Finally continued the Final Fantasy Playthrough... after jumping from IV to VII, IX, VIII, X, X-2 and XII. Now we are back to V. And the playstation version to boot. Thankfully the PAL version fixed so many of the problems that Americans reported on like save glitches and extreme load times... maybe load times still lingered a bit, but apparently a lot less. Finally, a good reason for being European. The SNES version was originally released in 1992 in Japan and didn't come to the west until the Playstation version in 1999. I got it for Christmas some time after we got the Playstation 2 as it was part of the Anthology version together with Final Fantasy IV. Probably the one I tried last since I got VI as well, and as everyone probably heard, VI might be the best classic Final Fantasy games, but this is a really good game, which took me a long time to get.
The story is that one day a meteorite crashes near castle Tycoon where Bartz and his chocobo Boko happens to wander around. He rescue Reine, princess of Tycoon as she is attacked by a couple of goblins as she tries to follow her father, the King of Tycoon as he traveled to the Wind Temple as he feared something was happening to the Wind Crystal. Around the meteorite they find Galuf, an old man that have lost his memory, but feels an urge to travel to the Wind Temple. They travel to a cave where they discover a pirate hideout where they try to take their ship, but they are caught and the captain Faris decides to help them since Reine has the same pendent as Faris. They get to the Wind Temple and reach the crystal chamber, but the crystal have been destroyed being the cause of the wind dying. Lucky for our heroes Faris ship isn't run by wind, but by the water dragon Hydra. And that the shards of the crystals gave them access to the job system, the defining gameplay of this game. And fun that is.
So you get a couple of jobs like Thief, Knight, Black Mage and White Mage etc. In battle you get ABP (Ability Point) that level up your level and when you get a certain point you level up and get either an ability to use in battle or an ability that enhances the character, like higher stats or passive abilities like first strike, caution and so on. So by combining these you can have a thief with magic, a magician that gives more damage with the bare fists and so on. Traps get avoided and secret paths become visible. And in the end, you can use all the passive abilities on the mastered job in the bare job, the one you start in. Which at the end becomes the best job of all, plus your ability to combine the other abilities how ever you want, but the stats bonuses from all the mastered jobs as well. The enemies don't stand a chance.
So you get your quest, protect the rest of the crystals. Which take approximately 5 hour to get to the water crystal and fire crystals, both which explode and where I pretty much stopped four years ago. Maybe Mysterious Cities of Gold came in the way. So after watching SoemcallmeJohnny's review of Final Fantasy VI I got a huge urge to play that, but first was gonna finish V. So continue to find the earth crystal in the lost city of Ronka where it was hidden since it began to crack as it was used to power the flying city. With the help of Cid and his nephew Mid they get an airship running to board the flying city where the possessed body of King Tycoon is destroying the crystal. Turns out he is possessed by X-Death, a warlock from Galufs world. Galuf travelled to this world by meteorite to protect the crystals since 30 years ago Galuf together with the Warriors of Dawn defeated X-Death and sealed him in this world. The Dawn warriors travelled home except Drogan who decided to stay and protect this world and the crystals and turned out to be Bartz father. And Faris was Reine's sister who disappeared by falling into the water and being picked up by pirates who raised her. They fail to stop him and X-Death is released, another meteorite lands and Krille, Galufs granddaughter arrives and save them from X-Death who returns to Galufs world. Galuf and Krille follows. Afterwards Bartz, Faris and Reine charges the meteorites in order to warp to Galufs world where they get kidnapped by X-Death. Galuf uses a dragon to enter X-Death Castle to rescue them and then escape, but a barrier is set up so they fly toward another part of the world. After some adventures with meeting the other Dawn Warriors, who die one by one trying to stop X-Death they are sent to the Elder Forrest by the sage Gill, a 700-year talking turtle. The forrest is burnt down and it's revealed that the forrest was guarding another set of crystals and X-Death wanted to destroy them since by doing so merges the two worlds and allows him to get his hands on the void that was sealed 1 000 years ago after the wizard Enuo was defeated by the 12 sacred weapons... I feel Tales of Symphonia used this for it's story. And apparently X-Death is a tree that was possessed by evil spirits of executed criminals that gained sentience 500 years ago.
X-Death have our heroes on the rope by trapping them with the crystals, but Krille appears once again, but is trapped herself by his magic, which causes Galuf to go berserk, destroying the crystal that trapped him and then fighting of X-Death on his own, but like Tellah in IV he dies in the end after rescuing everyone. X-Death gets away with the remaining crystals, Krille takes Galufs place and gets all his power.
/Update%2026/67-079.gif)
That was a shocking moment when I came to it for the first time. Galuf's been with you since the beginning, but it is a bit telegraphed when the other Dawn Warriors dropped like flies talking about a new generation taking over. So you charges X-Death's Castle once again and fights him at the top. Defeating him you still lose and the worlds are merged and you are back outside of Tycoon. Faris and Reine are put in as leaders of the Castle since the king's dead. Bartz and Krille escapes, and followed by Faris who don't feel that ruling isn't her thing. You find Gill who takes you to the Ancient Library where they learn how to unseal the sacred weapons together with the most potent magics and summons. So a treasure hunt is on. First stop is a pyramid in the desert. As you got the tablet from inside X-Death have taken over the Void and sends it upon the Library, Tycoon... pretty much every major centre of World 1. As you reach the Elder Tree at the edge of the desert Reine appears again, possessed by a demon from the N-Zone where the Void was hidden. Defeat it and Reine joins again, but the dragon that appear and helped them is mortally wounded and travels to the Phoenix tower. You go to Fork Tower unlocking Flare and Holy, destroying the tower and unlocking the Ronka ruins where Cid and Mid hide. They upgrade your ship to a sub so that you can find the tablet at the bottom of the sea and the tunnel to the waterfall. All 12 weapons unsealed, traveling up Phoenix Tower to get the summon Phoenix and then fighting Bahamut to get that summon and then 10 hours grinding for jobs before tackling the N-Zone.
Traveling through the zone there is a barrage of high-end monsters and bosses. First it looks like distorted version of the areas that the void was used by X-Death to swallow until you get to a transporter a space like area with crystals and tree roots binding the worlds. Here you get super bosses like Omega and Shunryu (who hides in a treasure chest, that's a cheap shot). Didn't defeat any of them, mostly since I hardly survived one turn against them and I didn't want to grind the jobs to max out the Bare Job and then try to find a winning combination. You reach the end and X-Death attacks you with the Void, but the spirits of the Dawn warriors and the King of Tycoon appears and stops it allowing Bartz and the Warriors of Light to fight X-Death, and then Neo X-death as the Void took over. Defeated him, all characters arrive (since the end differs if any character is unconscious as the final blow is landed). The world is restored to its merged form, the crystals is resurrected and returned to the places where the tablets where... which makes me wonder if 1 000 years ago that where their originally place until they used them to stop Enuo. And the Playstation version have an extra cinematic cg scene after the credits with highlights from the game.
It was a fun game, music great and the story is decent enough for what it is. The job system is amazing and I don't know how I didn't get this as a kid, or where the misinformation that I had to grind battles between each change? Was it bad translation or something? III was at least a couple of years away for me so it can't be confusion off both games? Still, would I play this version again when I got the GBA-version and the Retron 5 to see it on the big screen? Don't know, colours and music is worse, but saving and extra content and portraits makes it interesting at least (and I got the patches that might solve it). Still, PAL version works fine for me, but since SquareEnix is bringing games like Dragon Quest III and Live A Live back in the HD-2D engine it would be nice to see all the classic Final Fantasy get that treatment, combining all the contents fo the GBA and PSOne in a superior package for consoles, especially since the Pixel Remaster is a bit barebones and not released on consoles as of writing.
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar