Intro
Here we go! I played a few minutes of this on the playstation not too many years ago, at a guess in 2018. I was aware of the huge levels of hype and praise around the game and how 6 and 7 were frequently lauded as the best in the series.
Main characters/cast
Terra is the main character. No wait it’s Locke. No, Celes is very important. Or is it Edgar and Sabin? The game does a good job of making a good strong cast of characters to play as. And mercifully the game is not too tragic, though it tries to kill off people it shies away from doing anything permanent.
Battle
Nothing too exciting here but it's all solid as ever. I usually had Sabin doing a particular Blitz, Edgar using Auto Crossbow/Chainsaw/Drill, Celes dropping a spell or attacking and Cyan using Bushido.
This is probably the first game to remove itself from rigid jobs completely, or any mixture of them, so each character is different but with the help of the espers they can all learn every magic spell and summon.
I was lucky to be having such a great party. I had few, if any game overs. I found this one a little bit easier to manage and play. I had more game overs grinding dinosaurs for experience points and whatnot in the late game.
Music/Graphics
Some damn solid numbers in here. Nothing that makes it break from the pack but the Magitek Facility is a banger, probably my favourite track from this game. The boss and battle themes were super too, especially Decisive Battle.
The opera was OK!
Graphically, it looks great as ever. I am finally done with all the sprite games but am glad I took a break between 1-2, 3-4 and 5-6. Made me appreciate them all a bit more.
Plot/Villain/Allies/NPCs
Kefka is a great villain. The Emperor Gestahl is also a great villain. I was more pissed off at Gestahl than Kefka honestly while the latter does some heinous shite the Emperor made me believe in something and betrayed me!
The gooey
I scored this slightly less than 5 as there is simply less to sink your teeth into here. The Espers give you small stat boosts every time you level up with one equipped but the removal of bonus dungeons has made any long term planning redundant. I made sure to equip specific espers to certain party members after they mastered each of them but I was casual enough about it.
I will say, without a guide there are so many things you can miss. At least 3 party members, for starters. There are just so many secrets in the game I would not have come across if not for the guide. Using the Cursed Shield in battle 256 times until it became the excellent Paladin Shield? It was actually not so bad. I equipped 2 accessories that prevented the bad effects and just grinded.
Also I struggled to find Deathgaze initially so I just left it for a while and came back and found him in a few minutes my own way.
Conclusion
A rip-roaring conclusion to my Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster adventure. Having never played any of them before except for a few minutes of VI, they were all very good really. It was really interesting as a huge fan of 7,8,9,10 and 12 to see where all the elements came from. You could see them starting to all come together by the time 6 came around and it was like "let's just write a story and have a game with it". This was all fine and dandy until 13 when they wrote a story and were like "must we design a game as well, what a nuisance".
Was it better than 7? No way. Was it better than 1 through 5? Yes. Was it better than 8,9,10? No. Better than 13? Of course it was! Until I play the 'sequels' I will continue to place 13 near the bottom of the pile. 6 was very good and I look forward to playing it again maybe in a few years when I do all the funky-looking 2014 Steam re-releases.
The whole Kefka or Sephiroth thing can be put to bed by me. I was really disappointed that Kefka just sat in his final dungeon while I went around collecting power and my allies. Even in previous editions 1-5 the final bosses found ways to dick you around until you finally decided to go murder them.
The strong cast with multiple stories going on throughout the game with nice resolutions and heartbreaking moments really made this game shine over the previous 5 remasters. There were also tons of secrets and interesting places and things to do that made it special but again this one benefitted from having 5 games before it making mistakes that it could learn from.
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The achievements were grand - I had missed the Blue Flan in the Magitek Facility so I went back after the game was finished and got him with an earlier save file. I didn't mind as I got to hear the awesome facility music again! It was the last thing I did. Took an hour or two to power through the story. Before that, Siegfried was tough but I just made Celes a 16-hitter. Also the 777 death thing took a while but I just sat down one day with Setzer and grinded it. It kept hitting me so I gave up on it and came back later.
The ending was quite cute.
Just going to post this real quick while it's still on my mind. Writing this mid-January when I actually finished it.
Main characters/cast
I really liked Cecil, the conflicted Dark Knight. Really cool to play a Dark Knight after 3 games of fighting against them. His love interest, Rosa, is a White Mage. His buddy from childhood, Kain, is a Dragoon, who are awesome. This is a love triangle established early but Rosa clearly prefers Cecil. They are a decent bunch to start out with, at least they have names. Also Cecil has such a badass picture:
Other characters that join later include Rydia the summoner girl, Yang the Monk, Edge the Ninja Cid the Engineer, Palom and Parom the mage twins and Edward the Bard. They are all nicely established, perhaps even more so than Rosa and Kain. They all cycle in and out the only constant is Cecil and unfortunately I did not get to have my pre-planned Attack party of Cecil-Kain-Yang-Cid-Edge for the last part of the game but was fine.
Battle
I used Cecil to attack mainly and sometimes heal the party outside of battles, not like he was using his MP otherwise. Rosa healed all the time. I sometimes had her use Pray to heal as it cost no MP. Kain was either Jump or Attack. Rydia would blast most enemies with Bio for second half of game. At the very very end she used more Flares. Finally Edge would usually Attack but his Throw helped me defeat the scary end boss.
There are a bunch of guest characters beyond the 5 I discussed above, namely Edward and Cid and so on. I liked them but I can see how they were not solid enough to go to the end of the game with. Edward certainly was crappy really. I was not enamoured with the twins or FuSoYa or Tellah or any of the mage guest characters. Out of all of them I would have liked Cid and Yang to stay but it's fine. Probably better I didn't trade out Rosa as she can heal so well while Rydia was the weak link but never got hurt much in the back row and provided classic magical artillery fire on groups of enemies. Also her Summon is very powerful and was useful in beating a lot of the optional and main quest bosses.
Crucially FF4 is now Action Time Battle or ATB, after three games of slower turn based now we have the ATB gauges! I set mine to Wait otherwise I would've died. I mainly auto-battled so had to be careful that my setup was correct. So I had to pay a bit more attention to battles this time but was a good thing. I was a bit worried that I was just going to auto battle through all these pixel remasters. At last, I was selecting particular courses of action. Certain enemies would become invulnerable at certain times and others might counter attack constantly if attacked so paying attention was more important.
Minigames
There are none. Moving on.
Music/Graphics
A slightly better selection this time around. FF2 still sticks in my mind as the best so far but there were some good ones here. Particularly at the end, the Moon and its dungeons were cool. Kind of cool to see the early versions of later game tracks throughout the game here, such as the Prelude.
Graphics are as good as ever but I think I'm tiring of the pixels a bit.
Plot/Villain(s)/Allies/NPCs
An orphaned Dark Knight and his buddy must go out into the world and seize Crystals by force for the land of Baron. So there is a lot of brutality at the start but thankfully our heroes come to their senses and try to undo Baron's plan. Aerith dies in FF7 sure but Christ a lot of characters die in the first four games.
You go on a long convoluted quest to stop all the Crystals being stolen and the evil villain's plan being activated but of course their plan comes all the way to 99% and our heroes must defeat them personally in a final battle. At least its not EXACTLY a Giant Space Flea from nowhere BUT there is a lot of man behind the man in this game. It's not bad but you do gradually zero in on the true baddy after running through a gauntlet of enemies.
All the games have Crystals and whatnot so far and the same graphics so I feel like they are all running together a bit in my mind. A lot of the side characters are fun and interesting and their dialogue updates as things change throughout the game so that creates a nice feeling of change and growth.
The gooey
There is not a whole lot to see here sadly. Spells cost MP and most characters run out fairly quickly. While Rydia and Rosa have a few hundred MP by the end of the game you often have to economise your spells. Its not worth casting Meteor for 99MP if you can only do it 6 times. Bio cost 20MP so I would spam that at groups and do maybe 1000 damage on average, more if one enemy left. Rosa has Curaja for 40MP I think but Curaga was 18MP so she would spam that. By the end of the game I had burned through most Ethers and Elixirs - I was never stuck for MP but the option to buy Ethers came very late in the game this time.
As for the guys - Attack is the only real option; Throw was less powerful and Shurikens are too expensive, late game and nerfed. Jump for Kain is pretty much all he can do, or Attack, he has 0MP. All the guests had interesting abilities but it all came back to the basics in the end. Except FuSoYa - he had every spell but like 180MP so I would get him to spam his ability, Regen, which was very slow but something.
There are no class changes or Jobs or anything (with one major Plot exception) so kind of a step back from FF3. No upgrades to any characters really unlike 1 and 2 and 3. They all get progressively stronger while I felt the game was easier, I did not game over until the very very end against the optional Dark Bahamut and all it took was me changing strategy for him. But I never felt like it was possible to hit on an OP strategy or build with any character that broke the game or anything.
So all in all a disappointment on this front, not a while lot to plan for at all. But I hear FF5 more than makes up for it...
Conclusion
So a slight upturn from FF3 but barely, FF4 had better music, characters and plot but weaker stuff like battling and mechanics.
I knew I liked it more early on but again just a tiny bit more than FF3.
Of the Pixel remasters:
FF1 = 60.5/100
FF2 = 62/100
FF3 = 58/100
FF4 = 59/100
Apparently 5 has amazing mechanics and job system and weaker plot, while 6 is lauded as the greatest title. I now have 5 in my library so might crack into it soon, am feeling a bit poorly. I actually have the 3D game as well but I can save all those versions for some other time if I want to.
The achievements were a tiny bit harder to get here, namely the obscure item drops. Took a bit of the postgame to collect those but only an hour or two. Also the level achievement creeps up every game, this game needed all 5 of the main party to be 70.
There was a particularly infamous series of drops namely the Hidden Summons for Rydia such as Goblin and Cockatrice. I had Goblin and Bomb but had to grind for the other 3 but it did not take that long at all thankfully. Another one to acquire the ultimate armour was toughter, getting the Pink Tail was apparently once a 1/64 chance but I got it in like 5 battles. I was happy with that as I sometimes have flashbacks about my grind versus the Adamantortoises etc. in FF13.
Hiya - I was studying how to play Final Fantasy 2 as I intend to play that next but my eyes were starting to blur at all the preparations so I said f it I'll throw together a quick FF1 review while it's still frehs on my memory and I remember what my screenshots meant at the time.
I've never played FF1 before so this was fun and I really did enjoy it. It was tedious at times but it gets a pass for the nice sprite graphics, nostalgia for the first entry of my beloved series and the few nice things they added/improved in the recent Steam edition.
