Kuja is actually a pretty interesting villain if you put some thought into it. He's kind of let down by the game's dialogue. Actually, most of FFIX could use a remix, it has some interesting themes built into it that were either insufficiently or hamhandedly expressed.
From what I can gather or extrapolate, Kuja spent all of his life being a mere tool for Garland, doing everything he was told to do knowing that at the end, he was just going to be discarded. He hated it, and desperately wanted to be something more, to be the master of his own destiny, to not be doomed to be thrown away when his time was up. In order to do so he plotted to gain power, and hypocritically used the Black Mages his own tools, seeing himself as worth more than them. He hid away his tail because it was a reminder to himself that he was a servant, rather than a master.
However, when he actually gained enough power to overthrow Garland, he learned that he was still doomed, that no matter how much power he gained, the universe was still eventually going to cast him aside. He was still a mere tool, the same as the ones that he had used and that he had convinced himself that he was superior to. Rather than accept that he was worthless and that the universe would continue without him and eventually completely forget him, he decided to use his newfound power to destroy everything, to make a mark that could never possibly be undone.
If existance is a play (and I use this metaphor intentionally, the game seems to be attempting to say this as well), Kuja is a character who desperately wants to be an actor, to have some meaning outside of the lines he is reciting, to go on existing after the curtain has fallen. Rather than simply let the play end and be gone forever, he decides to destroy the entire stage.
You and DarkDragoon perfectly summarize what was going on behind the main plot about FFIX, and why it was so memorable. It wasn't just a fantasy story, it was a fantasy story that attempted to be more than itself, to question the very foundations of 'narrative' itself by having the characters subtly break that fourth wall between 'actors' and 'stage', or even to extrapolate, 'characters' and the 'world' they inhabit.
Now I want to see a real play where the characters rail against their nature, and eventually burst from the stage and seriously attempt to kill members of the audience. It would be the most postmodern thing ever.
For now, we're stuck with throwing an additional layer of abstraction on top.
From now until the end of the thread I'm going to spend a day talking about various FF games in detail. Feel free to correct any mistakes I made and to add any good fan art, song choices, or opinions as we go along. I plan to do one a day or so until the end of the thread. So here we go.
Final Fantasy
Release Dates:
NES
JP December 18, 1987
NA July 12, 1990
MSX2
JP June 1, 1989
WonderSwan Color
JP December 9, 2000
PlayStation
JP October 31, 2002
PAL March 14, 2003
NA April 8, 2003
Game Boy Advance
JP July 29, 2004
AUS November 18, 2004
NA November 29, 2004
EU December 3, 2004
Mobile phones
JP March 1, 2004
PlayStation Portable
JP April 19, 2007
NA June 26, 2007
EU February 8, 2008
AUS February 28, 2008
Virtual Console
JP May 26, 2009
NA October 5, 2009
What's the Deal?
Well, it's the first one. One of the first JRPGs with character creation, make your party, give them stupid four character names, and set off. Starts the whole good guys on the right bad guys on the left, take turns based on stats battle system. Not very linear at all. Hard as balls. Fantastic music for the NES, and pretty decent graphics too, especially considering the first release was 1987.
The basic story is that [strike] Ninjas [/strike]Garland captured the [strike] president [/strike] Princess Sara and that you the [strike] Bad Dudes [/strike] Four Light Warriors have been sent out to get [strike] the president [/strike] her back. Oh and then some nonsense about relighting the four Orbs (Crystals these days) to stop the earth from rotting, get the wind blowing again, the seas alive again, and the fires from going out, possibly by killing Fiends and Chaos or some such.
What sucks about it?
Oh people have some complaints about good old FF1. Only four characters in English to name someone sucks. Also if you aimed an attack on an enemy that dies it doesn't hit, a semi realistic but frustrating proposition. Roughly a third of all the spells are useless, bugged, or both. Running away is bugged, and Houses don't work properly.
That and the story has a very confusing, very poorly explained Time Loop at it's core.
Which Version to Play?
This one isn't as clear cut as most. MSX2 version is right out because it sucks ass. Most of us don't have Japanese cell phones or Wonderswans, so you can leave that one out too. So we've got NES, PSX, GBA, and PSP left.
NES-All the bugs, but also all of the 8bit charm, including the immense early difficulty if you don't know what you are doing.
PSX-Improved Wonderswan graphics, same content, bug fixed, with new music and more letters two name your dudes. You can turn on and off various "improvements" like auto retargetting and MP instead of the D&D esque pyramid of spells.
GBA-All of the PSX improvements, plus additional content. Easy mode only though.
PSP-GBA version with better graphics. Same additional Dawn of Souls Content.
I personally vote for: NES original. There is something special about the original presentation of the game. This ain't nostalgia talking either, as I didn't play FF1 to completion on the NES until 2003, maybe 5 months before the Collection came out on the PSX. GBA and PSP versions may look good and have fun additional content, but the MP system makes the game just too damn easy. They quadrupled Chaos' HP and he still dies on turn two or three!
Fun Facts:
What's in a Name: Named Final Fantasy because it was going to be Square's last project if it bombed. It rode DQ III's coattails to popularity and started the mega franchise we know today.
Peninsula of Power: East and North of Provoka there is a two by six area that wraps around the world, and has monsters from the inaccessible without a canoe area of the Elfland continent. Most are undead, and those that aren't are weak to fire, so a few good uses of Hrm 2 and Fir2 can start you on a path to tremendous amounts of Gold and Exp...if you can survive.
Sliding Puzzle Minigame: Get on your ship, hold a and press b a whole bunch. Get some quick cash. Good for low level/ single party member games. In the modified versions you get items, and really good ones if you do it fast.
Monk/Master Defense Glitch: Every character recalculates their stats every level up. Monk/Master have natural armor that improves only if equipment isn't equipped, but if you set them up right at higher levels and never go to that screen again you can equip them with ribbons and pro rings and gain the benefit of your unarmored defense. Likewise earlier in the game you should always visit the equip screen after level up.
Run Glitch: Instead of speed, luck, voodoo magic or what have you, running is instead glitched to look at the status of the character two slots below you. If the third slotted character has status condition normal (standing up) then character one will have a 100% success rate at fleeing as long as the monster can be run from.
I think my record for beating FF1 is something like 5 and a half hours (Albeit that was the easy as pie GBA version). I'm pretty sure I've replayed it more than any other game in the franchise, despite it being one of the last ones I played.
Exactly why I brought up Roy Batty from Blade Runner as a great analog; both were 'created', and are searching for their ultimate purpose in life, and in the end accept that no matter how much they kill, they will die inevitably, and death scares them. Just like tears in the rain...
Hahahahaha
Sound more emo
See Blade Runner, fuckstick. It's a god damn quote from Roy Batty.
I actually own Blade Runner, but yet have to watch it.
But if it's full of ankle-deep faux poetry dialogue like that, I suddenly don't want to anymore.
Man, I remember taking my FF1 strategy guide with me everywhere. I probably had most of the monster stats memorized at one point. I loved that goddamn game so much.
To this day, I can't see snow falling without thinking immediately of school closings and playing the game while wrapped in a warm blanket.
Exactly why I brought up Roy Batty from Blade Runner as a great analog; both were 'created', and are searching for their ultimate purpose in life, and in the end accept that no matter how much they kill, they will die inevitably, and death scares them. Just like tears in the rain...
Hahahahaha
Sound more emo
See Blade Runner, fuckstick. It's a god damn quote from Roy Batty.
I actually own Blade Runner, but yet have to watch it.
But if it's full of ankle-deep faux poetry dialogue like that, I suddenly don't want to anymore.
Wow, you've gone from troll to full blown idiot. It's existential angst. And that's not even a fraction of what the movie is about.
Exactly why I brought up Roy Batty from Blade Runner as a great analog; both were 'created', and are searching for their ultimate purpose in life, and in the end accept that no matter how much they kill, they will die inevitably, and death scares them. Just like tears in the rain...
Hahahahaha
Sound more emo
See Blade Runner, fuckstick. It's a god damn quote from Roy Batty.
I actually own Blade Runner, but yet have to watch it.
But if it's full of ankle-deep faux poetry dialogue like that, I suddenly don't want to anymore.
You are hereby no longer allowed to have an opinion.
Exactly why I brought up Roy Batty from Blade Runner as a great analog; both were 'created', and are searching for their ultimate purpose in life, and in the end accept that no matter how much they kill, they will die inevitably, and death scares them. Just like tears in the rain...
Hahahahaha
Sound more emo
See Blade Runner, fuckstick. It's a god damn quote from Roy Batty.
I actually own Blade Runner, but yet have to watch it.
But if it's full of ankle-deep faux poetry dialogue like that, I suddenly don't want to anymore.
You are hereby no longer allowed to have an opinion.
i'm pretty sure he's just doing this to get zephyr riled up, it is pretty easy
anyway, FFI!
my experiences with it are awful!
my dad first got it way back when he still played video games and i couldn't even get past garland, but he, on the other hand, apparently cruised all the way to chaos and then gave up
many years later (i was 11 or 12), i started it again, got all the way to chaos and then gave up
Final Fantasy 1 is, without doubt, the game which I have played and beaten the most often in my entire gaming life.
I remember the first time I'd ever heard of it: I was at a pep rally / other school function in the gym and was sitting next to one of my friends, who had the strategy guide. Instead of paying attention to whatever was going on on-stage, we spent the entire hour flipping through it. I asked him what it was like, and he couldn't really describe it* - I left with the impression that it was somehow like a Mario game where Mario got better? And it involved a rat tail, somehow. And you could ... buy? ... fire flowers, or something like that.
I'm basically a Final Fantasy 1 sucker. I've bought it every time it's been released for any system I've ever owned. I've got, basically, 4 copies of the same damn game at home, and I love all of them. None of the remakes have ever been as hard as the original, though - I still remember the Swamp Cave, and finally getting my hands on that crown after the We-Swear-They-Aren't-Mindflayers fight, only to have to fight my way back out of that poison-filled craphole.
And failing at it (generally through running out of useful spells), at least once or twice, before I managed to pull it off. It's a feeling of videogame accomplishment that, honestly, I've really only felt a couple times since - the most recent being in Demon's Souls, which is one of the reasons that game rocks so hard. In subsequent versions' playthroughs, that dungeon is never as hard as it used to be (especially with the move to spellpoint / mana systems, which are much more forgiving - one Fire 2 is almost always more useful than three or four Fire 1s, so the upcharge is never enough to offset the increased utility; this is a weakness of basically all point-based RPG mechanics).
And yet, I still play it, and I still have a great time telling Chaos to sit down and shut up.
Final Fantasy 1 is the game which kick-started my love for roleplaying games; they're still, absolutely, my favorite games - PC, console, tabletop.
Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage, Black Mage fo' life.
* We were D&D illiterate at the time, which would have changed the description somewhat had that been different!
Honestly, one is probably too many. Though they have their perks, they are probably the worst class in the game. At the very least, I can't think of any class combination that's worse than four monks.
Honestly, one is probably too many. Though they have their perks, they are probably the worst class in the game. At the very least, I can't think of any class combination that's worse than four monks.
They always seem to get ridiculously powerful at around the halfway mark both times I've played through the game. I think my core party is usually fighter, monk, black mage, and white mage. I don't think I've ever used the thief or the red mage.
Honestly, one is probably too many. Though they have their perks, they are probably the worst class in the game. At the very least, I can't think of any class combination that's worse than four monks.
An unarmed Monk does 999 damage 4 times per attack.
That's really called Assault of the Silver Dragons, but god damn it's so awesome. I love it when the Red Rose and the Hilda Garde III are owning dragons left and right.
Tell me one of you guys remembers when Nintendo Power had the Final Fantasy contest where the winner and 3? friends got to go to an island for a Final Fantasy adventure of some sort.
Vincent Grayson on
0
cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
That's really called Assault of the Silver Dragons, but god damn it's so awesome. I love it when the Red Rose and the Hilda Garde III are owning dragons left and right.
Man, I gotta say, Kuja is stupid fun to play as in Dissidia, but dear God that wardrobe.
Tell me one of you guys remembers when Nintendo Power had the Final Fantasy contest where the winner and 3? friends got to go to an island for a Final Fantasy adventure of some sort.
That's really called Assault of the Silver Dragons, but god damn it's so awesome. I love it when the Red Rose and the Hilda Garde III are owning dragons left and right.
Start thinking about FF 2 everyone, that retrospective is coming up next.
Yeah, I know, not much to talk about there. I'm sure some of you have actually played it besides me and aren't just pretending to have gone through the hassle. It is the only character driven NES FF game, and it does start the trend of side characters dying en masse and it does have the brutal final dungeon, so it's not an entirely lost cause. Passwords was a good idea too, I guess, and it does actually have kicking rad graphics.
Yes, it's also the game where punching yourself, going unarmed and unarmored the entire game, swapping life with a goblin, and selecting and deselecting commands are viable methods of leveling. So what I say?
If it wasn't for FF2 I don't think we would've gotten the SaGa series (oh I miss you so much!). I wish we could get another SaGa game soon; too bad it doesn't seem we'll get a SaGa game during this gen.
Posts
For now, we're stuck with throwing an additional layer of abstraction on top.
I just wrote a novel for NaNoWriMo where the narrative actually lies to you. What is truth and what isn't is entirely up to you.
From now until the end of the thread I'm going to spend a day talking about various FF games in detail. Feel free to correct any mistakes I made and to add any good fan art, song choices, or opinions as we go along. I plan to do one a day or so until the end of the thread. So here we go.
Final Fantasy
Release Dates:
NES
JP December 18, 1987
NA July 12, 1990
MSX2
JP June 1, 1989
WonderSwan Color
JP December 9, 2000
PlayStation
JP October 31, 2002
PAL March 14, 2003
NA April 8, 2003
Game Boy Advance
JP July 29, 2004
AUS November 18, 2004
NA November 29, 2004
EU December 3, 2004
Mobile phones
JP March 1, 2004
PlayStation Portable
JP April 19, 2007
NA June 26, 2007
EU February 8, 2008
AUS February 28, 2008
Virtual Console
JP May 26, 2009
NA October 5, 2009
What's the Deal?
Well, it's the first one. One of the first JRPGs with character creation, make your party, give them stupid four character names, and set off. Starts the whole good guys on the right bad guys on the left, take turns based on stats battle system. Not very linear at all. Hard as balls. Fantastic music for the NES, and pretty decent graphics too, especially considering the first release was 1987.
The basic story is that [strike] Ninjas [/strike]Garland captured the [strike] president [/strike] Princess Sara and that you the [strike] Bad Dudes [/strike] Four Light Warriors have been sent out to get [strike] the president [/strike] her back. Oh and then some nonsense about relighting the four Orbs (Crystals these days) to stop the earth from rotting, get the wind blowing again, the seas alive again, and the fires from going out, possibly by killing Fiends and Chaos or some such.
What sucks about it?
Oh people have some complaints about good old FF1. Only four characters in English to name someone sucks. Also if you aimed an attack on an enemy that dies it doesn't hit, a semi realistic but frustrating proposition. Roughly a third of all the spells are useless, bugged, or both. Running away is bugged, and Houses don't work properly.
That and the story has a very confusing, very poorly explained Time Loop at it's core.
Which Version to Play?
This one isn't as clear cut as most. MSX2 version is right out because it sucks ass. Most of us don't have Japanese cell phones or Wonderswans, so you can leave that one out too. So we've got NES, PSX, GBA, and PSP left.
NES-All the bugs, but also all of the 8bit charm, including the immense early difficulty if you don't know what you are doing.
PSX-Improved Wonderswan graphics, same content, bug fixed, with new music and more letters two name your dudes. You can turn on and off various "improvements" like auto retargetting and MP instead of the D&D esque pyramid of spells.
GBA-All of the PSX improvements, plus additional content. Easy mode only though.
PSP-GBA version with better graphics. Same additional Dawn of Souls Content.
I personally vote for: NES original. There is something special about the original presentation of the game. This ain't nostalgia talking either, as I didn't play FF1 to completion on the NES until 2003, maybe 5 months before the Collection came out on the PSX. GBA and PSP versions may look good and have fun additional content, but the MP system makes the game just too damn easy. They quadrupled Chaos' HP and he still dies on turn two or three!
Fun Facts:
What's in a Name: Named Final Fantasy because it was going to be Square's last project if it bombed. It rode DQ III's coattails to popularity and started the mega franchise we know today.
Peninsula of Power: East and North of Provoka there is a two by six area that wraps around the world, and has monsters from the inaccessible without a canoe area of the Elfland continent. Most are undead, and those that aren't are weak to fire, so a few good uses of Hrm 2 and Fir2 can start you on a path to tremendous amounts of Gold and Exp...if you can survive.
Sliding Puzzle Minigame: Get on your ship, hold a and press b a whole bunch. Get some quick cash. Good for low level/ single party member games. In the modified versions you get items, and really good ones if you do it fast.
Monk/Master Defense Glitch: Every character recalculates their stats every level up. Monk/Master have natural armor that improves only if equipment isn't equipped, but if you set them up right at higher levels and never go to that screen again you can equip them with ribbons and pro rings and gain the benefit of your unarmored defense. Likewise earlier in the game you should always visit the equip screen after level up.
Run Glitch: Instead of speed, luck, voodoo magic or what have you, running is instead glitched to look at the status of the character two slots below you. If the third slotted character has status condition normal (standing up) then character one will have a 100% success rate at fleeing as long as the monster can be run from.
The Pipe Vault|Twitter|Steam|Backloggery|3DS:1332-7703-1083
I actually own Blade Runner, but yet have to watch it.
But if it's full of ankle-deep faux poetry dialogue like that, I suddenly don't want to anymore.
To this day, I can't see snow falling without thinking immediately of school closings and playing the game while wrapped in a warm blanket.
You are hereby no longer allowed to have an opinion.
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
i'm pretty sure he's just doing this to get zephyr riled up, it is pretty easy
anyway, FFI!
my experiences with it are awful!
my dad first got it way back when he still played video games and i couldn't even get past garland, but he, on the other hand, apparently cruised all the way to chaos and then gave up
many years later (i was 11 or 12), i started it again, got all the way to chaos and then gave up
that cure4 spell can just burn forever and ever
Criminally underrated track:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxmgjddikwk
FFI: White Mage is a dude!
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
So, we can have some online Dissidia battles now?
Soon as I figure out how to do that, I'd be more than happy to get some lobbies going.
Blog||Tumblr|Steam|Twitter|FFXIV|Twitch|YouTube|Podcast|PSN|XBL|DarkZero
I remember the first time I'd ever heard of it: I was at a pep rally / other school function in the gym and was sitting next to one of my friends, who had the strategy guide. Instead of paying attention to whatever was going on on-stage, we spent the entire hour flipping through it. I asked him what it was like, and he couldn't really describe it* - I left with the impression that it was somehow like a Mario game where Mario got better? And it involved a rat tail, somehow. And you could ... buy? ... fire flowers, or something like that.
I'm basically a Final Fantasy 1 sucker. I've bought it every time it's been released for any system I've ever owned. I've got, basically, 4 copies of the same damn game at home, and I love all of them. None of the remakes have ever been as hard as the original, though - I still remember the Swamp Cave, and finally getting my hands on that crown after the We-Swear-They-Aren't-Mindflayers fight, only to have to fight my way back out of that poison-filled craphole.
And failing at it (generally through running out of useful spells), at least once or twice, before I managed to pull it off. It's a feeling of videogame accomplishment that, honestly, I've really only felt a couple times since - the most recent being in Demon's Souls, which is one of the reasons that game rocks so hard. In subsequent versions' playthroughs, that dungeon is never as hard as it used to be (especially with the move to spellpoint / mana systems, which are much more forgiving - one Fire 2 is almost always more useful than three or four Fire 1s, so the upcharge is never enough to offset the increased utility; this is a weakness of basically all point-based RPG mechanics).
And yet, I still play it, and I still have a great time telling Chaos to sit down and shut up.
Final Fantasy 1 is the game which kick-started my love for roleplaying games; they're still, absolutely, my favorite games - PC, console, tabletop.
Fighter, Red Mage, White Mage, Black Mage fo' life.
* We were D&D illiterate at the time, which would have changed the description somewhat had that been different!
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
The art is... interesting.
Honestly, one is probably too many. Though they have their perks, they are probably the worst class in the game. At the very least, I can't think of any class combination that's worse than four monks.
Those two are ridiculous and hilarious.
They really REALLY REALLY need to put FFIX up on the PSN. I want to play it through again on my PSP so badly....
Edit: One of the most epic, awesome songs in the whole series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaQ9ppIpdsI
They always seem to get ridiculously powerful at around the halfway mark both times I've played through the game. I think my core party is usually fighter, monk, black mage, and white mage. I don't think I've ever used the thief or the red mage.
An unarmed Monk does 999 damage 4 times per attack.
That's really called Assault of the Silver Dragons, but god damn it's so awesome. I love it when the Red Rose and the Hilda Garde III are owning dragons left and right.
From an enjoyment standpoint, I'm gonna say 4 White Mages.
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
4 Thieves would be a nightmare too.
Is monk the same as black belt?
I can't believe I forgot to post this.
Tell me one of you guys remembers when Nintendo Power had the Final Fantasy contest where the winner and 3? friends got to go to an island for a Final Fantasy adventure of some sort.
So much for that.
And I do kind of remember that contest.
Man, I gotta say, Kuja is stupid fun to play as in Dissidia, but dear God that wardrobe.
just
man
...Whatever that is.
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
I'd hit it.
I just remember a Power Staff was involved
I'm going with Metro sexual
he seems fairly straight with the creepy attraction to Dagger but he's in touch with his feminine side to say the least
Obligatory:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9xRxzUtI2M
XBL/PSN/Steam: APZonerunner
Yeah, I know, not much to talk about there. I'm sure some of you have actually played it besides me and aren't just pretending to have gone through the hassle. It is the only character driven NES FF game, and it does start the trend of side characters dying en masse and it does have the brutal final dungeon, so it's not an entirely lost cause. Passwords was a good idea too, I guess, and it does actually have kicking rad graphics.
Yes, it's also the game where punching yourself, going unarmed and unarmored the entire game, swapping life with a goblin, and selecting and deselecting commands are viable methods of leveling. So what I say?
FF2 was the game that started the jRPG reputation for being 'emo' because cutting yourself was the best way to proceed.
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111