Love/hate #34 Final Fantasy IV Pixel Remaster on Steam 100%

 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.

Love/hate #33 Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster 100% Steam completion

 Better type this down while its fresh on my mind. I started it on Sunday the 2nd of January and finished it on the 3rd of January haha. Took all of 16 hours and unlike the first two, no game overs. It was much easier than FF2 and much more polished than either FF1 or FF2. But was it better?



Main characters

You get to name them. Good. They have no class or job so you can define them Good. They have no other real distinguishing features. Not so good.

While your main guy, in my case, Fire, gets dialogue (blue text here and there) the rest just tag along and get no moments to themselves. I guess, neither did the backing characters in the first two games but at least in 2 Firion, Maria and Guy had a bit of a back story and dialogue apiece. And the other fourth character was integral to the plot, I guess. Here, in FF3, its all about the main guy and even then not much to say.

I only named the main guy Fire because he was red, blue was Water, green was Earth and pink was Air. They have no discerning attributes in this one, unlike in FF2 where Maria had higher intelligence so made a good mage from the start. Kind of a bummer.

Battle

It's as polished as it ever is with these remasters. While you can mess around a bit with different setups I spent 99% of the game attacking with Fire and Earth, healing with Water the White Mage and blasting the enemy with spells with my Black Mage, Air.

There is absolutely no need to dip into casting Haste or Berserk like there was in 1 and 2. While those were the difference makers in boss fights, I found that bothering to waste time casting Haste (a single target spell) would just mean losing a turn of healing with Water. It was just better for her to spam healing while the others damaged. I never even cast Holy in this game.

By the end of the game I was still attacking with Earth and Fire, healing with Water and spamming Meteor with Air. It worked and there was no need to deviate.

Minigames

There were none in this game so will just give a passing score of 5 here. Sh*tty, tedious games you have to play to advance the plot or get better stuff = lower score, awesom games that enhance the experience or are otherwise optional like card games = higher score. No games, medium. Not fair to give a 0.

Music

The main battle theme I never muted and had no problem listening to all game for hundreds of battles. Wasn't a banger but not offensive. There were one or two goodies but all in all not a very exciting soundtrack but very solid. I did enjoy how every location you saved/helped out would play this epic, triumphant tune when you returned there. The overworld theme was solid. The final dungeons were epic enough.

Plot & Villains

I followed a guide for 100% completion but I am still invested in the twists and turns of the plot. This is a weaker one for sure, no evil empire or whatever to fight against. The villains only reveal themselves here and there. Not much of a spoiler 30 years after its come out but there is a Giant Space Flea from nowhere bad gal just like in other entries. And that takes over from a paper thin villain IMO an evil mage dude who feels slighted because he is designated mortal.

I mean, fair but I don't know, having all the bad things already happen and then the Warriors of Light undo them one by one is less compelling than the give and take of 2 for example where for every step forward you take a step back. Just having dealt with the likes of Sephiroth and Ultimecia and knowing my first exposure to Kefka is coming up eventually makes FF3 pale in comparison.

I realise I don't have a score for World or Setting which I feel is probably more important, must revise that. The World is cool you got from a Floating Continent down to a drowned world you must save halfway through the game. There are also underwater sections, an entire underwater layer indeed but you don't spend that much time down there.

Allies/NPCs/Dialogue

Like any classic JRPG, there are plenty of amusing NPCs to interact with in every town and village that repeat themselves. Whenever your character, in my case Fire spoke, it was blue text so he gets a few words in here or there in important scenes but it's nothing exciting.

It only became clear at the end of the game but I had helped out 5 'souls of light' - good people I encountered along the way who I rescued or assisted in some way and they woudl all band together to help in the final confrontation between light and dark. If only they weren't the most forgettable bunch of Allies ever. Oh and they 'joined the party' but don't assist in combat they just sort of tag along. Whatever.

I say all that but the scene where they all assisted did bring joy to my heart so there is that, lifted this title from being completely average in score.

The Gooey

The big difference here is Jobs take over completely. A return to spell slots but no more levelling up your skills by using them. You have a Job level and an overall level. By the end of the game my characters were all around level 50 but in their Jobs it was different:

Fire was a Warrior 80+ for most of the game, then I switched him to Knight and he got almost as high up in that, maybe 70+. He briefly experimented with being a Black Mage in one other thing I must mention in a moment. All he did was Attack and he was good at it too.

Water was a White Mage 99, the one who unlocked that achievement. All she did was cast variations of Cure on the group. The occasional Raise for the dead later on. I would sometimes bother to remove peoples' status ailments with her instead of items. I switched her to Devout when that became available and she continued to heal people.

Earth was a Monk 70+, then a Black Belt for a while, then finally a Ninja. While the guides and internet in general celebrated the Ninja and all these he was very solid and not as flimsy as the Thief in FF1. I was advised at the final boss to use the Throw ability to fling like 10 Shurikens at her to win and I did. The rest helped just as much. Other than that, all game he attacked. He was briefly a Red Mage in one or two sections.

Air was a Black Mage almost to 99 before he became a Magus for the rest of the game. While a lot of the guides suggested having a Dark Knight or something to stop the splitting/multiplying enemies that appear in 2-3 dungeons I just went with classic magical artillery. All he did was cast spells and while the Black Mage kind of petered out midgame the Magus swung back and was really useful later in the game. Maybe not the most optimal anti-group weapon but I liked him. End of game he just spammed Meteor and every few battles toward the finale I would use an Elixir on him and the healer to have them at full spell slots.

So that's it really, there are a ton of jobs many of which I never bothered with Bard, Ranger, Summoner (I gave all the 8 summon spells to my fighter just for the achievement) and loads more. I kind of dithered on changing jobs a few times but eventually just decided to plough on as far as I could with the basics and get what I wanted above, namely the ultimate mage jobs and Ninja. I thought of making my fighter a Viking as a final step but Knight was perfect.

Oh I almost forgot - there were a few locations where you had to cast Mini on yourself in order to move around tiny places and Toad to go underwater. Was not a big fan of these locations but mercifully they were short. You pretty much had to change job to have mages in the whole party but as I said the sections were short and the monsters were thankfully weak.

Graphics

It's tied with FF1 and FF2, another gorgeous sprite remaster. Not much else to say about it! I will say this here - while in FF1 there were very few if any secret tunnels and such, in 2 there was a few but 3 is RIDDLED with secret tunnels. If you didn't have a guide you'd be looking forever for these. Everywhere, every town it seemed every dungeon was perforated with tunnels and secrets. Kind of cool but dangerous for the achievement hunter.

Conclusion

Ultimately a fun if forgettable entry in the series. By my scoring it's the lowest at 58/100 but who knows, I still have 4,5,6 to play as well as 15 and of course stuff like X-2, XIII's two sequels and maybe the MMO 14 so it could be lifted up.  Oh and 11 how could I forget ^_^ . Not a bad FF just feels like a step backwards after FF2, maybe they were scared they made that too difficult so in 1990 they released a back to basics, polished 3.

Onto FF4! Probably sooner rather than later.

2021 retrospective

 Hoo boy. I know everyone was saying 2021 was shite but it's hard to argue with them. Much like 2020, 2021 for me started good for a month or two and then dipped. In 2020 it was just the dip of lockdown and fear from March to late autumn before things started to open up again. In 2021, it was a meltdown of sorts until I hit rock bottom in the summer and then slowly recovered back to the present, end of 2021 where I'm just fine.

EDIT Jan 2nd 2022: This was very negative for some reason so I will say this: I got to meet up with a few good friends over the year, I still got to go out a few times, family and friends are healthy and safe and other than that not much happened felt like a continuation of 2020. So not too bad overall just a bit blehhh. I mainly could not cope with constantly feeling sun-struck in the summer so was delighted to move to evening shift.

Some topics:

52 takeaways

I actually ate food from 59 different takeaways in Galway this year. I originally planned to only eat from new places but I was eating takeaway on average twice a week so I fell back on classics as well as some of the good new ones. Here they are:

1. mcdonalds
2. botown
3. galway tandoori
4. goldenmountain
5. bun bros
6. four star
7. umbrella
8. curryandspice 
9. woozza
10. boojum
11. YUMMY WOK - best spice bag I had.
12. papa johns
13. nuthot
14. subway
15. milanos
16. burger king
17. handsome burg
18. bare pantry
19. charcoal mary street
20. dominos
21. shake dog
22. hush? burgers
23. VOCHO - amazing loaded fries, got me trying loaded fries everywhere for a while
24. wholly cow
25. speedos
26. scottys
27. CHARCOAL - cross ST
28. zambrero - great burritos and the amazing ice cream cookie sandwiches
29. cap cabin
30. bun and burger co
31. da roberta
32. sliders bar n grill
33. underground
34. harrys - great burgers, beautiful frozen cocktails. Good desserts.
35. venice
36. classico
37. mizzoni
38. capones
39. chef laura rosso
40. apache
41. burgerstory
42. pizzamax
43. mcdo central
44. gourmet offensive
45. anfora
46. lolo
47. jalan jalan
48. bangin noodles
49. neo
50. spice india
51. giovannis
52. tulsi
53. supermac
54. osteria
55. chili shACK
56. china garden
57. xian street food
58. samyo
59. kashmir

So that was fun, definitely gave me more places to go back to. I only did that because I ordered so much four star in 2020.

Ogame

I played this briefly in 2015/16 and for a year in like 2007 but have been playing this again since 2020 and taking big vacations here and there. I think I spent March 2021-September 2021 on vacation mode. Despite that I have made it to rank 165 roughly out of 1900+ players. I'll return to it in a few months I worked really hard at it from October to December but just need a break.

Survival modes, Very Hard

These deserve a solo post, maybe in January. I played Fallout 4, Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 3 to completion on Very Hard difficulty and you know what, it wasn't too bad! I will do a post in January on all 3 of them, why not.

Final Fantasies

I have posted about 1 and 2 already and my 100% completion of same. They deserve a mention here as I never played them before and they made an impression on me that's for sure, especially 2.

Top 2021 song(s)

This is a tough one. I had to disqualify a few that were actually released in 2020.

Cold Heart
Back4good
Bed
Remember
My Universe
Bad Habits
Red
Easy on Me

...are some faves from 2021. I'll give the award to Becky Hill. Olivia and RAYE can follow that.

Work blab

I went from easy work at night to harder work in the daytime. Since October I am doing the harder work on a much more preferable evening shift. I start at 4:45 and finish at 1:15 Mondya to Thursday and on Friday it's 2:15 to 7:15. It's super chill, I can continue walking 5km to work and back (something I've done every workday since January) and less people. Also they are just generally sound in there.

DND

One of the things that kept me sane this year. As a player I got to play in the 5e campaign Curse of Strahd start to finish. Played an Aarakocra Gloomstalker Ranger and it was great fun. As a player I only play 'team player' type characters so as awesome as my flying and long range sniping was the party came first. Finished the game with some awesome equipment and lessons learned.

As a GM: I only returned to GMing full time in mid 2020 after a hiatus since 2016, even then last time I was properly full time was like August 2011 so like 9 years. ANYWAY I have made various posts about the campaign which is basically a heavily edited Doomstones/Crystals of Power campaign from Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay edition 1 crossed with my own stuff. This is based off the deposition of the 3 demigoddess queens who ruled one of the main countries of my gameworld for like 1900+ years.

 So far so good, 50 sessions done since the 29th of December 2021 and 1200 things killed exactly. I've been using experience points instead of milestones and it's worked out well. They are currently level 14 and have acquired 2 doomstones/crystals of power, lost another 1 and are about to uncover the last 1. I'm hoping over the next 6 months to close out the campaign and wrap it all up. I am enjoying it immensely but in classic GM fashion am already planning out the next campaign, hopefully starting in late 2022. I'm thinking Enemy Within as a template although heavily, heavily edited and crossed with events from my gameworld.

Conclusion: 2022  

In conclusion, 2021 was a 5 out of 10. Here's hoping 2022 is better. I'm 30 in like 12 days!

Love/Hate #32 Age of Wonders III

 I finally played Age of Wonders 3. And basically played it to death. As in, I played the basic minimum to death. I never really did much of the tactical combat and I'm sure there are all kinds of intricacies that I missed out on but I got a good look at pretty much the whole thing.

It's basically the best elements of Age of Wonders 1, 2 and modern 4X games mashed together and the result is pretty damn good.

My first ever game I played some random class and lost horribly. I rectified that by deliberately picking an Orc Warlord class who started with a powerful army and proceeded to dominate. My third ever game I foolishly picked an extra large map and played as a human dreadnought. Loved the Dreadnought class for all the machines and gunpowder units, really fit with my idea of the Humans in Age of Wonders, tech savvy.

There are achievements for playing most races, so I did so. None in particular were particularly exciting to play, and I see



Race relations don't matter so much any longer, I was often a Orc or Elf or whatever running a cosmopolitan empire with no difficulties. I was also playing on the easier difficulties so maybe that changes a lot.



Most games devolved into just sending 2 or at most 3 powerful stacks around and clearing out independent structures without rhyme or reason. The occasional lair would provide some nice items to equip my expanding roster of heroes and my leader who I usually risked in the field anyway. The AI players seemed content to just muddy around and expand slowly enough around their own realm. Every game I'd have the most cities and biggest economy and would even settle a few cities. Every town would have a garrison and I'd usually rush them out and replace them whenever I needed to rally the entire military to attack another player or seldom for desperate defence.



You can customise your leader to a ridiculous degree including their faces and features in general but I usually passed on that. Maybe I'd mess with their pose and 1 of the handful outfits offered. Like in AoW2 you can give yourself certain traits but they don't seem to game-breaky and unfortunately or perhaps fortunately you can't edit your starting skills to make classic dominate-lightning strike badass heroes with max defence.

You level up over time and with battles as do your heroes but I'm sure there are all these nuances and skill synergies but I just increased defence, resistance and hit points initially and later I would buy the nice boosters like 'Forge Aprons' which grant all units in army 40% fire resistance and so on as they are nice damn boosts and helpful for buffing non-hero units.

Leaders die and go to the 'void' and return 3 turns later in the throne city you start in so one thing from Aow2 they kept and improved on. Leaders are also mounted and capable of being badasses again. I like having my leaders and heroes in the field rather than sitting on some wizard tower to spread my domain (looking at you Aow2).

Units no longer have descriptions, instead have quotations. I miss the descriptions of AoW1 which were very nicely done and sometimes very obscure but provided some worldbuilding. The quotes are still good though and capture the units well, the Nymph for example is a good story.

I didn't cast many spells other than some of the summon spells for the achievements like summon Dread Reaper and so on. I would allow my guys to cast spells in combat if offered in automatic.

Cosmological events were good some you could just passively ignore ones that boosted stats or penalised aspects of empire depending on whether you were good or evil and so on but some were more active such as spawning armies of independents. Thankfully I usually had the walls and garrisons to deal with this craic as they would always attack in the background of my empire where it was safe, never really near my 2-3 exploring stacks.



Most battles I played automatic and overwhelmingly in my favour but I gave the tactical combat a go. I sometimes did tactical if the odds were incredibly against me (likely defeat) as automatic had a bad tendency to just have all my guys die instantly and no casualties to enemy. In tactical, even at max speed and auto battle, my units seemed to bloody the enemy or even win sometimes. Sometimes outright slaughter the enemy.

Editor - I gave this a spin and did make most of a Necut map but I dunno it soured on me quickly. Just too 'debuggy' for my liking a lot of editors are like that now. I'm sure I could get over the hump and just finish the damn thing and maybe learn a thing or two but who has the time. Maybe I'll return to it but again slightly separate issue but Necut has advanced beyond simple global maps, in AoW3 anyway more zoomed in continental maps would be better served for Necut rather than zoomed out world maps.

Achievements - most of them are easily attainable through regular play. There are no real obnoxious ones like play 10000 games or anything. There is one that is win 30 online games but I can do that eventually... cheese or no... There are also <10 to do with the campaign and the dlc campaigns, I'll do them one day but I've shelved Aow3 for now.



It's a good game but I dunno the heart seems to have gone. As I said I'd mindlessly build units for garrisons and then just build random buildings and it would all work out. Maybe at higher level play there are all these strategies but I still had fun. Cities would get a little tedious later I'd just have them loop build merchandise eventually. Increasingly horrible cosmological events and independent armies I felt pushed me to end the game sooner and kill the enemy usually.



But yeah I gave the seals and unifier victories a go and they slightly changed gameplay but not too much, I am somewhat intrigued to play seals again - capture and hold a point for a certain number of turns - especially if I play a map with multiple seal points not just the one I had in my 2 games. As a certain article said somewhere, it really forces you to dilute your strength and play in non-optimal standard AoW ways, stacks out in front of the 'Back' (rest of empire, quiet cities w/ and w/o garrison, away from enemy).



Unifier was painful as I had a map with 10 cities on it and I controlled 9 and the enemy had 1. I had him boxed away anyway. I then had to juggle the happiness of my empire between the Orcs and Dwarves, make both happy enough with me to build and then light these beacons that declare I am the unifier of the world or something and win. You build a beacon and light it and the AI declare war on you and the independent spawn big armies to stop it. That's all fine. What wasn't was how awkward it was to get the race relations to the amount to get it started. Spent maybe 150 turns playing that game but maybe I'm just an idiot and did it in an awkward fashion. I won anyway, eventually.



All in all as I said the best of the past combined with modern 4X elements make AoW3 very playable but I'm sure there are plenty of 4X games with may more heart than this. By that I mean I just don't care you can re-skin the different races and units and they are still laregly the same, most games are the same in the end.

I'll return again to play through the campaigns I am intrigued by what may be in them but at the same time I just don't have the time or patience for campaign style games most of these games offer nowadays.