The Final Fantasy Mega Thread - Now playing FFXV

Vorph said:

There's basically 4 types of chests in Cerobi: 1%, 2%, 5%, and 8%. Pretty much all the top-tier items are 1's or 2's, but there's almost always another no-respawn chest somewhere with the item in it (but it could be in Henne Mines optional area, the Great Crystal, or it could be just about at the end of the game). If you wanted more than one or don't want to wait, you either farm Cerobi, do something far worse like try to get a 1% drop or 3% steal, or do without.

I can't think of any Cerobi weapons worth the bother unless you need two Yagyu Darkblades for some reason. Armor is a different story entirely.

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Yeah cleanse and the circlets are worth the effort. TK if you have not gone after Chaos, maybe. Everything else is better in Henne Mines with higher respawn. Pharos Basement has crappy reaspawn, but you can trigger chest pops simply by crossing the abundant doorways. The Pharos farm was by far the least tedious. Biggest cockblock is Excalibur being literally under Ultima, because by the time you can kill her you don't need it (Hellwyrm is likely already dead by this point). Assuming you have the multiple hunter classes, having another Yagu is worth it for Yaizmat, but farming the breaks and afking is less time consuming than getting a second one.

RE: Armors in the end game: Since most of the later boss fights basically ignore evasion, the only reason I ever saw to use light armor was for raw HP. But even then, the loss of MDef and Defense was never worth it. I think I had three people in robes, Fran in Grand Armor, Balthier in Maxamillian stuff, and Basch in Genji at the end? Frankly, accessories were more important from about the halfway point on and you can brute force your way through most of the first half with bubble belts and protect armor. Most of those dropped incidentally on clears of zones, mostly the deep parts of mine areas around Zodiark or Pharos Basement. If you are not a completionist, there are tons of spells and tech you can just skip. Holy, Shock, and Scathe are the only nukes worth having. Most of the heal spells are gimmies. Breaks and maybe gil toss (for chaos fight and magic pots) if you are going for all the bosses. Hell so many of the harder boss fights are res fests, that bravery and shellga are the only worth it buff spells to have.

Everything else you might need comes from vendors or guaranteed chest drops. Outside of farming the break skills, you really require nothing special to beat Yiazmat easily. Netsuke accessories for Ultima and Mirror Mails for Zodiark are the only other items I would even consider essential for taking down the top end boss enemies in the game. If you don't give a shit about the bazaar (you don't ever need to), you will be swimming in cash two thirds of the way through the game, just by selling crap and putting a cat ear hood or two on some bench warmers, so the money farm isn't even really a thing. I think I was at something like 1.8 million gil at the end and I was using coin toss without a care in the world the whole time.

Some fights definitely got harder from the old PS2 version (the disease blob guy in the sewers, Lyndwyrm in the snow area, summoner dickback in Pharos Basement) but for the most part this game was much easier than the original. You could farm for years and still get your shit pushed in by the top bosses in that version, despite everyone getting the entire job board. But that's ok, this game was never good because of the challenge. It was good because it was playing the best parts of an MMO without the worst parts (idiot guildies and drama) of it. And most of the fights are actually strategy based and not just gear checks, unlike what plagued FF9 and FF10.

pharmakos said:

in my ongoing quest to play/replay every Final Fantasy game, i have thus far only beaten FF1 and FF5. debating on which to play next -- FF4 or FF8. part of me really wants to jump to FF3, but having just beaten FF5 idk if i want to play the only other FF with a job system just yet.

jealous of you guys with PS4s playing FF12:TZA. hopefully soon i'll be done with chemotherapy and can go back to work and afford a trivial purchase like a PS4...

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FF8 is very polarizing. People either really like it (I liked it more than most) or hate it. If you are trying to avoid burnout, I would knock out FF8 early and save FF4 for when you need to play one of the better games to get back into the groove.

Magic system was shit and the time travel plot was poorly done, but I liked the individual character stories and the music more than most.

The level mechanic was irrelevant. The dumb part was the entire game was centered on sitting with 100 spells in slots on espers as gear, which made using magic pointless and meant you would spend hours sucking spells out of people like a straw to get 100 of something. The levels were basically superfluous, because it scaled to your level. The combat, was otherwise sound. But yeah, the only difference between characters came down to limit breaks, since the hard fights revolved around chaining them. The last dungeon was probably the most challenging and interesting one in any of the series, though. I will agree in principle that the system was flawed (but still better than anything in FF13 or beyond)

But I disagree that Squall was the worst protagonist in FF. You prefer Cloud the crossdressing amnesiac who cosplayed his friend? Or maybe Vaan the shoe horned in protagonist of nothingness? Lightning? FF8 had story problems, but Squall was not one of them. Really, protagonists have generally been crap in FF games since FF6, if you can even consider any single person in that game a protagonist.

Really worse that the ff13 system where leveling things made you worse because the airport would use worthless Skills? Or ff9 where you had to drag around every item ever to exist in order to level Everyone? Or ff10 where the sphere grid could be completely ground out in two arena Battles? Yeah it was a dumb system, but at least the summons were an essential part of the game without being open or useless. Again it's not the best system, but there were plenty worse in the series and I have not even touched 15.

I think Cloud was one of the worst protagonists in a FF game to exist and that FF7 is overrated because people who came into the series in the PS1 era (especially early edge lord anime types) worshiped Sephiroth, who was the first major American exposure to that type of anime villain. My favorite protagonists were Cecil from FF4 and Celes from FF6. If Square's marketing department didn't have such a hardon for Japanese boy band knock off characters, Auron and Basch would have been the protagonists of their respective games and on the same level. That's not even getting into Ramza, Denim, or Lance (FF-Tactics, Tactics Ogre, and Knights of Lodis, respectfully) who eclipsed anything in the main Square titles. FF7 marked where the main writer started going insane (think his parents died or something) and writing weird shit, causing it to be a committee written thing from there on out. Its also where it stopped being medieval worlds (mostly) and became full on JPOP video nihilistic world stuff, though both 9 and 12 dialed that back a little.

But seriously where is this character development you are talking about? Cloud went from "I think I am Zack for some reason" to "guess I will bang Tifa since Aeris is dead and we are about to die at the crater", with a lot of nonsensical crazy in between, like the cross dressing stuff and Sephiroth somehow magically being able to control him because he was Trans-Zacking that hard. Vincent had the better story arc and more interesting background and he was an optional character.....

And yeah, any game where I can farm three easy to get things and instantly hit max level in three arena fights less than halfway through the game is pretty much a busted system (FF10), because at least the stat linking in FF8 required you to go around and get enough Espers (and the right ones) to cover all stats for three characters. FF10 also had some of the most retarded mini games, all of which were essential to get the ultimate weapons or breaks for characters (seriously, only an Asian would think dodging a billion lightning bolts for an item is fun and fuck underwater soccer). The real issue with FF8 was the enemies scaling with your level making generic character levels meaningless and incentivizing people to NOT ever use magic in the game. Hmm, now that I think of it, Tidus might be the worst protagonist ever in a FF game, the imaginary son of the imaginary friend of the dude who should have been the main protagonist, if the marketing faggots at Square were not calling the shots.... The "laugh" scene might be the cringiest thing I have seen in a game (until ME:A came out) all time.