecessors, where it's a similar shift that Dragon Quest experienced at this time with IV, in that the emphases on free-rein explorable space to characterize the adventure with gave way to more compact and invisibly guided slices of RPG setpiece that constructed these mini-narratives with a deft hand. As a consequence, the language of its town and dungeon environments changed as well, with a high density of discoverable secrets in safe areas and a reduction in attrition-boosting negative space in the dungeon layouts themselves; if you consider earlier 8-bit RPG icons of these series as largely faithful adaptations of the tenets of their original computer RPG influences, then it's about this point where their own extrapolation and mutation of a "console RPG" really began to meaningfully gestate and manifest in practice. III additionally benefits from that selfsame liminal nature that separates it from many others in its series, as the boom that FF would go on to enjoy was regularly characterized by it being a series that hardly ever numerically pushed back--III still cares to, to a memorable degree, utilizing friction as an impactful tool instead of a hushed taboo.
 
Forever ago I tried a fan translation patch of famicom 3 and bounced off largely because it was sort of a bare minimum effort to get the menus in English and all other text was gibberish. Then I played most of the way through the DS one which I found kind of a miserable and claustrophobic experience. Then most recently I played the PR version and... OK yeah this is a fun little romp. The reveals of the setting's nature are neat, the plot is just a bunch of crazy stuff that happened. They really really liked their mini dungeons etc. And the final dungeons are just absolutely absurd excess and I can't imagine dealing with them on original hardware.
 
Purple said:
And the final dungeons are just absolutely absurd excess and I can't imagine dealing with them on original hardware.
Click to expand...
Yeah, there is a lot packed in there. Makes me wonder how people handled those in other versions of the game.
 
FF III (nes) is one of my four favourites of the series. Really high praise. I love the sense of adventure, as if you were playing an adventure a kid made up. You enter a town, but it's full of ghosts! You fly over a city, and get shot down! A dude made of gold, in a mansion of gold, chained down your airship! It's beautiful.

And yet, there are interesting themes here. Like the three presents Doga, Une and Zande got, and what they mean. The cicle of Light vs Darkness. I'm forgetting stuff, but you can find things, if you just look.

We are introduced to moogles! And the fat chocobo!

Peklo is absolutely right about the job system. I like it a lot, and love how you get equipment for the job the game wants you to use. And each job, except bard, gets its time to shine. I enjoy having final classes. I don't like, how this is always changed in remakes.

I don't like the ds version. It exchanges gorgeous pixel art (seriously, look at Hein or the Cloud of Darkness, they look amazing) for ugly 3d. I feel like this is, aside from changes to the job system, my my main point of critisicm.

I love, how there is soo much stuff hidden at semi-random pixels, making each town a chance for treasure huntin, a simple puzzle.
 
FelixSH said:
I love the sense of adventure, as if you were playing an adventure a kid made up. You enter a town, but it's full of ghosts! You fly over a city, and get shot down! A dude made of gold, in a mansion of gold, chained down your airship! It's beautiful.
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The phrase that came to my mind while playing it was "story book".

(Speaking of airships - is 3 the game that gives you the most "different" vehicles? And takes them away the most often? Isn't it also the only one where you can fight random battles on your airship?)

FelixSH said:
And each job, except bard, gets its time to shine.
Click to expand...
So when does that happen for Monk/Black Belt, Geomancer and Evoker? I can't think of any point in the game where I felt like they would have been a better choice over the jobs that I was using.

To be honest, outside of the gimmick dungeons or maps I only really used a handful of job - Fighter then Knight, Black Mage then Magus, White Mage then Devout, Red Mage and Thief.

I did use Ranger briefly. Barrage is nice but a bit too unpredicatble when fighting multiple enemies.

I do like that the game (or at least the Pixel Remaster version) gives you tools that let you work around some of the usual limitations of the jobs - like giving your Black Mage a bow in the early game or the spell casting staffs your White Mage can use a little bit later.

FelixSH said:
I enjoy having final classes.
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Ninja did feel like an upgrade over other physical classe (for the most part) but I felt like Sage was a bit of a downgrade from Devout and Magus. In hindsight I probably should have rebuilt my Sages to have a mix of magic instead of having one with all white magic and one with all black magic. Definitely would have helped against the Cloud of Darkness even though it ultimately wasn't necessary - an Elixir on my healer helped keep my attrition strategy going in the final battle. Oddly enough the boss that gave me the most trouble was Two Headed Dragon.
 
Torzelbaum said:
I had assumed that most people would prefer 5's over 3's. So now I'm curious - why do you prefer 3's then?
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I'm a less-is-more kind of person and I find that a lot of what FF5's jobs offer are superfluous. FF3's set-it-and-forget-it approach (within the confines of the job itself) is more my speed.

There's a type of person that enjoys complexity and customization. I tend to not be that person. As an example, when a game offers a character customizer, I tend to hit the random button until I find something that looks okay, and then I just start playing. There comes a point when customization is not interesting, and player freedom is an idea I'm skeptical about in general. In any case, I've gone off topic.

I also enjoy how FF3s jobs work essentially like keys, where you need the right key to unlock the right path forward. It reminds me a bit of FF13's paradigm system, where you must switch to the paradigm that will be best during different situations. You can technically just do whatever you want but you are usually punished in some way for doing so. In that sense, it also reminds me of Octopath, a series I really enjoy. Sure, you don't have to exploit enemy weakness to break them, but the game will eventually make you pay for this.

For me, there is more fun in the figuring out the progession puzzle than choosing my own adventure, if you take my meaning.
 
Torzelbaum said:
So I just played through 3 for the very first time (Pixel Remaster version). Before I share my thoughts would like to know what other people think of 3 in general and what your preferred version of the game is.
Click to expand...
I wrote a novel on this this topic on TT 2.0, but I can't be arsed to dig it up now, and Peklo has largely said everything that I'd want to say anyway, so I'll just say that, when I played FF3 Famicom for the first time 5-10 or so years ago, it was an unexpected delight, and I was kind of annoyed that I had stayed away from it for so long based on a false narrative presented by the internet at large.

Every later version of the game, seemingly following that same false narrative, is unambiguously worse in the ways that they try to fix something that was never broken. The DS game is nigh unplayably bad, while the PR is... fine, but pales in comparison to the original. The key difference, however, is that while I've always resented the DS game for convincing so many people that FF3 is a bad game and scaring them away from trying the original (and perpetuating surprisingly resiliant myths about how job levels in the FC game actually mattered), I appreciate the PR for finally allowing so many people to experience the secret best FF game in a way closer to how it was originally intended. I personally have no interest in its compromised version of the game (I played through once; it was okay), but I appreciate how sanding away some of the friction made it appeal more to folks who aren't me.

(And also, on a more personal level, I think the PR hides one of my favourite things about FF3 FC: the ways in which it is directly in conversation with the games that preceded and followed it. I love how it's positioned in the series history, improving on the games that came before, and being an obvious direct predecessor to FFIV after it in some very direct and delightful ways.)
 
Torzelbaum said:
So when does that happen for Monk/Black Belt, Geomancer and Evoker? I can't think of any point in the game where I felt like they would have been a better choice over the jobs that I was using.
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I can't say specifically anymore. I remember for the Thief, specifically, you reach a dungeon where you get great equipment, and it was suddenly my strongest fighter, for some time. The scholar was basically a Black Mage, except with infinite spells, as hitting monsters with the books was effectively as strong as the corresponding elemental magic (maybe just level 1, so not good forever, but great for where it was).

You get a lot of different arrows, kinda early in the game, right? Around the time you fight Medusa? I remember the Ranger to be very powerful with those, for some time. Probably until I got the next set of jobs.

Aside from that, I think Monk is a starter class? I likely used it there, then. I mostly had each character have a different job (except for Dark Knight and Dragoon, for their specific gimmick dungeon/boss. So when getting new classes, I probably switched to those immediately. And when I then got specific equipment for a class (like as mentioned for the Thief), I switched to that. But I also focused on experimenting with the classes, so I would know which were good and which not.

Like, Geomancer depends on the place where you are, but I know that they are at least holding their ground well. The same with Evokers, which are a bit of a gamble, but worked out for me. Maybe time to shine is a bit much, for every class, but they can at least all be used effectively, at some point.

I think another exception are the last set of regular jobs you get? I think you get Sage and Ninja very soon after, so they are not useful. Iirc, it's years since I played it.

I think two more things also are relevant here: That the balance is clearly different in the PR version. If Sage isn't the ultimate magic class, they have been nerved or the others have been strengthened. This likely happened with other classes too. And also, while some of it is lock-and-key (like Garuda), some jobs you don't need, but you can. It does give more freedom than it needs to. But I think if you stick to classes like you did, and just do straight upgrades, you might run out of good equipment, at some point. Maybe, I would need to try that.
 
4-So said:
I'm a less-is-more kind of person and I find that a lot of what FF5's jobs offer are superfluous. FF3's set-it-and-forget-it approach (within the confines of the job itself) is more my speed.
Click to expand...
That makes sense. Sometimes less is more.

JBear said:
I love how it's positioned in the series history, improving on the games that came before, and being an obvious direct predecessor to FFIV after it in some very direct and delightful ways.
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I agree. If you consider 1 to be more gameplay/mechanics focused and 2 to be more story focused then I think it's fair to say 3 was the first game to expand and integrate both of them together. And then 4 continued developing that on the story front. I know what JBear means about 4 but I don't really want to expand on it at this point. I liked 3 so I would suggest that anyone who is curious should go and play it to see for yourselves (especially if you've played the other games).

Speaking of mechanics I like to think that there's the following progression:
Final Fantasy 1 - job system 1.0​
Final Fantasy 3 - job system 2.0​
Final Fantasy 5 - job system 3.0​

(Based on what 4-So said Final Fantasy 5 is a case where sometimes the new version isn't actually an improvement for everyone.)

FelixSH said:
I can't say specifically anymore. I remember for the Thief, specifically, you reach a dungeon where you get great equipment, and it was suddenly my strongest fighter, for some time.
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In PR when you first get Thief the only weapons available are the upgrade from the starting knives. You can get some really strong knives soon after that including one that steals HP and a wind-elemental knife which does massive damage to the flying enemies you're fighting around that same time. Thief does fall off a little bit after that.

FelixSH said:
That the balance is clearly different in the PR version. If Sage isn't the ultimate magic class, they have been nerved or the others have been strengthened.
Click to expand...
Sage seemed to trade versatility for the raw utility of the penultimate casters who had more magic charges.

FelixSH said:
But I think if you stick to classes like you did, and just do straight upgrades, you might run out of good equipment, at some point.
Click to expand...
That happened with my mages, to a degree.
 
Torzelbaum said:
I agree. I know what JBear means about 4
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I'm... not sure you that do? My response was specifically in the context of "I like the Pixel Remaster less because it obfuscates these things", and it seems like that's the version that you played? When you play the FC version of 3, the ways in which it improves on the prior games and leads to the subsequent game are much more apparent. Like, yes, the surface level "has job system" and "4 is 3 with fixed jobs" stuff is still obvious, but it's the more subtle stuff, like the way the targeting works, or the sprites that the games share in common, that gets lost in the PR mélange, which sands off all the edges and homogenizes all the entries.
 
My girlfriend, who has a history with games, but not really much familiarity with RPGs wanted to try a final fantasy, since she knows i'm a fan of the series. So, i set her up on FF10.

I felt like the lack of an ATB system means she can take all the time she wants. The voice acting makes the game approachable. With the standard grid, you can't really make any mistakes in leveling. The story is sweet and sad and the characters are well written. The world is easy to navigate and you can't get lost. Most of the random encounters have a simple mechanic like Wakka beats flyers.

In short, i felt like if she only played one FF, 10 would encapsulate a pretty good example of the whole and doesn't really have landmines for people who don't have history with RPG type games.

We had some snowy weather lately so we made good progress. She is at Guadosalam. She is picking up way more nuance in the story than I ever did. I'm really amazed how good she is at picking up context clues and guessing where the story is going. Right after Rikku joined the party, she asked me if they were sisters. She also guessed pretty quickly that Jecht was Sin. She keeps trying to guess who the little boy is, but we haven't gotten any clue that would lead her to that answer and she has so far taken the story at face value that Auron and Tidus were transported through time.

Her favorite character is Lulu "because she is bad ass". So far she seems to really enjoy the game. She says she likes that there's no pressure and she can take her time to decide what to do next. She is sort of terrified of going the wrong way on the sphere grid and always asks me if she's going the right way. Other than that, she sort of never really got the hang of blitzball, loosing the game 1-0 in overtime. She didn't like it and has not tried it since. I've told her if she ever gets sick of the game, we can just watch the story on youtube. I know the difficulty ramp up may turn her off finishing it, but so far she's pretty invested in the story and things are about to really get going there, so i think she'll be hooked for a while yet.
 
Your girlfriend is correct that Drownball is an incredible snorefest. I fell asleep multiple times grinding out matches back in the day to get Wakka's ultimate weapon.
 
Blitzball is lame and Lulu is great. Your girlfriend has good taste.

And yeah, I would start a new player with X or VII. There is a good reason, why they got so big.
 
That's certainly an interesting topic, perhaps one deserving of its own thread. It's very easy to forget just how many players are unfamiliar with RPGs, despite some titles becoming wildly popular.
 
I'm seeing a lot of baseless hate for Blitzball, My Beloved in here. Ya'll are whack. I arguably liked it better than the rest of the game, and inarguably so now (although for complicated reasons). From that opening cinematic, I was hooked. I sunk like 100 hours into it, building up a maxed-out team composed solely of the original Aurochs that I'd ground up from nothing. They were my boys.
 
Bliztball is pretty terrible, one of the worst mini-games in the franchise. (I say *one* of the worst because Tetra Master is still out there, hanging out, taking up all the space on the couch, man-spreading and shit. And if we want to include things that are not strictly games, Lightning Dodge is right there.) Alas, Wakka's ultimate weapon is the only one I've never gotten. I've made my peace with that.
 
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