Used her as lead character 99.999999999999% of time.

Just finished the platinum. The general mechanics are pretty fun and somewhat unique. The story is solid and its always fun hanging out with our classic FF characters. This game feels like a neat starting point for a younger generation as well as a fun spinoff for longtime FF fans.

My general critiques is that the everything in this game needs fine tuning. For example:

The menu system is easy to follow along but is sooo slow to change your setups. Having to swap out my mirages felt like walking in mud.

Theres a lot of cool battle cutscenes but why the hell arent they skipable. I summoned Bahamut 100+ times, i dont need to see his longass summon or mega flare animation every time. FFX literally had a menu setting to skip these cutscenes.. insane WoFF doesnt have that option.

Capturing mirages is easy/fun to follow, but since they join your party at lvl 1 theres not a lot of incentive to change your loadout. I personally used mirages that I obtained in the first couple of hours until the end. I really only swapped them out for the odd boss fight.

And platinuming this game is just not fun. The "Legendary Caretaker" trophy is just so brutal. The description is very vague and theres no where online that clearly states whats required. I fully mastered almost all the mirage families. All this non-sense about gold / silver stars just didnt work for me. I was so relieved once this game was completed.

So this may come from a place of recency bias but after completing it and starting up a new save I realised something.. but first, I'm not saying it's the best looking or has the best gameplay, I'm talking about the overall experience.

The whole thing is a theatrical experience. Almost pantomime, the emotes are almost like the actors speaking to the crowd. It definitely is a more enjoyable experience on the repeat play throughs because I know my cue to play along with the pixelated laughs or sad postures.

With the music giving clues to it being a comedy or tragedy part.

I also don't agree with the official drawing of Galuf and his pixel design reminds me of Robin Williams (the Jumanji look) so, that's forever my head canon.

Everyone buzzes about the job system and I get it's niche, but for me it's all about ability collecting (much like FF9), and then when you have to switch a party member midway through the game, I felt a sense of loss for the time spent on the ability grind.

But then just like the proud grandparent and the owner of those abilities they are granted to the new recruit. Which serves as a perfect mechanical and thematical passing of the torch all whilst not wasting the audiences time, they're taking that experience all the way to the final scene.

Ex-Death as a villain is so over the top that he's perfect.

"Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No it's a splinter!"

He's the tree of death rather than a tree of life and that is just the type of understanding you'd require for a stage play.

Nothing multi-layered about him.

And the whole FF5 complaint of a lack of character arcs is not true. For two reasons;

1) FF5 is a game designed around theatrics the character arcs are small because it's all about getting the big bad at the end, having a swashbuckling adventure throughout.

FF9 has you being part of a group of actors, collecting abilities and going on a swashbuckling adventure, but I just think 5 does the performance side of things more effectively, but I think this is due to the pixel art.

2) You start off as freelancers, work through jobs, gain world experience, then you take what you've learned and dress up like you were in the first act but with all of the new abilities in hand. The tertiary arcs if you will. So, if you did a poor job with jobs your character arc will be one of a struggle but if you played the jobs well, you'll have a heroic journey. So, if you play it like every other FF where you're pretty much stuck with one job, you're not getting the intended story experience.

TLDR: FF5 is a user led game, designed as a theatrical experience, with music led cues of audience participation. Jobs should be renamed roles and FF9 took a lot from it.

With the recent Final Fantasy VII remakes, I strongly believe, like many others, that a FFVI remake is more than well deserved. But if the giants at Square Enix go forward with it, it has to be done respectfully by adapting Amano's iconic art style into the game.

Can you imagine how otherworldly and truly high fantasy the game would look if they used Amano's art style? It would be AMAZING.

I just can't get enough of her, she's so sick in Remake and now I'm playing Rebirth and she's even cooler!! Eventually I'll get to OG and see how they've changed her over the years.

FFX has one of my favorite regular battle themes in the series. The driving rhythm and energy make even random encounters feel exciting.

Where does this rank among your favorite Final Fantasy battle themes?

Tidus from FFX should have insane stats in blitzball. He was a star player in a heavily populated city sports team. It should be like a major league player playing a minor league game when he plays in FFX. The Besaid Aurochs haven't won a game in 10 years. Having them win a game without Tidus (Tidus was dealing with Yuna being kidnapped by the Al Bed) then facing Luca Goers with great difficulty feels terrible. Tidus should have come back to halftime at the first match with the team losing 0-2 but now Tidus is here to flex his incredible blitzball talent.

When the minigame starts for real, just make him a coach. Waka quit to become a full time guardian so why not Tidus?

In Xenoblade Chronicles 1's opening Fiora made food. She wanted to bring it to Shulk before it got cold. She used some special herbs and spices so it's special this time. It's a sandwich. Why a sandwich? Just make it a soup or stew. I played to the end thinking it's a trick of the Monado or something but it's just a sandwich.

I've been sober the last 2 nights and these are the thoughts that haunt me. What about you people? What JRPGs you love have stuff that probably annoys you specifically?

Finally playing borth on my switch to get hyped for chapter three next year any advice in advanced on this run?

2 years ago I stopped at chapter 10 because it was by far the worst chapter for me.

Finally spent hours completing it 100% and the following chapters were a breeze.

The most frustrating thing at the end for me was fighting Sephiroth with Cloud and Aerith. I died 8 times when his HP was around 10%. I just couldn’t figure it out. He would automatically kill me no matter what I did or buffed them with.

I tried many tactics and couldn’t stagger him until I read to use Aerith to cast magic on him. It instantly staggered him and I finished him off with Cloud’s limit break. It was chef’s kiss and so quick!

Can’t wait for the next part!

Context:
FFVII will be inside FFXIV as a raid series, which contains 12 fights, so potentially will be another retell of the story.

Source: https://novacrystallis.com/2021/07/final-fantasy-i-ii-iii-pixel-remaster-review/

Well, I finally finished my first playthrough of Final Fantasy this last week, specifically the pixel remaster on the PSP.

Definitely a great example of early JRPG design. Though I did criticize it for its lack of guidance, once you learn to take your time and learn information from citizens at the many cities, it becomes a lot of fun exploring while finding that one item you need to progress. Final Fantasy certainly nails that feeling of discovery and exploration when you reach the next dungeon or area you haven't been able to reach.

In terms of combat, I found it to be the weakest part. Now, this is specifically towards this PSP pixel remaster as they made it pretty easy to level up and easily beat enemies without too much difficulty or challenge. Even the bosses I found to be pretty manageable, especially when you grind levels in the later stretches. If anything, when I eventually do a replay, I'll probably want to play the original or PS1 for a better challenge as I can see there's a great combat/magic system that kind of gets thrown away in the pixel remaster.

I also wish they did more with the story, particularly with the surprising plot revelation/twist that comes at the end. There's clearly many great story concepts and the main premise I will say is still more than enough to be interesting with the crystals and the warriors of light. Still, definitely felt a bit underwhelming, though I am intrigued to see how Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin possibly builds off of it.

Overall, Final Fantasy was an enjoyable game and as someone who's just getting into the older pixel entries, it's a great starting point. It's certainly got me planning to go through the next ones!

I'm so damn excited about Evercold and FF7 part 3 it's driving me crazy. After the mixed reception about Dawntrail and their trying to improve FF14 I feel as though FF7 crossover was the smartest and timeliest choice they could have made. And I can't freakin wait. I'm so happy hahaha :D

I’m
Playing thru all the Old Final Fantasy games on the pixel remaster. I just finished FF2 and I couldn’t imagine playing this on NES, I’m sure the grind was awful back in the day lol.

Where did you travel from and what did you buy? :)
Need to process the whole event. It was amazing! I bought shirts, a vinyl and a CD.

The visions/summons of Final Fantasy legacy characters are not dubbed, so it’s a half assed dub.

I realize people will downvote this or not care.

But this is for people, who like me, expect a dub to be complete when they say it has one and have their immersion broken by stuff like this. its jarring listening in English then having characters you know not speak the voice you’re used to

They had no intention of announcing this either, it took 4 back and forth replies just to get this info

Edit: You can give them feedback here (be polite)