Are we allowed to bring in Dragon Quest characters into a debate about Final Fantasy women? Because Dragon Quest still has some games that fill the usual tropes, ignoring the entries where the heroes are stock fillers (DQ3, DQ9, DQ10).
DQ2 has next to no character development, on top of having a damseled magical girl party member, so we can ignore that one. DQ4, 5 and 6 all have very strong female party members of varying roles. I haven't had a chance to play DQ7 yet, and I know Jessica in DQ8 can be slotted into that magical girl archetype as well, but if I remember right, she wasn't really characterized negatively. Whether you think her Sex Appeal skills are empowering of her persona or just a blatant trope, though, I think is subjective.
Marle is strong outside of the context of her "real life" all her interactions as her actual persona are either her running away, being saved or screaming to get her way (and failing)
Only when she runs away from home, ie escape from her actual responsibilities, does she show occasional flashes of being something.
But still, you know, at the cost of being a petulant child and running away from home after throwing a tantrum.
I kind of think it was more than a petulant child throwing a tantrum. I mean, her escape from the castle involved the uncovering of a wrongful execution plan and escaping armed guards trying to kill her friends.
Marle is strong outside of the context of her "real life" all her interactions as her actual persona are either her running away, being saved or screaming to get her way (and failing)
Only when she runs away from home, ie escape from her actual responsibilities, does she show occasional flashes of being something.
But still, you know, at the cost of being a petulant child and running away from home after throwing a tantrum.
I kind of think it was more than a petulant child throwing a tantrum. I mean, her escape from the castle involved the uncovering of a wrongful execution plan and escaping armed guards trying to kill her friends.
Damn so she almost had friends executed twice? Seems a dick move just to abandon them after meeting Crono.
Marle is strong outside of the context of her "real life" all her interactions as her actual persona are either her running away, being saved or screaming to get her way (and failing)
Only when she runs away from home, ie escape from her actual responsibilities, does she show occasional flashes of being something.
But still, you know, at the cost of being a petulant child and running away from home after throwing a tantrum.
I kind of think it was more than a petulant child throwing a tantrum. I mean, her escape from the castle involved the uncovering of a wrongful execution plan and escaping armed guards trying to kill her friends.
Damn so she almost had friends executed twice? Seems a dick move just to abandon them after meeting Crono.
Well, first it was friends, second was her father.
And I guess earlier on there was the bit where she ducked out of the castle to visit the fair, but that's hardly an escape.
So it's a Mobile, Free to Play, FF All The Bravest clone?
Already better than ATB.
Also, it looks like named characters make up the whole of your party, you can choose your characters, and you have health bars instead of dying in one hit.
I'm not saying that it's gonna be a great game, even for its platform, without seeing it in action.
I'm just saying that being as bad as ATB takes some work.
So the FFX HD gods of fortune giveth, and taketh away. This weekend I started working on Celestial Weapons. Did Tidus' first. The chocobo racing game took me like 2+ hours of nonstop attempts to get. I was just having the worst time. And then it was time for Yuna. But then I realize that I didn't get the destruction sphere item in Besaid's temple, so now I can't do Yuna's without getting through Dark Valefor somehow. I'm so frustrated at this point. I decide to try grand summoning Yojimbo. At this point I've never even summoned him once so I don't have affinity or whatever. I pay him 10k gil because i couldn't afford at the time to pay a lot, and first try he Zanmatos Dark Valefor so I could get the item and get Yuna's celestial.
Down to only needing Wakka's, but I have about another 20 blitzball games to play for it and since I don't love playing Blitzball I just have to do it in small chunks.
I do have a question about super end game grinding. Right now I'm at the point where I can handle fights in the beginning of Omega Ruins but not super easily. Should I just keep grinding there for a while? For reference, all my people have finished their own section of the sphere grid and have now started into moving around the rest of it to fill in stats. I know you can get triple AP items from One-Eye in the monster arena, but how hard is that monster to kill? I'm not sure if I even could at this point.
Also, is there a good reference for what I should use to fill in the empty spots on the sphere grid? This'll be the first time I've ever really grinded to power up my people in this game since the dark aeons and what not weren't in my original version of the game.
Yeah, good characterization doesn't mean super perfect people.
Good characterization? "Runway princess" is a tired trope. Slap on the "powerless till she follows random guy A around to learn the true meaning of not being a tool." And you run right into common fantasy cardboard female X.
Lenna, Rosa and Prim all jump immediately to mind. I could probably think of more if I looked at what other games came before CT. Oh yeah, Prim is the girl from secret of mana. I don't recall if she's actually a princess or not.
Marle is, frankly, a totally generic square character that they had done half a dozen times before.
I do have a question about super end game grinding. Right now I'm at the point where I can handle fights in the beginning of Omega Ruins but not super easily. Should I just keep grinding there for a while? For reference, all my people have finished their own section of the sphere grid and have now started into moving around the rest of it to fill in stats. I know you can get triple AP items from One-Eye in the monster arena, but how hard is that monster to kill? I'm not sure if I even could at this point.
It isn't super hard after you have one of the heavy melee hitters (Tidus/Wakka/Auron) with about 130ish strength and their powered up celestial weapon (in Auron's case also low HP). If you want to cheese AP grind, one good method is Don Tonberry, with everyone equipped with Overdrive -> AP weapons, you have 2 people set to Comrade, 1 to Stoic, the stoic attacks, the Comrades heal/revive. you can also have 2 set to Stoic, I found that works just as well, have the third spam revive. you have about 4 "steps." If Don Tonberry starts knifing you, and stops his Karma attack then just flee/run away and rinse/repeat. Do this until Tidus/Wakka/Auron whichever ones you have celestials weapons for can consistently do 99999, and then you if you can 2 shot One-Eye you can farm the triple AP weapons but aim for the ones with 3 slots so you can add Overdrive -> AP and Triple Overdrive to them. btw the Don Tonberry method can potentially take a character from 0 to 99 sphere levels in about 1 go. better yet his karma works so even if you haven't done a ton of stat grinding for like Tidus, chances are his attack will still hit Tidus for 450K give or take, which pretty much all turns into AP it's a deliciously cheesy AP farm method.
edit: This is just the basic guidelines of this AP farm. It worked super well for a replay I did a couple months ago.
On the topic of FFX, Is anything important missable? finally got around to picking up Remaster, and would like to 100% it this time.
I, personally, can't think of anything off the top of my head, other than Al-Bhed primers. Though it's highly recommended you get the destruction sphere's when you're going through the temples the first time, otherwise with some of them, you're gonna have a bad time....trying to get them later in the game for Yuna's Celestial weapon, and gathering all the Aeons
On the topic of FFX, Is anything important missable? finally got around to picking up Remaster, and would like to 100% it this time.
I, personally, can't think of anything off the top of my head, other than Al-Bhed primers. Though it's highly recommended you get the destruction sphere's when you're going through the temples the first time, otherwise with some of them, you're gonna have a bad time....trying to get them later in the game for Yuna's Celestial weapon, and gathering all the Aeons
Well shit, was too lazy to do the destruction spheres in the first two dungeons :P. Guess I'll have to yojimbo cheese those dark aeons or just do it without yunas ultimate.
So this is a pretty weird thing. I guess it's all three guides (though I don't understand how anyone could republish that shitty IX guide) in hardcover. I'm utterly baffled as to who would buy this now.
So this is a pretty weird thing. I guess it's all three guides (though I don't understand how anyone could republish that shitty IX guide) in hardcover. I'm utterly baffled as to who would buy this now.
It sounds like they're redesigned guides, so the FFIX guide shouldn't have any playonline shit.
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So this is a pretty weird thing. I guess it's all three guides (though I don't understand how anyone could republish that shitty IX guide) in hardcover. I'm utterly baffled as to who would buy this now.
It sounds like they're redesigned guides, so the FFIX guide shouldn't have any playonline shit.
Would you like to know more?
I actually still own the 7 and 9 guides. Have to whip those out now that I grabbed all the PSN copies
There are some of the Al-Bhed primers that are missable, but that's the only thing. At least, when I started my FFX Vita playthrough, that's the only thing I looked at a guide for.
RE: FFX HD can somebody help me understand this. I found a FAQ about doing up the sphere grid for end game. The one I want to go for is this:
Expert Sphere Grid - International/PAL (Sane)
The Expert Sphere Grid has 792 Nodes total.
85 of which is not removable, so there's 707 nodes to manipulate with. This
setup is the same one used for Standard - Sane, by means of results.
Manipulable Nodes - (Stats + HP + MP)
707 - (354 + 81 + 47) = 225 nodes left.
225 nodes for HP gives 67500 HP
67500 + 16200 (Already on grid) = 83700 HP
I'm not understanding exactly what it means i'll need to do. It doesn't say I need any HP spheres in the list of what's needed, but then goes on to imply i'd be putting HP spheres in 225 nodes.
I guess it seems like it's saying I need to use clear spheres on 39 nodes, presumably ones that give +1 stat. Then fill all empty nodes with 40 str, 53 def, 41 magic, etc. But then where do the 225 nodes come from to put HP in?
I'm sure i'm just missing something really simple here....
RE: FFX HD can somebody help me understand this. I found a FAQ about doing up the sphere grid for end game. The one I want to go for is this:
Expert Sphere Grid - International/PAL (Sane)
The Expert Sphere Grid has 792 Nodes total.
85 of which is not removable, so there's 707 nodes to manipulate with. This
setup is the same one used for Standard - Sane, by means of results.
Manipulable Nodes - (Stats + HP + MP)
707 - (354 + 81 + 47) = 225 nodes left.
225 nodes for HP gives 67500 HP
67500 + 16200 (Already on grid) = 83700 HP
I'm not understanding exactly what it means i'll need to do. It doesn't say I need any HP spheres in the list of what's needed, but then goes on to imply i'd be putting HP spheres in 225 nodes.
I guess it seems like it's saying I need to use clear spheres on 39 nodes, presumably ones that give +1 stat. Then fill all empty nodes with 40 str, 53 def, 41 magic, etc. But then where do the 225 nodes come from to put HP in?
I'm sure i'm just missing something really simple here....
It saying that after you have maxed other stats you still have room for 225 HP spheres. The author did not have them as needed. There might be a section about HP spheres somewhere else in the guide.
I'm doing the insane version because... I'm insane. But I've tried a bunch of times to parse this out, and I'm confused too.
Insane is easier to work out just based on simplicity. Clear off every single node that isn't +4/40, including all HP nodes (there are no default +300). It requires the same amount of str/def/mag/ect spheres. I'm almost done with most stats, and about 40% through the grid. The remaining 60% slog is going to be all HP nodes.
Best I can figure out for Sane is not removing any HP or MP nodes, fill all blank nodes with str/def/mag/ect spheres, needing to clear 39 spots to do so. Then if you want to, clear out all the non +4 nodes for HP spheres.
Wording it like that is confusing, because honestly it doesn't seem far removed from insane anyways.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
Alright, well i'm glad it wasn't just me that couldn't figure out what he meant. Maybe i'll just do the insane version since it actually makes sense, heh.
Okay, I think I figured out what the guy meant in the sane version. He means you clear and replace every stat node that isn't a +4 with a +4. So every +1, +2 STR gets removed and a +4 STR is put in its place. When all that is done you end up with 225 empty nodes for HP. Basically, you just don't clear the 200 HPs or 20 MPs and replace them like you do in the insane version, but you do the rest of the work.
His synopsis of the sane version doesn't have the right number of clear spheres or HP spheres needed though based on that.
So I'm making real headway on my platinum trophy FFX run. I'm still 12 games of blitzball off Wakka's completed weapon which is the last one I need, but I'm now the only things i have left for capturing 10 of every monster are a small handful from inside sin which I will get next time I play.
The thing i'm having the worst luck with is getting one-eye to drop a triple AP weapon for Rikku and Wakka. I have the rest of them, but the RNG is not being good to me. I only have about 5 million gil at the moment so I don't want to bribe for the item to customize triple AP manually because i'm going to need a lot of gil for buying clear spheres and possibly other bribes that i'm forgetting about.
Once I get the triple ap weapons on the last characters i'll start working on the proper sphere grid completion.
Ugh, I cannot for the life of me remember where I'm supposed to get all these stupid uniforms in FFX-2. I found one, but it's been like, a month, and I can't seem to find whoever told me where the other ones were.
I like how, at its highest level, FFX becomes almost a completely different game. It's seriously cool that we finally got the version that incentives us to run through the sphere grid and clear nodes and do all that fun stuff.
Yeah, no doubt. I love that this version of the game gives me a reason to power up my dudes so much that I can kill the final boss of the game before he gets a turn, but still have optional challenges that are hard.
So does anybody have any tips on speeding up the farming of DEF, Magic, AGI, Luck, Fortune spheres for sphere grid maxing? I'm sure the answer is no and it's just going to be a huge slog, but dammit I can't quit now.
So does anybody have any tips on speeding up the farming of DEF, Magic, AGI, Luck, Fortune spheres for sphere grid maxing? I'm sure the answer is no and it's just going to be a huge slog, but dammit I can't quit now.
The special Monster Arena enemies are your best bet for basically all farming.
Edit: oh yeah, be strong enough to kill everything there with Overkills, to increase your farm rate. Also, there's one enemy there that drops 20 of something, so if you Overkill it (and it's one of the weaker enemies) after using a Distiller on it, you can get 40 of whatever you Distillered.
Edit 2: Kottos is the enemy you're looking for. It hits hard but if you can survive it, it's an easy fight.
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Thanks. Yeah, as far as I know the arena enemies are the only way to get the +4 stat spheres. It just seems like the ones I've fought so far have been a bit slow to kill, even though my people are pretty strong already. I know about using Kottos to get power/mana spheres etc to fill in when you get low, it's the actual +4 spheres that have been a bit troublesome. I guess I just hoped the farming would be a bit faster.
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DQ2 has next to no character development, on top of having a damseled magical girl party member, so we can ignore that one. DQ4, 5 and 6 all have very strong female party members of varying roles. I haven't had a chance to play DQ7 yet, and I know Jessica in DQ8 can be slotted into that magical girl archetype as well, but if I remember right, she wasn't really characterized negatively. Whether you think her Sex Appeal skills are empowering of her persona or just a blatant trope, though, I think is subjective.
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I kind of think it was more than a petulant child throwing a tantrum. I mean, her escape from the castle involved the uncovering of a wrongful execution plan and escaping armed guards trying to kill her friends.
Damn so she almost had friends executed twice? Seems a dick move just to abandon them after meeting Crono.
Well, first it was friends, second was her father.
And I guess earlier on there was the bit where she ducked out of the castle to visit the fair, but that's hardly an escape.
The latter, in fact, makes her even greater.
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This looks like a legitimately cool idea but all I can think of is how badly they'll mess it up.
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Good call. You might even finish a battle by the time the new semester starts!
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
Already better than ATB.
Also, it looks like named characters make up the whole of your party, you can choose your characters, and you have health bars instead of dying in one hit.
I'm not saying that it's gonna be a great game, even for its platform, without seeing it in action.
I'm just saying that being as bad as ATB takes some work.
Yeah these very frequent encounters wouldn't be nearly as irritating if every fight didn't take 5 minutes to finish.
I just read it as "So now that my school and exams are done I think I'll look into having people kick me in the stones for 30 hours."
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He said "FFIX", not "FFATB"
Who would want to play that for 30 hours?
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Down to only needing Wakka's, but I have about another 20 blitzball games to play for it and since I don't love playing Blitzball I just have to do it in small chunks.
I do have a question about super end game grinding. Right now I'm at the point where I can handle fights in the beginning of Omega Ruins but not super easily. Should I just keep grinding there for a while? For reference, all my people have finished their own section of the sphere grid and have now started into moving around the rest of it to fill in stats. I know you can get triple AP items from One-Eye in the monster arena, but how hard is that monster to kill? I'm not sure if I even could at this point.
Also, is there a good reference for what I should use to fill in the empty spots on the sphere grid? This'll be the first time I've ever really grinded to power up my people in this game since the dark aeons and what not weren't in my original version of the game.
Good characterization? "Runway princess" is a tired trope. Slap on the "powerless till she follows random guy A around to learn the true meaning of not being a tool." And you run right into common fantasy cardboard female X.
Lenna, Rosa and Prim all jump immediately to mind. I could probably think of more if I looked at what other games came before CT. Oh yeah, Prim is the girl from secret of mana. I don't recall if she's actually a princess or not.
Marle is, frankly, a totally generic square character that they had done half a dozen times before.
Lucca was the only decent female character in CT.
It isn't super hard after you have one of the heavy melee hitters (Tidus/Wakka/Auron) with about 130ish strength and their powered up celestial weapon (in Auron's case also low HP). If you want to cheese AP grind, one good method is Don Tonberry, with everyone equipped with Overdrive -> AP weapons, you have 2 people set to Comrade, 1 to Stoic, the stoic attacks, the Comrades heal/revive. you can also have 2 set to Stoic, I found that works just as well, have the third spam revive. you have about 4 "steps." If Don Tonberry starts knifing you, and stops his Karma attack then just flee/run away and rinse/repeat. Do this until Tidus/Wakka/Auron whichever ones you have celestials weapons for can consistently do 99999, and then you if you can 2 shot One-Eye you can farm the triple AP weapons but aim for the ones with 3 slots so you can add Overdrive -> AP and Triple Overdrive to them. btw the Don Tonberry method can potentially take a character from 0 to 99 sphere levels in about 1 go. better yet his karma works so even if you haven't done a ton of stat grinding for like Tidus, chances are his attack will still hit Tidus for 450K give or take, which pretty much all turns into AP
edit: This is just the basic guidelines of this AP farm. It worked super well for a replay I did a couple months ago.
I would also like to know this. Especially regarding Celestial weapons.
I, personally, can't think of anything off the top of my head, other than Al-Bhed primers. Though it's highly recommended you get the destruction sphere's when you're going through the temples the first time, otherwise with some of them, you're gonna have a bad time....trying to get them later in the game for Yuna's Celestial weapon, and gathering all the Aeons
Well shit, was too lazy to do the destruction spheres in the first two dungeons :P. Guess I'll have to yojimbo cheese those dark aeons or just do it without yunas ultimate.
It sounds like they're redesigned guides, so the FFIX guide shouldn't have any playonline shit.
Switch (JeffConser): SW-3353-5433-5137 Wii U: Skeldare - 3DS: 1848-1663-9345
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Would you like to know more?
I actually still own the 7 and 9 guides. Have to whip those out now that I grabbed all the PSN copies
I'm not understanding exactly what it means i'll need to do. It doesn't say I need any HP spheres in the list of what's needed, but then goes on to imply i'd be putting HP spheres in 225 nodes.
I guess it seems like it's saying I need to use clear spheres on 39 nodes, presumably ones that give +1 stat. Then fill all empty nodes with 40 str, 53 def, 41 magic, etc. But then where do the 225 nodes come from to put HP in?
I'm sure i'm just missing something really simple here....
It saying that after you have maxed other stats you still have room for 225 HP spheres. The author did not have them as needed. There might be a section about HP spheres somewhere else in the guide.
Insane is easier to work out just based on simplicity. Clear off every single node that isn't +4/40, including all HP nodes (there are no default +300). It requires the same amount of str/def/mag/ect spheres. I'm almost done with most stats, and about 40% through the grid. The remaining 60% slog is going to be all HP nodes.
Best I can figure out for Sane is not removing any HP or MP nodes, fill all blank nodes with str/def/mag/ect spheres, needing to clear 39 spots to do so. Then if you want to, clear out all the non +4 nodes for HP spheres.
Wording it like that is confusing, because honestly it doesn't seem far removed from insane anyways.
His synopsis of the sane version doesn't have the right number of clear spheres or HP spheres needed though based on that.
The thing i'm having the worst luck with is getting one-eye to drop a triple AP weapon for Rikku and Wakka. I have the rest of them, but the RNG is not being good to me. I only have about 5 million gil at the moment so I don't want to bribe for the item to customize triple AP manually because i'm going to need a lot of gil for buying clear spheres and possibly other bribes that i'm forgetting about.
Once I get the triple ap weapons on the last characters i'll start working on the proper sphere grid completion.
The special Monster Arena enemies are your best bet for basically all farming.
Edit: oh yeah, be strong enough to kill everything there with Overkills, to increase your farm rate. Also, there's one enemy there that drops 20 of something, so if you Overkill it (and it's one of the weaker enemies) after using a Distiller on it, you can get 40 of whatever you Distillered.
Edit 2: Kottos is the enemy you're looking for. It hits hard but if you can survive it, it's an easy fight.
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