The Authoritative Final Fantasy & Bravely Default thread

Araysar said:

I played the SNES roms years after I gave away my SNES, so I don't think I ever did the super dragon end dungeon, that shit sounds fun. Kefka ends up being a pretty weak end game boss if you do most of WoR quests.

I think I'm gonna find a GBA advance emulator and load it up on my new big screen Android tablet

Click to expand...

GBA is super easy to emulate too. There's a ton of untapped gold on that system for me because I pretty much missed that era. Doubt I'll ever get around to it but every time I turn around I find out about some GBA great that I totally missed.

Kaiser Dragon is a fun fight and it's interesting to see how they tried to get a superboss out of FF6, the game with the most overpowered PCs (at endgame) relative to their opposition. They could have done way more TBH. But it's interesting regardless

Been playing on my tablet and its pretty great control-wise. I thought about replaying Chrono Trigger or Secret of Mana at some point but there's no way you could play those with a touchscreen D-pad, especially SoM. Anyways, last time I played FF6 would have been sometime in early 2000s and it was interesting to replay it again 20 years later. I played through most of WoR, the only dungeons left are Cultist Tower and Kefka's Tower.

It was interesting to see how some things became really apparent that I didn't pick up on at all as a kid.

1. The actual game is really short, even with WoR. I didnt really realize this, but playing open world RPGs like Witcher 3 really changed my perception of RPGs in regards to world size, side quests, itemization, etc. I'm at the end game and I put in maybe 20-25 hours. It's crazy to think that Floating Continent was originally meant to be the final dungeon, this thing would have been a 10-15 hour game at most. When I played it as a kid, the game seemed huge.

2. There is an illusion of exploration but in reality, the game is entirely on rails up until WoR. The map is designed in a way that everything is blocked off by giant mountain ranges until the story line opens areas up for you. Most of the WoB map is mountains to fill space or gatekeep you out of stuff. Theres nowhere to go or other stuff to do other than what the main quest demands at any given time.

3. in WoB, there's basically no side dungeons or side quests for the sake of exploration or challenge, 99% of stuff to do is part of the storyline. Though I dont remember if that was the case with earlier console RPGs too. It gets better in WoR but not by much.

4. I liked the WoB part of the game less and less than I did as a kid, probably because its so much hand holding. I like the WoR part much better because you could go do whatever you wanted to and there was just more stuff to discover.

I wonder if the game would have been so highly regarded if it came out as originally planned (WoB only). I think that without the WoR half, it would have been considered one of the worst FF games (granted I havent played ALL of FFs). I always thought that this could be a game that I could happily replay once every couple years until I'm an old man, but now I don't think I'll ever pick it up again after I'm done with this run.

Gavinmad said:

Cyan pretty much always sucks because sword techs aren't even vaguely powerful enough to justify how long they take to charge,

Click to expand...

This was annoying at first until I found out you can hit Select to cycle through party members that are ready to attack. I would assign them all commands first and save Cyan for last and start charging his sword tech. By the time the first 3 characters are finished with their turns, Cyan is already charged up to lvl 4 sword tech at least. You can also juke it a little by assigning commands to other characters with longer animations like spells, this gives Cyan another 10-20 seconds to charge up his sword tech to whatever level you want. I usually just do Lvl 1 or Lvl 4

Siliconemelons said:

Yes, this is all true- there are very few things to miss/go back to or explore in WoB - and you have 2 chances to have airship freedom in the WoB and they are both very easily missed.

The game would be very short if it was simply our WoB that we got. But when they say "We were not going to do WoR" I do not think that means /all/ that stuff that is in our end product of WoR. Most of the scenarios of finding your group members would have been there, perhaps not all, but many. You can general tell this by where you are leveled to at the end of WoB, its about level 20/25 and WoR if you stick to the script your 30/35 and well powered to take on the end game. Also what does the "outside" of Kefka's tower look like? The floating continent for the most part...

Move the airship destruction to align with the rising of the floating continent, add in another 3 scenario routine there to rebuild the gang, lead to and end with an expanded floating continent.

I always found it interesting they did that 3 scenario split thing so early in the game and then never again.

Click to expand...

All true.

In regards to having airship freedom twice in WoB... by the time you get that freedom (after the Opera house I believe?) there isnt a whole lot left to explore. Youve already been to every town except Thamasa or Tzen I believe, and theres nothing really there in either one, other than some gear for sale at shops. So yeah, you get the freedom to explore... but you already explored it pretty much.

Araysar said:

This was annoying at first until I found out you can hit Select to cycle through party members that are ready to attack. I would assign them all commands first and save Cyan for last and start charging his sword tech. By the time the first 3 characters are finished with their turns, Cyan is already charged up to lvl 4 sword tech at least. You can also juke it a little by assigning commands to other characters with longer animations like spells, this gives Cyan another 10-20 seconds to charge up his sword tech to whatever level you want. I usually just do Lvl 1 or Lvl 4

Click to expand...

Cyan's L1 attack usually makes his regular attack obsolete for most of the game. It's instant and it does way more damage. There might be exceptions like if he has a Genji Glove or you're using the Tempest sword against a bunch of foes. Obviously later on with the Offering (or whatever it's called now) regular attack is bigger. He has one weapon (Scimitar I think in the old version) that procs insta-kill a LOT so I'd always give him that + Offering and watch him one-shot almost everything.

Select to switch between characters mid-fight is a bit of a game changer. I thought it was Y. It's Y in one of these games. Lot of people don't even know you can do that and it's a handicap (not to mention making Cyan pretty bad). Chrono Trigger got it right by showing everyone's commands onscreen at once.

Siliconemelons said:

Yes, this is all true- there are very few things to miss/go back to or explore in WoB - and you have 2 chances to have airship freedom in the WoB and they are both very easily missed.

The game would be very short if it was simply our WoB that we got. But when they say "We were not going to do WoR" I do not think that means /all/ that stuff that is in our end product of WoR. Most of the scenarios of finding your group members would have been there, perhaps not all, but many. You can general tell this by where you are leveled to at the end of WoB, its about level 20/25 and WoR if you stick to the script your 30/35 and well powered to take on the end game. Also what does the "outside" of Kefka's tower look like? The floating continent for the most part...

Move the airship destruction to align with the rising of the floating continent, add in another 3 scenario routine there to rebuild the gang, lead to and end with an expanded floating continent.

I always found it interesting they did that 3 scenario split thing so early in the game and then never again.

Click to expand...

We were talking about this in the other thread and it's interesting stuff. The original WoB-only game could have had a bunch of WoR scenarios at the end. Darill's Tomb is a very likely one (if the original airship got destroyed during the events of late WoB). That very much feels like your traditional Squaresoft "good guys suffer a big loss and have to recover right before the final area" trope.

Kefka's Tower is basically a fusion of the Floating Continent and Vector because it's quite literally made out of both of them. You can see on the world map how the land looks like it swirled around Vector. I'm guessing there was a big tornado of energy or something that dragged the FC and the surrounding lands into Vector and formed a giant misshapen tower out of all of it. One of the more interesting ideas for an area in RPG history.

Originally the outdoor/FC-like parts of Kefka's Tower might have been the upper level of the WoB FC or something. It's darker because by the time you get there it's now night-time. Or maybe it was intended to be higher in the atmosphere, like how the top of the Black Omen (CT) is above the cloud layer and has space as a background.

Araysar said:

All true.

In regards to having airship freedom twice in WoB... by the time you get that freedom (after the Opera house I believe?) there isnt a whole lot left to explore. Youve already been to every town except Thamasa or Tzen I believe, and theres nothing really there in either one, other than some gear for sale at shops. So yeah, you get the freedom to explore... but you already explored it pretty much.

Click to expand...

Tzen is on the Vector continent but optional (so is Maranda). There isn't much to see with the WoB airship except Thamasa. And I guess revisiting Narshe and obtaining Mog.

Araysar said:

Been playing on my tablet and its pretty great control-wise. I thought about replaying Chrono Trigger or Secret of Mana at some point but there's no way you could play those with a touchscreen D-pad, especially SoM. Anyways, last time I played FF6 would have been sometime in early 2000s and it was interesting to replay it again 20 years later. I played through most of WoR, the only dungeons left are Cultist Tower and Kefka's Tower.

It was interesting to see how some things became really apparent that I didn't pick up on at all as a kid.

1. The actual game is really short, even with WoR. I didnt really realize this, but playing open world RPGs like Witcher 3 really changed my perception of RPGs in regards to world size, side quests, itemization, etc. I'm at the end game and I put in maybe 20-25 hours. It's crazy to think that Floating Continent was originally meant to be the final dungeon, this thing would have been a 10-15 hour game at most. When I played it as a kid, the game seemed huge.

2. There is an illusion of exploration but in reality, the game is entirely on rails up until WoR. The map is designed in a way that everything is blocked off by giant mountain ranges until the story line opens areas up for you. Most of the WoB map is mountains to fill space or gatekeep you out of stuff. Theres nowhere to go or other stuff to do other than what the main quest demands at any given time.

3. in WoB, there's basically no side dungeons or side quests for the sake of exploration or challenge, 99% of stuff to do is part of the storyline. Though I dont remember if that was the case with earlier console RPGs too. It gets better in WoR but not by much.

4. I liked the WoB part of the game less and less than I did as a kid, probably because its so much hand holding. I like the WoR part much better because you could go do whatever you wanted to and there was just more stuff to discover.

I wonder if the game would have been so highly regarded if it came out as originally planned (WoB only). I think that without the WoR half, it would have been considered one of the worst FF games (granted I havent played ALL of FFs). I always thought that this could be a game that I could happily replay once every couple years until I'm an old man, but now I don't think I'll ever pick it up again after I'm done with this run.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I've been saying for a while that these FF games are WAY shorter than people remember. This led to a whole big argument in the Pixel Remaster thread with people telling me FF4 wasn't short, so I went and beat the SNES version of the game in 8 hours or something.

I've had a whole bunch of things that I thought I'd be playing until I was an old man, only to replay them again and be pretty let down. FF6 is one of those things. Along with FF8, FF9, FF10... Surprisingly FF1 and FF7 are both things I like more as time goes by. Super Metroid, FF4, and Chrono Trigger have held most of their value on revisits at least. I'm afraid to replay Link to the Past and Earthbound because I think they might be letdowns on a revisit and they're both magical things in memory, two of my favorite things.

Going to the "Bravely Default" half of the thread title... some time next year I'm gonna try to make some room for the three of those (Since I have a hacked 3DS now with the first two prominently featured on it, I may as well). They're all portable which is super useful for me and means I'd get through them a lot quicker than my usual console things.

-How is BD as a series? Worth playing for an FF person? Isn't it class-based like FF5?

-Are any of them particularly weak or particularly better than the others?

-Is Octopath 1+2 kind of the spiritual successor to this or am I thinking of something else? Four Heroes of Light was definitely the spiritual predecessor and I played that like a decade back. Octopath's something else I might give a run next year.

-Are they all particularly drawn-out or do they move fast if you're an FF veteran?

-What's the difficulty on these?

Kriptini said:

I love the Bravely Default series. They are class-based like FF3 or FF5, but (most of them) have narratives that are as strong as FF4 or even FF6. You'll level up multiple jobs on each character, borrowing skills and passives from each to make cool builds, or there might be some fights where you change jobs that are better at defeating certain bosses.

Of the three, Bravely Second is by far the best, but it is a direct sequal to Bravely Deault so you should play that first. Don't get confused: Bravely Default is the first game, Bravely Second is the sequel, and Bravely Default 2 is a completely different narrative in a completely different world with no link to the other two. Think of Bravely Default and Bravely Second as FF4 and FF4: The After Years while Bravely Default 2 is FF5. Quick overview of their differences:

• Bravely Default: very good game, difficulty is pretty moderate, although there are some endgame superbosses that are insanely difficult unless you abuse the Hasten World + Stillness combo which lets you auto-battle everything in the game. The narrative is alright, and it gets a little weak towards the end.
• Bravely Second: absolute masterpiece. It took everything the first game did and made everything better. I honestly believe that, maybe outside of a little too much dialogue, this game has no weaknesses. The character development is incredible and the narrative is genuinely unique and clever. There's even more classes than there were in the first game, with some being removed and a bunch of new ones being added. The OP combo from the first game was removed so endgame bosses are actually challenging (though there are still ways to break the game if you don't mind grinding stat-boosting items). There's also a TON of side content, maybe almost as much as there is main game, and all of the sideplots are bespoke quests with their own well-developed narratives. This game rocks, and I really think all RPG fans need to play it, but you do have to play Bravely Default first or you will be lost in some places.
• Bravely Default 2: this is the weakest of the three games but it's still worth playing. Compared to the other two games, the characters are really underdeveloped and the plot isn't particularly interesting. There are some significant changes to the game which I think makes it mechanically worse than the other two. In the first two games, you have random encounters, but you can adjust the frequency of them (and even turn them off completely if you don't want to fight). In BD2, there are no more random encounters but instead enemy models roam the map and if you touch them, you go into a battle. You can outrun some enemies to avoid them but it's more tedious if you're done grinding and just want to explore and get missed chests. The battle chain system from the first two games is also gone, making grinding a chore compared to the first two games. For difficulty, the early game is absurdly difficult (due to some completely OP bosses) and then the difficulty falls off by the end of the game.

For pacing, Bravely Default moves at a pretty good pace but can slow down at the end (just keep pushing through though, it's worth it). Bravely Second's completion time will vary depending on how much of the side stuff you want to do because there is a LOT of it and it's all very good. I think my mostly-completionist playthrough was over 100 hours. Bravely Second is more like the first; it also slows down at the end but is much more obnoxious about it.

Octopath 1 and 2 were done by the same developers but they're not like that Bravely Default series at all.

Click to expand...

That's a solid write-up, thanks. I've got this well-documented weakness for having to slay all the super-bosses in every FF game but it doesn't really extend outside of that series luckily.

Glad I read this because Bravely Second was the one I was most likely to skip, assumed it was some kind of spinoff. They should have just called BD2 "Bravely Third" to avoid confusion.

Gavinmad said:

Here we go again.

Knowing how to optimize a playthrough for speed after having beaten the game over a dozen times does not make the game short.

Click to expand...

These SNES RPGs (FF4, FF6, Chrono Trigger, probably others) are short relative to modern games.

8 hours is short. I could probably beat CT in sub-10 too and I haven't played it since like 2003.

They're shorter than people remember them being.

That's it.

Chris said:

The first two Bravely games have a good combat system but the story is absolutely dogshit and the first game isn't finished.

Click to expand...

I'm okay with that setup. FF5 is probably my favorite FF from a straight gameplay perspective. Just give me classes and good battles and I'm all set.