The Authoritative Final Fantasy & Bravely Default thread

Hateyou said:

These games were a lot longer when you had no idea wtf you were supposed to do. Go whistle in the desert for an airship, wtf. DQ had some random search in certain spot bullshit. Shit that took you hours and hours of wandering around talking to every NPC and searching every nook and cranny of the game. I remember wandering around the moon in FF4 pushing against every wall and ledge looking for hidden passages and invisible bridges.

FF1 took me weeks when I was a kid. It felt like a long epic journey. Played through it a lot as a kid and got fast at it. One day a few years later I went back for a play through one rainy summer day and beat it start to finish in one sitting. That was the first time I realized how short it really was.

They can’t really make games like that anymore with the existence of the internet and how easy it is to access now. To make a game long now it has to have a lot of content or artificial power cockblocks aka roguelites.

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Yeah good point. I loved Returnal at first, but after a while I just felt like it was wasting my time, and that was probably the last time I checked out a roguelite for a while.

I think they CAN still make games like this, though, if they do it very carefully. Dragon Quest 11 is very much a game in the vein of DQ3 or FF1, a game that takes a very long time to get through because so much of it is about discovery. Even when you know what you're doing and where to go, there's still a ton of game there. DQ11 is the kind of game we've been largely missing for the past 12 years or so (at least on consoles) and it was so good to see it.

Chris said:

I'm tempted, I was upset at lack of extended endgame but honestly am I even going to do endgame?

Every FF playthrough I've done for a long tine has always ended just before the final boss because I went to do an optional endgame I had no patience for.

Now I've finished FF5-10, 12-14. I played roms of FF1/FF4 and the 3D FF3 remake but I didn't finish them. Fuck FF11.

But FF2... I'm terrified to play it lol. You gotta punch yourself to cheese your stats right?

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You do indeed have to do that. FF2 is worth a run, especially if you're trying to complete the game. I can send you a ROM save at the beginning of FF2 (original NES version) where the characters are super powered-up (about a third of the way to the levels you need to beat the game). FF2's stat gaining system is tedious and boring, yes, but it also allows you to power up to way greater levels at the very beginning than you can in any other FF. It just takes time. The file I've got is the result of like four hours of stat grinding. Hell if I ever actually load up a new file in that game. I've played through FF2 three times over the past 20 years and always just start from that save I did at the beginning. LMK if you want said save file and I'll dig it up.

I recommend playing the entire FF series. Much like the Dragon Quest series, it's worthwhile, even the bad entries. FF2 is interesting to see the origin of things like chocobos, and it's a proto-FF4 and proto-FF8 in a lot of ways. As far as the FFs you haven't played go:

FF1: Can be finished in a day, worth it. The NES version is the hardest one but I still prefer it since you can use emulator speedup. Just avoid the Thief class, it's terrible.
FF2: There are better later versions of this one but I like to play the NES version of this one too for the reasons above. Probably isn't much longer than FF1 if you use a powered-up save.
FF3: This one I actually recommend deviating from the originals for and playing the pixel remaster instead. I think it's far superior to the NES version AND the 3D remake. It's actually quite good in this form and gives you the real genesis of the class system that FF5/Tactics/14 adopted. Longer than 1/2/4 but more enjoyable IMO.
FF4: Another very short game like FF1, worth it. How worth it depends on how into the characters/story you get. Can be finished in 8 hours easily. Recommend the SNES version because of the low difficulty and also because you're seeing the genesis of the ATB system that way.

Did you check out 10-2, 13-2, or 13-3? I thought all of them were good but they're also hit-or-miss, some people really don't like them. There's also World of Final Fantasy which was fantastic for me, but you need to be a big fan of the series to get much out of it.

Either way I definitely recommend doing FF1-4 and knocking them off your list. Don't know how far you got in all of them previously but if I were you I'd go 1-2-4-3 for order. Mainly because 3 is the longest, but also because the version of 3 I recommend is the new one, while I think sticking to the originals for the others and seeing the progression is half the fun.

Well, I'm doing this. It's like when Louis CK talked about staring down the barrel of a dick and going "Alright, here I go! I'mmmm gonna suck ya!"

Update. Turns out that Thief in FF1 Pixel Remaster isn't bad at all. At the beginning it's about as strong as Fighter was in the original (while Black Belt is stronger and Fighter is way stronger). So I grinded to level 5 or so flying through enemies with ease before I stopped. It was waaaaay easier than it's supposed to be because of the rebalancings they did. Playing a four White Mage or four Thief challenge in the Pixel Remaster is NOT the same thing as the NES original and probably closer to the easy PSP version. So if I went ahead with the all-Thief party I don't think I would have even counted it as "beat FF1 with four Thieves" in my list of accomplishments. I was already pretty set on giving this a go, so I... fired up the NES version.


My God. Immediately it was very clear that the Pixel Remaster blows this game away in terms of Thief power. Here's the state of my party at the end of THEIR FIRST FIGHT, which was against five Imps:


To be fair, this was before I bought weapons for them (which you can immediately). Didn't even think about it because the Pixel Remaster starts Thieves out with knives already and hitting for 10-15 damage. This one, they start with nothing and hit for 1 damage. After getting weapon upgrades for everyone (Rapier since it's the best buyable at this point) they're hitting for whopping 15-25 strikes, about the same as Fighters at this point. Maybe this won't be so bad after all. Still going to need to buy 99 Potions, and I don't know how I'll be able to beat Lich.


As if this can't get any better, my overworld sprite is a blue-haired land whale.

Man, this has to be the hardest 4-character challenge in FF1. I can't imagine 4 White Mages is worse than this, at least that group can heal. It's worse than 3 Goof-Offs in DQ3 but actually somewhat comparable, only without a ringer Hero to carry things a bit. 4 Thieves have like not a lot going for them in the NES version, to say the least. I managed to get all the best equipment for them from Elfland (Sabre, Copper Armlet, Cap, Gloves) and that's pretty much their best equipment for a while.

Was starting to roll once equipment was sorted and I gained some levels on the boat. However all of that ran into a brick wall with Astos. Even at level 9, Thief can't hit him for more than 1 damage. So I've got everyone hitting for 1 (when they even hit) and he's got 180 HP. Yeaaaah. I'm fully reliant on RNG to give me a few criticals.

If I can get past Lich and get to the class change and get four Ninjas, the game will suddenly become sweet. However, I don't know if I can make it. If Astos is this bad, how bad is Lich gonna be? It's possible Astos just has super-high defense because you're supposed to use magic, or something to that effect, so Lich won't be as bad. I guess we'll see whenever I get around to this again.

I'm told that level 18 is probably the lowest you can think about beating Astos. I'm at level 9. Luckily, it turns out that part of the beach near Astos' Castle has enemies from the Melmond area (so not POPower levels, but a go-between) that significantly speeds up this part of the grind. I'll hit that for a while, then the POPower, then eventually roll Astos and Lich and claim the class-change. From there I'm just worried about Kraken 2 and Chaos, but I'll deal when I get there.

Beat Astos, the real final boss of this type of run. I'm guessing four Black Belts would also run into serious issues with this guy. Now I get the 3 special swords with the mystic key, eke out a win over Lich, and run away from everything till I get Ninjas.

Chris said:

You ruined the run by calling one of them fucking Cody.

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What's your beef with Cody?

Got 4 Ninjas, so now the game becomes more like the original Dragon Quest. I can go anywhere and do things in any order while powering up and finding equipment, so the second half of the game should be a lot more fun than the first half. The first half was just nonstop grinding for hours. A few bits of advice to anyone who ever tries this with 4 Thieves on the NES version:

-Go with Scimitars from Pravoka rather than Sabres from Elfland. The Sabre might do more damage, but Scimitars get to 2 Hits faster and that's the key to doing any real damage to Astos/Lich. Or anything pre class-change. With Scimitars, the Thief gets 2 Hits at level 10 and things speed up a lot at that point. 7-10 or so is brutal, I just fought Ogres outside of Elfland and died a lot. Once you get to 12, drop a tent or cabin outside Astos' Castle and fight him until you luck out and win. Then grind out to 14 and go defeat Lich. Then run from everything and get Castle of Ordeals and the Ice Cave out of the way. Ice Cave is particularly bad. Once the class change is reached everything calms down a bit and you can go do the Peninsula of Power, farm money for better gear, etc.

I'm the other way around. I've played 4-6 to death, while new versions of 1-3 certainly interested me. I played 1 a couple times and I'll probably play 3 at some point. Maybe 5 also since it's the one I've played the least out of 4-6. I don't know. I'm on more of a Dragon Quest kick right now, outside of the FF1 stuff.

My 4 Thief/Ninja run was on the NES version BTW. It'd be vastly easier in the remaster. Now I'm running 4 Monks, 4 Black Mages, and 4 Red Mages in 3 simultaneous games that I'm going back and forth between. So far the RM is surprisingly the hardest. I thought it'd be the easiest.

I did 4 Fighters back in like 1999 and I'll do 4 White Mages at some distant time as my final FF1 run, probably.

Ninja group down, here's proof...two down four to go


Four monks. This group actually starts out weaker than four thieves, then starts to get better at level 3, and by level 10 it has way outpaced a thief party. At level 15 it's steamrolling the fights. I'm guessing it'll even outpace the OP fighter group by 20 or so.


Red Mage group, on the PS1 version. This one is the slowest and weakest of the 3 I'm working on now, mainly because it's so expensive to get up and running with any kind of strength. Penta, Fenix, Sammy, Orange are keeping the AEW naming scheme going.


BM group is on the phone version. If I refrain from using Hi-Potion, Phoenix Down, and Ethers, then it's pretty similar to the NES version in difficulty.

This is interesting so far. Got monk and BM at the Earth Cave and RMs are gearing up for the Marsh Cave.