Final Fantasy I-VI Pixel Remaster Series

A couple more FF1 notes:

-The Pixel Remaster removes the Peninsula of Power from FF1. Probably not even on purpose, 'cause the Peninsula was a bug that had to do with how the NES had encounter sets in blocks on the overworld. There's a Peninsula in FF2 as well (just south of the starting town) but it serves a lot less of a purpose than the one in FF1. I'm sure it's gone too.

-The PR also doesn't have the EYE in the Ice Cave as a farmable grind, since you can no longer respawn an enemy by stepping on and off of its tile.

-So my two main grind spots in FF1 are both gone. However I did find in the phone version that the Sunken Shrine (Kraken's dungeon) is really good for just normal walk-back-and-forth grinding. That and the sea right before Elfland are probably the only places where grinding is really needed. Grind in the sea with Lit2 enough to afford whatever you need from Elfland and you should be good for a while, then when you reach the Sunken Shrine grind there with Lit2/Lit3 for a bit and you should be good for the remainder.

-FF1 is very open and you can do things in pretty much any order once you pass a certain point (Lich). I often leave Gurgu Volcano for last even though it's technically the second Fiend dungeon. So one could go to the Sunken Shrine pretty soon after Lich if they were so inclined and just get all the leveling out of the way early, then turn encounters off for the rest of the game if so inclined.

Arbitrary said:

Unplayable.

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I think you're kidding, but I will say the Sea is actually a good place to grind without the PoP being available.

Lit2 one-shots Sahagin and Kyzoku (pirates) and they attack in big posses. Pirates give a lot of gold too. So run around the sea with at least one Lit 2 caster and hit the inn in Corneria every few fights (cheapest inn). The levels and money add up quick.

There's also a second Peninsula of Power that hardly anyone seems to know about. One tile southwest of Astos' Castle. Has enemies from the western continent, which aren't as strong as the first PoP, yet give a lot of exp nonetheless. So I found that to be a great spot in the NES version when I had a party that wasn't good enough for the PoP.

Regardless, in the PR you're gonna need the sea to grind. Or just play normally and make do. The difficulty is leveled out enough that grinding might not even be needed.

I highly advise bringing a Black Magic caster no matter what, cause the sea and later the Sunken Shrine are much faster leveling with a caster in tow. Either a BM or RM.

Not sure what my party is gonna be this time but I'm thinking Fighter/Thief/Monk/RM. That way I can spam regular attacks while also having access to AOEs on one character. BM has more spell charges than RM which is nice, but you're gonna run out after a few fights early on either way. Late game I'll have Ninja and RW who can buff everyone with haste/temper and all the ToF bosses will fall fast.

I maintain that WMs are pretty unnecessary in FF1. Not so much in FF3 where WM (and later Devout) is crucial enough that you always want one on your team. Most people go Ninja x2 and Sage x2 for the FF3 endgame, but on one of the 3 times I played that one I kept a Devout as the 4th member and went with one Sage and that worked well too.

Arbitrary said:

I've played the NES version and the Final Fantasy Origins version on the PS1. The experience requirements on the FF0 version were much, much lower than the original so grinding at the peninsula wasn't really needed. That one also had magic points instead of the psuedo-Vancian spell system so character power was higher in general.

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I liked the FFO versions of 1 and 2 a lot. Only played them once, a couple years ago during the homebody times. Too bad the PS1 didn't also get an FF3 port, it would have actually had all nine (at that time) Final Fantasy games. Drove my OCD nuts, it did. Regardless, the PS1 version of FF1 is quite nice, just slow-moving. I prefer the GBA version I think, which is similar to FFO but faster and brighter and has new dungeons added.

Rajaah said:

Not sure what my party is gonna be this time but I'm thinking Fighter/Thief/Monk/RM. That way I can spam regular attacks while also having access to AOEs on one character. BM has more spell charges than RM which is nice, but you're gonna run out after a few fights early on either way. Late game I'll have Ninja and RW who can buff everyone with haste/temper and all the ToF bosses will fall fast.

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Actually I think I'll go BM instead of RM. Just realized that in the final area I'm not gonna need four meleers, because by the time I get Haste/Temper on the Fighter/Monk/Ninja the fights are gonna be as good as won anyway, whether I have 3 characters blitzing the boss or 4. As a tradeoff I'll have quite a bit more charges to AOE enemy groups in the final dungeon which will save me a lot of trouble and speed up grinding when I need to do that.

So my group is officially Fighter/Thief/Monk/BM. Maybe I'll do a second run with 3x RM and 1x WM or something to mop up trophies. Any group can viably beat the PR version of this game without much trouble, except maybe 4x WM. No strong melee damage and no Haste/Temper = Ehhh. Even that group will be able to eke out a win with one character using Masamune and Giant's Gloves and full Holy charges on the others, but it's gonna need higher levels than other groups would need and some actual strategy.

I'm gonna re-iterate that Thief is actually REALLY GOOD in the Pixel Remaster and works as intended finally. They have an easier time escaping battles, are second only to Monk in number of attacks thrown per round, and are the third-best melee attacker (second-best at some points when the gear-depended Fighter is outpaced by the Thief's swing-speed). And when they get upgraded to Ninja they become pretty awesome, essentially tied with Knight as the second-best attacker behind Monk, plus has a bunch of useful spells (Haste/Temper alone are huge). Overall they're actually BETTER than Fighters are in this version and you'd do fine having your party lead be a Thief instead of a Fighter if you feel like doing something new.

Chances are the Thief class is gonna be totally new to most players, since it was useless on the NES to the point that anyone with any experience ignored it completely. Yes it blossomed into Ninja later on and yes Ninja was good then too, but Thief was atrociously bad. I remember being midway through the NES version once and having my Thief hitting Astos for 1 damage per round while the Fighter and Monk were doing like 15 and the casters were doing like 40. Well, that isn't the case anymore. And the Ninja got buffed a bit too, on the NES it was the third-best attacker and closer to RW (4th) than it was to Knight (2nd). Now I'd say Ninja is equal to Knight and with better spells.

Lemme do a chart of how the final classes shake out for melee characters. I might be off on some of this due to faulty memory but I'm also going off of like 12 playthroughs between the versions.

NES:
Knight - 2nd best attacker, best defender, WM spells up to L3
Monk - Best attacker, 4th best defender
Ninja - 3rd best attacker, 3rd best defender, BM spells up to L4
Red Wizard - 4th best attacker, 2nd best defender, WM AND BM spells up to L7

Knight and RW were extremely good in that one, though Monk's attacks were also #1 with a bullet. Ninja was kinda by the wayside a bit, despite being good. I was able to steamroll FF1 on the NES with four Knights, four RWs, and four Monks, but when I tried with four Ninjas it was at least a challenge. And the first half of the game was ridiculously bad with the Thieves.

PR:
Knight - 2nd best attacker (tied), best defender, spells
Monk - Best attacker, 4th best defender
Ninja - 2nd best attacker (tied), 2nd best defender, spells
Red Wizard - 4th best attacker, 3rd best defender, spells

So yeah, you can see the upgrades Ninja got. In addition to Thief actually being decent now and probably on par with Monk for the first 10 levels or so as opposed to completely useless during that time. A group of four Thieves-Ninjas would have little trouble beating the Pixel Remaster which is kind of crazy to me.

As a kid I liked the Thief and always kinda wanted him to Git Gud Fgt so it's just nice to see this class finally be worthwhile.

Fogel said:

I still remember playing up till the floating castle and constantly bitching about how much our monk sucks because he does shit for damage. Than we finally took his weapon off and after he one shot everything in the next fight we were like... oh! our bad! Oh the good old days of learning the hard way.

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Oh yeah, totally forgot that in my FF1 notes. Don't equip monks with weapons, cause their punches scale based on level.

They do more damage with a Nunchaku or whatever until about level 5, then after that punches outpace any normal weapon they can equip.

Not sure how armor works for them TBH. Can't remember if it's better to leave them unequipped or throw a bracelet (Copper, Silver, Gold, Opal) on them. In the PR it's probably better to use armor.

It also occurred to me this morning that this is the first time ever that FF3 has gotten an official 2D version in the US. That's pretty cool. So Wednesday is gonna be the first time anyone has been able to play a legit version of the original FF3 on a console in the US. Not sure why Square had such an antipathy towards porting it during all of their port-fests.

Important note: This is out today, bundle doesn't appear in searches though for some reason.

You have to select the ... button and the bundle is in the options, at least for VI, probably the others too. Edit: Well it isn't listed on FF1, so go to FF6 to find the bundle. Also, WTF SE.

Costs $30 less this way. People who buy them all individually since the bundle is invisible are gonna be pissed-off tomorrow.

Took the day off for this, glad it's actually up. I damn near wasted money buying FF1 by itself before I was informed that there was a hidden bundle somewhere.

I'm leaving out the holy duo-nity of Fighter and White Mage. Lot of people talking about how good Thief is in this version, and Fighter was always so bland and OP.

Other notes: Can confirm Monk is much better without armor, not just weapons. Equip him and his defense goes down. Late game armor like maybe the Opal Bracelet (or whatever it's called now) might be an improvement at that point but even that I doubt.

Monk is doing more damage than the rest of the party combined and I'm level 5. If you want to roll the game, bring a couple monks.

Red Mage seems significantly nerfed compared to earlier versions. His HP growth is terrible, worse even than BM. Kind of balances it out since RM was always too good, but I think they went too far (he has half the health of the others, wtf)

Bruuce said:

Bundle popped up in search for me

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Must be fixed now. Wasn't there this morning.

SorrowsEnd said:

I absolutely love the new orchestral music in these games.

Loaded up part one with the music cranked in the living room. Warrior, Monk, Red Mage, Black Mage.

Might as well play through this with the broken group. I feel like I've bought this game at least half a dozen times now.

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I went with the same party, except Thief instead of Warrior. It's worked out pretty well. The RM and Thief kind of alternated tanking. RM has much better defense, Thief has way more HP. Got by fine without a Warrior though.

3 and a half hours or so on the clock and I'm about half done. I'm intentionally going out of my way to get every mob and chest for trophies, too. Gonna resume it soon, might actually get to FF2 today.

FF1 beaten, barely.


Took 6 hours and change.


75% trophies so I'm not actually done yet.

I said before that people are gonna be surprised how short these games actually are. I also did an FF4 speed run over the weekend since people were contesting when I said that game is a lot shorter than people remember:


Reached the Moon in 5:43. I haven't played this since like 2019 (and before that 2011) so bear that in mind.


I took my time on the final two dungeons, grinded levels, got all the equipment, etc, final time before Zeromus was a shade under 9 hours. The big surprise was that Rosa did more damage to Zeromus than anyone else. White was doing 9999 per round so I kept her spamming that while Rydia healed with Asura, an inversion of how I typically do FF4 endgame fights.