Final Fantasy I・II・III: Memory of Heroes – Quantum-Identical Quadruplets

Content Warning: Body Horror

Once again, we have a single-page interlude before FFIII. This one exists to remind us that Light isn’t “good” in the world of FFIII, and so not in the world of Memory of Heroes, either – it’s just order, and that’s not always beneficial. But it also warns that the Void, oblivion, is worse than both Light and Darkness, and you can probably guess where that’s going, too: he’s going to make the Cloud of Darkness an avatar of the recurring, Final Fantasy “Void” rather than of Dark, her name be damned. I honestly approve! It’s pretty much the only way to hold FFIII’s backstory intact, where the Cloud was responsible for the Ancient empire of Light. “Light can also be evil, but Darkness is somehow still responsible for that.” Yeah, great dualism you’ve got there, FFIII. Try again!

Since the reader understands the general rhythm of the three Famicom games at this point (not least because this book was written for a very niche market who had probably already played the Famicom games in some form or another), Umemura makes a reasonable call to start the story in medias res with the FFIII party already fighting the Djinn, skipping a lot of rigamarole! This also arguably skips a lot of character building, but the 3D versions of FFIII have standalone character scenarios for each character, so there’s still time for them to shine, even if Ingus’ episode is being slashed in half as we speak.

Continue reading →

Final Fantasy I・II・III: Memory of Heroes – Once More Unto the Breach

This is FFTA Radio Edition’s fault.

If you haven’t already seen my coverage, the FFTA Radio Edition was a direct adaptation of the original that arguably improved on it, or at least kept me entertained for most of the run. That was good, because I generally find direct adaptations to be very boring! Direct adaptations (adaptations that repeat the exact plot of the original in a different media) just aren’t for me, and it’s even worse for my format, because they provide so little to talk about, except in the unusual cases that they go completely off the rails, like Legends of the Eternal Wind or the FFXII manga. And think about it: modern, novel adaptations were mostly created to adapt movies or TV. If a novelization is barely the right format to cover an hour and a half movie, what could they possibly do with a 40 hour RPG? So I approach certain upcoming Final Fantasy Journals with… trepidation. Even this one is going to be more a list of changes than an ongoing narrative, because there’s so little new to work with, but it’s the nature of the beast.

Continue reading →

Final Fantasy Marathon Look-Back: The Worst Dungeons!

So, during my most recent FFVIII post, I was discussing my least favourite dungeon in the entire Final Fantasy Marathon, D-District Prison. For point of reference, I also threw some shade on my previous least-favourite dungeon, the Ronka Ruins from FFV. But as I added in an edit after the fact, I actually replayed FFV not long after FFVIII, and realized I didn’t dislike the Ronka Ruins as much as I remembered. If you want to see my comments on those two dungeons, check out that post. In this post, I’m going to follow up those thoughts by trying to work out my new #2 least-favourite dungeon! I’ll do this by going through the series, listing all of my picks for worst dungeons, and we’ll rank them at the end.

Now, some quick standards. Because not every FF game has “dungeons,” we’re going to be weighing whatever each game considers to be a distinct “unit of play.” That means dungeons in the traditional RPGs, any chapter/stage in the stage-based games, or any battle or fixed series of battles in FFT (spoiler: there are no FFT battles on this list, not even the duel with Wiegraf. But I thought it would be nice to have that rule in case we revisit this list after playing FFTA, because who knows!). Also, this is only for games we’ve covered in the Final Fantasy Marathon at the time of writing (in the middle of FFVIII), and for Final Fantasy alone. If I had allowed Persona 1 dungeons, there’d be nothing else on the fucking list, so I am happy to dismiss it. No TV episodes or films either, both because they’re so different, and because, like Persona 1, LotC and FFU would just dominate the list. With that out of the way, let’s take the the dungeons in Marathon order.

Continue reading →

Final Fantasy Marathon Look-Back, Part 1

Since we wrapped up the FFVI Journal last week, we decided to take the opportunity to do a celebration here at Marathon Recaps and look back over the past two eras of Final Fantasy: the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. And it won’t just be me because, for the first time you’ll be hearing Kyle’s thoughts directly from the source! With many of these games, it’s been years since we last played them, and we wondered if a good look back might have changed out opinions. So here’s the plan: this week, Kyle and I will alternate talking about each game, giving some time-aged insight into each, with Kyle going first as selected randomly (Ed. well, mostly, I’ve eliminated a more complicated format to avoid confusion). Next week, we’ll be back with two Top 5 lists each: our Top 5 Worst and Top 5 Best Moments in the Marathon! Be sure to be back for that!

Continue reading →

Final Fantasy II – The Many Trials of Our Headache

Once again, since Soul of Rebirth is from the remake, we’ve got filler screenshots today.

I’m going to put this bluntly: at the time of writing, Soul of Rebirth was the roughest part of our entire Marathon so far, and also the dullest. It started with the longest grind of the Marathon as well, almost as long on its own as the final dungeon of the main game. This is where we discovered that the mirrored Jade Passage actually does have different enemies on other floors, meaning the impossible enemies dropped on our heads when we controlled only Minwu and Scott were just the 2004 developers being dicks. It wasn’t a happy way to start the day.

Continue reading →

Final Fantasy II – Nyah, Nyah, you can’t hurt me while I still have my stats!

First off, according to a walkthrough we checked, Leon is supposed to be stronger than us right now, or at least as strong. E-excuse me.

(*hideous laughter* *wheezing* *gross cackling*)

Leon started off stronger in Attack than everyone but Firion, and was weaker than everyone in every. single. other. stat. Oh dearie. We have a problem.

We started the day by trying to grind a few of Maria’s weapon stats, and also Leon in general. Leon got a bit out of it but actually proved somewhat uncooperative. It wasn’t (quite) like Josef strangling himself to death with his own hands: Leon just didn’t gain HP, the only stat we were truly monitoring, until we were well past the Jade Passage. But Ultima was the real disappointment, looking at this in hindsight. We never used Ultima, not seriously. While it proved better than Maria’s Level 6 Flare (and it only cost 4 MP for most of the time we had it), Maria was simply too preoccupied with casting Berserk 6, which was the real game-breaker. Ultimate magic my ass.

Continue reading →

Final Fantasy II – I Cast Magic Missile at the Weather

Returning to the north, we received some bad news almost as soon as we stepped on shore, when we were attacked by a powerful new group of Imperial, wandering monsters. It was a great accidental story moment: “Oh, shit, the army’s here.” Exploration confirmed it was worse than even that: all the towns opposed to the Empire, except for Fynn, had been outright destroyed. Even the original headquarters of the Rebellion! The people in Fynn were rambling about how Fynn would be next and wouldn’t stand a chance, making you wonder why Fynn hadn’t been attacked first. There’s really no explanation, either, since the doughnut world makes it so Palamecia and Fynn are practically neighbours.

The source of the attack? The Emperor had used his magic to summon a massive tornado. Wow, and Ultima is supposed to be the ultimate magic? (Tornado actually did go on to become an unusual but powerful FF spell.) We followed our walkthroughs and told Paul that we planned to attack the “Cyclone.” To help out, he gave us access to his stash, which included the Blood Sword. Excellent. Stage 1 of The Plan is complete. We have our super-weapon: a blade that causes more damage to an enemy the more HP they have, devastating bosses in a massive, developer oversight. Now for our secret plan: to smuggle it into hell. We’re the heroes.

Continue reading →

Final Fantasy II – 00 Days Since Last Accident

Our murdering a snake-lady disguised as the princess led to the most bizarre scene of the game. Our weapons still stained with the blood of the woman they thought was their monarch, Gordon and some guards burst in and started shouting that the princess was still being held by the Empire. Look, if you knew about the monster, would you at least remark on it? If not… could you arrest us? I don’t want you to arrest us, but I’d appreciate some semblance of realism, some reaction to this series of events.

It seems that the Emperor had a coliseum built near Palamecia itself, and was holding the princess as the “prize” of the tournament. Yeah, this isn’t a trap, let’s rush right in to the weapon- and monster-filled location where they’re holding the political prisoner. For his next low-hanging fruit, the Emperor will hold the Elf Prince hostage in one of the jet-bike stages from Battletoads.

Also, shouldn’t Hilda be addressed as “Queen” by now?

Continue reading →

Final Fantasy II – This is All Firion’s Fault

When we reached Kashuan with our unexplained bell-key, we discovered the fire was right there, just inside the broken front gate. We hadn’t noticed it during our Kashuan grind, just assuming it was the sort of fire pit dungeons keep as decoration all the time. The real problem would be finding the torch inside the rest of the ruins. I admit, this does retroactively explain how the empire got to the fire, if not how they carried it. In any event, the locked door was just past the fire, so we unlocked it and discovered Prince Gordon had gotten here before us, but had stopped just inside the gate, terrified of the monsters. Dammit man! Someone’s already died because you went missing! A little girl’s been orphaned and left with an obsessive stranger! And… okay, several of those things are our fault, and probably none of this is helping your cowardice, but my point stands!

Continue reading →

Final Fantasy II – Freelance Adoption Agency

What we did next was a bit of an odd note, one not likely to be repeated in the Final Fantasy marathon. We decided to use the game’s fast travel system – this game has a taxi system of ships and airships – to explore ahead of where we were supposed to be, partially because the airship ticket guy talks too fast and we bought one by accident. We landed in a town that was only one quest ahead of our intent, but we actually stumbled into a special plot point you can only see by going ahead of schedule!

It seems that the Empire was building a massive Dreadnought, an airship built for war (as opposed to the warships in the other Final Fantasy games, which carried fully-equipped level 93 Warriors of Light for famine-relief purposes). The man in charge of the operation was called “the Dark Knight” and no one else in town would speak to us: it’s not clear if they were just terrified of the Knight or if they were actually zombified by some sort of power. Later dialogue suggested that whatever it was, terror or magic, it was making work proceed at a rapid clip.

Continue reading →