I went through this game faster than I intended, as before. This was SO
AWESOME. FFI was good, and FFII was neat too with some cool parts, but
this was the first Final Fantasy that felt like a truly complete and
wonderful game. It had challenge, customization, good story, pretty good
characters, variety, humor. I’ll try to quick hit a few areas:
Graphics: I learned from last week’s discussion that the art
style is a Japanese thing. “Kawaii.” I also heard the term “Chibi”
bandied about elsewhere, but not sure if that’s just related, or has
more negative connotations, or what. I don’t entirely like it. I have to
keep reminding myself that I’m not just playing a Rugrats game where a
bunch of two-year olds are pretending to be in a fantasy realm.
But the sprites (that’s the term, right?) aside, the in-battle graphics
were phenomenal, beautiful. Creative too! So many of the monsters were
not just well-drawn, but unique. My personal favorite was the
Catoblepas, the bull with wings. The final game boss was AMAZING, that
woman sticking out of a swirling black hole with magic snake tentacles.
Where do those names come from btw? Some are clearly Japanese words, and
some are from myths/stories/pop culture – LOL at the ninja monsters
called “Shinobi”- but Catoblepas? Malboro?
The backgrounds and dungeons were really cool too. The Dark World was my favorite. Speaking of…
Story: It started pretty standard. The crystals are going out.
Re-light the crystals and save the world from darkness and blah blah
blah. That’s more negative than I really mean; if it had been that
simple, the game would’ve been fine! Each game has had a twist of some
kind so far, and this is my favorite.
They didn’t make light good and dark bad. They made them two sides of
the same coin. I do wish they spelled out more what this meant, what
“light” and “dark” actually entail, but there’s a dark world! And we got
to visit it! Some trippy shit, too. All starry and spacey and purple
gas.
But is the dark world just that, just random monsters, or are there
civilizations and societies there too? I have to imagine that the dark
warriors who saved me had their own adventure like us, where they were
plucked out of their normal life after being chosen to fight the evil
forces of light. I would totally play an FFIII addendum, similar to
Souls of Rebirth, that followed a part of the dark warriors’ adventure
to restore the dark crystals.
Characters: FFII was a step beyond FFI by having main characters
with personalities and stories. FFIII went beyond that by having them be
better personalities and stories. Luneth, the main character, was oddly
the least developed. Ingus was also a bit on the typical side, a loyal
soldier in love with Princess Sara (the same one from FFI?).
My favorite two were Refia and Arc. Refia is in-your-face, takes no
shit, and is at the same time upbeat and fun. She also didn’t get stuck
with a romance, which for some reason makes me glad. Arc is shy and
unsure, bookish. The best part of his story is his friendship with the
young Salonian king. They just wanted to be friends! FRIENDSHIP!!!!
The side characters here were once again pretty good. I guess Cid being
in or mentioned in every game is going to be a thing, which I’m fine
with. He’s awesome. Who the fuck was the teddy bear with the pom-pom on
his head? What was the deal with the mail system? I’ve seen him before
in Final Fantasy imagery, like promotional material for later games, so
maybe they’ll explain more later.
Challenge: Definitely the hardest game. FFII: Souls of Rebirth
was tough too, but in a grindy way. I suppose I could have grinded to
make it easier, but without grinding, the game presented a tough but not
insurmountable challenge. The toughest bosses were Salamander, Gutsco’s
second form, and the final boss, Dark Cloud. I died often, but usually
there was some strategy adaptation that eventually made it work.
There were some weird spikes in difficulty. The Temple of Time was
really frigging hard, way harder than most of what came after it, with
its behemoths and the monsters that cast Lightning. Died a lot there.
And the Eureka cave within the Crystal Palace was much easier than
anything around it, even the bosses.
Those aside, it was a very smooth ramp in difficulty, and often
adjusting my characters’ jobs was enough to get around. Bringing us to…
Mechanics: This is the highlight of the game. The customization
that started in FFI with class selection and increased with individual
skill building in FFII goes into overdrive here with the jobs. It gives
the game a real sense of replayability. This is the first in the series
that I wanted to give another shot immediately after finishing. Maybe
try a bard, or evoker, or monk more fully, or…
This builds on the difficulty issue, but the game managed to encourage
me trying new jobs without requiring that I stick to a “main” set or max
one set out. It gave me room to play around and experiment. My main
build that I stuck with through most of the ending content was:
Ingus: Dark Knight > Ninja
Luneth: Dragoon
Refia: Geomancer
Arc: White Mage > Devout
But I spent a lot of time trying out Viking, Red Mage, Thief, Monk, and
Knight too. This is the combo that just seemed to work best for me. I
would’ve tried Black mage on Refia, but the Terrain attacks on Geomancer
were so powerful and satisfying. And Refia just DESTROYED Eureka! It
was like every other attack was Shadowflare, that hit consistently for
9,999.
Completed the game around character level 52-53.
A few other mechanic notes:
-IIRC, they finally add rest and save points in dungeons in FFIV. It was
a pain in the butt here, as it was in the prior games, to be unable to
recover health and mana midway through long dungeons. That said…
-I really love that after you kill a boss, any kind of boss, your
knocked-out characters get revived and your health and mana get
replenished. It made the final dungeon tolerable with regular boss
fights.
-The magic exchange system was a bit awkward for job swaps.
-I liked the optional stuff! I found some of the summoned bosses, Odin
and Leviathan. Eventually found Bahamut too. Bahamut was pretty easy
with my dragoon, and Odin wasn’t bad, but Leviathan was brutal. I feel
like I missed a bunch of exploration, which adds to the replay value. I
looked underwater for places that might look like they have caves, and
likely only saw a fraction.
---
Next up: FFIV! Going to play the PSP version, no PPSSPP emulator. I grew
up on this game, so it’s the one and only in the series that’ll be a
replay for me. Spent hours watching my brother play it on SNES growing
up, and played it myself too.
I hear the DS version is great, but DS doesn’t look great emulated. The
double screen set-up means that at its largest it takes up only half the
screen and has poor resolution.
