December Holiday Festivus Retro GOTM - - Final Fantasy

Original game was 'balanced' to be beaten around party level 30, going all the way to level 50 (which I did once) took hours and hours of grinding in some of the nastiest parts of the temple of fiends.

Siliconemelons scared me! My party being level 29, the notion that I might have to grind to 60 to beat the game was not a pleasant one!

Wuwu! Beat the game! The final fight was dangerously close. He started spamming these super cinematic versions of hit all elemental magic and there is just no way to out-heal that, so it turned into a dps race I barely won. I probably got a little lucky though because he is supposed to have a full heal in his arsenal of BS... but maybe they removed that in the Wonderswan Color and later versions as bosses are supposed to have more hp?

The ending was a bit disappointing when you consider they made little movie clips for things as mundane as taking the sub to and from the underwater temple and that final text scroll sure felt like it lasted for 2000 years! HAH!

On this upgraded version and with the help of spoilers, the ride was a mostly painless one, but also a bit dull with a vast number of questionable design decisions that came to be fixed in later iterations of the franchise. I could not fathom playing this game blind on the NES (with character based item bags, single item shopping, no attack redirect and, most importantly perhaps, no sprint!). GG to the FF OG I guess?

Anyway I am glad I played the game for general video game culture and glad years after buying it that weird Bandai handheld got put to good use. The screen is horrible as it is not back or side lit, the D-pad is 4 buttons, there is no headphone jack BUT I played through 20ish hours of FF on a single AA battery and it was still kicking! I guess that's something!

I am essentially playing it blind. In the sense I haven't played it since I was a kid. Although I did watch projared play through it i can't figure out wtf I'm doing or where I'm going. I've found the dwarves, level 4 spells etc. Can't find the first crystal though so there's that I guess haha.

So far I am lvl 10, got matoyas crystal and about to wake the elf prince. I spent some time doing peninsula of power before marsh cave. Wanted to get some money and levels. But holy shit feel like I'm barely making progress. Aside from having spells and all the gear. Lol.

*edit* spelling.

T Therage I think mechanically, at least for melee characters, the important levels are 11, 21 and 31 as their max number of hits per attack increases.

The wife and I sat on the couch last night. She was doing some work and we listened to an audio book while I ground some levels and gold. Level 15, finally found the earth cave. Immediately chose the annoying battle ever step path. Thankfully I think I'm super over leveled lol because I'm rolling this shit. I realize I'm taking forever to get shit done, but I typically don't skip battles and haven't been looking anything up. On the upside I have lots of money (I think) even after buying spells in melmond or whatever that town was (50k+).

Having a blast can't wait to play more after work tomorrow. Really want to get back up and see if I can beat earth cave tonight.

I don't think the devs realized that making a "death trap" area with tough encounters on every tile was really making a "grind fast" area since it removes both the wait time between random encounters and the possibility to have lame encounters. When you discover the area it's pretty neat though, because you don't realize instantly what is going on and when you do it's a bit like you walked into quicksands or something... should I go back? should I press through?

Szlia said:

I don't think the devs realized that making a "death trap" area with tough encounters on every tile was really making a "grind fast" area since it removes both the wait time between random encounters and the possibility to have lame encounters. When you discover the area it's pretty neat though, because you don't realize instantly what is going on and when you do it's a bit like you walked into quicksands or something... should I go back? should I press through?

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Yup I actually plan on grinding there a bit. If I can although the inability to use tents or cabins inside makes it annoying.

Back traveling for work and this time brought my ps4 controller. I've never beaten a single final Fantasy game ever. I'm a little scared.

I originally played this game on Thanksgiving day in my grandparents basement in 1990. Playing on some tiny ancient 1970's TV with janky color. The Vampire looked like it was going to a rave.

So 14 years old. With a group of my cousins navigating the nintendo power guide to look up information for me. Warrior, Thief, Red Mage, White Mage as my party of choice.

So nice revisiting this 28 years later. PPSSPP version running off the main pc with 5x upscalling and 16x FXAA turned on makes it look fantastic. Using a wired xbox 360 controller. Warrior, Monk, Red Mage, White Mage. So nice playing off a 34" Alienware monitor on a brand new rig.