Final Fantasy (NES Classic Edition)

Deja Vu

I've just been to this place before

Higher on the street and I know it's my time to go

... I feel like I'm stuck in a time-loop! Again!

So I played through the Ys X: Nordic Demo in wait for the full release of the game on Switch, but I beat that and my copy of the Tintin Reporter game was late so I thought I could fire up the NES Classic Edition and play through the original Final Fantasy. I tried to mod the console to fix the bugs and make it a bit more working and faster, but my Mac didn't want to play with me on that regard so it was what I had in the box.

Somehow I feel that I can understand why people still play this version even though all the bugs and non-working things in it. It's just fun. Especially when I know a couple of things like Peninsula of Power, where to find the magical items and how to properly use some of the classes, like Monk where no weapons and armour is the way to go and what magic to go for. Still fighter, monk, black mage and white mage. 

Now, using the save state function on the console elevates a lot of the stress if you play it as intended. Pause in dungeons, restart directly beside bosses to try if luck is with you the second time (used that for every encounter in the Ice Caverns) and skip the problem with the house bug where they save before replenishing spell charges so in the normal game you have to use another tent or cottage (houses cost 3000 gil so no) to save after healing up. Funny enough I actually changed class at level 19 and beat the game on level 28-29. Don't enjoy having to buy a single item at a time.

I can actually recommend playing as is if you want too. I know some mention the guide in the manual as a necessity, but I actually think the game does decent at explaining what to do and you hardly need maps (I used them to speed up everything, I guess I would have a bit higher level if I wandered around a bit more). And with that I only have the Wii Virtual Console left to play of these versions and that one doesn't have save states so I guess when I play that version that will be the most legit run I will do, and maybe Switch it up with a fighter, monk, red mage and white mage party.

So, recommended over other versions? I like the graphics, but I miss the cut scenes they added in later versions. A bit hard getting what happened after giving the TNT to the dwarf that blew up the canal. This also enforces my thought that 1/2 EXP on the Pixel Remaster would be the better option (would have to try since they changed the stats for Chaos and maybe making a low-level run around 30 levels makes it a bit harder). Would I play this version again? Maybe if I mod the console to get a working version with all the bugs and such just to experience it. It's not unplayable by any means, the player just have to change perspective for a much slower and more methodic combat. Especially when you use people to heal with the heal helmet and heal staff to save on the potions while the damage dealers just wreck havoc on the enemies. 

Chrono Cross (Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition) (Switch)

 

Through the Dimensions

Took me a while since I started it right after playing through the Radical Dreamers. And that post was published in 2023 and I assume I played it some months before that. It's a remake of a PS1 game from 1999 and a sequel to the SNES Chrono Trigger. Story is that the young boy Serge have dream of him, a girl and a puppy wandering through a fortress, he wakes up and has too collects items for his... I assume they hint at girlfriend... and he is transported through a dimensional portal. He ends up in the same world, albeit different. Like the fact that he was supposed to have died 14 years earlier drowning in the ocean. He gets the help of Kid, the girl that appeared in Radical Dreamers and he helps her to find the Frozen Flame in Viper Manor... this is basically the Radical Dreamers again. Lynx is also here as the main antagonist. After a lot of adventures you end up at the Fort Dragonia which is where the game started. And redoing the steps you face Lynx, Kid gets killed (?) and suddenly Lynx steals your body. You play as Lynx from this time on and tries to get into the Sea of Eden where the connections with Chrono Trigger becomes apparent. Shadows of Chrono, Lucca and Marle is there and the Bell in the town square. And the first boss I really has trouble with. To fix it I guess I had to go back to town, get red elemental magic to combine with and choose a team that adhere to that. I didn't so I got beaten up and in the end I quit for a time. 

And a year or so later it hit me, all these remasters Square Enix put out have things that make this game easier right? Speed-up and boost right? So I got to it and what did they do? They made you invincible since the battle system doesn't work like Final Fantasy games where they just gives you constant special attacks. And here is probably best to describe the game mechanics. There is levels, and yet not. Defeating a boss gives you a star level and with it a stat boost that goes to all characters. In between the bosses you can fight say 5-10 enemies and get mini stat boosts, like HP and one of those gives you something better. After that you don't level up until the next boss. Meaning the challenge is constantly scaled. Which forces you to learn the magic system and such. And I'm bad at that. Maybe if the equipment side would compensate, but either I didn't get it, since I ended using the quick smithy thing and decked them out with that and nothing else seemed to come up, except the rainbow equipment, which I never got around to since I couldn't get the hammer the smith asked for.

And that isn't mentioning the most problematic thing about this game. It has 45 characters to play as... Jesus. And people complained that Final Fantasy VI had 16 characters. You see the problem here? If you only get those mini-level ups by fighting monsters? Do you need to use them all? Yeah, if you want to min-max yes but doesn't matter. But how can you keep all these characters separated? Especially hard since they actually have counterparts in the other dimension. So you are gonna confuse them. I prefer parties that have set characters for this reason, I might grow with them and feel for them. The only one that matters is Serge, and Kid, but she is killed half-way through. And in the end I just used Pascal the pirate and the alien guy, who for some reason is very important for the story since you need his UFO to get to Terra Tower where the Time Devourer awaits... and you fly there with a machine from the UFO installed on the sail boat. It's f***ing awesome!

I might not like the battle system and all the characters, but it was a bit of fun. Graphics are nice, music great and the story draws me in. First the question on where Serge ended up and then what happened at Fort Dragonia. Then getting to Chronopolis, a city pushed back 10 000 years from the future and Terra Tower, another city brought back 10 000 year. How the story begins claiming humans to be infestation on the Earth since they are "children of Lavos" compared to the Reptites and the dragons that are part of the Earth. Lynx is actually your father corrupted by FATE, the computer that... I don't remember, the story goes crazy here. Kid is actually the clone of Schala and so on. It's so convoluted I actually like it.

The problem though makes it hard for me to know where to go. Several points I ran back and fourth through all locations in order to figure out where to go, and I didn't use the no encounter button. Gets tedious, especially since you don't gain levels beyond the first points. Don't say no to money and items and such. Doesn't help that you might need the right character, do you have the item? So many variables that it makes it hard to get it for me. Coming back a year or so later made it rather hard to guess what all items I carried did, but at least I got it working to power through the end. Helped that all battles was made easy by being invincible. Still, found the final battle interesting since you have to use the Chrono Cross to get the good ending, and how do you use it? I got that since the chimes and colours that appears after getting it is important and that being seven means I have to use the different magics to create a pattern. But it only works on the end boss and I get that climbing the Terrra Tower tells you the pattern, and that the second to last boss uses that pattern himself. I got that since I looked it up before and could see that it was the pattern. The game is a bit obtuse is all I'm saying. 

Still, I can't say I didn't like it. Maybe playing it in New Game+ works better, but this is a game that if you gotta 100% it you need a guide. Another complaint people have was that this game actually undoes everything you did in Chrono Trigger. That message was that you could change the future, every game over screen have that the future refused to change and in the end you did it, Lavos defeated and everyones happy. Well, not here. Lavos conjures a city back in time which forces the dragon gods to summon a reptilian city from the future and so on. What then do I think about it? Eh, in another dimension Chrono succeeded, this is more like a what if. They even hint that Radical Dreamers is an alternate dimension so why not the original Chrono? Like the third timeline in Zelda it might be one part where they die and so on. Really, the only time that bothers me would be if it goes in a boring direction. I can't say they went there. As said the story goes bonkers and I kinda like it. Can understand why not the whispered about third entry Chrono Break never got made cause where are you gonna go? Didn't think Xenoblade Chronicles 3 would tie in with the others, but they did. And I saw it floating around that they registered Chrono Break again so who knows.

Super Mario RPG (Switch)

 

Clash of the Gaming Titans!

Yet another remake, this time of a Super Nintendo game, the very first Mario RPG, made by Square (now Square Enix). Originally not released in Europe until it was one of the first special Wii Virtual Console releases during a certain Japanese holiday and cost a bit more than the usual releases. I got it there and then they released it for the SNES Mini as well. Never finished either version. Only tried it on the Wii Virtual Console, but I fell asleep somewhere after the bow boss. Should probably finish it some day to see the differences from this game.

Story is that Bowser have kidnapped Princess Peach, but as Mario beats Bowser in his castle a gian sword falls from the sky and throws Mario, Bowser and Peach in different directions. Apparently the sword was sent by Smithy from Weapons land as he intends to take over the world. So Mario begins the rescue of the whole world.

First he meets Mallow a cloud boy that says he is a frog. He had a run in with a pick-pocket so you help him and you go back to his father, the frog sage that tells him that he really is adopted since the sage found him in the river so he took care of him. You also meets up with a living doll called Geno that have been possessed by a star entity to find the seven stars to restore the star road (that was smashed by the sword crashing down) so that wishes can be granted again.

I played to much D&D when this is what I think of as star entities.

You also recruit Bowser and Peach in order to stop this existential threat to the Mushroom kingdom and all others. You fight underwater shark pirates, climb to the clouds and fight off a usurper to the throne that belongs to Mallow, you traverse Star hill, fight some dwarf in a tower that tries to marry Peach and so on until you fight off Smithy in his weapon factory. Beat him and you win, a parade is shown and everyone lives happily again. 

It was a fun adventure. The changes made the game go a lot faster. For one, if you time your attacks right you get an area of effect that damage all enemies and that greatly speed up the game. I think that was what broke me last time, that I had to fight every individual enemy in a fight. You also can gather energy to a super attack with all three players in your party either do some buff or healing effect or do decent damage. Otherwise it's seems to be just graphics and music that is changed. Also they added cutscenes that was a bit more cinematic than the in-game cutscenes from the original. Interesting choice not to have any voice acting. You are able to play some post-game stuff and finish up unfinished quests, like what's behind the locked door in Monstro Town... OH NO!!!

I haven't been fooled like this since Final Fantasy V and the damn treasure chest!

Overall, I found it most enjoyable. Finally finished it for the first time. Really looking forward to the Thousand Year Door remake in 2024. Why I mention this is that the Paper Mario was the sequels to this game Nintendo made themselves and you can feel that the first Paper Mario really took a lot of the story like the seven stars and star road and incorporated it into that game. Due to the first Paper Mario being on the Switch as N64-game I have a hard time seeing that being remade. All I'm saying I got a craving for more Paper Mario. (This was of course played well before the announcement of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door Remake)

Final Fantasy (Final Fantasy Origins) (PSOne)

 

Deja Vu

I've just been to this place before

Higher on the street and I know it's my time to go

... I feel like I'm stuck in a time-loop!

Well, played through all games and gave the PSOne version another shot... good god it's hard going back. After 6 hours I defeated the Dark Elf Astos, and I was right, the limiting factor isn't levels but enough money to get supplies. Maybe should have taken the easy mode, but still, if the Pixel Remaster took me 10 hours this version took me something like 25 hours to finish and that is without counting the retries when I died. Should have finished it as a kid, but since it was a PS2 we played on it doubled as a DVD-player. 

So, recall how I mentioned that I class changed at level 30 and felt that it was very high compared to my original playthrough? Well, I played it at normal mode and guess what? Here the class change came at level 20. At level 30 I was on my way to the final confrontation with Chaos. I assume then that level 80 was a bit of overkill then in the Pixel Remaster. Thinking that a closer feeling would be playing the Pixel Remaster with 1/2x EXP. It was apparently doable for me, but I learned that easy mode actually works like Pixel Remaster with EXP 1x. Which is sad to learn that it means that as a kid I probably could have finished the game if I had played it on Easy instead of Normal, damn you prideful kid me!

It had it's moments though, I rage quitted first time at the March cave as I tried to get the final rooms after getting the magic key. Then I took two days of and did other things, but it was always in my mind so I continued and skipped it until I was a bit higher level. I tried to do Ice Cave before Mt. Gulug, but I got so beat up just going there I did the volcano first, got beat up there as well so then I went and did the Castle of Trails instead which gave me a healing staff, gauntlet and the ice sword. The healing staff and Gauntlet you actually could use as an item with heal1 and thunder2. Never knew that, that saved a ton of resources regarding healing and magic change how I played the game totally (wish for the auto-battle function of the Pixel Remaster since it was a lot of back and fourth to the item menu). Now the volcano was a breeze and I thought the Ice Caves would be the same. Boy was I wrong. Damn Dark Wizards pelted me with fire3, there was mindflayer looking guys who instakilled me by touching me, I think I did the run 3 times before going out with the levistone. 

Final party kill was in the water temple, but after that only Magus got killed from time to time (had to shorten Imaginos so I got Magus instead). Still, a bit unnerving traveling through the Chaos Temple or the Flying Castle knowing that if you die here it's back to the beginning. I think they would have made it less frustrating instead like (I think) Dragon Quest and sending you back to the latest visited Priest or so (I know Golden Sun did this at least) with half your money. Now, money is always the limiting factor here, but if I have 3 levels and have to redo them and being faced with the bad luck of an instakill in the early areas before being able to get the protection ring. At least give me something since the game is so random. Doesn't matter what speed your characters have, it's total randomness who goes first every turn, or that the damage really is between the highest and lowest possible without any actual explanation why it is at different times. Fun rolling in a physical DnD game, not so much in a video game when I can't get off a heal on the black mage in time before the slow moving snail kills him. That's what you have preemptive attacks and ambush attacks for.

No, Pixel Remaster beats this out of the water, but it was fun experience it. Sadly no cinematic cutscene, just stills from the introduction movie over the credits, meaning I actually already seen everything that was special about this release. Still, the rumble from attacks and cutscenes were also rather intense and they didn't see to replicate it on the Pixel Remaster either, and definitely not on the GBA. I don't think I ever will do Final Fantasy II on the PSOne though, seems too boring with the grinding and such.

Final Fantasy VI (Pixel Remaster) (Switch)

 

Highest Acclaimed Game!

The last game in the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster pack, and this one was hard to play through (not only by being the longest game, but since I probably entered Final Fantasy fatigue as well as it was just a year ago since I played it last on the PSOne). 33 hours compared to V:s 25 hours and the others something like 10-15 hours. Still the fastest I finished the game compared to the 60 hours last time, and every level above 80. The boost option works really great and even allowed me to get pretty much every magic except Meltdown to every character. Which might have added to the fatigue by make the micromanagement of the level grind kinda irritating. If you don't know, you don't raise stats by normal level ups unless you equip an esper that grants one, and that is at highest +2. So, best strategy is running through the first part to get to Ramuh and get the first esper and finish the magitek factory and then equip specific esper before every level up. Kid me didn't understand that, but I do now and boy, is it fun to get several characters with magic 100 or strength 100, enemies don't stand a chance.

Did they change things? Yes, several parts in fact. The most talked about is the opera scene, actual singing vocals and instead of 2d they soar around the scene like it was a 2d-hd engine and that is only for that scene. They changed the mine-cart scene so I actually see what it is (unfortunately it doesn't give the same effect of car sickness looking at it and they slowed it down). Celes doesn't get punched in her introductory scene and some changes here and there to the script. Changes to enemy encounters at places, drops and so on. Mostly fixed things that was bugged out in the original (which they fixed in every release afterwards what I know). They also added motor sound to the airships and Deathgaze is no longer invisible on the map, but still a pain to find, but at least I can see him. And they changed the fish to Cid mini-game, I didn't even try and he got better, and I wanted the downer ending with the jump from the cliff!

Still a hard game though. I got beaten up by bosses I have not had trouble with before (or that be due to the change of grinding meaning I had lower levels at times which would help immensely in the end game, just need to get there). And most of them you can't just cue up the same attack patterns and just get a sandwich as the auto-battle plays out, no, here you have to carefully choose your attacks, otherwise the bosses will walk all over you, but I'm glad I can speed up the slow ATB-meter.

Now, the usual final question, which version to play? I don't need to play the PSOne-version ever again. GBA has some extra espers and an extra dungeon (which I haven't played through if I recall, it has the Kaiser Dragon in the Dragon's Den). Someone on youtube mentioned that they believe that all bonus will come as DLC and I almost hope so I can retire my GBA collection since I need more space in the bookcase. But there is problems here, at the 15 hours the game crashed and there is stuttering in the scrolling while walking around towns. I thought the game would crash more, right after finishing the game an update arrived as well. 

And with this I finished the whole Pixel Remaster. I wish the Dragon Quest games would have gotten this treatment as well, but since they are working on a Dragon Quest III remake in the 2d-HD engine I have to wait for that (and they hinted about doing I and II as well). FF III the most interesting game in the collection and all is very nice, just missing the extra content from GBA releases.

Final Fantasy V (Pixel Remaster) (Switch)

 

Go, mighty warrior... The kings of enchanted lands are awaiting your
victory! Ride on the wings of wisdom, ride beyond the middle valleys to
defeat the master of chaos in the name of cosmic justice. Peace and love
forever!

Now we enter the ones that I only played one year ago (as of writing) and I gotta be honest, this is still a fun game to play and due to the different ways to play there is a new way to play every time. And this version speeds up the end game a lot. I spent 5-6 hours at first chance in Bal Castle and just grinded out the Object d'art until I got every job mastered, meaning I could just focus on arming up the characters with double weapons with highest damage output. I still have to be strategic with bosses and environments since most bosses have something that stops them from being hacked to death, be it several enemies that auto-regenerate or something like that. Graphically I also noticed that some backgrounds in battles had moving parts like waterfalls flowing down. First time I noticed this in these game, don't know if it's due to being the first game that they did that or if I didn't look at the backgrounds in the other games.

Of course, I played the EXP and Gil counter on normal and the ABP on 4x and it wasn't a problem and before I grinded it out I actually tried different job combinations (with getting Blue Mage Learn ability first for all characters to make that easier). The game still played fine and had a decent challenge. Noticed though that the end game stops giving you EXP when you enter the final area... of course I grinded out to level 50 in order to get the super bosses this time around and I crushed Omega and Shinryu for the first time. I got two badges for that... a bit anticlimactic, but Shinryu also had Ragnarok hidden in that stupid chest he hid in. Damn cheater. They also had a lot of mentioning of Hell in this version. 

I also think the end credits is also the first that have a background beyond a black screen. I wonder if it's due to the actual one having something compared to the earlier entries. At least make it interesting to watch... and makes me wonder about the end theme since there is a lot more credited people in these rereleases compared to the original. Playing it so close also reminded me about things I missed like the summon near the lake in the second world and actually using beastmaster abilities in order to get some of the blue mage spells. I also started with the intention of getting every bestiary, but I somehow missed the Hydra in the Ronka Ruins so I gave up that. Same place actually gave me a reason to use 0.5x and 0 EXP to get some abilities like lvl 4 Gravity and so on. 

So, same question like the others, which is the preferred version? I finished the PSOne version and have no need to play that version again, this version is fun enough and the ease of play works fine. Discovered a glitch or something since I was in mirage tower and suddenly the game froze on me trying to open the menu so I had to close the software. Don't know the reason and that was the first time I got that. Could be that I played over 15 hours without closing the software, but that's just a guess. GBA? Still have the extra stuff like more jobs and a post-endgame dungeon that allows you to fight the big bad from 1 000 years ago that forced the heroes of that time to split the crystals and create the two worlds in order to seal the void that Exdeath was after. Since being level 50 and out-grinded on jobs made me defeat the super-bosses without problem it might actually be needing something more.

Final Fantasy IV (Pixel Remaster) (Switch)

 

The Warrior Within!

Another ones bite the dust. Fourth game and it seems the fourth time I've finished the game. This is actually the first time I see they enhanced the cutscenes beyond mere upgrading the sprites. First noticed when Rydia burns away the ice and instead of a flame going through the obvious grid it actually melts the whole ice. And then when Leviathan attacks the ship it looks animated. I also discovered some things I didn't get from the original. For example, I've never used the bow and arrows since I found it cumbersome to keep track on the amount of arrows, but turns out that it's the best weapon for Rosa since it allows her to sit in the back and just deal a lot of damage. Helps a lot that they apparently changed it so you only need one arrow and not stock up on them. This and the 3D version used that while all other have the need to stock up on supplies. Another thing that used to bother me was that the monks looked like quarterbacks in American football with helmets and such, wasn't until this playthrough I got that it was marks like Aang in the Last Airbender on their heads. Makes sense now.

Another change is that they got rid of the developer room. It was nothing more than a fourth-wall breaking area where the devs put themselves in and you can interact and fight some of them. I found it rather fun first time finding it since it felt like a secret. But they got rid of it since they had to ask every person involved in the original and some things I get wasn't as PC today to say. Then again, you still have the dancing scenes with the showgirls. 

I played it with 4x EXP and Gil meaning I probably had the same level as when I grinded like hell for the GBA version since I knew some hard parts of the game (the dwarven castle boss fight the worst since it was two boss fights in a row). Of course, was it a walk in the park? No, this game reminds me why I hated the sylph cave with the damn malboros and toads. I find it even more funny that due to equipments and such I gather you are supposed to do that one before the land of summons, but it's just more easy to do that first meaning some equipments are just useless.

So, which version to play? Ease of play this one wins without a problem, although the auto-battle mechanic is a bit of a bother since at times you have to adjust more often than in earlier games and since I can't see what attacks they are auto-ed to compared to the earlier games it can be a bit bothersome. The DS have the 3D graphics and some extra story with Golbez and voice acting (but the 2D versions wins out there since you can hear the awesome music instead of someone talking over it) while the GBA have the changing character mechanic and extra dungeons. PSOne is obviously the loser in any of these beside the cutscenes before and after the game... which I probably should finish one day to just tick it off.

Final Fantasy III (Pixel Remaster) (Switch)

 

Pretty much the jobs I used.

Third game and pretty much the most interesting of all these games since it's actually the first time we got the 2D version in Europe or US. I of course have the DS-version (two of them as well to one day fix the locked behind social connection dungeons and weapons) and I enjoyed that for what it was. Of course this version doesn't have Luneth, Arc, Refia or Ignus and the tied in story beats for these characters so I just reused Niklas, Aang, Tara and Imaginos. And used fighter, monk, white and black mage for the starter. It gave you access to the jobs much faster since you get it in the starting cave while on the DS you had to defeat the Djinn first and uncurse everyone. Monk seemed to be the master stroke since damage output is phenomenal together with Black Belt made Aang MVP yet again.

Having knowledge about what's gonna happen helped a lot.. or it would have if I hadn't forgotten the mini sequence early on. Didn't matter much this time around since they got rid of the adjustment period and I played this version legit. No boost in EXP or Gil (except EXP boost between level 3 and 4 since I tried out if it affected the job level up, didn't look that way so I quit that). In other cases, I kept Aang as a monk to level 99 and then a Black belt to level 99 and then a knight until I got the ninja class, occasional black mage during mini sequences. Tara white mage till 99 and then viking (which was rather good since the high defence allowed me to just attack with her) and then devout and sage when that came up. Used more potions for healing to get around that I didn't have a healer in the party. Imaginos a Black mage till level 99 and then a geomancer and then a Magus and then a sage for the end game. Geomancer worked rather good for the dividing enemies so I could handle that part of the game with just one dark knight. Niklas had to change the most. First fighter, then red mage, thief, scholar and then I stuck with dragoon as soon I got that until I got a dark blade after the Geruda fight so I could switch to dark knight which I held until the ninja class was found. 

I played it a bit slower as well. Instead of rushing to place to place I took a tour around the islands on boat and under water as well which probably helped with levels. I ended up with level 53 after almost 15 hours of play. And I finished the game that way. I assume they nerfed the end encounter a bit since I recall I had to grind to level 70-80 to get over 5000 hp to stand a chance against the particle beam, but it was nerve wracking fighting 6 boss battles in a row. I don't know if the crystals healed you in the DS, but thank god for that this time, plus I probably would have been ok with the auto-save feature sending me back so I could grind around a crystal if need be.

So... DS or Switch? Not gonna lie, the simpler version and auto-battle features are pretty nice... but there is the extra things in the DS version, a secret dungeon, extra sidequest and the ultimate black smith that rewards you for grinding jobs to 99. That is enticing (if it wasn't locked behind the damn mognet feature). And the small story bits with the named characters are better, since in the Pixel Remaster, there is pretty much only one character, Niklas who was character number 1 and got every connection with the other characters. In the DS version Luneth got Aria, Arc got prince Aura, Ignus got Sarah and Refia at least had her adoptive blacksmith father. It wasn't much, but it was something. At least there isn't any GBA or PSOne version.

Final Fantasy II (Pixel Remaster) (Switch)

 

So fortune shine your light on me and my dog
'Cause we need some security
While other folks are living high on the hog
I'm the black sheep of the family

Continued with the second game, the black sheep of the original games. Still find the story rather interesting, the gameplay... felt worse somehow. I just boosted everything, HP goes up after an amount of battles, easier to grind abilities and stats, they don't do negative growths, but... was the encounter rate always this high? Same problem with money in that everything was so expensive, but the ability to stop encounters make it palpable. They also seem to have added extra musical tracks since it doesn't correspond to the Famicom track list, but that might have been since any rerelease. I would also say, one thing to have made the whole forcing you to grind every single person more easy would have been to do it like in Grandia, you get an orb with the experience to give to a new character (to speed them up as actual replacements) or give it to one of the remaining players to specialise them in magic or weapons. 

Still, no extra content with the dead characters which is a pity since this version I might have geared them out just fine and been able to grind their stats a bit. For example, in every pixel remaster you can just press Y in combat and the game goes into auto-battle doing the same actions the character did last time meaning it's perfect for this game where you had to use every spell or attack to get good at it. Getting Esuna up? Just spam it for a character and it will go up in no time. I noticed though that the weapon levels seemed a bit... strange, they hardly went up except after some bosses if I used it, did they limit it or something? Or was it always like that, but adding a fast grinding ability didn't make it work? Also, seems to a something like 10 levels for spells (I got cure up to 15 and the enemy highest seemed to be 16). 

PSOne, GBA or Switch? PSOne has the cutscenes and that's it. Probably finish it sometime to get it over with. But GBA has that extra mode with Scott, Minwu, Joseph and Richard. And they are likeable characters so I feel inclined that one day I should probably play through the version legit and make sure I don't shaft them on the gear side like I done every other playthrough (penny pinching is real if everything cost this much, that's why Minwu didn't get any mithril gear... on the other hand the switch version seemed to give me the former party members gear so maybe I've just been an idiot all these years).

Update 2024-11-05: Well, I tried playing the Origins version and guess what? If you try to use warp points, the game freezes on me if playing on the PS3. Apparently it also can freeze if you try revive party members in the church and crossing a bridge after getting the sun flame trying to play the cutscene off Hilda getting overtaken by the Dreadnought. So my game is unplayable as of the moment. That sucks! At least it confirms it's last place status.

Final Fantasy I (Pixel Remaster) (Switch)

 

Where it all started!

Finally got the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster for the Switch. Ordered it from Playasia back in April before the release and it came 20 June of 2023. Perfect timing for my vacation that started 2 days later. So this is the latest release of the original Final Fantasy-games and that means I can play I-X, XII and XV all on my Switch. Played the first game recently back in 2018 when I just had moved in my apartment and that was the GBA-version. 

Took me something over 10 hours to play through, of course I used some Quality of life improvements, I gave myself 4x Gil and after getting the class upgrade I even gave myself 4x EXP. This at least showed me how the game is balanced. I didn't grind or anything until the class change and it happened around level 33 like my old playthrough, but I found out that the limiting factor in the game wasn't my levels, but my lack of resources to get weapons, items and magic. Probably should avoid getting some spells in future playthroughs since I don't use any of the status effect spells, save the gil for armour instead. I also changed my team so that is was Niklas the fighter, Aang the monk, Tara the white mage and Imaginos the black mage. Aang probably the MVP of the group with that damage output. He is a bit squishy though and bit the dust once, but in the end I find the monk class probably the one to keep.

So, is it the definitive version? Graphically and musically yes, especially when you can toggle the old and new music (some songs are just a bit better if they are scaled back, but choruses are always appreciated). Probably beating out the PSOne version since the only thing that version has is the cutscenes... so I might actually playthrough that version after finish of this collection. But the GBA? It has more stuff, although ease of play is rather important, but since it's a GBA I can save anywhere and it's portable if I want that plus with the Retron-5 I can play it on the TV. On the other hand, I got a bestiary and music player with the music, a gallery with concepts art as well as constant running and taking away encounter making the game play so much faster or just quickly check if I forgot something which the map helps with since you can see how many items and treasure chest there is in any town or dungeon. I assume I will get this problem for every game. Well, maybe not the original version I have for Wii Virtual Console or the NES Mini... but then again, listening to the Final Fantasy Retrospective makes you appreciate the original graphics and the way they used the limits of the original console for example to create white mountains and with the scan lines of the old TV:s make them out of crystals instead of the boring grey mountains we have now... I hope I don't get so into these games that I play those as well.

Radical Dreamers (Switch)

 

Hard to see how it is a Chrono Trigger-game at first glance.

Finally got Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, the remake... remaster... port(?) of the sequel of Chrono Trigger which I played before... a couple of times. Not only does it have the game Chrono Cross, but also the Satellaview-game Radical Dreamers. I almost bought a reproduction cart of that game, but decided to push it back since my assigned budget for video game expenses couldn't cover it at the time and this game was announced in the meantime. Which probably was lucky since my Retron-5 is a hit or miss with reproduction carts, especially games that officially wasn't released. And one of my sisters stills hogs the family Super Nintendo.

So what is Radical Dreamers? It's a visual novel game with random encounters where your action can get you killed in several ways, like being killed by monsters or traps out in the mansion where Serge, Kid and Margil (the thieving group Radical Dreamers) are looking for the jewel the Frozen Flame and the lord of the manor, Lord Lynx that Kid wants to kill. The first notion I got it was a Chrono Trigger-game (besides being bundled with Chrono Cross) was that they mentioned an army from Porre which was the southern continent of Trigger, and then it is revealed that the caretaker of Kid that was killed by Lynx was Lucca and that she gave the Time Egg (aka The Chrono Trigger) to Kid for safe-keeping. I also assume Magil is Magus since they look a lot like each other for the few instances of art that appears on the characters. The wikipedia article about the game also mention that Kid might be Schala as well, and that the Frozen Flame is part of Lavos and found in ruins from Zeal... I didn't get that dialog in the game, but since there appears to be 7 endings that might be understandable.

Was it a good game? Music is nice, you can't really talk about graphics but the art they show is wonderful and the story is rather good. Didn't die, but it appears to keep track on my health after battles and traps so it wouldn't surprise me. A bit short since it only took me 2-3 hours to get through without a guide (might have been faster if I would have mapped out the place). Now it's on to the real game in the package.

Final Fantasy VI (PSOne)

 

Fantasy changed to steam punk.

So finally got around to the last part of the classic Final Fantasy-games. They even released the pixel remaster during the meantime. So that means another round if they get released on Switch. By some seen as the best Final Fantasy and is at least top 3 or so for most people. When I got the classic Final Fantasy games for Christmas in the early 2000's this was the first game I tried since it was seen as the best one by the gaming magazines I read. It begins with Terra Branford, a brainwashed magic user in a world where magic disappeared 1 000 years ago during the war of the magi. She is sent to Narshe, a mining village where reports is about an Esper, a magical creature that the Gesthalian empire is looking for. Terra together with her guards Biggs and Wedge fights their way through the coal mines and soldiers until they reach the Esper that obliterates Biggs and Wedge and releases Terra from the slave crown that was used to control her. Terra awakens in a house belonging to Avis, a supporter of the Returners, a rebel group that fights the empire. The Narshen guards are her so she tries to escape through the mines, but after falling through the floor she passes out again.

Meanwhile Avis have called in Locke Cole, an adventurer that work as a contact with the Returners. He finds Terra and together with some moogles fight of the Narsheans and heads for Figaro Castle where they team up with its king, Edgar Figaro. He helps them escape from one of the generals of the empires, Kefka, an insane magitek knight clown who tries to burn down the castle to find Terra. During an escape past the mountains they meet Sabin, Edgar's brother who left the kingdom and trained as a monk to fight the empire to avenge the death of their father by the hand of the empire. They meet Baron, the leader of the Returners that ask for Terra's help to communicate with the Esper so that it will help them stop the empire that is on the verge on reenacting the war of the magi that nearly destroyed the world. But the Empire strikes by attacking South Figaro, a town they passed through and closing in on the Returners hideout in the mountain. Locke leaves to stop the Empire behinds enemy lines in South Figaro. The other travels with Baron on a raft through a river to get back to Narshe, but during a fight with an octopus Sabin is thrown away. Edgar, Baron and Terra heads back to Narshe and to Avis house. Locke discovers another of the Empires generals, Celes Chere, the second magitek knight that have been imprisoned as a traitor due to objecting to the war. Locke rescues her and both gets on to Narshe. Sabin meanwhile wash up near the Castle of Doma that is under attack by the Empire. Together with Shadow, a mercenary assassin they infiltrate the camp and witness Kefka sending away the other commanding general, Leo and goes on to poison the river and killing off all in the kingdom. One of the survivors are Cyan Garamonde, a knight of the kingdom of Doma, but both his king and wife and son perish. In rage he fights his way through the camp and is helped by Shadow and Sabin as they escape through a forest where they hitch a ride on the phantom train that transports the recently deceased to the other side. After getting away Cyan sees his family as they board and travels to the realm of the dead... it's damn heartbreaking.

ELEINE! OWEIN!

Shadow leaves them as Sabin and Cyan jumps into another river to get to the Veldt where they meet the beast boy Gau that was raised by monsters. He gives them a diving helmet that they uses to travel through the ocean current and then hitch a ride on a ferry back to Narshe. Everyone gathered the Empire under Kefka attacks again so you have to fight off the invading forces until Kefka flees again. Meeting with the Esper Terra has a reaction, turns into an Esper herself and flies away. The others regroup, take Figaro Castle to the Western continent and follows Terra's trail to Zozo, the city of thieves. She lies in a coma, guarded by Ramuh, another Esper. He asks them to rescue Espers from the imperial magitek factory in Vector, the captial of the Empire and afterwards give them three magicites, the remains of Espers that can tech people magic, and then he passes away and turns to magicite himself. The Returners decide to travel to the opera after news that the worlds only airship captain is about to abduct the opera star Maria, that looks like Celes. After some hijinx they get aboard the Blackjack, Setzer Gabbiani's airship. After some trickery he agrees to take them to Vector. They infiltrate the factory and can only get the magicites from the Esper, one being Maduin, Terra's father. During the escape Kefka confronts them again and insinuates that Celes is a spy so she uses her power to get rid of Kefka for a while so that the Returners can take a cart ride from Cid, the engineer behind the magitek. They return and awaken Terra and infiltrates an imperial camp that hides the portal to the Esper world. Kefka finds them yet again, but is stopped by the Espers that comes through the portal and wrecks the capital. Emperor Gesthal declares a cease-fire since the Espers threatens the whole world. Terra and Locke heads for Thamasa with Shadow, Celes and Leo. They meet Strago Magus, a blue mage and descendent from the magi knights that fought int the war of the magi. Together with his granddaughter Relm Arrowny they climb the holy mountain and learns about the statues of the gods that caused the war of the magi by creating the Espers and turning themselves to stone to stop the war. They meet the Espers and take them to general Leo to negotiate the end of the war, but Kefka shows up since the Emperor have betrayed them all. Kefka turns the Espers to magicite, which unleashes even more Espers from the portal that Kefka captures. He kills general Leo and together with the Emperor enters the portal in search of the statues of the gods.

Everyone talks about Aerith, but this came as a shock first time playing.

The emperor and Kefka flies to the sky with the island so the Returners land on the floating continent and fights their way to the statues. But they are too late as Kefka kills the emperor and move the statues out of alignment causing untold havoc on the earth. The Returners jumps on to the Blackjack, but as it tries to avoid the destruction it breaks in two and the cataclysm is a fact. All goes black and one year later Celes wakes up from her coma on an island together with Cid. Here starts a little mini-game where you need to feed fish to Cid as he gets sick and depending on which fish you give him he will either live or die. Usually he dies, but this time I actually got him to live, he gives Celes a raft he have built in the meantime so that she can sail to land in order to find her friends and stop Kefka. Cid dying is actually emotionally better since she then tries to commit suicide by jumping from a cliff, but wash up on the shore again, but a bird fly by with Locke's scarf, giving her hope that the others are alive and then she finds the raft.

Back at the main land she finds Sabin saving a kid from a house that have been struck by the Light of Judgment that Kefka controls from his tower on the ruins of Vector. They travel to a town with kids where Terra resides, protecting the orphaned children. Unable to fight she sends them away. They meet Edgar in another town in disguise as he gets escaped convicts from Figaro Castle to lead him to the castle that have been stuck under the desert. They meet Setzer that tells them about this other airship in a tomb to his old friend Daryl, they get it and the hunt for the others are on. A pigeon leads them to Zozo and Cyan as he impersonates a dead soldier so that his girlfriend wont lose hope. They find Gau training in the Veldt, in a cave there they find Shadow who after being nursed back heads for the colosseum where they have to fight him to join them. Relm is trying to exorcist a painting and Strago joined the Cult of Kefka when he thought Relm was dead. Terra finds her fighting spirit as she protects the children from a demon released by the cataclysm. Locke is found getting the magicite Phoenix in order to give life back to his old girlfriend Rachel that was killed by the Empire, but it's too old, but she absolves his guilt during the small moment she is brought back to life. Mog just hangs around Narshe and then you can also recruit Gogo, the mimic from Final Fantasy V and Umaro, the yeti of Narshe. Getting more magicites, train some spells and levels and then you climb the tower and fight Kefka. The tower collapses and magic disappears. Shadow stays behind in the tower, laying his guilt over leaving his old friend to die behind while Terra leads the others out and looses her Esper form. Credits roll and lives return to the shattered world.

The end!

First time finishing it on the Playstation. Took me 60 hours, levels ranging between 36-46, compared to my GBA-save where I got to level 60. So how did I achieve this? Well, I could probably have cut something like 30-40 hours by not grinding at all. I learned that you don't get stat increases besides HP and MP from levels unless you have specific Espers equipped. Meaning best time to grind is at earliest after the magitek factory, but probably recommended in the world of ruin. How do you get around this? Fights in the Veldt doesn't give any EXP, but money and magic points to level up spells, so I grinded some 10 hours to get every character most of the spells before the floating continent. Maybe wished I grinded at the Cultist Towers instead, 5-10 magic points goes a lot faster. Overall a great experience. Graphics are nice, music is fantastic and the story is really good. Well, up until you got the characters back in the world of ruin. Very little character story is shown since it's pretty much open world and your choice on people you want to gather, although a minimum of 12 is recommended to get 3 full parties so tackle Kefka's Tower. I have it for GBA, Wii Virtual Console and the SNES Mini so I got other version to try if I get the itch to play again.

Final Fantasy V (PSOne)

 

Original cover

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.

The art for the Anthology version, which I didn't get until long after, especially since it spoils part of the story.

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. 

Maybe they got the idea of Mithos from this guy as well.

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.

Oh, you f***ed up X-Death!

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. 

Behold the King of Dragons!

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. 

Final Fantasy X-2 (Switch)

 

Girl Power!

Finally finished it, after failing to win in the original release at the end boss. And then never even try it on the remaster release for the PS3, but I got it on Switch and finish it. Don't know why I prefer to finish them on Nintendo console, but I again attribute it to the Pro-controller, just feels right in the hand. This game is also interesting in that it was the first direct sequel to a main Final Fantasy, and afterwards they pumped out sequels to VII, IV and later on XII and XIII. 

The story is that 2 years after Yuna defeated Sin and entered Spira into the Eternal Calm trouble is brewing again. Spira stand divided in different factions, New Yevon who arose from Yevon that try to preserve some order, often being associated with old people and the Youth League rising from the Crusaders with much radical younger supporters and a quest to bring the truth to Spira. There's also a third faction, the Machine Faction rising from the Al-Bhed, but they are not that important since they basically just digs for machines in Bikanel Desert. To unlock the past Sphere Hunters have appeared to gather spheres that show Spira's past. Yuna joins the Gullwings, that are lead by Rikku's brother.... Brother, after Khimari as the new elder of the Ronso found a sphere of what looks like Tidus. Yuna, Rikku and newcomer Paine (that looks a bit like a younger Lulu) sets of searching for sphere's.

This evolves into stumbling upon a secret weapon of mass destruction that lies dormant under Bevelle that New Yevon tried holding away from the people which gets hijacked by a ghost that possesses the leaders of the factions. The ghost being a look-alike for Tidus, and speculated to be the person the fayth based Tidus on, is an unsent that 1 000 years ago during the war between Zanarkand and Bevelle tried to get the weapon from Bevelle to save his girlfriend Lenne that was a singer and a summoner. But as she tried to stop him from destroying all of Spira (which apparently was the problem with the weapon, it was assured destruction for everyone which explains why they couldn't use it against Sin, nice save there writer) both were killed and he spent 1 000 years roaming a cave until the ones becoming leaders for the factions was on a mission for the Crimson squad during operation Mi'hen and the leader of Youth League was possessed.

That's the dramatic story that glues it all together, otherwise it's Yuna and friends going from place to place doing side quest and mini-games showing you what happened to all the people and tying together some loose ends like the animosity between the Guado and Ronso, Lulu and Wakka hooking up and expecting their first baby etc. You go on a "murder-mystery" to find out who smashed up the hoover craft on Mi'hen high road, playing a sphere break tournament. There's a lot, divided by 5 chapter (and chapter 4 is just a railroad for Yunapalooza, a concert to unite the world as Yuna as the headlining act) and a tips for new-comers, don't go after the hot-spots the first thing you do, do them last. That was the problem I had as a kid playing it for the first time, meaning I missed out on a lot of Dresspheres, garment grids and levels. Maybe play the Besaid one first since then you get the White mage dressphere.

Dresspheres is this games job-system, which means this was the third time it was used and the last time was Final Fantasy V. And you also got levels back instead of the Sphere Grid from X so this is basically more closer to old-school Final Fantasy. You use garments grids where you equip the dresspheres and equip them to the players so that in battle you can change job and also by passing through gates get some bonuses, which I pretty much never used, but at least it doesn't penalise you for changing jobs like the old games. Put up a team of Lady Luck, Alchemist and Dark Knight are pretty much enough to power you through to the endgame. Yuna at lvl 72 and Paine lvl 65 and Rikku lvl 63. The game encourage the player to play the games over and over since to get 100 % and the good ending you need to make a different choice, either give a sphere you stole in Kilika to either New Yevon or Youth League. It affects the factions look on you and gives different cut-scenes that add to the percentage score. Finishing unlocks New Game+ where you keep the garment grids, dresspheres and the unlocks for the spheres so that the games get easier or makes you try different jobs, since why still use the Gunner, Thief and Swordsman jobs when they are 100 % and items allow you to use the skills without equipping it? (Some garment grids do the same).

Overall, it's a fun game... if you can get past the more goofy, girlier and fan-service part of the game. I mean, I think I didn't replay it as much as a kid since you wouldn't want to be caught by your parents as Yuna, straddled over rival Leblanc giving her a back message as Leblanc moans really loud, and most females have very exposed clothing... or that within 10 minutes Yuna falls from a ledge and the camera just zooms in on her ass, glad she is officially 19, but it gets weirder the older I get. 

How does that stay in place?

Glad I'm living alone without any insight from the neighbours... maybe I'm gonna pull down the curtains just in case anyway. So I got both main game on the remaster and there's only one thing left and that is Final Fantasy X-2: Last Mission. Started it and it's a dungeon (or more correctly Tower) crawler where you and the monsters take turns in order to get to the top. I'm not gonna play that. I read a synopsis and it feels just sad since the main trio of X-2 seems to have a falling out and go their separate ways. I gather that the original was tied to the percentage score of X-2, but they remastered it without the 100 % dialog so that is probably why it's seems so dismal. But the main reason is I can't bother to learn the gameplay, it just doesn't connect so I don't wanna get into it.

Some negatives is that the music isn't that good, it's not bad and I like the rock style and the chocobo theme is a real ear-worm, but I miss things like the Hymn of the Fayth and the assualt song. Songs that elevate the scenes in the epic proportion... or that might be the reason there isn't one. Most of the main voices are the same, but it's clear they changed Rin for example and that puts me off a bit, but hey, George Newbern is one of the main guys.... you know, Superman from the Justice League series.

Final Fantasy X HD Remastered (Switch)

April 16 2019? Maybe was time that I actually played this (2021-03-20 as of writing)

So I got Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Collection again, but this time for switch, so I had to play it. And I still like it. I like the story, the graphics are cozy nostalgic for me and the music is heavenly. I noticed I never wrote about the story last time which is a bit uncharacteristic for me since I usually focus on that. Glad I can fix that right now? Basically it's about the blitzball (some kind of water polo sport) player Tidus from Zanarkand that during the cup honoring his fathers Jechts disappearance ten years earlier (he himself a famous blitzball player) the city is attacked by the monster Sin and together with his father's friend Auron is transported to the land of Spira. In Spira Tidus learns that Zanarkand was destroyed 1 000 years ago in a war between Bevelle and Zanarkand and after that Sin appeared. His father also ended up in Spira 10 years ago and journeyed with the High-Summoner Braska and sir Auron on a pilgrimage to defeat Sin and they succeeded, but Sin is back again. 

Tidus joins up with Braska's daughter the summoner Yuna and her guardians Khimari, a ronso blue mage, Wakka, a blitzball captain and Lulu the black mage. On their journey they meet up with Auron again and Rikku the Al-Bhed thief. On their journeys they meet the maester Seymour Guado of Yevon (pretty much the church of Spira that gives hope to the people by claiming that if people atone for their sins, using machines and all that, Sin will never return when the summoners bring the Calm) who intends to kill Sin and become it in order to destroy all of Spira so that all can be free of death... a psychopath is what he is. The church is corrupt and just perpetuates the status quo, even being led by an unsent Maester Maika (unsent being a person that died and haven't been sent by a summoner to the Farplane, and if they aren't sent they can turn into fiends). At the same time the Al-Bheds are kidnapping summoners in order to save them since the Final Summoning they uses to destroy Sin will kill the Summoner. 

Turns out that the Final Summoning must be created by sacrificing one of the guardians. Also, the Final Summoning destroys Sin but is doomed to become Sin since the entity inside Sin, Yu Yevon was a summoner of Zanarkand that as the city was destroyed 1 000 years ago put up the Fayths the summoner prays to recieve different Aeons (summons) by using the survivors from the city, and most of them was used to summon Zanarkand in a dream world so it would become eternal. And since Tidus is from there he is a dream given life by the Fayths since they are tired after 1 000 years and want's to end it. Meanwhile Auron lost his life after Braska destroyed Sin so he has walked around unsent to stop the spiral of death by masterminding everything together with Jecht who become Braska's Final Summoning. Tidus and the gang blasts into Sin by using machines that Al-Bhed have salvaged, like an airship. 

Also you fight Seymour 4 times, the last inside Sin before fighting Jecht as the final summoning and then Yu Yevon, which you can't loose since you have auto-life granted. Nice with a boss that isn't that hard. It's more for story purposes. Yuna sends Auron and Tidus disappears as the Fayths are dying since Yu Yevon isn't summoning anymore.

I finished it 2-3 times, played to the end some 2 more times and I love it more and more. I recall some complaining that Tidus steals what is actually Yuna's story, and on one hand they are right. He hardly actually effects the story in any meaningful way other than actually question how the world works. But on the other hand, it's about Tidus and his strained relations with his father Jecht who always towered over him. He was a drunk, belittled him and his mother didn't look twice at him when his father was around. Until he ended up in Spira and tried to get home, and had to confront his behaviour. Jecht stopped drinking after hurting an innocent beast while drunk that forced Auron and Braska to pay for the damages. And as he realised he couldn't get home whenever he talked about Tidus he almost teared up. Which makes it so sad when he chooses to be the summoning, since he has nothing in Spira. And the music, the Hymn of the Fayth in every incarnation in the game sounds amazing. Auron's theme is fantastic and the assault song as they go for the wedding scene is thrilling, they even used it on the trailer timing it with the cannons from operation Mi'hen going off. And since I never got there as a kid I'm always entranced by Seymour's last battle theme. And the voice acting... I like it? One of the first (almost) full voice acted games I played. And good voices. 

Now, I only played it for 60 hours and only got 3 fully upgraded Celestial Weapons, but I got all summons and Al-Bhed primer. I pretty much sat with a guide by my side so that I could know when to go to Besaid before the Dark Aeon appeared and all that. Got a no encounter weapon that made the end game so much easier. So I checked up on my save on the PS3. I played that for 90 hours, got 4-5 celestial weapon fully upgraded (missing Lulu's that I got this time around thanks to the no encounter weapon). I even defeated the Dark Aeon at Besaid since I got all the Jecht spehere's (I got the trophy to support it), but I have to replay the game since I missed some primers at the Al-Bhed Home. I was actually thinking that if I ever wanted to play it again I might do it on the PS3 since it has the trophies, but since I got the ones I got and frankly the controls are better on the Switch (used a pro controller). I think it has to do that the right stick feels like a walking stick compared to the PS3, it's even placed more naturally above the d-pad. Also I imported a cartridge with both games on it, screw that with only giving 1 game and then download the other. At least not as bad as Capcom who gave you the smaller game (by a lot) and got you to download the 23 GB game to play it.

Final Fantasy VIII Remastered (Switch)

 

The love story of the ages

Finally played through Final Fantasy VIII on the Switch and with this I've played through Final Fantasy I through X. Another of those I got back in the day so I also have them on PSOne disc as well, but I couldn't finish it. The furthest I got was fighting Cerberus in the Galbadia Garden. My biggest problem was not understanding the leveling system of this game. Me being a bit of grinder completely failed to get that the enemies and bosses scaled with the characters level. So I grinded away causing my own downfall. What I should have done, as I used more of here, was running away and turn every enemy to a card. Enabling me to save on exp, get cards to turn into items and magic, and still level up the GF needed. Cause when you understand the system... it's rather fun junction magic and get your GF to level up to get better abilities to put you ahead of the leveling curve of the monsters.

The story on the other hand, parts I like, but it doesn't all make sense. Ground story is that you play as Squall, a mercenary in training that wakes up after a match with his arch-nemesis Seifer which left both with a cut across the face. It's graduation day so together with Instructor Quistis he heads out to get Ifrit, the Guardian Force (GF). Together with Zell and Seifer they head out to help a small city from being overtaken by Galbadian forces. After some troubles that leads to a communcation tower the order to withdraw is delivered by a exchange student from Trabia gardem, Selphie. Seifer leaves the group to get to the escape ships on their own, which pretty much disqualifies Seifer from becoming a SeeD while the others become it. At the graduation dance Squall dance with this mysterious girl with dark hair and then is taken out by Quistis that announces she has been demoted due to the failures of her students.

Next day Squall, Selphie and Zell is sent to Timber to aid a resistance group fighting of the occupation of Galbadia.  Before arriving they are put to sleep and experience a part where they are three galbadian soldiers fighting their way out of a forest and then travelling to Delling City to look at this singer Julia, which Leguna, the leader of the group, has fallen for. A short date later they are sent out again, but Squall and the others awake. In Timber they meet the Forrest Owls, lead by the mysterious girl from the party, Rinoa. The plan is to kidnap the President of Galbadia, Delling. After executing the plan it turned out it was a decoy and instead Delling arrived to the TV-station to send a message with the now working Communication Tower. Turns out he is gonna announce a peace diplomat in the sorceress Edea, but Seifer runs in taking Delling hostage. The others try to save him, but Edea turns up takes Seifer away. Procedure is to get to nearest garden, that is Galbadia where they pick up Irvine and a mission to assassinate Edea in Delling City. After some running around the city with planning the assassination and the man leading it is the general of the Galbadian army and Rinoas father. It goes awry in many ways, but Squall has reached the Sorceress and... gets an icicle showed through the shoulder ending disc 1. 

It's a strong start. Pretty good characters and the mystery of the Laguna sequences are nice (and his battle theme is the best). I've have a small problem with the high school setting of the Garden and that all main characters are 17-18 years old. Probably why Laguna is much more fun as well since he is a bit older together with Kiros and Ward. Most fun here is also the game theory that Squall actually dies here and the rest of the game is he slowing dying and imagining a better ending. The biggest claim to that theory is that from disc 2 and onward the story goes all bonkers with first an escape from a max security prison, splitting the team where one team tries to stop rockets being launched on Balamb Garden and Squall heads for Balamb to warn everyone. But there is a civil war between the student where a creature named NORG is looking for the headmaster to throw to Edea since his failed assassination forced the attack. And to avoid the missiles coming they get the Garden flying out into the sea. Where they crash into some Fisherman colony and are reunited with the other team that survived the base exploding. They go to Trabia Garden where they found out that all main characters (beside Rinoa) grew up on the same orphanage and Edea was the caretaker of that orphanage together with Balamb Garden headmaster Cid. Really? Which they forgot due to using GF as it apparently alters their memories? REALLY!?!

Gets worse, you attack Galbadia Garden that also flies now and enter it to fight sorceress Edea... and I couldn't get past Cerberus last time, but with an average of level 15, this is easy. Fight Seifer and Edea and... Rinoa falls into a coma as she is taken over by Sorceress Ultimecia that comes from the future to search for a girl named Ellone that appeared through the game and can send peoples conscious back in time, which is the cause of the Laguna episodes. You get to Eshtar, the hidden country that Galbadia fought against 17 years ago against sorceress Adel and are sent to space where Ellone is together with the president of Esthar, Laguna. Possessed Rinoa releases the trapped sorceress Adel and as she is slowly dying in space Squall jumps after her and finds the spaceship Ragnarok. With it the team boards a flying cube that concentrates some sort of moon beam that destroyed a civilisation 100 years ago. You defeat Seifer... again and then Adel that have been possessed by Ultimecia. Rinoa is possessed again and is sent back in time by Ellone and then taken back causing Ultimecia to achieve "time compression" so that the past, present and future converge and you end up at Ultimecia's Castle where you battle out the monsters and then finish of the 4-5 forms of Ultimecia to achieve victory. Credits roll, every ones happy and Squall and Rinoa ends up together.

I skipped a lot, like the central love story between Squall and Rinoa and I give it credit, it's nice at times, like the space sequence, but some parts just feels weird since the action the player takes doesn't always match how the story wants it to go. And everyone else doesn't matter really. Especially when it turns out non can remember anything before joining SeeD. Squall's inner monologuing goes on my nerves at times since he is a really bratty teenager at times. Zell I can at least tolerate, Selphie is just weird... and Quistis clearly going after her male student have a bit of problematic undertones, but then again she's hot and the same age (what is it with japanese and promoting young inexperienced people to positions of authorithy... one would think it was like Sweden).  Irvine perving on Selphie and Quistis is also troublesome, even more so when he clearly remembers them from the orphanage. I just don't like Irvine. You also get to play as Edea, but as tip... don't give her any special spells since when she goes they go to which I sadly experienced.

So I gotta say I liked the game. CD 1 totally fine, 2nd as well with the escape, garden civil war and the fight against gardens. CD 3 had the space station and after that the game slows down trying to grind for magic and items to junction and upgrade weapons and get GF:s. Instead of me falling back on grinding levels I should just have run around on the Islands Closest to Hell and Heaven to get the magic I needed. I liked the junction system when I got it, the music is fantastic as usual and the remastered graphics looks a hell lot better than the original. And another thing with the remaster, speeding it up with 3x makes it playable. Normal game is SLOW, everything takes forever, speeding it up makes it enjoyable. Just be sure to have a finger on it during boss battles, especially the last on so that you don't lose one of the main three characters you use to fight Ultimecia.

Final Fantasy IX (Switch)

Spoilers!

So I continued with the next Final Fantasy I had on the Switch and what do you know, there is a fast-speed option here as well, the 12 hour challenge gonna be a piece of cake... 

*12 hours later*

... wait, I haven't even cleared the first CD portion of the game... this will take a while I fear.

Back when this game was released I remember that they discussed this game on Swedish gaming review show on the public channels and I think that was the first time I heard about Final Fantasy and I remember looking at it and being enthralled by the visuals. They showed stuff from the first part up until the escape from the evil forest. We didn't have a playstation so we never got it until we got the Playstation 2 and my parents gave me this game (together with VIII, VI, V, IV, I and II) one Christmas/birthday (for the record as mentioned other times, my birthday is fairly close to Christmas, but not on Christmas so I have a problem separate when I got what). The intro music fantastic, graphics looks good and I played it until the desert palace which broke me. I restarted this game so many times due to getting stuck at different places. I've only finished this game once before and this time I did it with a guide to do stuff that I normally doesn't get. For example the Chocobo mini game and the Mog Central.  So let's get started.

The game begins with Zidane, human monkey (?) that together with his bandits friend are gonna use a theater play to get into Alexandria Castle and kidnap Princess Garnet. Meanwhile Vivi, a black mage, tries to get in to the Castle to watch the show, but he finds out he has a counterfeit ticket so sneak in with the help of some rat boy. During the play Zidane enters the castle with his friend Blank and stumbles upon the Princess that tries to run away. Steiner, the Captain of the Knights of Pluto are sent by Queen Brahne to find Garnet and tries to stop the kidnapping. They end up on the airship where the play is played out and after some hi-jinks escape, but not until their ship is badly damaged by the cannons of the castle. The ship lands in the evil forest where Vivi and Garnet has been thrown off. Zidane and Steiner tries to save them and as Blank comes to the rescue while everyone else from the ship have escaped the forest they run out, but not until after Blank was turned to stone with the forest after pushing Zidane out of harms way. 

They are at the bottom of a valley and this world is special in that it is covered in mist which creates monsters, but is also the source of fuel for their machines. They have to climb to a mountain top where they find a town where they discover a black mage factory, since they apparently create them from the mist. They board a cargo ship and travel to Lindblum, the capital of airships. During the travel they have encounters with the Black Waltz, powerful black mages that have been sent out to bring Dagger (which is the undercover name for Garnet) back to Alexandria. In Lindblum it's revealed that Tantalus, the group Zidane worked with, was sent by the regent Cid to rescue the princess from her mother since the king died, queen Brahne became more eratic and was making deals with a weapon merchant that sold her the black mages. Cid unfortunately had been turned into an oglop (some kind of insect) by his wife Hilda when she found him cheating on her. Zidane hits the town and meets up with an old friend Freya from Burmecia that enter the traditional city hunt and Zidane joins her. After the hunt an almost dead soldier from Burmecia breaks in at the award ceremony. with news that Bumecia is under attack by Alexandria. Cid can't do much at the moment since he must gather his forces before he cam help. Zidane, Freya and Vivi decides to go, but at the bamquet before leaving Dagger put sleep weed in their food so that she and Steiner can return to Alexandria in order to stop queen Brahne. Zidane sets out and meet Quina, a quan from Qu marches that is this games weird character. At Burmecia Zidane overhears queen Brahne's plan to attack Cleyra, the sister city of Burmecia where the king of Burmecia went into hiding.  Kuja, the weapon merchant is there as well and when they protect one of the last Burmecian soldiers from Beatrix, Alexandria's finest general, they are left for dead as Kuja flies of on a dragon ending disc 1.

She hits hard

Now, in Final Fantasy VII the first disc ends on Aeris death. I gotta say, VII have a better start. More intense although they try here, but it just doesn't feel as important or dire. There are things I like more in this game though. The ability system is nice where equipment gives you different abilities depending on the character and if you get enough AP you can learn them permanently. Of course you gotta equip them from a limited pool of points each character have. This creates at least for me a reason to play every character since you don't get that unless you level up. Bad thing is, this took me between 35-40 hours to complete and then I had 3x speed on. I recalled when playing that I probably spent 120 hours to finish it the first time and the reason are the slow gameplay. They move like they walk in mud and the battles drag, but the reason for that is probably due to the player needing time to execute orders to counter the enemies attacks. I hardly needed to change speed playing VII, but here it was a good strategy to get things done without being steamrolled by the bosses. Also, sidequests suffers from the same problem as the condor strategy game, return again and again without knowing when it's supposed to. Especially the Nero family sidequest in the end. On one hand it was funny reading the lines, but the problem was that it took place during the endgame where after every story point you need to return outside and back to Lindblum (my guide said Alexandria so thanks for that) breaking the story. Also, you have 8 party members, 1 must always be Zidane, and only active party members gets EXP, meaning that some will always be left behind. Not even a trinkle down like in VII. 

Anyway, what's really going on in the story is that Kuja activilly tries to stage conflicts between the different nations and Alexandria and their grieving queen was an easy target. Plan was that Brahne wanted to rule all nations and was gonna use Kuja's black mages to get it together with the eidolons (summons) that Dagger possessed within her. Even going so far to sacrifice her. Zidane reaches Clerya which is destroyed by Brahne who was able to get Dagger and extract her summons. Zidane and friends escapes to the airship Red Rose and finds out about the order to kill Dagger so they teleport to the caste where they meet up with Steiner and Marcus, another Tantalus bandit that have the cure for Blanks petrification, that just escaped the dungeon. Zidane breaks in to a hidden basement and rescues a sleeping Dagger, but as they are about to leave are confronted again by Beatrix that subdues them, but when the order of killing Dagger comes she hesitates and questions the queen. She teams up with Freya and Steiner to give Zidane, Dagger and Vivi time to escape. This scene is awesome and the music on point. They escape by the secret tunnel that Dagger tried to enter the castle with and ends up near Lindblum where they meet Ramuh, the god of thunder that gives Dagger a stone that will teach her the summon Ramuh. They leave and at that time Lindblum is attacked and conquered by Brahne. Zidane reaches Cid that tries to keep the situation under control and they decide to strike at Kuja since without the black mages they can strike back. They reach Qu marches and meet Quina again and finds a tunnel to another continent where they meet dwarfs, find a village of black mages that awakened and hides from humans. Also the ruins of Maiden Sari, the city of summoners that was destroyed by a disaster 10 years ago. There Eiko, the last of the summoners lives with a bunch of moggles. She gets kidnapped by a mercenary that have harassed them on their way to the continent by the order of Brahne that wants the stone Dagger has. Another mercenary, Amarant frees her, but only because he wants to fight Zidane due to beng humilated by him some years ago. Zidane beats him and he joins them. They enter the Iifa tree and lears that mist are a byproduct from the tree as it siphons souls for some unknown reason. They defeat it and takes away the mist from the world. Outside Brahne's navy have arrived to fight Kuja since he is a threat to her dominance. As Alexandria summons Bahamut, the king of dragons, a giant eye in the sky appears (like the one that destroyed Maiden Sari), takes control of Bahamut and destroys the navy and kills Brahne.

You're the Queen? I never voted for you!

Dagger is to be crowned queen, but Alexandria is attacked by Bahamut, controlled by Kuja. Steiner and Beatrix (that seems to have fallen in love with each other) protects the people of the town while Dagger is drawn to a tower where the four stones of the kingdoms that Brahne gathered unleases Alexander, a summon that... is the castle? They never explained what it was, all I know it have wings that protected and destroyed Bahamut. The eye appears again and destroys the summon Alexander before Kuja can take control of it and we get to see Garland, the other big bad of the game. Zidane rushes up the tower and saves both Eiko and Dagger from the crumbling castle and they return to Lindblum. After turning Cid into a frog they set out to find Hilda since she is the only one that can return him to his self and they need him to build new airships to be able to continue search for Kuja. They travel to the black mage city where the mages have turned to Kuja since they have a limited life span and believes that Kuja can give them that. The last ones point to a desert and arriving imprisons all and Zidane have to go to Oeilvert to get a stone for Kuja. There it tells the story of Terra, a world destroyed and that they await to be resurected. Zidane returns, the others escape, Eiko gets kidnapped and rescued together with Hilda. Cid is restored and you now have an airship and can travel everywhere and the destination is Ipsen Castle where you get four mirrors and the location of 4 temples of the elements where the mirror needs to be placed in order to open the way to Terra. Done, enter Terra and it is revealed that Zidane is actually from Terra when they find the gnomes, other human monkies that are created the same way as the black mages and Kuja as well. Garland was created to ensure that Terra would survive by merging the planets, in that endeavor he created Kuja to wage war and siphon the souls so that Terran souls could take over the planet, but when Kuja grew to big for him Garland created Zidane, but Kuja tried to dispose of him and stranded Zidane on Gaia. During the confrontation with Garland Kuja takes control of the Invincible the airship that is the eye in the sky and uses it to overpower Garland and kill him. But Garland reveals the final piece of information that pushes Kuja over the top and that is that Kuja's days are numbered just like the black mages and gnomes he despised so much. Zidane evacuates all the gnomes to the black mage village and return to Terra that have been reformed by Kuja as he travels to the Crystal from where the universe sprang from in order to destroy all the universe as revenge. On the way you get an air battle with Nova Dragons as the sky fleets of Lindblum arrives and blows up the dragon while Beatrix and the knights of Pluto save the Inivincible with the airship the Red Rose. Zidane fights his way through different memories while the voice of Garland explains the story and fight of the four fiends that also guarded the different temples. You fight Kuja and then out of nowhere another boss shows up that want to bring the universe to zero appears that you still win over and then is teleported away. Cid picks up everyone up, but Zidane stays since he hears the voice of Kuja who was the one that teleported them back to Gaia and enters the Iifa Tree where the dying Kuja awaits and they reconcile since they both suffered as instruments of destruction.

Some time later we are back in Alexandria, Tantalus once again are gonna play the play from the beginning of the game. Dagger is queen, Eiko have been adopted by Cid and Hilda, Vivi has died but left a couple of kids, Steiner and Beatrix seems to have gotten together, Freya rekindled her love with her amnesiac boyfriend and as the play goes on Zidane is revealed to have survived and we get a romantic reunion as Dagger runs from her throne to jump into his arms. *sniff* I'm not crying *sniff*

*sniff* Alright I'm crying *sniff*

Loved the ending, except for the final boss. I must have power leveled a lot last time since I can't recall that it was this hard... or maybe I just leveled so much that I had enough Ability points to cover all statuses that are the biggest problem with the boss. Hate auto-death spells and apparently no armour to protect one self. Overall, a good game, it really charms me with all the references from earlier game like, Garland who was the first (and *spoiler* last boss) of the first game. The boss before Kuja looks like Chaos from the first game. The four fiends make a comeback and Dagger, a white mage is first seen in traditional Final Fantasy white mage clothes and Vivi looks like the old black mage. And the first complete party is a thief, knight, black mage and white mage, just beautiful. They referenced Joseph from the second game and one of the last dungeons are named Pandemonium like the one from II. Several items bear the name of important NPCs from III, I think the name of the last airship also is from that game. The two worlds and moons are from IV and the whole Clergya and Burmecia plot feels like the attacks on Damicya and Fabul. Also the dwarfs are back and the airfleet turning up to save the good guys at the end is the giant of Babel all over again. V... well, there is that boss that is a book, also travelling between the worlds and uniting planets feels a bit like the plot of V, but place four mirrors and enter a teleport was pretty much taken from I. A tree boss might be a reference to the final boss of that game. Could be that I haven't played through V all the way through in a long while since I jumped from IV to VII. Gilgamesh was mentioned in the game. I believe the scene where Kuja kicks Garland of the ledge is inspired by Kefka shoving off the Emperor of the floating continent. The name of a ring is named after an esper and I believe Terra might be not only another name for earth (like Gaia), but also one of the main characters from VI. You have an auction house and finally can get your hand on a model of an airship without a snot-nosed brat get his rich daddy to buy it from him. Now VII, they mention Cloud twice and for VIII you got the card game and one mention of Squall. Now music references, the volcano track is inspired by a track from I, I think Beatrix theme is taken from II and maybe the love theme is inspired by the same from VIII. Overall the music is fantastic.

I love this game with all it's references and call backs, especially now when I played all games. It's a bit slow in the gameplay department, but fixed in this rerelease. The mini-games like Chocobohunt was actually fun in the speedup version since they don't take forever and I think the games with that feature, but I like it. I actually got the card game as well this time and I actually won most of the games, but the guide mentioned that it wasn't that rewarding besides PS4 trophies... which the Switch doesn't have. The game was basically made for someone like me that liked the fantasy part in Final Fantasy and wasn't that keen on modern or cyberpunk final fantasy (which since finishing VII makes me rethink that point). Beside being a game that heavy romanticize the fantasy genre, it does have themes of being alive, having a soul and that life and death is part of it. Vivi tackles with the knowledge that he is a puppet creation, but have free will and that his time is limited. Zidane never thought of that until he is struck by the realisation he is also a construct. Even Kuja, but as the voice at the end mentioned. Kuja gave them hope in that he was the first that went against his purpose, akin to a Paradise Lost Lucifer who went against god. Also, friendship, but that is pretty much always a thing. If I ever do a run through all Final Fantasy games I might go for the cheats to speed up since who have 40 hours to spend on these kind of games anymore?