T w e n t y S i d e d
Pre-existing condition: my mouse is going out, apparently.
Let’s get one thing straight from the beginning: Final Fantasy is *not* the first console RPG, or JRPG…but it *was* inspired by the early ones. It *was* the first to use the format of enemies lined up vertically on the left side of the screen and home team lined up vertically on the right, for what it’s worth. This format is broadly associated with the concept of early console RPG’s, despite Final Fantasy being one of the few that used this idea. Dragon Quest, debuting a year earlier, used a first-person fight screen then switched to a second-person hybrid screen with Dragon Quest 7. This view would also dominate HD and 3D remakes so thoroughly and effectively that people associate that particular view with the series as a whole, now. The Phantasy Star series, another early hit for Sega-based systems; used a second-person view set right behind the protagonists. You would see their back and hair which set an early standard for that series’ focus on the avatars’ designs. Most earlier RPG’s used some variety of first-person point-of-view. So at least in one regard Final Fantasy did do something different.
There is one other particular quality of the first several Final Fantasy games: they were all based on crystals. If you have ever watched the “History of Final Fantasy” video released about the same time as Final Fantasy XII, which would also be the Twentieth Anniversary, you will have picked up that crystals are central plot points in most games. While that’s overstating things, at least these days; it’s not far wrong. More games than you think are centered on crystals, although a few “re-name” the crystals things like “magitek” or “materia.” The video also makes a big deal out of the detailed attack animation, but I don’t remember that being particularly impressive at the time. Once the games got into “summons” I think they did more than most others, but not before.
I’ll be doing the Pixel Remaster versions, despite some of the interesting aspects of the Playstation remasters that are available. The Pixel Remaster provides a consistent platform for the first several games, while the actual releases, even the early remakes, tended to be closer to the original release than any current version. A notable exception for Final Fantasy 1 is the anonymity of the four selectable heroes. You can input your own names, as well as choose four out of the available six classes: Fighter, Thief, Monk, Black Mage, White Mage, and Red Mage. The default recommended party is Fighter, Thief, White Mage, and Black Mage. I went with the Pixel Remaster’s recommended names as well, and so Rukus, Yubert, Robyn, and Clair begin the adventure.
The current story, or back story, begins 400 years ago. Prior to that point, the “world” was governed by four fully-powered crystals tied to the traditional elements of Air, Fire, Earth, and Water. But then a Kraken destroyed Onrac, the underwater kingdom that held the Water crystal and the dragon Tiamet took over the Lufenien nation floating “stations” or “air castles” and teleporters. The remaining two crystals, Earth and Fire, dimmed and were unable to hold the wild environment in check. 200 years later the Earth kingdom of Melmond fell to the Undead and an eight-armed knight took up residence in the volcano near the mage home of Crescent Lake. The chief mage, Lukin/Lukhan/depends on the version, prophesied that four young travelers carrying crystals attuned to the elements would appear one day and fix everything.
While the King (of Cornelia) is ready to trust the four nobody’s who show up at his door, his advisor the Chancellor points out that technically, *any* four people could show up with some crystals and claim to be the chosen ones. But since the King wants his daughter back (she was kidnapped by a 5th Bad Guy, the recently-turned-evil Top Knight Garland), he charges the four of you with retrieving his daughter from the nearby Chaos Shrine/Castle/Location. Help yourself to whatever is laying around, which is basically nothing because he left the key to the vault with the King of the Elves, and doesn’t think it’s important enough to retrieve it just yet. Maybe this guy is smarter than he looks. The Chancellor gives us a hot tip: check with the town’s “dancing girl.” She tends to know odd bits of information. Huh.
Unfortunately she knows nothing; at least at the moment. All she does is ask if you want to dance with her. While we *may* be getting some good drops in the future, we start out with 500 Gil (the near-universal word for “gold” in the Final Fantasy universe) and can upgrade almost everything immediately. Only by a point or two, though. Seems like a pretty lousy exchange, until you fight a few battles. The Fighter receives chain mail, the Thief gets some leather, and the two mages both remain in “clothes.” Similarly, the Thief and Fighter are given rapiers; and the White Mage gets a hammer. But the Black Mage remains with their default weapon, the “staff.” Conversely the Black Mage is the only character to receive powerful magic spells: Fire, Thunder (which is actually Lightning), and Sleep. The White Mage learns Cure, Dia (basically Turn Undead/Destroy Undead) and Protect. These names are better than the original NES translations, although those were HUGELY better than certain FF competitors.
Our first challenge is to be able to cast more than one spell at a time. Actually, you start out being able to cast two, so this isn’t really fair. Buuuuut…bear with me. More than two is the same as more than one, really. The Chaos Shrine is where we need to go; it’s the only place we’ve received *any* pointers to at all. As this is a classic RPG, even in the Pixel Remaster format, we’ll need to “grind” out a few levels before trying the Chaos Shrine. Many people recommend you get to level 2 or 3, so I’ll get to 4. (The pic is of 3, because I apparently tapped the wrong buttons at 4.) At level 4, I can beat almost any random encounter that occurs right around the starting town and castle with the default attack, and can withstand all the battles that it takes for a level up without taking a rest to recharge.
The Chaos Shrine is “far away” to the Northwest…the furthest you can go without leaving the continent…which you cannot do yet. In the Chaos Shrine, there are four treasure vaults, one in each corner. The two on the right are sealed for the moment, just like the vaults in the castle. But there are three chests total on the left containing a leather cap (which I equip on the Black Mage, as she is the weakest party member), a potion, and a sleeping bag. The sleeping bag is metaphorical; it allows you to spend the night in the overworld and recover HP and MP. You then retrace your steps to the beginning (there will likely be a half-dozen random encounters at least visiting the two vaults to the left) and proceed to the center. Here you confront Garland, whom you can defeat in two or three rounds at this point.
Princess Sarah will teleport you back to the throne room of Cornelia Castle. The King will promise to rebuild the bridge connecting Cornelia to the rest of the world, his Chancellor will once again advise you visit the dancing girl when you can’t figure out what to do, and the Princess will give you…a lute. I have been told this lute is *incredibly important*.
And…that’s the first part of the adventure done. When all of this was new-ish, I would imagine this would take HOURS. It took me..about an hour; actually. Of game time, that is; I spent considerably more curating screen shots and fighting with my mouse.
In other news, I haven’t been having great luck in Lord of the Rings Online. As others have pointed out (you can find videos all over YouTube) I am having fairly regular connection problems. The game will almost always *connect,* but after connection it sometimes takes quite a while to load an area. Skills frequently freeze, and rubber-banding is a constant problem. So instead I installed Star Trek Online, which I have intended to but never previously tried.
It feels…different. And not very optimized. My system runs full blast the whole time the game is running, but I don’t see any side-effects or anything. Much like LotRO, the character control is just enough different to require a mind-shift in control. Not convenient when I’m attuned to Star Wars: The Old Republic and World and Warcraft, which feel effectively identical. LotRO has inertia which *looks* nice, but STO just has slightly different timing for all the movement controls. Still, it’s working better than LotRO, so it’s keeping me interested.
But that’s it for now, see you next week!
Batman v. Superman Wasn't All Bad
It's not a good movie, but it was made with good intentions and if you look closely you can find a few interesting ideas.
Overused Words in Game Titles
I scoured the Steam database to figure out what words were the most commonly used in game titles.
Dead or Alive 5 Last Round
I'm not surprised a fighting game has an absurd story. I just can't figure out why they bothered with the story at all.
The Loot Lottery
What makes the gameplay of Borderlands so addictive for some, and what does that have to do with slot machines?
Charging More for a Worse Product
No, game prices don't "need" to go up. That's not how supply and demand works. Instead, the publishers need to be smarter about where they spend their money.
I’ll probably have to struggle to not be annoying on this series. It’ll be interesting to see what the pixel remaster changed, I’ve played the original and the PS1 Origins versions.
Fighter/Thief/White/Black is the “standard” party, giving access to all the spells and equipment in the game except the Black Belt’s earlygame weapons. Red Mage is stronger than… well arguably anyone who isn’t the Fighter, but especially the Thief. And in the first version, the default party was Fighter/Black Belt/Thief/Red Mage, which is going to miss a lot of spells and be a lot more difficult.
I assume Garland still knocks us all down, it’s one of the most beloved translations in the series.
I’m pretty sure the first time I played the game I used the Monk and Red Mage instead of the Thief and White Mage. But honestly that was so long ago I could be remembering wrong. I think this was either a borrow or a rental. It would have been unusual to be a rental when I owned my original NES; there was literally nothing around that rented the games. I lived in a *very* rural environment. But there were other NES owners that I could have borrowed it from which would have let me keep it long enough to finish it, which I do remember.
Garland does still “knock us down,” allegedly.
I have to wonder if “lute” is a play on words for “loot”.
Which is important after all.
Good catch. although as with many nearly-forgotten macguffins, it has ONE very important use late in the game.
So I’ve never played any of the Final Fantasy games so I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes. It’s interesting seeing the origins of such a massive series.
Thank you!
I’m looking forward to the Final Fantasy playthroughs. :) I never played the early FF games; my first introduction to the series was FF: Mystic Quest Legend on the SNES (and I never finished that), followed by FFVII and FFVIII, but I fell off the series again after that.
I would not be surprised to find there are *many* Final Fantasy fans that played the “Mystic” versions then VII, VII, and maybe IX and X. Especially in Europe and European-release-using countries, since they didn’t get any of the early games until the Playstation collector/special edition versions (AFTER VII and VIII).
FF1 is, of course, an important historical milestone, because without it we wouldn’t have 8-bit Theatre.
I kid, but I did read the webcomic first and then play the game. It was kind of funny seeing the stuff recontextualized. Really, it’s a pretty reasonable game to write a story in, because the actual game has very, very little plot.
I still have a hard time not calling Sarah “Evil Princess Sarah.”
I’ve been re-reading it recently. Genius.
Still haven’t played FF1 but I will someday.
I have been meaning to log into STO. I kind of miss swooshing around in my Original series Connie class cruiser.
I have seen the part where you can design and buy starships, but it apparently takes a currency I don’t start out with on free. I have been told that’s one of the highlights of the game, though.
I have started FF1 three times, I think. I have never finished it. This will be interesting.
As for reframing movement mechanics in games, I’ve been playing a lot of BTA (a mod for Harebrained Schemes’ Battletech game) where to speed up movement during a turn, you hit space bar. Now I’m playing BG3 (again) and if you hit spacebar during movement it immediately ends your turn.
I have been there, believe me. You get used to how one control scheme works and automatically apply your movements to a different one, which can occasionally have near-catastrophic results.
Small correction on the timeline – Tiamat attacked 400 years ago, Kraken attacked 200 years ago, and Lich shows up shortly before the start of the game. Basically, one fiend is slated to show up every 200 years.
Hope you have fun with the game!!
Thank you for pointing that out. The Pixel Remaster version doesn’t come with a manual that I can find (I have the Steam version), and the version I’m reading did not specify the arrival of the fiends in that manner.
This prompted me to go look up the instruction manual. But honestly I can’t tell if this is the manual or a strategy guide, it covers over half the game.
So many early game quirks, like “use potion” being separate from “use item”, and attacks on dead enemies not automatically redirecting. (Also the fearsome Fiend, KAREN).