The Shrine

So I know this hasn't gotten a whole lot of buzz, even I kinda disregarded them when I saw they were charging like $75 for all of the old games, BUT I've now heard these games and they totally remade all of the music with these orchestral arrangements which are incredibly amazing.

I've never been a huge fan of FFI-III, but FF IV & VI are some of my favorites in the series and I'm looking forward to hearing the music from these games.

https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/14 ... nPQCaD.mp4

I only like the original NES FF1, with the original magic system and such. While the newer ones will be way easier for newer players, the one I grew up with has a charm that can’t be replaced.

One some things never players wouldn’t forgive: the original didn’t tell players in game what classes could equip which weapons. It came with a big map, and on the back had a chart of all the weapons and their equip info (or was it in the book? Or that Nintendo power guide? Either way, I had it memorized). There are no tutorials, and without looking at the map or memorization, it’s all trial and error or gamefaqs.

I have no issues with people playing and loving remade versions… … … Still! I recall the hatred in my biceps and GBA gripping fists when I played the first remake with the art ruined and the magic system replaced with a generic mp + ether system. Grrrrrr!!!!

OK, I didn't realize they brought back the original magic system AND the original art style from the first FF game. I'll be looking forward to this getting a Switch release... hopefully!

It's super weird this isn't getting a console release on Nintendo/Microsoft or Sony and is only on Steam/Mobile heh.

They need to announce the release for FF6 already....

Agreed! Announce it now! NOW!

Feb 23.

https://twitter.com/SquareEnix/status/1 ... 6i9H_oi_IQ

I’m going to hold off on purchase simply because if they do announce it for consoles, I’m just going to be buying it multiple times.

Although, I might take the plunge if they promise cross platform cloud saving. I REALLY want to play this.

I actually started playing a pretty neat hack of Final Fantasy VI prior to this in anticipation. Adds a buncha bosses and content, and re-balances the game without going overboard with the difficulty, but adds a bit of challenge to it. It's pretty fun.


https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6339/

Yeeeeeeeesssssss

https://twitter.com/FinalFantasy/status ... 4Pb5yiFGbA

I approve of this remix.

Guitar hits.... violin hits... mmmmmm

The ESRB has rated all six games for Switch. So they should be announced for consoles very soon. Probably just waiting for a Nintendo Direct.

Now this is how you do a proper announcement.
April 19th.



So, while we knew about them in December because of the ESRB leak, this is the actual announcement. Just two weeks before. Unlike Suikoden which looks like it will approach a year before.

Anyway, the Canadian prices are identical to the mobile prices, FF1 and 2 cost $17 each and FF3-6 cost $25 each, but the bundle is a little more $100 instead of $90.

These remasters are superior to most of the past ones as, while they add QOL changes (like auto-targeting a new enemy after killing the first, bulk purchasing, diagonal walking, and optimize equipment) the gameplay has remained the same. My biggest issue with some of the earlier remasters, like the GBC version of FF1, is they overhauled some of the systems which kind of broke certain classes (mages, particularly). Many of the remasters in the past swapped out art for new versions, and it didn’t feel right. This time around the art style remains the same while still looking updated.

There were two major complaints of the mobile remasters:
First, was they didn’t include additional content from previous remasters. To me, while I did enjoy the FF4 stuff quite a lot, most of the additional stuff from other games didn’t improve the games. I think it would be cool to get access to that content later, but it’s not essential. FF4’s expanded world is (IMO) the most interesting out of all the expanded worlds of FF games.
Second, the font kerning was really bad. Looking at the video, this was fixed.
Third, originally there was a piece of the FF6 credits scene removed, but this has been added back in.


The future for Square Enix? Now I hope they do Chrono Trigger and the Soul Blazer series. They already remastered ActRaiser. Dragon Quest 3 is getting a full remake for 2023 (it’s the same one announced 2 years ago).

Anyway, I’ve played through the first game, and started FF2j. A few things to note about the game.

• Pixel art is updated with added colour, but maintains the original art style.
• Select between original and updated musical arrangements.
• You can now walk diagonally.
• You can now run everywhere except on the world map.
• Autobattle features, basically it just repeats your last command, if you run out of magic it defaults to attack.
• Menu UX is updated from the archaic styles to the FF6 style - which is still perfect to this day. Note: they did not change mechanics, like the FF1 magic system, merely updated it so you can use multiple potions without it kicking you out of the menu each time like it did in the original FF1-5. You can buy 99 potions at once, and such.
• Added Ether potions, which kind of breaks black mages/wizards in FF1. But this has been a problem for basically every remake/remaster. I still opted to use them extensively, but yeah, every battle ended up being Flare or Thundaga, auto-kill everything.
• New translation, and menu animations and such make the experience a lot smoother.
• There are a bunch of extras I haven’t explored (bestiary, music boxes, art, etc.)
• Game-genie type features, like upping xp and gp, or turning off random battles. I didn’t touch any of these, as the experience is already kind of broken as is with Ether potions.
• Rebalance of prices, and they got rid of the 4000 gp silver sword in Elf Town. Enemies are noticeably easier. I found no reason to do the stop and grind that I always found necessary in the earlier portions of FF1. Chaos was the only enemy I think they boosted a bit, I remember that battle usually being done in 3-4 turns, this was around 15-20 turns.
• Deaths don’t return you to the last in, but merely to the last door you entered. That said, I only died twice in the game, once on Lich, and again on Chaos at the end.
• Certain status effects still persist after battle, like poison and stone.
• You can buy an echo screens in every item shop in FF1, but I didn’t get silenced even once in that game. Although I did get stoned (as a character and a player).
• Display in native wide screen.
• Enemy attacks are randomized rather than pattern based.
• Attacks will retarget if the targeted enemy is killed rather than resulting in an “INEFFECTIVE” attack.
• Added cinematic scenes, for example, the text scroll at the beginning of the game is now more like FF6’s intro with cinematic stuff going on in the background of the exposition.
• Updated spell animations, and they look really good.

Overall, this Pixel Remastered version of FF1 was around as much fun in my 40s as I remember it being in elementary school. The main change is that with the new features, it’s a significantly faster experience. At a fairly leisurely pace, exploring every nook and cranny of the game, it took me about 3 days to finish the game, playing about 1-2 hours a day. I started Final Fantasy 2 yesterday.

So far, the pixel remasters are more in depth than the FF7-9 remasters, which still use mainly old pre-rendered background art. While the new 3D models are really nice, the backgrounds don’t look as good as they did years ago. DKC also had this grainy issue.

Anyway, to sum it up, this is (IMO) the definitive collection of 1-3 and 5-6. FF4 Advance has some very cool epilogue stuff and features that won’t appear in the pixel remaster (assuming you can’t select characters outside of the final party). Either way, I’ll wait and see how the game feels on the pixel remasters before deciding I like the GBA version best. While the DS FF4 was also very good, I still think the pixel remaster will be more enjoyable. FF4 is probably the only game square ever remade/remastered where I’ve felt the original is the worst version - FF1 NES might be horrible for people who didn’t have the giant map with all the weapon and armour stats on it, but for those of us who had that memorized it wasn’t an issue - but what was an issue was scrapping the battle system and changing the art styles: the pixel remasters didn’t do either of those things, they just fixed the stuff that was wrong with the original. The only thing I think I’d change is maybe making Ethers cost 1500 or 3000 instead of 150 - the 1500 to 3000 price isn’t going to hurt the ease of the game for players who want an easier experience anyway, because they can just shoot up the gp reward in the cheat menu. There is one other complaint I have, they broke Masamune (in a bad way): it can still be equipped by every class, but it no longer has a fixed range of damage, it is modified by strength like every other weapon, so it does a lot more damage than it did before when equipped by a Knight, but hardly any damage when equipped by a white mage: originally it was something like 400-600 damage regardless of who had it (that’s high damage for FF1).

I had, as a party, Warrior, Monk (blackbelt), white mage, and black mage. Warrior and Monk felt useless in the random battles, because killing enemies that the black mage will kill anyway is pointless. The Warrior and Monk were highly useful for boss fights, as their attacks were still the biggest bang for the buck. White mage used Heal staff every turn in random battles (at least in the second half of the game), and Healaga on boss battles - both these things heal a portion of every party members HP. As an attacker, the white mage’s anti-undead spells are useful in many battles, and the spell Holy is a great late game spell - perhaps the best attack spell in the game - but it shares an mp pool with Full Life.

Save your Elixirs for Chaos, you might actually use them all.

I'm now quite a distance into FF2 (not FF4). I had an unfair prejudice against this game in the past, and never gave it a fair shot.

First, the game feels much more modern than FF1. The battle system, should you choose not to abuse it, is well balanced and quite a lot of fun. The game is basically a workout routine - use magic and you gain MP and magic power instead of xp. It's basically an AP system, except your AP is automatically assigned based on your actions rather than manually assigned. It's otherwise the same as the SaGa systems. I find myself using magic frequently, almost all the time. It never feels like spell usage or weapon experimentation is a waste, because the more you use magic, the more you power up the spell, and the more MP you gain - and weapons that haven't been used advance quickly in the later game, I started a character in swords for the first time, and she gained about 5 levels in about 7-10 battles - everyone else is at level 11 right now, she's on level 6. That's without any boosting cheats on. So far the only cheats I've used are No Encounter, when I run out of time and want to get to a good place to stop - unfortunately, in early open world games, if you leave off at certain locations, sometimes putting the game down for a bit means forgetting what you're supposed to be doing (actually, this has never happened to me, but I imagine it could easily happen if I'm not careful).

Story is quite good for an NES game. It's not Dragon Warrior 4 good, it probably falls between Dragon Warrior 2 and 3. Definitely a better story than FF3 (again, the NES game) if my memory serves. It's your typical Sakaguchi "The unlikely hero who joins the rebels against the Empire" story with very good and evil characters, and one who is not sure if he wants to be good or evil. FF6 may have started with that Sakaguchi concept, but the new writers under Kitase took the story in a very different direction and did away with the idea of a singular main character, and made the story much more about magic, Espers, with some steam and science fiction elements, big theological concepts, and everything eventually ends up in a war on a god story in a post apocalyptic world. But, otherwise, the story is impressive compared to what I thought it would be.

The dungeon design is kind of annoying with a lot of empty dead ends, this is something largely done away with in the era of Final Fantasy Adventure, FF3, and Final Fantasy Legend. That said, the dungeon design is less annoying thanks to auto-battle and the ability to turn random encounters off if you're thinking "You know what? I just wanna finish this dungeon." But, I'd recommend not doing this too often as sometimes there are spikes in regular enemy difficulty. But if you wanted to just get things over with, put your battles on for one floor with 4X yields, and then turn it off for the next three dungeon floors. Although, I like the dungeons more than FF1.

The world is substantially better than FF1's world. There are houses you can go inside to visit people in the towns - FF1 didn't have this. It all feels a lot more modern. FF1 had some caves and castles to go inside, but towns were purely shops, anyone who could be talked to in a town was outside. Additionally, the people say more interesting things, FF1 felt so soulless in terms of what people said. FF2 they say things much more relevant to the current situation, and text evolves over time, probably better than FF4 (if I correctly recall), maybe even the best until FF8 (where dialogue from non-player-characters frequently changed over time, especially in Garden). You can also ask characters about different things from a list of terms you gather (similar to Shadowrun on SNES), but unlike Shadowrun, it highlights all the terms the characters have something to say about, Shadowrun, you basically had to go over the full list with everyone in the game or you'd probably miss something important. So, the world is a strong point for this game, it is a massive improvement over FF1. Also, I really dig the more open world feel to it, even though in reality the story is still linear.

Side note - Romancing SaGa 2 is more authentically open world in gameplay, although (unlike FF2) you don't have access immediately, you expand the world over time, and expand the number of available paths to take.

Overall, I like FF2 more than FF1. In terms of the remasters, I'd say I like FF2 two to three times as much as FF1. I'm exploring the final continent now, so I think I'm just about done.


MAJOR TIP - whichever character you plan to give ultima to, make sure they’re learning all weapons and a wide variety of spells (I like attack spells and common heal spells, especially cure and life that increases points if used outside battle. Ultima’s power is based on a combined count of all skill levels a character has, so if you’re really good in swords and nothing else, Ultima won’t be anymore powerful than a fire spell. Note, I had all weapon classes up to level 8-11, and all magic between level 6 and 16 (the level 16 spell being Cure, the easiest one to level up). Ultima was by far the most powerful spell in the game with these stats.

The last dungeon was brutal because of the length. It was basically like FF4's final dungeon, except not fun (because of all the dead ends). By the end of the game I was just using Ultima all over the place. The final boss wasn't particularly difficult. In fact, I had much more trouble reaching the end boss than actually fighting him. The game is roughly 50% longer than FF1. Weird enough, FF1 and 2 both took me longer than my last playthrough of FF4 (which was about 9 hours), FF6 I can do in about 14 hours, but comfortably (talking to everyone) is more like 20. FF1 is about 10 hours, FF2 about 15 hours.

Final Fantasy 3

I’d say there are a lot of improvements in many ways. But the game (IMO) feels a bit anemic compared to the Dragon Quest games it’s trying to mimic. Dragon Quest 3 is a similar game, but the world is so much more rich. In the end, I found the job system cumbersome and full of pointless stuff… in the end I found myself using dragoons most of the time, as they wiped out everyone with jump commands. The only times I used other jobs are when special situations emerged - unlocking a door (quick switch to a thief), or splittable enemies (switch to dark knights). I haven’t got the Ninja job yet, it seems it will be the last one. In the end, it felt like I was switching off my main dragoon job only out of necessity for small moments of the game, and it was annoying every time.

Overall, I think I still enjoyed FF2 more, despite the fact that the dungeons, towns, and presentation in FF3 are all improved from FF2.

FF3 has a great beginning and then promises to be such an exciting and fulfilling game after a certain point (in a way like FF4 and FF6 does), but when the world opened up, it was kind of like when FF9’s world opened up, the best and most charming parts of the game were already behind. The major plus on the Pixel Remaster game is that while it’s painful, it’s still a big improvement over the DS remake.

In all, Square’s remaster and remake philosophy is much better in the past ~5 years than it was the fifteen years prior (minus FF4, which IMO was an exception in a lot of remade and remastered games that all feel like worse versions of the originals).

Final Fantasy 4

So far this game is the most like its original. The main changes are the fixes for the horrible SNES UI map, and some graphical improvements. The QOL stuff is helpful, making hidden passages a lot easier to find and the various maps.

One thing about the original FF4 is they used weird downgraded sprites outside of battle. This has been fixed, and now the battle sprites are used for the map characters, so there aren’t these discrepancies.

Animations are updated. Spells in the first four FF games look the same, there might be slight differences, but I think the animations are the same. Not just battle animations, but stuff like the ship close up when it’s going through water is done very well - notably when Leviathan attacks.

FF4 is kind of the reverse of FF7, IMO. FF7 is a game that’s brilliant for the first 30% or so, and still great for the next 40%, but the last 30% slows down because of big desolate dungeon areas that take a long time to get through. FF4 starts off kind of slow, when Cecil is still the dark knight, but only gets better from Mount Ordeals onward - breaking into Baron, Troia, then all the Babel and Dwarf underworld… Monster world… very very much looking forward to that! Also, my favourite tune in the game.

I wrote this just after the Dwarf City crystal has been taken by Golbez. Although, I’ve finished the game, now. Better than the older FF games in almost every single way except maybe the magic system and the class system. I prefer the independent magic charges in FF1 and 3 to the mp pool in 4 (and 2). I also prefer the more customizable characters of FF2 than the pre-sets of FF4, but I prefer the FF4 presets to the job system of 3, and I’m not sure where I stand on the class system of 1, I liked it better than the job system, and maybe a bit better than the pre-set classes in FF4. Otherwise, FF4 blows the previous games away in terms of world, story, characters (they actually have depth!), plotting, and town/dungeon design. The early dungeon design is boring, but it gets a lot better from Mt. Hobbs (the one where you first meet Yang) onward. The final dungeon of FF4 is one of the few final dungeons that’s actually fun in the series.

Final Fantasy 5

The FF game I am least knowledgeable about. I’ve played all of the others before—although, only a bit less of FF2. The only time I played FF5 was on emulator to try it out back when they were brand new and the translucent layering didn’t work, so I couldn’t see what was going on if there were any overlays. Also, I was playing in Japanese, not English. Basically, this particular game is all new to me.

I just started, I’m only a bit into the game so far. Not getting a great vibe for character depth so far. More of a FF Mystic Quest vibe than anything. The story beginning with crystals exploding feels more FF3 level than the Red Wings attacking Mysidia at the beginning of FF4, or even the Empire attacking the Kingdom of Fynn at the beginning of FF2. We’ll see how it goes.

I’ve started using the job system, it seems an improvement over 3… FF3 was basically 10-15 garbage jobs and 2-3 good ones. Once you get Ninja, the others are basically pointless. FF5 looks to do the FFT thing where you can mix different job types together. Although, FFT suffered a similar issue where Ninja Monks were all you needed to crush everything.

So, FF5 allows players to learn skills with a job (kind of like the Abilities of GFs in FF8) and equip them while using another job - this can include white and black magic. I’m starting with 2 white mages and 2 black mages, I’ve learned their level 1 magic abilities, and now I’ve switched them all to knights (better equipment) and equipping the level 1 white and black mage abilities. Spells are bought, and all I have are level 1 spells, so there’s no current use to learn level 2 and higher black and white magic, so I’ll use the knight job - one ability is two-handed which increases weapon attack, a good ability to equip on my white and black mages later when they’re learning higher level magic skills.

Overall - FF5 feels more like a proper sequel to FF3 than FF4 does. FF4 is more like the first step toward the future FF games from 6 onward (minus 9 and 12, and probably 11 and 14). In fact, the story of FF8 is basically a reimagining of FF4. FF5, on the other hand feels like the final game of the old style FF, it’s a lot of fun on the gameplay side, and it’s very animated, but the lack of a compelling story and characters makes the game feel dated, even by Dragon Quest 4 and Final Fantasy 4 standards.

So, in the production values, FF5 is more advanced than FF4; but, the overall feeling of of the game because of characters and story, is that FF5 is more primitive than FF4. On one side we have FF1-3 and FF5, on the other is FF6 onward, FF4 is the transition between the two different eras of Final Fantasy. That said, the gap of production value between FF5 and FF6 is significantly greater than the production value gap between FF4 and 5.

I’ve finished all the Pixel Remasters. Going to try to do a light review of each.

Final Fantasy 1 - They rebalanced and added real-time cutscenes, graphics were upgraded without destroying the art style. Auto battle and re-target makes the dungeons WAY less painful. Maintains the original magic system.

Final Fantasy 2 - IMO is better than FF1 in every way, I’m not in the camp that thinks this game is terrible, it was a lot of fun for me. This was my first time playing through it. Make sure to play with at least one generalized character using all weapon types and all magic - as Ultima’s power is based on the total levels of everything else—getting everything to level 6-8 is fairly easy. Worst part of the game is the dungeon design is FF1’s archaic style, although, they’re mostly medium sized compared to FF1 dungeon length.

Final Fantasy 3 - better than FF2 in most ways. But I preferred FF2’s character development gameplay to the job system. I liked this version of the game way more than the DS one. They fixed the magic system as well. Dungeon design is WAY better than FF1 and 2.

Final Fantasy 4 - not much needs to be said, the game is very close to the original. The set character classes are superior to job classes in my opinion. This one Steph (who isn’t really a gamer) played through so we could be doing it at the same time.

Final Fantasy 5 - This was my first time playing through. I enjoyed how you could learn skills and equip them even when using a different job (a bit like a primitive version of FFT). The art style was better than FF4 IMO (though not as good as 6), comedic writing and scene work reminded me of FF6 (you could tell the comedy was Yasunori Kitase, and the scene work was Tetsuya Takahashi - both of whom I’m big fans of) - the job system was excellent too (I think that’s Hiroyuki Ito) but the pacing was awful (IMO) and felt repetitive after the first world like Bravely Default - I’m not sure if that’s Ito or Sakaguchi’s work. Either way, this one began with me liking it a lot, but felt increasingly like a chore in the second half. I felt it should have been shorter than FF4, but it was about twice as long.

Final Fantasy 6 - by far the best, they put more production value into this than the others combined, the Opera Scene is redone in 3D pixel graphics with camera angles and zooming, plus the new music is vocalized and true to the original song. The game actually took me longer than FF5, but that’s because I was squeezing every bit of good juice out of this orange. With FF5 I was hoping the end of the game was coming up about 40% of the way through, with this one I was hoping I missed something so there was just a bit more to play. This one, if any of them should be purchased, I feel Square could have got away with double the sold-separately price and it would have been worth it. Also, Steph is playing this one too - we kind of did the same thing with FF4 and played at about the same time. As a note, just before the leak occurred in December, I was playing FF6 on the SNES mini, as point of comparison, the Pixel Remaster graphics look WAY better on modern displays—given they actually fit widescreen and now blend correctly.

I decided not to quit, so I’m continuing my marathon with at least FF7 and FF8. I’ve played both recently, but I like them that much. The PSX remasters are not nearly as thorough as the Pixel remasters, given they still have VGA resolution - same dimensions, though stretched to fit the top and bottom of a modern display, but the sides are blank. The backgrounds are unchanged, but the 3D graphics are remastered - The train graveyard, for example, has some 3D model trains that look very out of place because of the sharpness of their graphics against the VGA resolution backgrounds. Still, it’s better than playing the original versions which have dismembered characters - and Squall in FF8 looks like a pixelated zombie (but, according to Rinoa, he’s the best looking guy at the ball).