Having finished the first three games on the NES I'm now playing FF4, Gilbert has just joined and so far this game just bores me to tears for some reason. Is it too early to jump to conclusions? Should I keep on playing?
if you dont like it by that point you probably wont.
>>12076317Well that sucks. Then I guess I'll play for another hour or two and if it doesn't grab me I'll just drop the game
>>12076315I never liked it either, I think it was massively ambitious for the time with all the classes and such. But ff5 and 6 just murder it on quality
The story is bad. It goes back and forth using the exact same twists multiple times
Just cured Rose, still not feeling it, will play a bit more tomorrow.>>12076368I like how all of the jobs are from FF3, I know it isn't supposed to be a callback or anything (too early for that) but I find it to be pretty cute for lack of a better word. Like when it's revealed that Cecil is a Dark Knight and Caim is a Dragoon and he can do the jump attack, etc and you're like>oh yeah I remember that from FF3
>>12076374>Nigga died >No he didn't >Nigga died >No he didn't >Nigga died >No he didn't >Oh shit he did die, but who cares he was lame and useless >Nigga died >No he didn't At least on the GBA version you can use them, in the OG they surviving or not didn't matter. And bitches dare to call it one of the best stories in gaming out there, the fucking nerve.
>>12076406FF4 is one of the earliest games to have so much story so it blew everyone away
>>12076406who cares every jrpg has the exact same story anyway>ragtag group of young heroes travels the globe collecting macguffins to save the world
>>12076315I maintain that if you play the first 3 FFs then FF4 you will be disappointed. 2 Had a tear jerking story with stakes and gave the player freedom to discover them. 3 perfected the combat system and gave you deep customization. 4 killed your customization and in reality the story is not as groundbreaking as people like to claim. Doesnt mean the game is bad but its not very special. I personally think the story in 5 is better and the teambuilding is incredibly deep.
>>12076406Dont forget the multiple betrayals
>>12076451I wouldn't mind a story simple like that, even simpler than ff3's but using the same twist gets tiresome
>>12076496FF2 is not really a tear jerking story in my opinion, I wouldn't even call it melodramatic, it's a story about the struggle and I unironically think the game's difficulty reflects that. In this game wherever you go everything just goes wrong. FF4 on the other hand really tries its hardest with all the melodrama shit, FF2 is an NES game that and it actually made me more emotionally invested than FF4 but ironically most fans claim that FF4 is when the series starts having an epic and emotional story, I disagree with that
Okay I decided to play for a bit longer and shit just got real at Fabul, I'm enjoying the game a bit more now. Still getting used to the ATB system, it's set to 'Wait' but monsters are still attacking while I'm choosing what to do, not sure how this works, what's 'Active' then?
>>12076719watch your own atb timer to know when the enemy atb is ticking. When you are paused they are paused. When you are scrolling through the menus it is still moving but when you pick a command itll stop and wait for you to confirm it.
>>12076719Yeah, I was about to tell you if you don't at least dig the plot after what happens at Fabul, then it's not the game for you.>>12076803I believe it also stops when you're in either a Magic or Item submenu, as well as when an attack goes off until it finishes its animation, though I could be wrong, it's been some time since I played vanilla FF4 and I may be going off of FF5 here.
>>12076803>watch your own atb timerThere's sadly no ATB timer in the original which is somewhat stupid>>12076805>I believe it also stops when you're in either a Magic or Item submenuYes, googled it, apparently it only stops when you are in submenus, it doesn't stop when you are in the regular 'Fight, Magic, Item, etc' menu. 'Active' apparently means that it literally never stops which kinda is just real-time combat in disguise if you ask me
>>12076719"wait" pauses ATB while you are in the Item and Magic sub-menus.Note that animations (and subsequent damage calculations, etc) that have triggered will complete while the menu is open. But any other countdowns will pause.
>>12076374>>12076406Tryhard lit critic pseuds hate FF4.It's a story for 11 year olds, not high art. On that standard it is fine.
>>12076909It's not just for 11yos. There's an interview with the director talking about the public of salary men expecting the game after FF3 and things as such
>>12077026>There's an interviewkek, can always count on /vr/ to slurp up marketing and take it way too seriously
>>12076814>There's sadly no ATB timer in the original which is somewhat stupidMy bad I was thinking of 5
>>12076814>'Active' apparently means that it literally never stops which kinda is just real-time combat in disguise if you ask meIt's not, it's still turn-based, but you get penalized for being a retard who takes too long with his turn.
>>12076315Funny im about to finish 1 and am going to try 3 for the first time. I cant stomach 2's progression system.
>>12078770Original versions? Did you enjoy 1?
>>12078985I have a real soft spot for 1 since its an off brand Advanced dnd game. Its not something i would play every year but I come back to it once in a while. With 2 I just cant stomach the leveling system enough to get through it. Trying 3 once i bang out the rest if 1 tommorow. All OG nes versions
>>12076315nah its boring as hell and the story doesnt respect the player. good ff starts with V and ends with X
>>12076451thats dragon quest
>>12079830The story isn't the good part of FF4. It's the relative (for a jarpig) challenge if you're not playing the original babymode FF4US Easy type and the cool exploration / dungeon crawling elements. It doesn't pick up until like 1/3 of the way through the game though.
>>12079821Oh so this isn't your first time playing 1, nice. I'd say that 3 isn't for everyone, it's more accessible than 2 for an average jarpig player but it still has some really annoying parts. Hope you like it anyway though>>12079835NTA but the devs really did aim to make a story game but it's still challenging compared to 6 and beyond
I don't understand how anyone can endure 1-3 but not 4
GOD FUCKING DAMMIT THAT DUNGEON WITH YANG AT THE BOTTOM IS ONE OF THE WORST IN THE SERIES SO FAR. Goddamn I hate Molbors or whatever the fuck they are called so much it's unreal, straight up the worst enemy I've met in FF1-4. Thank fuck I got through it, had to open up a guide because I didn't know how to wake Yang up
>>12080343This is a good point. I didn't have an issue with 4 at all, but I watched my buddy stream it and his constitution for "old school" JRPGs is much less than mine, and he really couldn't hack it. To be fair, he was playing the original JP version, so there was some added difficulty, but really all it boils down to is learning what each enemy in each formation can do and figuring out how to hit them hardest and in what order. You have a fixed party at all times in the game, so it's not like you can ever really have the "wrong" setup.If you're one of those types who just goes into every battle and spams "attack" and thinks that's gonna be enough, then yeah, you're gonna have a bad time with FF1-4.
>>12080654I'm OP and I'm playing the JP version as well, I've heard that the general consensus is that 3 and 5 are the hardest but this game so far is kinda harder than 3? I don't know, maybe because everyone played the US version of 4
>>12080343>endureFF1 and FF3 are phenomenal classics of the genre that got everything more or less right immediately and are designed around being fun on the gameplay side while the story is more of a sidenote, based around classic tabletop with party customization. FF2 is at least unique in that it was trying something extremely adventurous that still hasn't been done very often though I personally don't care for it or SaGa. FF4 is just kind of boring and retreading what the series already did but with far less customization to focus on a story that isn't worth said focus. The gameplay stopped being the main attraction and 4's version of ATB is kinda ass anyways.
>>12080663>but this game so far is kinda harder than 33 and 4 only get hard at the end and the end of 3 is much tougher. You have to beat what 9 bosses without saving in 3? 4 is the start of when they start giving you save points everywhere.
Done, marathoned the fuck out of this game. It's good, I liked it as much as 1 and 2 overall but 3 is my favorite so far. Also apparently I was playing a shitty translation, I just grabbed a translated SFC ROM from Vimm's without giving it much thought but whatever>>12080879Dude the final dungeon and Zeromus are brutal even with the two save points, I'd say it's as tense as Jade Passage and Crystal Tower. Strangely enough Chaos Shrine from 1 was a cakewalk compared to those. Let me guess, 5 also has a gargantuan final dungeon with boss-tier random encounters. What I've noticed is that in 4 I could run away from literally all of them during the final stretch, probably because my levels were pretty high
>>120820475's last dungeon isn't that bad but it does have 2 superbosses in the last dungeon that you can run into by mistake.
>>12082126>The original game included the first two proper superbosses to appear in the series, Omega and Shinryu.Cool, DQV was also the first DQ game to have a superboss. Interesting how both franchises introduced superbosses simultaneouslySo FFV is supposed to be the hardest one, right? I'll most likely play it in the future, it's the last FF game directed by Sakaguchi and I've heard that starting from 6 they get really easy and are more like story games
>>12082171It's mostly easier than FF4 (the Japanese original, not the US version based off the Japanese easy type version) but it has super bosses and the the best version of the job system up until that point in time.FF6 doesn't have a superboss in the original version of the game either, only the GBA port does with a large postgame dungeon with a lot of bosses. They planned to add one originally but it was just kept in the game files as the unfinished/unused Kaiser Dragon. FF6 can be hard at times with a lot of cheap party wipe deaths if you don't spend time leveling up and learning spells/buying equipment to prevent certain status effects.And the games after that, well it depends. FF7 is mostly easy while 8 can be somewhat hard if you don't abuse the junction system or if you overlevel because enemies scale with you in level. 9 and 10 are pretty well balanced difficulty-wise but a lot of people shit on FFX-2 for the cringe elements, not as good music etc. even though it has a great take on the job system and the best ATB system where you get rewarded for quickly inputting commands as the characters attacking quickly after each other adds bonus damage and there are a lot of ways to use the various jobs and their abilities to make use of this
>>12082126I think 5's finale is pretty perfectly crafted, overall. The enemies are a nice ramp-up in difficulty, and the save points are spaced just far enough apart to make you sweat on occassion. And the superbosses are some wonderfully satisfying challenges, even if one of them is a total douchebag jumpscare that WILL cause you to lose progress unless you know about it beforehand. That said, you lose like 10-15 minutes? if that? It's really not so egregious.>>12082171>So FFV is supposed to be the hardest one, right?I think FFV has the most dynamic difficulty. Random encounters are generally easy because the game is encouraging you to expiriment with jobs. Bosses almost always have some kind of twist or gimmick that might require you to try again with different jobs/strategies, but there are almost always save points close by, and multiple strategies can work. Often, bosses can be completely cheesed with certain status effects, so it pays to expiriment. If you do the thing most people do before the final dungeons where you switch all your heroes back to freelancer or mime to accrue all the passive abilities and stat bonuses from the jobs they've mastered, you can really steamroll things, but the superbosses will still present a challenge.Basically, FFV is "hard" if you refuse to think. People will claim that you can screw yourself over by leveling the "wrong" jobs, but that's baloney. As long as you build a party with reliable healing, you'll be fine. And the late game has tons of opportunities to level jobs quickly if you really need to.
>>12082047>Dude the final dungeon and Zeromus are brutal even with the two save points,Yeah, the final slog from the last save point to Zeromus can be brutal.Did you beat Zeromus on your first try? I've heard for years about how he filtered people, but I had no trouble at all, as long as Rosa was casting Curaja every turn. I don't even think I was overleveled—everyone was in the upper 50s. As I understand, he counters single spell attacks, but hitting him with a spell at a certain interval can also weaken his Big Bang attack, so maybe I just lucked out.
>>12082198>FF6 doesn't have a superboss in the original version of the game eitherIt technically does in the MagiMaster in the Fanatics' Tower, but only if you try and fight the battle in the boss's own terms and you don't come prepared with certain spells and equipment, as you said, and he can be cheesed a number of ways. He would be outright diabolical if he wasn't vulnerable to Berzerk, punished using non-elemental spells like Flare on him, and Life 3 didn't exist or he made sure to Dispel it on the party before casting Ultima.
>>12082270And btw, I know the pain of fighting him without a properly prepared party. Not long ago, I did a Fanatics' Tower run with a woefully underleveled party, no Life 3, and lackluster equipment, and it was really hard, only made a bit easier by the fact I already had Flare on hand so I could ignore his WallChange crap. I couldn't imagine actually sitting there trying to nail elemental weaknesses the entire fight just to get wiped.
>>12082198>>12082203Interesting posts, thanks guys. Getting into a classic /vr/ franchise for the first time always feels good>>12082228>Did you beat Zeromus on your first try?Yes, once I reached the last save point I tried experimenting with running away and it just worked 100% of the time for some reason? I just ran away from everything because I felt like my levels were high enough (mid 60s) but fighting everything before that was tough. So if you know about that the main challenge comes from the optional bosses that you need to kill to gather all the treasures. The bosses in Crystal Tower aren't as tough in my opinion and the random encounters are a joke. Thinking about it now it really isn't THAT hard and tense if you aren't underleveled, the final boss is just bullshit if you don't know what you're doing but some anon here just told me to spam Cure4 as both sages and make ninjas throw shurikens at it, I beat it first try. As for Zeromus I admit that I read that you shouldn't use Rydia because he does some bullshit counterattack some maybe that's why I managed to beat that boss first try. The first phase is actually the hardest because after he starts doing Flare and Meteo instead of Big Bang they barely do any damage and you can just stay alive as long as you heal>I've heard for years about how he filtered people, but I had no trouble at all, as long as Rosa was casting Curaja every turn.Yeah my Rosa was like level 67 so her heals were pretty good. I also realised that shurikens weren't the only thing you could throw as Edge so I threw some powerful weapons like Excalibur at him lmao, it did a truckload of damage
Also I think that Bahamut is actually harder than the final boss if you don't know what you're doing, I lost to him a couple times then decided to just cast deflect on my party members so that he would hit himself with mega flare and it worked. Like you don't expect it to work because it feels too easy but it does work
>>12082279My advice for FF6 for when you get to it: the game is essentially divided into two halved. The first half is very similar to FF4 in that you're basically railroaded through the story with not much choice in where to go or (save for a couple of points) what party members to bring along. It's quite easy as long as you fight most of the encounters along the way, and even then you can get away with running from most of them and still be OK. Its customization is higher than FF4 but not as high as FF5, though later in the game you get a lot more equipment options.The second half is what many consider to be the most interesting part of the game. After a certain point, the game more or less becomes entirely open, with full freedom to explore and go where you please. It's even possible to tackle the final dungeon right away if you really want, though it's inadvisable. To make the most of this, DO NOT look up guides on where to go or what to do. Instead, talk to EVERYONE you come across and note down what they tell you. Many of the NPCs will give you hints about sidequests and where to initiate them. The rewards for doing them are usually very good.Trust me. The blinder you go into the game, the better time you'll have. Many people say it's too easy, and it is IF you know what you're doing. It has a lot of exploitable mechanics and ways to cheese certain enemies and bosses, and IMO it's best to either not use them or at least figure them out yourself.
>>12082297>Like you don't expect it to workThere is a book in the summon town that says to do that to beat him. The game literally tells you to cast reflect on your party to win.
>>12082203>That said, you lose like 10-15 minutes? if that? It's really not so egregious.I find as time goes on, gamers are more and more offended by the notion of EVER seeing a game over screen. Even if they don't lose ANY progress, it stops their dopamine train dead in its tracks.>>12082308Yeah, I was watching my friend do his first playthrough and when he read that book, I specifically told him to remember that, but then by the time he got to Bahamut, I had to remind him again. I think it's a symptom of JRPG evolution—at some point the useful-to-useless info ratio got really fucked, so players started forgetting everything and expecting the game to remind them.But if you're playing a JRPG from the early 90s or before, it definitely pays to remember what you read. I tend to keep a little notepad on hand for things because my memory is not what it used to be, lol.
>>120823056 sounds really interesting, I kinda want to play an easier game now because honestly 1-4 were at times way too tense for me. Even though it does feel satisfying finishing a dungeon full of fucking Molbors. By the way I got a Ribbon as a random drop there, I feel like that shit REALLY helped, gave it to Rosa obviously as soon as I got it. That reminds me, remember that fight with Lamia in FF2 when fake Hilda is trying to seduce you? I got a Ribbon drop there too. I guess I get extremely lucky sometimes>>12082308Now I feel like an idiot, I've been to the library I just couldn't be assed to read the books>>12082330>But if you're playing a JRPG from the early 90s or before, it definitely pays to remember what you read. True
>>12082341Yeah, overall FF6 really is when they started to become easier, though there is one dungeon that I would say is up there in difficulty with some of what you encounter in the earlier games. All I'll say is you better be prepared to start it all over again.
>>12082330>at some point the useful-to-useless info ratio got really fuckedI feel like they added a lot of flavor text to enrich the world so the actual meritful information was kinda washed out. I recently replayed 1 and was surprised that NPCs just straight up told you where to go when I needed a guide at certain points many years ago when I first played it.>>12082341>I just couldn't be assed to read the booksMakes sense when the first few you read are about summons you already control, especially at the point in the game you would be there you see some useless information and just keep going without checking every single tile.
>>12082348>All I'll say is you better be prepared to start it all over again.Or just keep multiple saves. Although really I'm not sure what you're talking about. I can't think of anything in 6 that could softlock you so hard you need to start over.>>12082171>So FFV is supposed to be the hardest one, right? I'll most likely play it in the futureMy biggest piece of advice for 5 is to get familar with the equipment. I think it's the first game in the series where the weapons, armor, and accessories become truly fun additions to party customization. A lot of them have great effects that make them useful far beyond their stats (and the game doesn't always tell you what effects they have), so it's important to keep that in mind—it's somewhat ironic that this is the first game with auto-equip, yet it's also the game where auto-equip can fuck you over the most. Also, shields are fucking GOAT in FFV. I just did a fiesta where none of my jobs could use shields and boy could I feel it, lol.>>120823416 fucking rules, honestly. I think it's easy to nitpick in retrospect, but in 1994, there wasn't really anything else like it. My advice to you—because it's generally an easy game—is to constantly rotate your party. Some of the most fun I had with the game was figuring out which characters worked best together, and finding equipment to compliment their innate abilities, and all that expirimentation will pay off later on. Playing every FF in order really makes it clear that V is the last "classic" game, and 6 does a lot to bridge the gap between the SNES and PS1 era.
>>12082305>Many people say it's too easy, and it is IF you know what you're doing.I think this is what a lot of people overlook. A lot of the most broken shit is stuff you have to figure out yourself or earn. By now, these things are fairly common knowledge, but when you stumble upon them yourself, you sort of earn the "broken-ness".>Its customization is higher than FF4 but not as high as FF5, though later in the game you get a lot more equipment options.This was the real "meat and potatoes" of the gameplay, imo. Figuring out which equipment, relics, and spells work best with each character was really fun. Once I found loadouts that felt good, I got in the habit of just leaving the equipment on them so I could easily mix and match my party on the fly, instead of constantly unequipping and re-equipping all the time. It helps each character feel distinct and fun, and makes you want to regularly use them all.
>>12082404>I can't think of anything in 6 that could softlock you so hard you need to start over.lol I even tried rewording my post so it wouldn't be misconstrued like this, and I still fucked it up. I meant the DUNGEON would have to be started over, not the whole game. I'm speaking of the Fanatics' Tower here. Also, I could maybe see a scenario where if you really, really sucked and went in woefully unprepared, you could get locked inside of Cyan's Dream, but you'd pretty much have to try to do so.
By the way, I don't know if you guys really were paying attention to this when you got ambushed from the back but I don't think rows actually matter in this game when it comes to your party's damage output, your back row characters still receive half the damage but I've noticed that their damage output is the same regardless of their position. It's probably a bug
>>12082486Doesn't it depend on the type of weapon you use?
>>12082486>but I've noticed that their damage output is the same regardless of their positionBack row damage output is definitely halved unless you're using a long-range weapon like a bow, harp, whip, or boomerang. Or Kain's jump command, obviously. I played both the original American "FFII" cart, and a translated romhack of the original JP, and it was the same in both.
>>12082404Yeah, I think one of the traps people fall into with FF6 is that generally speaking, they find their favorite characters relatively early on, as some of them start flat out better than others and don't really fall off (or at least not until very late in the game) and their effectiveness is obvious from the get-go, whereas others either start pretty shitty or their utility is not immediately apparent and, like you said, you have to experiment and find how to make them effective, so a lot of people say "well, why use this guy at all when this other guy already kicks ass?" So they reach the endgame, and most of the characters get neglected once they assemble their team of favorites, which is unfortunate.
>>12082503It's supposed to but I was doing the same amount of damage even with my sword. I even tested this on a clean Japanese ROM and it works exactly the same, weird. Because I remember this being a big part of 2 and 3>hard as fuck dungeon in 2, every encounter counts>two of your fighters die but you still survive>revive them>every character is automatically placed in the back row after revival>forget to switch them back>next encounter>enjoy your party wipe because your fighters can't hit for shitI hated this so much in 2
>>12082506Cecil doing an attack from the back row
>>12082506>>12082523And now the front row, it's really weird
>>12082523>>12082525This is a glitch where a character equipped with a long range weapon will retain long-range status even if their weapon is changed. I'm not sure of the specifics (I think it has to do with which hand the long range weapon was last equipped in) but often it lasts for the rest of the game. If you ever gave Cecil a bow, that would explain it.On a separate note, the middle party slot in FF4 also gets a boost to accuracy, which results in generally higher damage because, even though it doesn't show it, FF4 uses the same "multi-hit" melee calculation that 1-3 do, so more hits equals more damage. It's actually bad to put Rosa in this slot and use her Aim command, because it causes an accuracy overflow that can make her miss everything, lol.
>>12082553That explains it, I gave Cecil a bow to get through the magnet cave
So is this pretty much the first Square game to feature the>final boss in a Square RPGdesign?
>>12082228>Did you beat Zeromus on your first try?NTA but I got mauled by the last boss on my first try. You say you werent overleveled but I got there at 45 and stood no chance. I ended up farming for 3 hours to 55 and beat him then. JP version if that matters.
>>12080793fukken told
Go play the Ultima ROM hack. The original SNES FF2 is in my top 3 favorite games. Millennials, and Zoomers will cry about this post.
>>12082797>You say you werent overleveled but I got there at 45 and stood no chance. I ended up farming for 3 hours to 55 and beat him then. JP version if that matters.My level range was 55-58 for the final boss. So it sounds to me like you were UNDERleveled, and I was, as I said, not overleveled. I never did any grinding, but in general I only ran from about 25% of battles, and I didn't run from any at all in the final dungeon. I played the JP version as well.>>12084669What's good about the Ultima romhack?
>>12076315Who tf is Gilbert?
>>12076315All the traditional fantasy FF games bore me to tears. I only like 6,7,10, and 12.
>>120850658 isn't tranditional fantasy too though
>>12085049a very spoony bard.
>>12085065>he thinks something isn't "fantasy" just because it suddenly has sci-fi or steampunk elementsAnon, I...
