FFVI - The World in Ruins, Epic...

So this one is pretty epic so far. Outside of the story arc which I will get to shortly, I just wanted to point out a few things in the game that were new or fun. One thing is that I got to jump into some mech warrior type suits and wreak havoc for a bit. Also got some side scrolling action for a while and a train scene similar to that of FFVII where I had to work my way through the train to the front. Also new is the sorta 3D view while controlling a chocobo. Of course all they did was change the direction of the mesh view so it stretches and rotates but still something new.

When last I'd posted my team was slowly growing to face off against the evil empire which is trying to gather magic to gain power over other kingdoms. They're very brutal, especially one Kefka guy who is just ruthless and annoying. He poisoned an entire town, killed one of the main characters' wife and little son. Was pretty messed up. I've gotten all kinds of characters with new and different abilities, unique to them and some new to the FF series completely.

Along the way I lost track of Cysra, who went berserk after coming into contact with an Esper (summon) creature. While trying to find her again we learned quite a bit about the history of the world. Long ago Espers lived peacefully with humans until some humans got power hungry and the War of the Mages began. At that time the Espers all retreated to another world and locked the humans out. At one point 20ish years ago, a human female found her way into that world and mated with a male Esper to have a baby daughter, half Esper, half human; they named her Cysra.

After a couple of years the emperor Gahstal found a way to invade the Esper home world and killed many Espers in an effort to harvest their power for himself. During this time, the baby Cysra was captured and taken away by Gahstal before the Espers once again sealed the humans out. Over the last fifteen or so years Gahstal raised Cysra as his own magic war machine. He also used the dead Espers (magicite) to infuse power in other trained soldiers such as another character I received named Nazomi. Presently the empire is on a tear, sacking town after town and Cysra has escaped with my thief Ikorid.

After learning all of this we found Cysra again and made our way to the Espers, obtaining Ramuh first as he explained that he wanted to give his life so that we could use his power in magicite to fight the evil empire. Many other Espers followed suit as we raided the Magicite Factory to save them, giving themselves to us as magicite. I think I have 15 or so summons now but they don't exactly work like other games in the series. Rather, each Esper has abilities attached to them which are slowly learned by the character currently equipping the magicite of that Esper. So the person who has Ramuh equipped eventually learns Bolt, Bolt2 and Drain eventually. That Esper can then be handed off to another party member to also learn those abilities permanently. It's an interesting and fun system. If I have ANY complaint about it, it's that the learned spells are often much more powerful than actually summoning the Esper to fight.

Anyway, when raiding the Magicite Factory I find that Cid is the scientist behind it all (first time Cid isn't an engineer or airship builder). Cid changes sides though once he realizes that the harvesting actually kills the Espers and tries to convince the Emperor to stop his war. But it isn't until the Espers come out to aid Cysra against the empire that he does; after they've devastated several cities. The emperor concedes and repents for all he's done, imprisoning Kefka. The gang all goes to meet with the remaining Espers to negotiate a peace treaty, but once all the Espers arrive so does Kefka with powerful magic that kills them all; he collects their magicite and absorbs their power. It seems the emperor changed his mind. When the other Espers in their world come to try to rescue them, Kefka only has more souls to harvest...

Eventually he and the emperor are so powerful they enter the Esper mountain and raise the whole continent into the sky. My crew pursues them while Kefka and the Emperor attempt to find the three magic statues which gave the world all of it's magic in the first place, forever holding the world in a delicate balance. They find the statues before my party can get to them and begin to tap their power. Kefka goes a little overboard and kills the Emperor himself then proceeds to purposefully move the statues to bring them out of balance. Unable to stop him my party must just stand by and watch paralyzed as he does this. Finally freed by a last minute save by another party member, we flee the floating continent before all hell breaks loose.

We barely make it before the three statues go into overload and reign all hell upon the earth, devastating the surface, destroying everything. The airship carrying 10 of my party goes down in broken flames as the world ends... EPIC!

Nazomi now has awakened A YEAR LATER on a deserted island with Cid who dies shortly thereafter, all alone. She tries to commit suicide to join all her dead friends but washes up on shore again, having failed. Finally she finds a note left by Cid and his raft. She ventures out and finally hits the main land, a destroyed, gray and rotten world.

Let round 2 begin, first half of the game was ... Pretty. Fucking. Good. Can't wait for more!

Final Fantasy VI, Industrializing

Alright, FFVI! Sorry about the absence, holidays are always hectic but it's time to get back to the grind if I want to keep my steady pace. Though I'm on track, I can easily get derailed if I delay too much longer.

Background: Final Fantasy VI was created by Hironobu Sakaguchi, Yoshitaka Amano and Hiroyuki Ito of Square in 1994 for the SNES system. Now, as you might recall, thus far the North American audience had only received the original Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy IV (sold in NA as FF II). So as to not confuse the NA audience, Square release FFVI as Final Fantasy III in the states. It was later re-released on the PlayStation in 1999 as a package with FFV which is the version I will be playing. This was a hugely successful title in the series, a landmark really. And coincidentally, it is also the first in the series not directed by the original creator Sakaguchi.

The end of FFV showed some isometric views of things and this title finally tries to utilize the full capacity of the SNES system. While not very much, they worked with what they had and it shows. The game is crisper, faster, and smoother. The backgrounds are better blended and the dungeons have multiple layers which scroll at different speeds as if looking down from a great height. It's not much, but it's improvement.

The game itself is already more interesting, handing us the series' first seeming female lead character. At least the first character I GOT TO NAME was female. So far I've named like 5 other characters as well and each character is unique with a given set of unchangeable skills. So it seems like this game has gone back to the form of FFIV in having a large cast with set jobs. I've also been introduced to a few new game mechanics, such as Blitz which is a game fighter type system in that I hit a button sequence to execute an attack combo. As for other "classes", I have one mage, the main character, and it appears she might be the only magic user I get since the plot line is essentially about the extinction of magic. Most of the technology is the industrial revolution type steam punk that was mastered in FFVII. Here we also see another preview of FFVII in two characters in the opening scene, Biggs and Wedge. This game also already has a darker overtone which I very much like.

Lastly, while I did split my party into two groups of two for like 10 minutes in FFV, this is the first time in the series where we truly see a split party going off in different directions, completing multiple parts of the story arc separately, as we will see again in FFVII. Gooooood stuff.... We also see here the first occurrence of having story line options. While I'm not sure if they will affect the overall story or what I'm able to accomplish in the game, there have been several times where I've gotten a pop up menu and a few choices to make in dialogue or paths. Also reoccurring in FFVII. It's really cool to see some of the seeds of FFVII develop in this game and I can already see why FFVI was so critically acclaimed in it's time. Looking forward to the rest of it.

Final Fantasy V, Routine Finale

Let's see...

Escaped X-Death's castle.
Found our way out of some forest.
Ran into some Moogles.
Galuf's grand daughter Krile came and found us.
Joined up with some other old school Warriors of Light.
Attacked X-Death's castle by submarine.
X-Death killed Galuf.
Krile joined party.
Went to find the four relics to unlock the twelve weapons of power.
Unlocked all the weapons.
Attacked X-Death's castle again.
X-Death summons the void.
Killed X-Death.

Something like that, been a busy few days what with Xmas... Along the way I fought some of the toughest bosses I've fought in any of the FF games thus far. Odin kicked my ass for a good couple hours before I gave up. I went around the world and got every other summon I could. I mastered Red Mage on Krile to get the Double Cast ability and went back and double cast Bahamut on that bitch till he went down. Getting each and every summon in the FF games is still one of my favorite parts. Gotten all of em so far in the six I've played that had the class.

One cool aspect of the game was the ability to learn spells for the entire group and be able to change to any job with all those abilities at any instant. It made for some interesting boss fight strategies. For example, one boss could only be hurt by black magic, so I switched to a party of all Black Mages and cast Flare 4x a round till it died. Another was weak to Holy, so.... four White Mages casting Holy. You get the idea.

Anyway, game was a bit shorter than the previous couple only clocking in at like 25 hours. Was good but it felt very routine. I just felt like I was playing a combo of the previous four games. I know that's what the series is about but I know what's coming in VII-XII and they're all different a little in some way. Can't wait to get to them. These clones are wearing on me and the graphics aren't helping. It's amazing how much the little things matter. How much the visual aids involve you in the story. How much something like being able to just name your characters makes an impact. I could only name the main character in this one and he wasn't even a major part of the story, just some wanderer. Kinda just glad this one's done. Not my favorite, I don't know how it could be Sakaguchi's. But then again his next favorite is IX, and most people hated that one. Can't account for some people's taste. Here's some screens of the end. Another weird point is the low level at time of completion.



Some things of note.

This game went back to the format of the first Final Fantasy game VERY strongly. It left behind the rotating cast of II, III and IV and focused on a very limited four member party. It focused completely on a crystal story line and standard kingdoms and quests. It also continued with the more morbid tone that was set in IV, where main characters died left and right in sacrifice for the greater cause. While only one character died in V, it was one of the main four party members that you'd been playing with for 3/4 of the game. Kind of a big deal, especially since he didn't like come back in the end.

The end credits of V is the first time I've seen any isometric animation in a Final Fantasy series. I wonder if I will see much more in VI before the series left Nintendo for the more powerful Playstation system in VII.

FFV - A brave new world

Finally getting some story going in the game. Galuf, the old guy in my party that couldn't remember anything finally started to remember stuff.

So the deal is... Galuf and a few others (Reina's father included) are actually from another planet where they were the four Warriors of Light. They had to defeat a villian thirty years ago named X-Death. Upon defeating him, they imprisoned him on our heros' home world with the power of the four crystals. Galuf and the King stayed on to watch over him and while here, they showed the people of the new planet how to utilize the power of the crystals to improve technology. The King had two daughters, Reina and it turns out, Faris (who was lost as a child at sea, hence being a pirate).

Anyway as time went by, the greed of the crystal power and the subtle manipulation by an imprisoned X-Death led to crystal overuse and one by one they started breaking. Once they all break X-Death will be free. Somehow along the way X-Death actually swayed and is now manipulating the King to help him against his will. On our way to the last crystal I was able to obtain other jobs and a few summons which I hunted down (Shiva, Ramuh) and others which were part of the story line (Ifrit, Titan). I love getting all the summons...

At the moment, I'm a little over whelmed with the shear number of available jobs but for now I'm taking Rhek full Sorcerer (Knight with the ability to elementally charge his weapons). Along the way I'm also going to master Hunter to get the X-Fight ability, that should allow him to attack 4x in one hit. Should be pretty brutal. I'm taking Faris Ninja until I get Dual Weild and then she's gonna go Samurai I think. I'm taking Galuf full Summoner and I'm going to master Red mage along the way so I get X-Magic, allowing him to cast two summons in one round, pretty evil. And finally, Reina is going full White Mage and Time Mage as a WHM w/o Haste is pretty useless imo. Plus she got like Comet already, so it's nice that she has some offense, and Demi hitting big mobs for more than the rest of the party can even get close to in the opening round of a fight is nothing to sneeze at.

Anyway, with my jobs in line I've been progressing nicely. Unfortunately (fortunately) the last crystal broke and X-Death is free. He immediately bailed and went back to his home world to wreak havoc. It all kind of reminds me of Superman (II?). So with the threat to our world gone, Galuf bailed to help his home planet with his grand daughter. My party of three decided they had nothing left on this world (X-Death killed the King and Rhek doesn't have parents apparently), and enlisted Cid's help to draw on the energy of Meteorites from Galuf's world to power one last teleport there. After going on a scavenger hunt to collect all the materials, my party said their final farewells and warped to a new world.

And landed in X-Deaths prison.

Galuf rejoined my party while breaking us out and now we're trying to figure out how to infiltrate his fortress and kill him. I kinda like the story. Would be a pretty good story if it was reworked for our generation of consoles. All my ships, dragons, chocobos and airships are gone; brand new world to investigate. Onward! Death to X-Death!

FFV - Back to Work

My FF Anthologies CD set finally came in the mail on Friday. Unfortunately I've been swamped with other activities since then. I've only today been able to sit down and put some time in. I started off with a lone character who I got to name (Rhek). After a nearby meteor crash Rhek met up with another character who had amnesia named Galuf. Unfortunately I was unable to rename this character. I was also unable the next two characters I picked up; Reina, a princess, and Faris a pirate who pretends to be a guy but is a girl we find out. Could it have been the hot pink hair that tipped them off...?

The game definitely feels like a beefed up version of FF1 with jobs added in and polished. The four crystals are at risk and as the plot progresses each crystal is shattered for some mysterious reason. Thus far Wind, Water and Fire have all shattered and I'm on my way to see to it that the Earth crystal does not. Of course I really do want it to because every time a crystal shatters the shards on the ground teach me new jobs. Many of the old jobs are back and a few new ones are showing up like Time Mage, Samurai, Dancer, Sorcerer, etc. However, this system is a little different than the one introduced in FFIII in that as you level up your job you learn new abilities and if you change jobs you can retain one such ability from a prior job on your new job. Example: currently I've leveled both of my fighter characters to Monk level 4, where they learn the Counter Attack ability. Now I'm switching one to Ninja and one to Sorcerer, both with the counter attack ability as their secondary. It's how the Tactics system was built. The only real difference being in how jobs were unlocked in tactics.

Other new stuff in this game is the added Ability Points (ABP) earned in addition to XP after each battle. This is evolves into Job Points (JP) or (AP) in later Final Fantasy games as a secondary XP system. Other than that, it's the same old stuff so far. Lot of jobs to choose from but nothing too novel or cool yet, no real enemy or major plot evolving just yet. Gonna keep plugging away.

Final Fantasy V, Sakaguchi's baby

Background: Final Fantasy V was developed by Sakaguchi (father of the series) once more and Hiroyuki Ito at Square in 1992 for the Super Famicom system (SNES). However, once again they failed to port the title to the NA audience after many attempts in different fasions. The game was toted as Sakaguchi's favorite title so far and would remain his favorite until IX (surprising). It wasn't until 1998 that Square would finally release a version on the Sony Playstation for NA after severing ties with Nintendo, but we'll get to that later (FFVII). Also of note, this title was the first that was completely translated and reprogrammed by a fan base to play in english, before Square got to it; that's pretty cool.

There's a lot of hype around this game, from being Sakaguchi's personal favorite for so long to being so important that the fans would rewrite the code just so they could play it in the states. Looking at a glance I see that they brought back the Job system in full swing, so I look forward to that and I assume new jobs. Of course I'll have to have a Ninja and probably a Summoner... =)

Come on stupid mail, get here already!!!

Still not looking forward to the graphics throw back but I can deal with it. REALLY can't wait to get to VII now that I'm so close. And even though none measured up, I recall liking 8, thinking 9 was alright (though I only played like a quarter of it), and 10 was pretty good (never finished though). Here's a pic of what's in store for me, graphics wise.



Quit a backwards step from the DS versions of III and IV that I just played isn't it.

Final Fantasy IV, Moon man down!

Over the past two days I was able to bring this epic game to a conclusion. I really liked this one and I often found myself wishing I wasn't rushing through at such a quick pace since I enjoyed it so much. But alas it is over, I'll sum a few things up here.

In short, I went to the moon on a massive behemoth of an airship, dark black and lined in red with windows on the sides, it out-sized my other two airships by at least 4x. Once again I could heal to full on my end game airship; nice touch that late in the game. I took my airship up to the moon, which was very weird, and I found a Crystal Palace where the Lunar people lived, and where Golbez meant to summon the Giant to consume the world.

Upon my arrival, I headed toward the Crystal Palace to find some kind of elder who explained that Cecil and Golbez were brothers and lunar people... oookay. Anyway he joined the party in place of traitor Kain again, a weak white/black mage of sorts. We headed to another part of the moon where Golbez was supposed to be and ended up fighting Bahamut instead, end game summon ftw! But we were too late apparently and Golbez had summoned the Giant already, so back to earth we go and we're greeted by an airship armada of about every character in the game including the two twins who died a long time ago, cured by their Elder. But no sign of Tellah the Sage, at least one person stayed dead, geez...

We attack the giant in Spaceballs fashion, entering the mouth and working our way to the self destruct button with the guidance of the schwartz. Once we get to the heart of the beast it was time to face the 4 arch fiends again, one after the other without rest or saves, but they all died easily. This was followed by a fight against a computer of all things, no problem. After that was done we faced off with Golbez, but instead of fighting him, the new Sage Fuyosa released him of his bond from the true arch nemesis Zemus, a much older elder of the moon. With Golbez released, he joins the winning side and apologizes. We lose Fuyosa and get Kain back, yay!

Anyway, Giant dies w/o his computer and we head back to the moon to face down Zemus. After a VERY long dungeon, we finally get to Zemus. Fuyosa and Golbez join forces to kill him on the spot with a Twin Meteor spell. But like the arch fiends, he only gains strength in death and resurrects to become more powerful, one shotting Fuyosa, Golbez and my entire party. Back on earth the Elder senses our struggle and the whole world starts to pray. We enter into a fight screen with resurrected Zemus, as Zeromus, and my entire party dead with exception of Cecil who has 1 HP. Uhhh not good.

Visions of prayers from earth start to appear on the screen and slowly my party is resurrected and brought to full HP/MP. Much better. Overall, pretty cool cut scene sequence there. I then proceed to whip the shit out of Zeromus. Sure he had his moments of cheating glory like casting Whirl (party HP reduces to single digits) followed within like two seconds by Meteor (5k party wide damage); but I had my own ace in Phoenix, an augment that says when that party member dies the entire party is resurrected with a percentage of their HP equal to his percentage of MP. I put it on Kain who never uses magic and always has 88/88 MP. So my party fully rez'd from the wipe. Notable damage dealers were Rydia summoning Bahamut for 9999 and the Ninja Edge throwing Fuma Shirukens for 9999 damage. Once in a while Kain would also Jump with Darkness up for 9999 damage, but Edge and Rydia definitely did like 80% of the damage. Ninja and Summoner ftw.

Once Zeromus went down I got a nice 15 minute long end scene spanning the globe and because it's on the DS I got a play again save. So as you can see my end game save after the boss is only level 10, but it's to start a second play through game. You'll notice the "Completion" time at the bottom left of my first beaten game. Longest one yet at thirty-four and a half hours. I expect the next two to clock in over forty each.



Here's some pics of the real party. Can't wait for anthologies (V and VI) to come in the mail.



On a side note it's worth mentioning here that this game also introduced the in dungeon save points which were SO much needed and became a regular staple in all games to come afterward. No more 3 hour dungeon treks to die on a boss anymore. More like one hour dungeon treks to die on a boss. =P

Lastly, the only beef I really had with this game was the whole naming thing. I hated that I couldn't name my own characters. It definitely took some of the personal touch from the game, made them feel less like your guys. Other than that, awesome great game for the DS. I hope I can overlook the super weak graphics coming my way in V and VI which will be on my PS3 in HD on my big screen in all their 16 bit glory.

Taking a break...

For like a day. I'm nearing the very end of FFIV, in the final dungeon, but I still haven't received 5 and 6 in the mail so no need to super rush anyway.

On a side note, I put two cool new articles in the "My Links" section to the right about the creation of FFVII and the history of the franchise, check them out.

FFIV - To the Moon! ...huh?

With my final party of five I continued my journey today, on the quest to retrieve the final crystal before Golbez could. There's just one problem, my crappy Red Wing airship from Golbez' armada that I stole can't fly over lava. I need some kind of... I don't know... airship engineer to rig my shit. Well what do you know, Cid is in the Dwarven castle infirmary! I guess strapping a bomb to your chess, jumping 10,000 feet out of an airship and self destructing didn't do him in. Tough old bugger...

So Cid jumps out of bed and rigs me up to fly over lava, now I have access to the whole of the under world. But before continuing I had to make some stops at a few caves which I had just been given access to. Two very annoying caves. I had to keep float on the entire time or my party would take poison or lava damage from the floor. And for some reason zoning in the dungeons took it off. I can't count how many times I took a few steps and a few hundred damage, smacked myself, and said, "Oh yea, fucking float!" (about a million times)

Anyway, for my efforts I got to meet with the leaders of the Eilodon (summons). And since I wanted to enlist the aid of the king and queen I had to beat them in their summon form as is the "Code" of Summoners (cool little antic there). So yay! I get to fight for some summons. First up on the plate was a summon I've never seen nor heard of before, Asura, a chick with many arms and swords. She healed too much so I cast reflect on her so it would heal me instead. Summon obtained. Next up was her husband who, in summon form was... Leviathan! Awesome! Well the husband was a BIT more difficult, casting fucking Tsunami left and right for 2k+ damage on the whole party, but I weathered the storm (like that pun?) and defeated him.

Armed now with a super powerful summon in Leviathan, I continued to the Secret Cave where the last crystal resides. On a side note, it wasn't until playing FF2/3/4 that I realized just how powerful the summon Leviathan was. I mean he's not as big as Odin or Bahamut, but he's definitely not on the same level as say Titan, Ifrit, Ramuh or Shiva. I've had to fight him for the summon twice now, and he's always some powerful worldly being in the game who I converse with or interact with. Cool deal, love the history lesson I'm getting playing these games. Another side note, while I was in the city of Summoners I saw another guy in another infirmary. Yang my monk, sound asleep! Man these guys are invulnerable. Will Tellah and the twins come back later too?!

The sealed cave was a pretty cool dungeon of lava, multiple levels connected with ropes and... Demon doors! Oh man, I remember these from other FF's and here they make their first appearance in FFIV. Sweet.

After a long fight down I reached the bottom and had to fight off a huge Demon door that moved toward me ominously promising instant death if I didn't do enough damage before it reached me. Reminds me of FFXII which I played last year. Anyway after beating the door and nabbing the crystal I walked on out only to have Kain turn traitor again upon hearing Golbez' voice. He pushed Cecil down, grabbed the last crystal and bailed. Fuck, I thought I finally had my final party... Son of a bitch.

I report back to the dwarven king for like the umteenth time to report that I've failed. Now he starts ranting about going to the moon, and visiting the wizards in Mysidia. The moon...? Seriously...? Alright...

Before all that nonsense though I went back to Baron (first castle in the game) and beat the undead old king to obtain the Odin summon. Gonna go see if there are any other summons before going to Mysidia and the moon...

FFIV - Square kills kids!

Alright! I got to play a good bit between yesterday and today, much has happened so I'll try to break it down as best and quickly as I can. Essentially the evil Golbez was successful in stealing the first three crystals and in capturing Rosa, he and the traitor Kain talked Cecil into obtaining the fourth (Earth) crystal in exchange for her life. So Cecil ventures to the dungeon where the crystal is held with the aid of the monk Yang, sage Tellah, and the two wizard kids I picked up along my path to become a paladin. After obtaining the crystal and defeating another arch fiend (three down, one to go), the bastards seal us in a room and start closing in the walls Indiana Jones style. The two kids decide to sacrifice their lives by casting Petrify on each other at the exact same time to halt the moving walls. Madness I say! My first party member deaths, but certainly not the last. This marks the first time the series has actually killed off a party member who you were in full control of for a time. I can't believe they killed the kids off first...

Of course after going through all the trouble of getting the crystal and handing it over, Golbez decides he does not want to part with his captive Rosa after all. Tellah, the Sage, then goes nuts on Golbez with the ultimate spell Meteor and the spell over Kain breaks; Kain then helps Cecil save Rosa. Golbez is only slightly wounded by Meteor and leaves, but casting the spell kills Tellah. After swearing to Tellah that we'd avenge he and his daughter's murder, we add Kain to the party (Dragoon if you don't recall), as well as Rosa (White Mage). Back to a party of four: paladin, dragoon, white mage, and monk. After Golbez has left, the party feels like we've lost but Kain explains that Golbez has the four crystals of light and that for each crystal of light there is a crystal of dark as well that he must obtain in the underworld. Off to the underworld! I pick up Cid as a character as I get a new airship and off I go.

I arrive at the underground Dwarven stronghold and Cid leaves the party to help rig the airship for the dwarves fighting the armada of Golbez. The dwarven king explains that he has three of the crystals locked up safely behind the throne room and one sealed away in a secret cave. Well guess what, the crystals in the throne room are getting jacked as we speak. I rush back there to face down a back to back boss fight against a doll and then Golbez himself. Once the doll went down, Golbez paralyzes the whole party and starts casting death one at a time. When he finally gets to Cecil, Rydia comes outta no where (lookin' all grown up now), and annihilates Golbez summoned creature with a powerful new summon of her own. Now the fight starts with Cecil and Rydia; Kain, Rosa and Yang being dead. A very harsh starting condition... Every time I'd rez a character, Golbez would immediately cast an -aga spell and kill the rez'd member as well as dealing significant damage to Cecil and Rydia. Not only that but he kept barrier shifting, so I kept healing him on accident with Rydia's summons for like 2500. After about an hour or two of party wipes (I kept putting it down for a bit and coming back to it), I finally gave up on trying to get my party up and just fought with Cecil and Rydia. Eureka! I cast Libra with Cecil to find his current weakness and summoned the corresponding beast with Rydia. About three summons later the fucker died. Finally! Except once more he was only wounded and retreated with the three dark crystals, now he has 7 of the 8! Well, I go back and tell the Dwarven king the bad news and he suggests that I go to Golbez keep and steal the 7 he has while he's out after the eight. Ok, sounds like a solid plan. I head on over to the tower and start at the 13th floor below ground. Ugh, this is gonna be a while. I work my way all the way up to about the 6th floor when I'm faced up against the master strategist of Golbez army, 'The Doctor'. I beat the crap out of him and his war machine, grab his key and head to the next floor to find some super death machine about to blow all the dwarves to hell. Enter my monk Yang to sacrifice his life to stop the death machine (fourth party member suicide). I really wish these guys would stop dying...

I head to the next level and that sneaky Golbez disintegrates a bridge under my feet. My party falls to the lava below, and is rescued by Cid in his airship just in time. The armada is hot on our tail so we start to bail for the surface. The ships in pursuit are gaining fast though and it doesn't look like we're gonna make it so Cid grabs a bomb and jumps over the side just as we reach the opening to trap the armada in the underworld. Another one bites the dust!!!

Finally I arrive at the Ninja empire which is currently under siege by Golbez (man that guy is busy). I'm trying to get into the same tower again, but from above ground this time. I pick up another character, Edge the ninja. I do believe I'm done with switching party members this time because ninja is usually one of the end game classes and my party is already in the 40's. Game can't be too much longer. Anyway, I get into the tower at the top floor and work my way down to about 6, when I'm faced up against the final arch demon. A mean sucker but no wipes, we kicked his ass pretty solidly. As we enter the chamber behind him we see all seven of the crystals on a pedestal and approach. And fall. Through a trap door. Damnit! My party then decides that they can not possibly defeat a trap door and give up on the seven crystals. They head back to the dwarven kingdom to regroup and I'm guessing go after the eight crystal.

Pretty epic story so far, going all over the place, lots of classes, lots of different tactics. Can't just tank and spank these bosses, each has a specific strategy. Cecil is really starting to become solid. I have the Counter Attack and Draw In augments on him. So essentially every mob HAS to attack him unless they do a party wide spell, and he counters with about 2k dmg each time. So Cecil gets like 5 attacks for 2k each round, it's pretty sweet. The summoner Rydia isn't nearly as cool as my last summoner in FFIII though. For one, her summons cost too much, I can cast like 6 before I'm out of mana. The summoner in FFIII could cast all the low level summons like 20 times each before he ran out. Not only that but I'm not sure she's going to have to fight for any summons either. We shall see though.

Final Fantasy IV, The series fleshes out

This game is... pretty damned good.

Background: Final Fantasy IV was developed by Hironobu Sakiguchi and Takashi Tokita of Square in 1991 for the Super Famicom system (JP name for SNES). Unfortunately, once more the new title was only released in Japan. It was later released on the Sony Playstation and about a year and a half ago it was remade for the Nintendo DS. But when it was released later in the states, it was released as FFII and I believe VI was released as III, much to the confusion of North America when VII came out. Just like FFIII on the DS, this is in full 3d; and honestly a beautiful, great game for the DS. Here are some comparison shots.



I'm quite impressed and satisfied with this title. The plot writers at Square really started to take interest in their characters and story lines at this point and it is very evident.

Right off the bat, I was introduced to the regular FF staples: crystal involved story line, character classes (I start as a Dark Knight, and am quickly joined by a Dragoon), and the character Cid. I was also introduced to many new game mechanics, some of which would become the foundations of all other FF games for years to come. One such mechanic is the Active Time Battle (ATB) system, which if you don't already know is a bar which counts down dependent on your characters speed and once the counter reaches zero, the character can act out an action. All character and enemy ATBs are going on simultaneously and it gives the game a shade of an action RPG feel. While it's still obviously turn based, the enemies WILL continuously attack while you're figuring out what to do, makes things a little more intense.

At the start of the game I only had my Dark Knight Cecil (the first time my class has been hard set in an FF game, also something the series would continue to do going forward), and upon trying to rename my character, the banga/vierra hybrid (w/e it is) says, oops, guess you can't change your name. I wonder if that is because this version of the game has voice acting in the cut scenes... The plot line drove my character, a top general in an empire, to question his king's latest decisions and finally rebel. But we quickly find out that the king was just a puppet to the real menace Golbez, who is trying to collect the four elemental crystals to wreak havoc on the world. Golbez then seeks to hunt down and destroy Cecil, which should be an easy task, as my Dark Knight is pretty useless against minions of the Dark, being one himself. So my character then seeks out to become a Paladin.

Along the way my party drastically changes, much more so than FFII and FFIII. While those games gave you your party of 3 or 4 and added an extra party member for a short time, this game continues to add several party members at a time, then remove some or all of them and replace them with others (if any). So my party is constantly fluctuating between 1 and 5 members of varying set in stone jobs such as Dragoon, Summoner, White Mage, Bard (love the bard), Black Mage, different White Mage, Sage, and Monk. So far... This is fun and I like it, but sometimes it can get annoying when a character all the sudden bails on my party with all this awesome gear. I've had to reload my game a couple times to go strip them before a cut scene; that stuff's expensive! This however also drastically emphasizes the story of the singular main character, something that's never been done before. All prior games had a party focus, all members being equally important. Even FFIII which started off with just one character, never really focused the story on them, and they were alone all of 10 minutes in the game.

So, I played the game through all these character last night. I got a dune buggy to drive around for a while, rode on a ship, got attacked by Leviathan (first appearance by a traditional summon), got to play a little mini game to buff a custom summon on Rydia (the SMN) which was interesting, I got through a whole mess of plot line and my Dark Knight was getting pretty pimped out, swinging a sword that cast death when it hit someone, almost level 30. And then I became a Paladin... lame. Would have much rather stayed Dark Knight with my soul eater like ability to consume health for double damage attacks. Not only that but when he switched classes, I was level ONE! again! >< And for some reason he got a Queer Eye for the Straight Guy makeover...



I'm personally of the opinion that I'd rather play a girl than a guy who looks like a girl, but w/e, game is still great. Some other mechanics of interest that were introduced:

Mapping: Not only is the mapping in this game great as you can watch the map fill in on the bottom screen while you walk around on the top screen, but it shows off screen chests sometimes and if you completely fill out the map, you get a bonus like potions, remedies, ethers and Phoenix downs.

Autobattle: At first I was pretty stoked on this, you could just hit X and your characters would auto attack and finish the battle for you. While this worked well when I just had some melee guys, it's not so great for casters, but I imagine it will come in useful later if I have to do any grinding.

Twincast: I got two characters and when you both cast the same thing, they work together to cast one big high damage spell, pretty cool.

Augments: Now this is interesting. From time to time I find a new Augment, a key item ability that I can put permanently on one character. An example is the latest one I got, counter. I can also manipulate my battle screen, so I added Counter to Cecil's ability set and now if anyone attacks him, I get a counter attack. This function to allow you to set abilities is really nice, I took out Attack on my mages and instead I put in Item>Rod in that slot, so for example my BLM Parom will use his Item Flame Rod which casts Fire for free on an enemy and my WHM Palom uses her Healing Staff to cast a light all Cure on the party.

Now that Cecil has switched to Paladin, it's time to become all powerful, defeat Golbez and rescue his sweetheart Rosa (little FF princess Leah).

Final Fantasy III, Ding Dong...

(my crew left to right, Yorick, Ikorid, Rhek, and Nazomi)

...the bitch is dead. Finally. I went to work earlier tonight, hitting the grind hard, knowing I had my work cut out for me. I spent several hours grinding from 45 to 57 before entering the Crystal Tower. I also killed Xande and opened a bunch of chests then went back out and saved before attempting the long trek back to kill the bitch who schooled me yesterday. It was still a long journey, clocking in at over two hours, but much faster than last night with my guys higher, knowing where to go, and knowing what to pick up along the way and what to ignore. I smoked Xande like he was a level 1 rabbit, and the four entities holding the Warriors of the Dark went down like little girls. My guys were hitting 9,999 left and right, shit was just dropping as it should. By the time I reached the Cloud of Darkness my crew was level 60, and my Monk Yorick was job level 97.

Along the way I built up enough cash to buy 33 Shirukens. That's like millions in gil.... I tossed Ikorid my Ninja in the back for protection and threw 9,999 dmg Shirukens at the bitch every round. Bahamut hit her a few times for 9,999 as well. Yorick did his share as well but I put him on retaliate as the only guy on the front line, and when she did hit him, he hit back like a champ for 9,999. She didn't like him being the only guy up front though so she kept cheating; killing him with things he couldn't retaliate against. But all was well, I hasted Nazomi in round one, and got Curajas off out the gate at the start of every following round. I layed into her fast doing about 70k damage VERY quickly. But then she went into particle beam overload and kept downing my strikers. I had to dedicate several rounds JUST to using Elixirs and Arise and just surviving with getting one shot in if any for the round. Eventually she went down to a Shiruken by Ikorid (I think he's killed every boss so far...).



This is from yesterday, when I thought I would kill her the first time, my guys were much higher level tonight, health all over 3k, check out my clear screen.



Feels good to be done with that one, it was long and tough, clocking in at just under 30 hours. I enjoyed it very much though. I loved the introduction of the Summoner class and all the summons, it's probably my favorite FF class. I loved all the cool new jobs and the job system. The story was great, the first one that I really paid attention to because of the plot. It wasn't riveting but the 3d graphics made you pay attention more than if it was just a 2d chat bubble you're scrolling through. I picked up FFIV for the DS today for a whoping $14. I already had it on GBA, but after playing this one, I'm not quite ready to go back to the old versions yet. Not looking forward to the downgraded graphics I'll have to face in V and VI, but I hear V is pretty damned good, so I'm looking forward to that at least. Don't know anything about VI.

I think I'll go boot up IV real quick... just to take a look before I crash for the night.

FFIII - Game Over

I continued on my journey yesterday with my four Warriors of the Light, slaying and pillaging my way through many a dungeon, cave and castle. All done in an effort to aid the two sages in their quest to kill Xande. I did their bidding and in the process, unlocked my fourth set of classes. This was what I had really been waiting for. I eagerly switched Rhek to Summoner and Nazomi to Devout. I also switched Ikorid from Knight to Ninja. The Knight was cool, but he was quickly losing pace next to Yorick, doing only about 1/4th the damage; even Nazomi was out DPS'n him with special ability staves. I tossed a full Genji set on him and two bad ass katanas I'd been saving. And watched his hits go from 500 to 6000, holy fuck, I love Ninja.

Even though I'm on a time table here, I still couldn't resist going back and retrieving every summon in the game for Rhek. I started with buying Chocobo, Shiva, Ramuh, Ifrit and Titan. Then I went to the main castle catacombs to defeat Odin, an old world lake to defeat Leviathan, and an old world mountain to defeat Bahamut. It was a little reminiscent of my FFXI days of being a level 30 SMN and doing battle with all the summons with only my little Carbuncle to get my godly companions; especially Fenrir, my favorite. And it was all worth it, if Ikorid and Yorick were hitting for 5k-7k a hit, well.... Rhek was hitting EVERYONE on the board for 4k-7k a pop, doing up to 22-23k damage at once. Nazomi didn't change at all. it moved some MP points around, like I can cast more Curaga, Curaja and Raises now which is cool, and she can definitely take a hit a lot better than the WHM. Other than that I don't see any difference from WHM.

I continued my journey, and ended up having to fight those two sages I'd been helping so I could use their souls to make a key to get into the Crystal Tower (hey it was their idea, not mine!). I pressed on into the Ancient Maze, working my way through to a small area right before the Crystal Tower, my ship with it's Inn and shops on board left behind (oh yea I got an airship that goes under water and an airship with an inn in it <.<). I was at my final save point before entering the final dungeon. I had full HP/MP, lot's of Elixirs, maxed out on Hi-Pots, lots of every other kind of item. I was ready...

I stepped into the Crystal Tower and worked my way down eight or ten levels, on the way there were end game weapons on pedestals scattered about. Trying to pick up each weapon initiated a boss fight, each boss had between 35k-50k HP. Some were more difficult than others, but nothing too problematic, and I got full HP/MP restored after every fight, which actually helped a bit. After about six of these bosses I encountered Xande with his 50k HP, and proceeded to smack him around quite nicely. He went down, but it was too late, the Cloud of Darkness had already been summoned and was going to consume the world, so I had to fight that. And I died.... but I was supposed to. I got resurrected by the five souls of pure heart to fight again. This time I was set in a room with four areas, each led to another map with two things somewhere in the map, a chest and a boss. Each chest contained a Ribbon, which I needed, and a Xande clone. So I had to beat Xande 3 more times. I left the final Ribbon because I already had one from before. I also had to fight four more very tough bosses who had 99,999 HP each. After finally defeating all these millions of bosses (like 14 I think), I was ready for the final encounter with Cloud of Darkness who was now in a much more weakened state from killing the mini bosses and enlisting the aid of the old Warriors of the Dark. It had taken me at least 3 hours to get to this point I think. I barely noticed the red light on the DS telling me my battery was about to go out. I quickly reattached the charger and was relieved. I almost lost all that work to a dead battery, can you imagine?!

I snapped my photo of the final boss for the blog and prepared to fight! Cloud of Darkness had two tentacles casting things like Protect, Haste, Lightning and Bad Breath. And the cloud bitch herself got to go twice per round, two attacks each time; so I'm getting hit with six attacks per round. I lasted about four rounds and did maybe 20k out of her 120k damage before I wiped. Frustration....

I began to recall the time period, 1990. I was 12 years old. It was a good period in video game history, but a different period. Those were the good old days of something which has been lost on this generation, something called... DIFFICULTY. That was a time when your three or four hours of game play could easily be dashed with one misstep. And somehow that made the rewards all the better, because not everyone could beat a game, there wasn't always a Noob level. The game was how hard it was, and if you couldn't hack it, you couldn't beat it, period. I guess I just gotta suck it up, go level another 10-15 levels (I hope I can, and am not stuck somewhere with no return to the old world), and come back for another 3 hour trek and crack at the bitch.

I'll be back for you shortly Cloud of Darkness, you will not defeat me so easily the next time we meet!

FFIII - Kickin' it Old School

I've entered the brave new world to find it dismal, small and dark. A sea of fog covers the land and time is stopped everywhere. I made my way to the only landmass I could walk on and found a priestess to help me navigate the Water Temple and break the spell on the land. While doing so I received the 3rd crystal and my 3rd job set: Dragoon, Viking, Dark Knight, Evoker and Bard. I also lifted the dark fog to reveal a gigantic world map. While I might have taken a stab at Dark Knight or Dragoon if I was playing the game leisurely, I don't really have time to go level those jobs up high enough to see if they're worth playing. Especially when my current group is doing so incredibly well.

I'm still running with my WHM, BLM, MNK and Knight. Running with the old school classes, and finally getting some good results. On crits my Knight Ikorid is dishing over 1300 while gaining 10% of that back in life with the Blood Sword (gotta love that) and even better, when my other characters are attacked in a damaged (yellow health) state, he Covers them; can't tell you how many times that's saved my ass. Yorick, my monk, on crits, is hitting like 3500.... so yea, I think he's going monk to end game cuz I'm pretty sure he can hit 9,999 eventually. I don't think I'll be changing my monk or knight jobs for the rest of the game. I'm still going to go SMN and Devout though when I get my fourth crystal, which shoulda been last night but the boss who had it disappeared with it after he was defeated. Son of a bitch....

I also fought Garuda (another summon from later in the series). That fight was TOUGH. I died several times. I had to switch Ikorid and Yorick to DRGs to kill him, because their jumps were hitting for about 1500 a piece versus the Knight and MNK hitting for like 500 a piece. But I put them right back afterward, I can't have the mages taking all the damage while they're up in the air all the time, Garuda was just especially weak to that class. And they kinda hinted at it when they gave me two full sets of DRG gear and spears in town...

Got some level 5 magic, so I figure I'm about 65% or so through the game. I think this one will definitely be over 20 hours. I haven't even gotten my final classes yet and their job levels have to be significant before I fight the final boss. Oh, speaking of the final boss, I discovered who it is. A powerful mage, Xande, who was granted great power by some guy named Noah along with two other mages. So it's off to enlist the help of the other two to defeat Xande. Onward!

FFIII - Trouble on the 'Job'

Didn't really make any progress Sunday after my post, needed a break plus I wanted to catch up on some Dexter and Demon's Souls. But yesterday it was back to the grind, albiet a fun one. =)

After busting up my airship on a rock, I was out of newb land and in the main world (or so I thought at the time). I trotted on down to my first city and was given several tasks to complete. It's kinda cool how there are all these little secret areas, passages, items, and triggers in the game but sucks that you have to zoom in to see anything sparkling. Anyway, I think I found most of the stuff, hopefully. I stocked up on crap tons of items and headed out.

I ran up a Dragon's nest to find... BAHAMUT! Alright! Probably one of my favorite summons of the series makes his first appearance. Love me some Bahamut. Except when he's kicking my ass and is invincible, I ran away. I picked up a fifth tag along character, Desch, who couldn't remember what he was supposed to do, so follows me. After a time, I'm told to head to a water temple, so the Vikings can sail at sea again w/o the great monster in the water killing everyone. I go on over and run through the temple, and am rewarded with a ship! called the Enterprise...

I hop on my ship and now, with full access to the world, I really start laying into the story line and got all the way up to my second crystal and second set of Jobs: Knight, Scholar, Geomancer, and Ranger. Now, by this time I had really been having some party troubles, more so than even FFII. I had Yorick on Warrior, but with crap weapons, hitting for like 30-50 a hit, less on bosses. Eventually I got some decent weapons and I figured out that using a shield is fucking useless since mobs always seem to go for the weaker classes anyway, so I finally dual wielded him. His weapons are still crap but at least he was doing a little more damage when I use the advance command, 100-230, maybe 30 on bosses. Ikorid on Thief was doing even less, and since I sold all my Knives and Daggers (don't ask me why), all he had was one Spark dagger and shield, and a whopping 5-30 damage a swing, useless. Nazomi on Red Mage spent most of her time using health pots on people because her MP is so low, and otherwise swings for about 30 damage. Now on bosses with 6k HP, you can imagine my trouble. The only real DD is Rhek on Black Mage. He throws down hard, hitting mobs and bosses alike for 500-800 damage, but he only has so much MP. I barely scrapped by most dungeons using about 50 pots, phoenix downs, all manner of elemental items in the hands of my useless melee classes, and tons of Mallets and Maiden's Kisses, Antidotes, etc.

So I was mightily relieved to be getting my second set of jobs. The first thing I did was put Nazomi on WHM, I need a fucking WHM, I don't want to start spending billions of gil on Hi-Pots and maybe X-Pots or w/e later on, and I can't do this game with a red mage with 8 Cures and 2 Curas in her arsenal before she's tapped out. No WHM experiment... Failed. Of course I kept Rhek on BLM, Never been a fan of Geomancers, and Scholar.. meh, I'll stick with my pure elemental class, he's served me VERY well so far.

Yorick I switched to knight, hoping for better (just like FFI right...?) and Ikorid I switched to Monk, never gonna look back at Thief again. I played like this a bit but then I just didn't feel right with Yorick not being the Monk, stupid I know. I switched Yorick to Monk and Ikorid to Knight. But now I'm thinking of putting them back, I just don't KNOW!!!! ><><). The other two, no clue... Two heavy hitters? A heavy hitter and a tank...? If I make a 'tank' does that mean my light armor heavy hitter has to be in the back row so he doesn't get hit? Be limited to like a ranger or another mage class? Ugh... help me Obiwan, you're my only hope. Any recommendations out there?

Anyway, I did some more story and got all the way to a part where I'm told that the world I live in is a floating land mass, and now I have to go down to the real world which is dark and evil or something. Who knows what lies in wait, but I think I better figure out my class issue before I head down. Maybe get at least level 5 or 10 job levels on them before I venture forth.

Final Fantasy III, Back to the Future!

Background: Final Fantasy III was created in 1990 by the same director at Square, Hironobu Sakaguchi and was the first title in the series released on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, however once again the title was only released in Japan. It wasn't until sixteen years later! that they released an english version on the Nintendo DS system, completely revamped, and in full 3D. In a way I feel like I'm cheating a little bit but I'm sticking with the excuse that my Japanese just isn't up to par to play an entire RPG in it JUST yet, so full 3D english version here I come... It's a little odd playing it like this, especially knowing that four, five and six will look like one did again. I almost feel as though I'm playing the old game in the future or something like that, check out the screens below to see the difference between the original JP title and the newer EN one; same game, same story, same characters, same battle system, TOTALLY different graphics...



I borrowed a DS from my brother-in-law and fired up his FF3 game (luckily he already had it on his DS). I've never really played a game on the DS before so it was kinda cool playing with the stick and two screens, but after about a half an hour, I tossed the stick (fun but making things slower). I got control of a single character, main character I assume, and named him Rhek, my usual alias in most games and all FF games until XI. Since I didn't know what class he'd be or if I got a choice I didn't want to go with Lokeir who's usually a WHM/SMN. Anyway, look how it turned out last game, I got to play Lokeir all of one hour =P. Already, I like this game better. I started with a 'Job', this is first appearance of the job system in FF, where each class is interchangable and you level a Job in addition to or in leiu of your normal levels. I quickly picked up the rest of my party and named them Ikorid, Yorick and Nazomi.

I then proceeded to get my ass handed to me, and be confused as to where to go, since I was getting one shotted down the obvious story arc road in a cave of skeletons and mummies. Had to go level a bit I guess... Grinded through about 8 levels in the out lying forests and main castle, then went back into the caves and cleaned house nicely. After a bit more story, I just now realize how far FF2 diverged and how quickly Square abandoned it to come back to what worked in the first game. And I was wrong before about the crystals. I thought every FF game held a common theme in crystals, but not 2. FF3 brought them back in again and the 'Warriors of Light' as my heros are called once more and have been prophecized once more to save the world once more. Sweeeet!

Presented with my first tier of jobs to pick for my characters, which I can change around at any time, I had to pick from... you guessed it: Warrior, Monk, Thief, Red Mage, Black Mage, White Mage. Awesome! I've decided to let the brothers Ikorid and Yorick have the spot light once more as the heavy hitters as Thief (to be Ninja I assume) and Warrior (to be Knight of some kind I assume) respectively. I put Rhek in some Black Mage garb and Nazomi got cast as a Red Mage (as she was when we played XI). What's that Rhek? No White Mage in your party??? Yea, gonna try it out, see if I can get away with a more damage oriented party.

Another cool aspect was the fact that you could move your spells around. Like I have a Cure orb and if suddenly I want Rhek to have cure instead of Nazomi, I can remove the orb from Nazomi and put it on Rhek. This seems familiar... *coughMateriAcough* While they do have levels on them, I don't think the spells/orbs level up, I think it just indicates that they go in the tier one slot on my magic grid.

Oh, oh, oh and I saw a Moogle in my second town. As well as Cid, and I already got his airship! and destroyed his airship... ><

It's cool though I guess, I got a magical canoe.....

Game is awesome so far, love it, reminds me of VII and Tactics quite a bit just because of the 3D look, the materia like spells, the job levels and the ability to change them, etc.

Final Fantasy II, The Emperor is dead!.. for real this time.

I decided against power leveling my guys for the last dungeon and instead opted to just level on the way to the last boss. I picked up 99 ethers, and 30 or so of every other type of potion and headed to the final dungeon. Upon dying Cid gifted me with his airship, but I had to go through the depths of hell to reach the Pandemonium castle. I fought tooth and nail down 10 levels then up 10 levels and along the way, my weak Lokeir up'd his health from about 1k to over 2300 and his hits from about 500 to 1k. I totally gave up on using Ultima and stuck with Teleport, killing all manner of bosses up to the Undead Emperor. I tried using teleport on him and it just healed him for like 1k... so that didn't work, but I suppose that would have been too easy. =)

However, it was almost just as easy. While Yorik hit for 0 dmg with his fists of fury, as Lokeir used his two end game swords, including Excalibur, to his for 0 dmg and 0 dmg, and Nicole hit him with Ultima for 120 dmg... good old trust worthy Ikorid who I decided to switch to swords on a hunch two days ago, well... he was hitting him for 5k. So the emperor lasted all of three rounds before dying single handedly to the Blood Sword in the hands of Ikorid. Beautiful... I'm glad I played this game on my trek to become a true fanatic and I did enjoy it, but man am I glad to leave that leveling system behind. Hopefully the next one is much more conventional. Here's some pics of my crew at the end again, enjoy! =D

FFII - The Emperor is dead! ...right?

Well no, not really...

So I got to play a bit more yesterday in the airport/plane and before I crashed for the night. I made quite a bit of progress. I got a new character who's actually a dragoon! He was in the belly of a beast named Leviathan who swallowed me up in the sea. I think that's the first mention of any of the major Summons from future FF games as well. I teamed up with the dragoon and we made our way out of the belly of the beast to continue to an old temple which held the Ultima Tome, supposedly the most powerful spell in the game. Through 10 long, difficult levels, I defeated several bosses with my broken ass Teleport spell. Will I ever have to fight a boss again...? Fortunately some mobs seem immune to it so I have to fight sometimes, but every boss has succumbed to it since it was about level 6, now it's level 10. I snagged the Ultima tome and taught it to Nicole, and smacked some mobs for a whopping 100 damage. Awesome, looks like something else to level for hours on end before it becomes useful...

Interestingly the world map changed a bit after I got the Ultima tome. The emperor destroyed several towns and now there are much more powerful mobs around the world in old low level areas. While it's cool, it does get annoying sometimes when I'm in a low level zone and wipe to a complete stone or confuse (apparently my guys can't take their own hitting them for 1500dmg). I then proceeded to the Emperor's castle, which was floating in a destructive cyclone in the air. How did I get there since there doesn't seem to be an accessible airship in the game?, well I flew on a wyvern =D (remember that egg I saved from before).

After a long fight to the top, I faced and defeated the Emperor, only to get back to town and find that my fourth character Lokeir, has unveiled himself as the Dark Knight and claimed the title of the new emperor. So once more I was off to fight an emperor.. again... I finally get there, and after much shit talking by Lokeir, the resurrected from hell, old emperor, rises and tells Lokeir he's fired and so, now out of work, Lokeir joins the party... finally... 15 hours into the game, with one boss to go. Except Lokeir is a weak piece of shit, so it looks like it's time to go power level again for a few hours. Oh joy! Hopefully I can finish this game off soon and move on, not a fan of the level system, at all.

On a side note, since Ikorid has become more powerful than Yorik, I've had to switch Nicole to the WHM role, hopefully all goes well since she's also my most powerful BLM.

FFII (continued)

Instead of jumping right back into my game last night, I instead tried to more carefully assess what I wanted my characters to be able to do and then I went and leveled those abilities a bit. After a couple hours I had gotten level three Fire/Blizzard/Thunder on Yorik and Nicole, I got my cure up to 3 on everyone, and 4 on Ikorid, and I started to train Ikorid in swords instead of axes because it just seems like the end game best weapons are always swords or spears in FF games, and Nicole already had a spear. I also made Yorik my Blink bitch, Ikorid has Protect and Nicole has Shell leveled. After getting a bunch of other Tomes leveled (spells) and a lot more MP and some HP, I set out to continue my game.

This was a bit more of a frustrating process than the typical power level where you could just go get exp and gain levels. I had to specifically cast and do certain things every fight, and sometimes I'd just sit there hitting my own party with spells and attacks and curing them, just so they would level my spirit/magic/mp/hp in the process of learning. A bit annoying, but I don't think any of the other FF games have a system like this, thankfully...

I picked up a few more weak characters through the plot, some severely useless, some ok, and continued on. Still no sign at all of Lokeir, but Nicole recognized the voice of the evil Dark Knight who's killing everyone for the empire... is it possible...? As I progressed, I was not surprised but satisfied when I entered a higher level dungeon and picked up two awesome weapons, one a spear.. one a sword... lol. Gifted with the new Winged Sword, Ikorid really started to lay into people, surpassing Yorik, who's been my very solid Monk type heavy hitter all the way. However, one of the reasons also is that I discovered umm, that I could dual wield weapons... Even Nicole crits for some big numbers, but lately I've just been abusing the shit out of her Teleport spell. Used normally, it takes the party out of the dungeon, used on a mob, 1 shot kill. After much use, it's now at level 7, my highest spell, and in a crowd of like 9 mobs, it's kinda cool when she kills 7 before they even get a swing in (due to her high agility, she always goes first). I even killed three bosses with it last night... BROKEN!

As far as plot goes, I think I'm definitely past the middle of the game, maybe nearing the end. On a side note, I had my first hint of the Dragoon class, and saw my first wyvern, who died shortly there after, the last wyvern in the world except for the egg I saved; might a wyvern come to aid me in the end...?

Also of note, I hadn't thought of it before, but this game is the origin for weapon levels in FFXI, where you had to level up each weapon independently to be able to hit harder, more accurately and use abilities. By the looks of it, XIV is purely a weapon job class system, probably similar to Tactics where all abilities are learned through the use of weapons. I look forward to that, I really enjoyed that class system in Tactics.

It's off to Vegas for the weekend so I don't know if I'll make any progress but I'll bring it along anyway for the plane/airport, and maybe those dull moments in the room where I'm bored waiting for people and don't feel like losing more money gambling or watching Nascar (gag).

Final Fantasy II, To begin again

The journey continues...

Background: The second installment of the Final Fantasy series was created by Hironobu Sakaguchi and Akitoshi Kawazu of Square in 1988 and released on the Famicom system (what they called the NES in Japan). The game was produced in a beta version for North American release and publicized but long delays, the release of newer Japanese Final Fantasy games and the soon to be released Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) all eventually led to the shelving of Final Fantasy II for the U.S. It wasn't until 2003 that the U.S. recieved an english version of the game as Final Fantasy Origins. They couldn't release it as Final Fantasy II because Square USA release Final Fantasy IV as Final Fantasy II in North America to avoid confusion among the fan base and to avoid questions like, "Where's II and III, why do we only get IV?" I will be playing the version packaged with Final Fantasy I on the game cartridge Dawn of Souls for the GBA.

Loading up the game I created my characters, except this time there were no classes to choose from, instead I just picked four names. To keep things going from my first trek in the series I named my characters Ikorid, Yorik, Lokeir, and Nicole and started my adventure; albiet a little confused. Things start off with a nice evil empire killing everyone off, and a rebel alliance of sorts, well... rebelling. Our four young heros' town was destroyed so they join up. Sounds good so far, but umm, where's my levels???

I ventured out into the world to do some fighting and find that there are none, you just sorta get stats as you do stuff. This is a cool idea, and I praise Square for their innovative ideas of 1988 but it can be kind of frustrating trying to get the game to level your guy up the way you want him to be. I had to go research why Nicole NEVER got more HP. Well it was because I had her in the back row, where my mage (what I want her to become) should be to be protected, and well... she wasn't losing HP ever, so she doesn't gain HP. Okay... so I have to put her in the front row, and equip her like a fighter so she doesn't get one shotted. So I gave her a shield and a spear too. Then, I have like 10 MP, and normally I reserve MP in case I run into a bad boss or something that only dies to magic. I had to figure out why none of my guys ever got more MP... Well, because they never used MP. ><

Took me a while to get a handle on things, but now that I see how the game is going to run, I can deal with it. But I do definitely prefer the class system. This was my main beef with FFXII, everyone could do everything. Not a fan of that idea, I like people to have specific roles. But I'll roll with it, everyone will have cure, life, blink, protect, fire, thunder, blizzard, and I guess I'll just specialize the super black magic on Nicole and super white magic on Ikorid. Yorik is going fists, Nicole is going Spear/Shield, and Ikorid is going Axe/Shield. But wait a minute! What about Lokeir, and why is Ikorid going white magic??? Well that's because three hours into the game, I have no Lokeir and have no clue when I'm ever going to get my fourth character so I have to adapt for now.

The game has the fourth character slot changing, first I had a super powerful White Mage Minwu (I call him White Mage cuz he already had every white spell in the game), then I had a Monk type guy Josef, and then a weak sauce soldier type guy Gordon. Right now though I'm rolling around with just three people in my party.

The story and gameplay is cool, graphics got a little better, mobs got more interesting. I saw my first Bomb type mob and got to ride around on a Snowmobile and ... ready....? wait for it... wait for it........ a CHOCOBO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Alright! Go, go first chocobo appearance!

It's kinda hard to relate how far along I am since there are no levels, nor any set plot line of like 4 elements to acquire like FFI had, so if you've ever played the game, the Dreadnought has arisen and taken over Cid's airship (yep finally got to see Cid). Tonight I'm going to try to find a harder mob area around a town and just level up some spells, try to get some more MP before continuing.

Final Fantasy I, The End... Already?

Yes, already...

As anticipated, the game was much shorter than I recalled and once I started rolling last night, I couldn't put it down until it was finished around 2am. Was just too much fun. You never get tired of seeing your guys just pummel the crap out of something. My Ninja Ikorid and Master Yorik quickly became my hard hitters of the group, but Yorik began to outpace Ikorid by quite a bit with his hands of fury and was the first to break a 1000 damage. I recall now that my monk in FF Tactics was also my hardest hitter. But all was well because Ikorid was still one shotting most opponents as was Nick from time to time. That is... until Ikorid got his hands on Masume near end game, then it was lights out. Ninja FTW, dropping 1300 bombs on Chaos with Temper and Haste up, just destroying shit. It was a fine sight to see.

I pretty much used the same strategy for the bulk of the end game bosses, I'd haste and temper Ikorid and Yorik with Nick, toss up Wall, and Nul(element) with Loke and go to town. Kary, Kraken and Tiamat all fell in about 3 or 4 rounds of fighting. Once Yorik had haste and temper up, he was usually hitting bosses with 24 hit combos for over 600. Chaos took quite a bit longer and turned out to be Garland (who woulda thought), the first boss I fought 2000 years in the future; that sneaky son of a bitch... At one point after I had done about 10k damage, he cast Curaja for 9999 ><. That started to worry me, but by then I had the whole party Temper/Hasted and with Ikorid smackin' him for 1k-1300 every round, he went down fast.

It was a gratifying win and even after all these years the game was still very fun, in all it's 8-bit glory (prolly 16 bit on the GBA tho..). Can't wait to start II tonight.

Some things of significant note:

-It was cool to see things like dinosaurs and mech warrior robots, I'd forgotten that those mobs had their roots all the way back to the beginning. I wonder when cards and jars and weird mobs like that make their first appearance.

-It kinda sucked not being able to get things like Flare and the other level 7/8 black mage spells, I would have liked to see them again. I also missed not having the black mage because of nostalgic value, since to me, there is no better icon for the Final Fantasy series than the blue robe and straw hat with glowing eyes of the Black Mage sprite.

-Late in the Mirage Tower I was walking down the hall toward my boss when I was suddenly put in combat with 'Death Machine'. I thought nothing of it until he survived two rounds and dropped Nick with a hit for 500. OMGWTF??? I definitely didn't remember this guy. Even though he eventually fell as I pecked at him with hits ranging from 60-100, he was still probably the only mob in the game to actually kill one of my characters w/o using a Rub or XXXX. Not only that but he yeilded a whopping 10k exp, the most in the game by a long shot. I found out afterward that you only have a 1 in 64 chance of running into him in that hall. Lucky me I guess. =)

-After each of the four fiends died, it moved to a cut scene in another area where a statue of that fiend disintegrated and revealed a doorway. I didn't bother to check those out, but I don't recall them AT ALL from my other FFI experiences. I imagine it's something like a uber mob area where you can put your skills to the test against mobs harder than Chaos or Death Machine, but I didn't take the time to check them out. I wonder if those zones were in the original game or new in this GBA version.

-The first appearance of Cid occurred in the final town before the last battle. Well not appearance, but rather they mentioned him as the creator of the Airship. Thought that was pretty cool.

Anyway, onward! We have much work yet to do. Here are some pics of my crew in the end.



Sorry it's a little blurry. If you're wondering: does that say 13hrs played? didn't he just start the game the day before? does this guy have a life? is he insane?... The answers are yes, yes, not for the next 100 days, and yes. =D

Final Fantasy I, The beginning

And so his journey begins...

Background: The first Final Fantasy game was created by Hironobu Sakaguchi of Square in 1987, and released in the U.S. in 1990 for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It has since been repackaged and sold in a combination cartrige with Final Fantasy II on the Gameboy Advance, which is the platform I will be using.

So, I decided to jump right in last night as my task is daunting and there is no time to be spared if I hope to hit my deadline. I found a save file of lvl 32 characters on my Gameboy and deleted it, when did I play that...? Anyway, I started a new game and was presented with my choice of character classes and names for my party. Ahh, the nostalgia, the foundation of the series, the game at it's basics, the starting classes: Fighter, Thief, Monk, White Mage, Black Mage, Red Mage... It never dawned on me before that these are the EXACT same starting classes in FFXI. Since I usually played Fighter, Fighter, Black Mage, White Mage in the past because of my cousin, I decided to change things up. I created a Thief named Ikorid, a Monk named Yorik, a Red Mage named Nick, and a White Mage named Lokeir. I named them as a tribute to the people I'll probably be playing with most in XIV, in the classes they have or are going to play. Of course, Lokeir is the White Mage, my character job and name from XI.

After playing a bit, I realized that my party is very heavy melee and that I'll never have the super heavy magic hitting ability. I also realized that none of them could really wear heavy armor or use shields. I started to think this might be a problem, having 3 light armored characters and my WHM. I still don't know who to put out front, but for the time, it's the THF, he has the highest health and evasion. He gets hit hard but so what, my WHM has to have something to do. =)

What I also realized is that they were going to fuck some serious shit up, unless faced with a melee resistant mob. I played through a bit of the game, my warriors of light on their quest to obtain the 4 orbs of power: earth, water, fire and air. This is the basis for all Final Fantasy games to follow, as each universe is different, the only real underlying theme is that there are always crystals of power.

So, I ventured out into the world, leveled up a bit, kicked the shit out of Garland, Astos, the Vampire, the Eye, the Stone Dragons, and even beat down Lich, the Earth fiend earning me the first of four orbs needed. I got my ship, my canoe, my airship, and even got to the class change; now I have a Ninja, Master, Red Wizard and White Wizard. In short, I kicked some ass last night, getting most of my party to lvl 34 before calling it for the night.

It looks like the game is a lot shorter than I remember, unless there's a lot left that I don't remember, but having the Airship drastically reduces down time from fighting low level mobs that yeild no exp or gold. The mages have the ability to learn 8 levels of magic and they both are already at level 7. The Red Wizard is pretty much tapped out as he can only learn 1 white and 1 black spell at 7, and none at 8 from either side. And the White Wizard just needs Life 2 and he'll be set for the game. Hopefully tonight I can down two more of the fiends, maybe finish this game out before I head out to Vegas for the weekend. Stupid real life getting in the way of my journey!

I've bolted out of the gate but I know that each installment gets more involved and longer. As such, and perhaps to the dismay of any true RPG fan, I AM using walkthroughs from time to time. The goal is to experience the games (most of which I already have), and to complete them, see the story, the characters build, etc. The goal is NOT to run around lost or waste time walking to the end of some dungeon to just find another Tent or Potion I didn't need.

Anywho until tomorrow, peace.

My history with Final Fantasy & Mission Statement

It was 1987. I was 9 years old and my little brother was 6 when he received the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for Christmas that year. Man, what a Christmas that was, a technological marvel in the hands of two young boys. He and I would embark on many a long journey's on that system, playing the old school greats like Super Mario Bros., Mike Tyson's Punchout, Bubble Bobble, Solomon's Key, Double Dribble, Techmo Bowl... so many.

I got my very first taste of something like an RPG when we finally got our hands on The Legend of Zelda a year or so after it was released. We treated that gold cartridge like it was the real precious metal, and worth just as much to us. A perpetual game where we could build up a character and play over an extended period of time was unheard of to us, and we loved it. I was usually the player and my brother, bless his little heart, was the navigator keeping track of where to go and what to do. We would trade off, but I was usually the one to beat the tough opponents. At that age though, our attention span was short and while we got to dungeon 9, we never beat the game.

It wasn't until 1990, when my cousin from Texas came over to spend the summer with our grand parents who were also watching us for the summer, that I had my first experience with a true RPG, Square's 'Final Fantasy'. Now this was a real treat for us. A turn based adventure with not one but FOUR heros who we could build differently. We could buy and find them each new armor and weapons, new spells, and even accessories. There was a huge world map, deep dungeons, awesome bosses, it was... epic. We spent that whole summer playing that game almost every day with our cousin, and while the game was very difficult for us in spots, it only took that long because our other cousin hated the game and would frequently unplug it to ruin our fun and force us to play other things. We didn't get to finish it before our cousin left so my brother and I had to go out and buy our own, and we started it with the same characters with the same names, in memory of our cousin's game: a Fighter named Rex led the group with another Fighter named Max, a Black Mage named Zeke, and a White Mage named Jill (we didn't know it was a guy until the characters grew up and changed sprites). We got our maps and guides out and went to work, but again sadly we never finished Final Fantasy.

Some years later in 1997 Square, now Squaresoft, released a cutting edge, state of the art, hot new game called Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation. I didn't even know they had made a Final Fantasy two through six, how did I miss out on this? I was a Nintendo fan to the core, the PlayStation seemed odd and stupid and I felt like a traitor even thinking of buying one but I HAD to have this game, and I found for the first time that my loyalties lay more with Squaresoft than with Nintendo, I went out and bought a PlayStation with the 4 disc game (4 discs??? madness!!!). By this time my brother and I had a new video game friend, and the three of us embarked on yet another glorious, truly EPIC adventure. That game floored us again and again, it was and remains one of the best games of all time in my opinion, and none of the following Final Fantasy games have even come close to it. I was drawn not just to the game play or the graphics, but more so to the battle system, the materia system, the characters and most of all the story. And Sephiroth is to this day, still my favorite villian of all time. It was so good, that I actually finished it, and I was sad to see it end. A couple months later, I downloaded Final Fantasy 1 on my PC emulator and played through the game and finished that too, then Zelda too.

Eventually VIII came out, I played it a bit, maybe 70% of the way through, but eventually I put it down and forgot about it. I didn't even realize it when IX came out and didn't play it until I felt nostalgic about the series one day after X-2 had been released and went back and played it some, it was alright, but hard to go back to those graphics. When X came out, I was pretty pumped up to play it on the PlayStation 2. The game was good, the battle system and grid were good, but some of the culture and backgrounds were very hard to swallow, and I had heard it all ended up being a dream in the end. I had rented the game for 2 weeks from Block Buster and had been tearing through it as fast as possible, but I was unable to finish it before having to return it. I stopped about 2 bosses from the final boss in the cloud/dream world of Sin. When X-2 came out, I just bought it this time, but I absolutely CRINGED when it opened with the girl pop song. Horrible! What were they thinking? I still played it though and it remains my favorite merit/battle system of any Final Fantasy game. After a while though the girly crap got to me and I had to put it down without finishing.

Then the evil, evil, Square, now SquareEnix released Final Fantasy XI, an online MMO. I really didn't want to play an MMO, but I finally caved and got it. I wanted to make a thief but apparently the best thieves were girl cat characters... ugh! I made my mithra thief and got her to about 35, had my fun with SA TA, then quit and rerolled a guy thief. I played him to about 45 then quit again, the thief was getting tough. The game itself was ridiculously hard, the monetary system was horrible, it was run by gold farmers, the crafting system was impossible, you could de-level if you sucked, you couldn't solo even a rabbit, and sometimes you had to sit in front of your computer for hours just WAITING to play the game, because you couldn't find a healer or a tank for your party to play. So I rerolled again, a Taru white mage, I just wanted to play the stupid game, and everyone ALWAYS needed a white mage. I had been playing a healer type character in Earth and Beyond and Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft, so I figured I'd take a crack at it. Three years later I had a 75 WHM and a 73 SMN when I finally quit the game, because I couldn't take healing a party with Cure 2 on my 73 SMN anymore. But I was still completely in love with the world, the story, the job classes, the cultures, all of it, amazing, awesome. I still sometimes want to go back and play even though I've told myself I'm done with MMOs. I got to play with a lot of good people in that game, including my brother in law (who is now my video game PIC), his brother and sister in law, and a couple other friends of theirs.

Then XII came out, it was ok. I really expected better graphics after playing XI on the PC for so long, and I really hated the liscense system because you could just make all your characters the same. None of them had any uniqueness or special quality, lame...

Now XIII looms on the horizon, the first installment of Final Fantasy on a true next gen console. It looks absolutely gorgeous, I can't wait to play it and I intend to beat ever damned thing in that game that there is to beat. It releases on March 9th, 2010, and some other type of Final Fantasy 13 game releases next year, not sure what the difference between the two is... And following that will come Final Fantasy XIV, the new MMO. Another evil MMO, but this is the only franchise that could make me play another MMO. My favorite franchise of all time, SquareEnix's Final Fantasy franchise.

I didn't touch on the other Final Fantasy spin offs or movies that I played and watched because they are not the core, or the focus of this blog, but I'm a big fan of them as well. In retrospect, though I call myself a fanatic of the franchise, I feel like I can't say that without a twange of falseness since I've only really completed 3 of the 12 released games thus far. Enter the self assigned mission:

To complete (kill the final boss) of every single player core Final Fantasy game from a clean slate (i.e. not from prior saves) before the March 9th release of Final Fantasy XIII in 2010. [Final Fantasy I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX, X, X-2, and XII]

It's an INSANE task to try to accomplish in just over three months, but I'm going to try to see how far I can get.

The quest to become a true fanatic begins.