I've just gotta talk about Final Fantasy for a moment

[JustKneller]

I'm a little trepidatious of this one. They have the look of it (or at least the look of RPG Maker), but "Through his coming-of-age journey, Johan confronts the ghosts of his family trauma, his passions and sensuality, and ultimately his own demons." sounds little risqué and off the yellow brick road for Final Fantasy.

I give this the goose emoji, even though I don't know what the goose emoji is supposed to represent.

 

[WarChiefZeke]

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And there it is, the final reveal. When we killed Garland in that temple of chaos, it was a strange ritual, allowing him to basically ascend to godhood with the power of the elements he'll have retroactively stolen. We are the reason the elements are faltering in the first place.

It's a completely stable timeloop. We kill him 2000 years in the future. Then he kills us 2000 years in the past. He must succeed in this battle, or else nothing in the game would have ever happened in the first place. His victory is completely assured.

Or is it? We were the warriors destined to save the day, but dare we hold onto hope, now that this very same destiny has spelled our demise?

The Dissidia fighting game series (massively underappreciated) expanded upon this whole concept quite a bit. They went as far as to give the generic red fighter a background story, pretty cool all things considered.

The Class system has always been the highlight of the Final Fantasy series. 3, Tactics, V, and X-2 are all satisfying games because of it

 

[JustKneller]

The Class system has always been the highlight of the Final Fantasy series. 3, Tactics, V, and X-2 are all satisfying games because of it

I do like the job system, even though my favorite games of the series are FFIX, FFVI, and FFVII, in that order. Technically, everyone has a "job" in those games, too, but you just can't swap them around (FFVI has a little flexibility, though). But, for the games that have it, they use it well.

But, X-2? Everyone knows that FFIX was the final Final Fantasy.

 

[WarChiefZeke]

I do like the job system, even though my favorite games of the series are FFIX, FFVI, and FFVII, in that order. Technically, everyone has a "job" in those games, too, but you just can't swap them around (FFVI has a little flexibility, though). But, for the games that have it, they use it well.

But, X-2? Everyone knows that FFIX was the final Final Fantasy.

I will die on the hill of X-2 being a good game. Most just hadn't tried it. Mechanically, it is in all ways a step up from X and even IX, in my honest opinion. As far as I know, it is the only Final Fantasy with multiple endings. I haven't played the later ones so I can't confirm.

 

[Chronicler]

The job system isn't always perfect, but it does seem to breath a lot of replay value into a game.

Like Final Fantasy 4 is a spectacular game, but it's in essence the same game every time you play it. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a valid way to design a game. But that's just how it is.

Where Final Fantasy 1 and 5 I've replayed so many times with different job combinations. No two times are exactly the same.

Final Fantasy 6 I've actually never played all the way through. Full disclosure, I didn't own a legal copy of the game until last summer. I tried to play it back in highschool but I got hit with some anti-piracy measures and wasn't able to progress past a certain point.

 

[JustKneller]

I will die on the hill of X-2 being a good game. Most just hadn't tried it. Mechanically, it is in all ways a step up from X and even IX, in my honest opinion. As far as I know, it is the only Final Fantasy with multiple endings. I haven't played the later ones so I can't confirm.

I did play it (X as well). I just don't think a waifu girl band/adventuring team really reaches the same bar as some of the earlier games. And, I found the dress system to be a little kitschy. To be fair, I didn't finish it, but it felt super linear. Like, there was no open world, just flying a ship to level after level. Multiple endings is a nice touch, but I found the journey there so uninteresting that I couldn't get to that point.

The only other game past FFIX I've played was FFXII. The system was interesting, and it had potential, but ultimately the voice acting was flat and the story was dull. Also, they kinda lost me with the Viera (i.e. hypersexualized characters, and being furries didn't help). It just felt like a cheap move to bring in the boys.

Where Final Fantasy 1 and 5 I've replayed so many times with different job combinations. No two times are exactly the same.

I think Final Fantasy V might be the most underrated game of the series. Some games might have had a better story, but they had no job system. Other games might have had the job system, but not as good of a story. FFV really pulled its weight in both departments. The fact that I still remember Bartz, Galuf, Lenna, and Faris and it's been years since I've played the game says something.

Final Fantasy 6 I've actually never played all the way through. Full disclosure, I didn't own a legal copy of the game until last summer. I tried to play it back in highschool but I got hit with some anti-piracy measures and wasn't able to progress past a certain point.

Well, that's a bummer. However, if you had an emulator and the rom, I don't see why you couldn't finish. A friend of mine received one of those letters, but he just appealed it, and stopped filesharing from there (but still kept what he had).

 

[Chronicler]

I think Final Fantasy V might be the most underrated game of the series. Some games might have had a better story, but they had no job system. Other games might have had the job system, but not as good of a story. FFV really pulled its weight in both departments. The fact that I still remember Bartz, Galuf, Lenna, and Faris and it's been years since I've played the game says something.

Final Fantasy 5 is in my opinion the best one. I didn't used to think that until I started doing 4 job runs. I don't think you fully realize the depth of the gameplay until you start applying some self imposed limitations.

Well, that's a bummer. However, if you had an emulator and the rom, I don't see why you couldn't finish. A friend of mine received one of those letters, but he just appealed it, and stopped filesharing from there (but still kept what he had).

Specifically the problem I ran into, and it's been a while so I might be butchering the details, but there was a point when you enter an island. You were supposed to go into this building. Might've been an opera house. And then when you were done in there, the boat was supposed to appear, allowing you to leave the island and continue to the next part of the game.

But the boat never appeared for me. No matter what I did I was just stuck on that island forever. It's not a super early point in the game either, so it was kind of daunting to start over again with a fresh rom, especially when I didn't necessarily even know if it would work better this time.

 

[JustKneller]

4 job runs

What is that? Do you just use four jobs the whole game?

This makes me want to take another FFV run, but I have too many games ahead of it in line.

 

[JustKneller]

until I started doing 4 job runs.

Oh wait, didn't you mention something about this a while back? The Four Job Fiesta?

 

[Chronicler]

What is that? Do you just use four jobs the whole game?

This makes me want to take another FFV run, but I have too many games ahead of it in line.

Oh wait, didn't you mention something about this a while back? The Four Job Fiesta?

Yeah! The four job fiesta charity event popularized it.

Off Season Fiesta Runs

www.fourjobfiesta.com

Basically you just take one job from every crystal.

So using this one as an example, you'd play until the wind crystal, and then you'd unlock the thief, and play as an entire group of thieves.

Then you'd play until the water crystal, and unlock the red mage. At that point you're playing as a mix of thieves and red mages.

Then you play until the fire crystal and unlock the ranger. Now your group is any combination of thieves, red mages, and rangers.

Then you play to the earth crystal and unlock the chemist. At this point you have 4 jobs and 4 characters, so you basically have 1 character as each class at all times going forward. You can swap the jobs freely as long as you're always using all 4 jobs.

The game is really well designed to allow you to use any class combination. In fact, you can beat the game with any single class in the game. Kind of. There's a bit of an asterisk to that.

Final Fantasy

sullla.com

This Sulla fellow has soloed the game with every class except the white mage and berserker. He'd use a mod to have the class available from the start of the game, then he'd kill off all his characters except 1 and go through the whole game that way.

The white mage he was just too impatient for, so a guy called T-Hawk did it for him. The berserker is where things get questionable. You can technically beat the game solo with a berserker, but it relies on a series of RNG checks that surpass human patience. Robots can do it just fine, but as far as I know there's no human who's beaten the game with a solo berserker.

DonYagamoth

Simply playing some random games. Maybe at some point in the distant future I will upload something wortwhile... Maybe. If not, that's that. If you are interested in speedruns go to Speedrunslive(.)com and speeddemosarchive(.)com are your best options.

www.youtube.com

Don Yagamoth has also streamed himself doing every class except the berserker. The berserker he did all the way to the final boss but he couldn't beat the final boss.

Since ever class individually has the tools it needs to succeed, any combination of 4 classes tends to be pretty well set, though there are still some very difficult runs. My roughest run to date was White Mage, Time Mage, Bard, Monk, which just didn't have a lot of offensive potential through pretty large swaths of the campaign. Though it really came together in the end game.