341 - Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy. Dragons and Broadswords. Mystery and Adventure. Final Fantasy has them all. And welcome to Nostalgia, a chronological exploration of... Every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. The day has come. Destiny has arrived. It is not our final fantasy. It's not even the... Final Final Fantasy will even play in our lifetimes, but there is something we need to get out of the way real fast, and that is the rumor.

That has been spreading for nearly, what, 30 plus years now about Final Fantasy. And it's meaning for either the creators or developer Square at the time. That's what we're leading with. There is a belief. Yeah, we talked about this. There is a belief that I feel like it needs to be cleared up. And that is the origin of Final Fantasy itself, right? The origin of all things. Everything has a beginning.

Final Fantasy, they wanted to call it anything that had an FF sound to it. I don't know why. I don't know how the Japanese language works, but they liked the idea of... uh alliteration with two f's and they were trying to do fighting fantasy which is definitely weaker than final fantasy i don't know if fighting fantasy like fighting fantasy works for one game

I don't think anybody's looking for Fighting Fantasy 2 unless it's like a brawler. It's funny because realistically Final Fantasy should be the one that only works for one game because of the word final. But Final Fantasy... is like an epic like accident in the sense of like it truly does uh bring on this idea where obviously this rumor would have started from the idea that like

Square was so down on their luck that this was going to be their last game. They would close the studios. So they just had one final fantasy, but it, it also like those words are great for.

you know, myths and legends and the kinds of stuff that you deal with in the game Final Fantasy, where I don't think fighting fantasy... conveys anything other than maybe the combat system you know like there's so much more to this game than that i completely agree i mean final fantasy in my opinion is the perfect name but uh

Yeah, I think that my issue with fighting fantasy is more that it doesn't give me the vibe of the combat system. It makes me think of a fighting game. It makes me think it's like... Or a fantasy version of Street Fighter or something. I also think we're trained by decades of knowing Final Fantasy to think that. But I also agree that it does roll off the tongue better.

But I think if it was fighting fantasy and fighting fantasy 8 came out, I think we would still be like, oh, I can't think of it being called something else. I don't know. Well, yeah, yeah. I mean, totally because we are trained. by recognition but just something about the word final fit like it doesn't mean anything and that's why it's so cool

Because it's like Final Fantasy. It's like almost got this air of mystery to it. We're like, why is it the Final Fantasy? It's like, this is the end all fantasy story. I know that's not what they were going for, but... Perfect. It's closer to final. It's the F-I-N-F-I-N thing. Yes. That was Wall Street, kid. It's fun that...

The Final Fantasy thing is the only thing that's not final about the franchise, right? No matter what, there's always more Final Fantasy on the horizon. Even now, we are up to 16, probably going to get 17 in the near future. uh, don't never say never to this franchise. I think that's like, what's interesting is that what should be, Oh, final fantasy, like the last one. It's like, no, it's just, it just keeps going. It's definitely one of the,

Premiere video game franchises, if it was a stock, you would see a very shaky chart, right? It kind of falls in and out of favor from time to time. But I do think... Final Fantasy XVI and the VII remakes have put Final Fantasy back into some of its highest territories ever. Would you guys agree with that? It's prestige again.

Yeah, yeah. I think that, honestly, I think there was really only, like, since it got, since it became Prestige, I think there was really, like, just, like, one long dark era. What's the dark era? 11 to 15.

yeah 12 being like a bright supposedly i've never played it like a bright gem in the dark era but like yeah i completely agree yeah i could see that especially because i think 15 was one that a lot of people were banking on as uh you know like a return to form and like you know oh we're back to these four you know just these four bros hanging out you know in a car and it's gonna it's gonna be something like you know the four bros

that you have in Final Fantasy 1. Hanging out in the car. Well, no car, but I mean, hey, there's some pretty cool vehicles in this game. You'll have to give them credit for that. But, you know, it didn't quite deliver. And while we're on the subject of origins of Final Fantasy, I would love to hear your guys' origin story with Final Fantasy. It is something that none of us...

played Final Fantasy 1 as our first game, or even necessarily our second game, right? So, Joe, where and how were you introduced to Final Fantasy? It's hard to say exactly, like, when. But I know it was after I got my PS1, I had a demo disc with Final Fantasy VII on it. And I had never played a JRPG before. So just the idea of... This stat turn-based system where it's not about the action, it's about the strategy, and it's about this story. It felt so adult to me.

really held a major allure to me. I thought that was so cool, and I was so fascinated by the story. And I played the opening bombing mission of Final Fantasy VII a lot as a kid. I didn't know.

what was really going on, and I never even really knew what the full game was like. And it wasn't until I was in fourth grade, and a friend of mine came over, and he brought Final Fantasy VIII, and we played... oddly enough another train mission from disc one of final fantasy eight and i was hooked on that and like literally the next day i begged my parents to take me to wherever media play or wherever i went and i got final fantasy eight

And I've told this story so many times on the podcast, but played Final Fantasy VIII for like eight years, getting stuck on different things, not really understanding what I was doing. And then finally, like when I was a junior in high school, I was like, I've been playing this for so long and I'm doing so bad. I'm going to start over. And I started over and then beat it in like a week. You were on the same save file the whole time?

Yeah, yeah. I would play, like, I played up until, I mean, Sean, you're familiar, I played up until disc two when there's the, um... the missile-based mission, and I got stuck on a boss there. I was stuck on that boss for, like, three and a half years. Like, I would just come back to it every couple months and, like, can I beat it now? Nope. And then, um, because I didn't really know how to play.

you know yeah and then when i got older then i played it and i disagree i think it's a great i think it's once you learn how to play it's a great no i'm sure we'll talk about that later but um but yeah so final fantasy 8 was like In the zeitgeist of my childhood, those characters were always there. That's what got me into Kingdom Hearts. That's what got me into other games. I eventually played 7, and then I went back and played 6, and I recently played 9, and I've played...

4 and 1 and everything. I love the series because of that. Yeah, I mean, similar to Joe, Final Fantasy 7 was my first exposure. It was more so like my stepbrother... It was like, oh, I got this game. It's supposed to be the best game ever. And then we were kind of like taking it back at like how weird it looked. And then we sort of watched him play for a while. And then I started my own save when he wasn't looking and yada, yada.

Then moved on to 8, then mostly skipped 9 because it got rid of all the sci-fi stuff, and that's sort of what drew me to it. Came back with 10. Didn't really care for online stuff, so skipped 11. 12 I played and fell out of very quickly, and then I just sort of like, you know, I hibernated for a while, and...

Some say that that hibernation never really ended. Some say. It's a legend. Until 7 Remake. I think my first exposure to Final Fantasy 1 was I was... I rented, for a weekend, the PlayStation 1 re-release with the newfangled... FMVs, yada yada. Yes, Final Fantasy Origins. Yes, I grabbed that and was not prepared for how much of a technological step back it was.

But, you know, I think I played through the first island or maybe got to the boss of the first island and was just like, huh, maybe this isn't for me. And again, this was... I don't even know what year that came out. It was probably like 11 or 12. Maybe, yeah, something like that. But I played, yeah, FF7, 1998. Kind of just stuck with that as my...

as my identity for a while. And I think I've told a version of this story somewhere, so I'll abbreviate it, but I started... getting interested in retro gaming much earlier than like i was playing video games for in a weird way like super smash brothers melee with its trophies and you know weird like this is the first appearance of this character like really got me into the idea of playing these older games and that there was like a history to franchises and stuff. So.

Before I even had like a Wii, I was going backwards and being like, well, I got to get a Super Nintendo. I got to get an NES. So I was like this weird 12 year old who was like asking my mom on eBay to like buy me old consoles and stuff. So. I didn't really play modern Final Fantasy when it came out, but I also didn't play the old Final Fantasy games too far from their original release when you actually think about it. What wound up happening for me, though, is...

Turn-based RPGs, for whatever reason, eluded me when I was a kid. Like, other than Pokemon, I wasn't that interested in them, and I think I had tried a few. I know my first ever was Quest 64, and that's a terrible game. So it was just like a bad introduction. But I didn't really feel like I fully grasped the concept or whatever. So as I started getting more into retro gaming, I knew about the prolific...

Final Fantasy franchise, but I didn't think of Final Fantasy as the 3D entries of 7, 8, 9. I didn't even think about those games when I tried to picture Final Fantasy in my head. It was... the images of like one, four and six. Like, that's what I thought was like, oh, I got to go experience that stuff. Not I got to go experience the.

bombing mission in final fantasy 7 so my first entry was final fantasy 4 what we know is or what we knew at the time is final fantasy 2 on the super nintendo and that game immediately like hooked me Just from a story point, like to Joe's thing, it was like, we played video games that are before that do all sorts of different stuff, but it never had something that felt so like...

you know oh this is like a movie like this is you know it takes like the next narrative step in video games and it's weird to say that as somebody who was playing them in my teenage years because I should have been exposed to more narrative driven games but I was mostly playing Sports games, platformers, party games, racing games. I wasn't really looking for these epic stories until after my introduction to Final Fantasy IV. So I have...

Final Fantasy 4 to thank for that. And that got me hooked on immediately trying all the other Final Fantasy entries. And I have not played them all, not even close to them all, actually. It's weird. It's like everybody has their own numbers.

And I feel like very rarely do you get somebody who's like, yeah, I played all of them. Like there are people who love Final Fantasy, but probably like never touched. And then they insert like three numbers that you'll be like, that's crazy. How did you not play that one? Like that just happens. Yeah.

But we're here to talk about Final Fantasy 1 and, you know, rather than do any sort of deep historical, you know, look into the franchise of how it started or talk about who worked on it and the coding and everything. I feel like that's a different podcast, and I think we should just start to get into the actual game, and there's no better way than to start a file of this game and get into the character creation, the class system.

And the party you make is the immediate answer to, well, how is this different than Dragon Warrior, right? In Dragon Warrior, you're one character taking on enemies one at a time. as you progress as a single entity. In Final Fantasy, you're a party of four. Now, that's not unheard of on the NES. We have played, since Dragon Warrior, other RPGs.

that uh you know are mostly ports of pc games so maybe they're a little wonky when they get brought down to the nes or they're a little too large in scope or they try to do this pseudo 3d thing that doesn't really work so we've seen examples but we haven't been sold yet

Final Fantasy immediately tells you you are a party of four and that you're not locked into any particular classes. If you want to make four fighters, go for it. If you want to be all magic users, go for that too. If you want to be... Four white mages? I don't know if it's possible to beat the game, but you could certainly give it a try. The game gives you that freedom from the start. And so...

I would love to hear what your guys' parties were, but then also a couple thoughts on the class system. I'm going to jump right in here and say, coming from the future, and this will always be our perspective. coming from the future, it's a little jarring that the first thing that you really see in this game is create your party. And that's not even just because the feature doesn't...

It doesn't really stick with the series for that much longer. It's just because I'm used to, and I think we're all, or Joe and I, are used to very specific... story driven character driven uh gameplay here where you're you may get to change the character's name but the but the way that

They interact with the world like that's their character. And so seven, eight, nine, ten, yada, yada. Four does it as well. Four, five, six, two, I believe. I mean, two, it doesn't... three even have set characters in every final fantasy after this until the look until the mmos have this yeah set characters yes but you can change you can choose classes and other ones where like theoretically

uh because of final fantasy sevens like stats for each character there is like an intended role right like you don't get to say like yeah and i'm gonna build cloud to be a mage right like it's like right just he's just cloud yeah right So it's weird going into this and not and not seeing like a a very written story where your characters are characters and more so RPG characters.

So that was cool. I'm fine with that. I'm opening my mind. So I go in there and I see a bunch of sprites that are very familiar to me just from... you know culture through osmosis because i again i didn't play too much of final fantasy one when i rented that origins disc and i really didn't touch it since um so this is as blind of a playthrough as you're gonna get um but you know i

So I went with a fighter because, you know, he's the first one that shows up, and you have to imagine he's going to deal some good damage. And then I went with a monk, or I guess a black belt. Because I did a little bit of research and learned that thieves were broken. And then I went with a black mage because Vivi. And then a white mage because you gotta have a healer.

And I know that going back, I kind of wish that I put a red mage in there instead of a black mage because of, firstly, the drip. And secondly, because apparently they're just... mostly better than the Black Mage. There are some regrets, but that was my setup. Interesting. So I didn't do enough research to go to decide if Red Mage or Black Mage is better, but...

Well, I'll get into what I did. So my first experience with this actually was years ago, probably end of high school or beginning of college for me, I played Final Fantasy 1 on the PSP. um where there's a lot of quality of life improvements so i already had beaten this game i was already familiar with it it's been a long time so i forgot a lot but i had a lot of the same thoughts that you're talking about sean back then where i was like well i was expecting like

deep character-driven stories. And there's really not that here. For the time, there's a pretty deep story, but it's the silent protagonist story. There's no... oh my god, what's my fighter thinking right now? Because it's just a stand-in for you. Pretty literally a stand-in for you, but we'll get into that another time, I guess. So I... Originally on the PSP, if I remember correctly, I definitely had a fighter, I definitely had a thief, and I definitely had a white mage. I...

Oh, no, I'm sorry, I definitely had a red mage. I can't remember if I had a white mage or a black mage. I gotta say I must have had a white mage, because I wouldn't have gone without a healer, even though your red mage can be a healer. So actually, I might have had the black mage and the red mage. I don't remember exactly, like...

what my thoughts would have been on that party. But just to get that out there, that was my original first party. It's my first Hall of Fame party. This time, I went with a fighter named Fax in honor of Fexanadu. I went with a black belt named Taiso in honor of Mike Tyson's punch out. A black mage named Ark. in honor of Archon, and a white mage named Ryga, in honor of Rygar. And I will say that, again, not remembering too much about the PSP stuff, I was surprised that, like...

It does give you different ways to play the game, I imagine. You know, I'm imagining, like, if I didn't have the fighter and black belt combination, like, there might be things differently. Or if I didn't have a black mage at all, like, you know, there's...

The way you think about the game must be different. Granted, compared to other Final Fantasies and stuff, this is obviously a much more basic strategy system, but I... I guess I was expecting it to be really basic, and it was a little more robust based on the party layout alone than I was expecting.

My party was fighter, white mage, black mage, red mage. And if you can't tell, it's just because I love magic. Should I have had a black belt? Yeah, apparently they're also like uber ridiculous. So maybe.

But I liked my party. I would also love to get into how our parties fared throughout the game as we continue to explore because that is like the ultimate freedom of this game is that it does allow you to just pick even just... four of the same character classes too i i think that that's kind of unexpected for the time that you could be like yeah and we're just four black mages and we're just gonna wing that right like the game gives you the freedom to screw up

In a way where it's like, yeah, you'll probably get somewhere, right? Like, I don't think four black mages would suck at the beginning of the game, but it might suck at certain points later on. The best balance is probably at least having... someone who can cast some form of healing and someone who can cast some form of, you know, the offensive magic. And I think that each class...

Whether you're the fighter with the strong physical attacks and high HP or the black belt who, for whatever reason, you know, don't equip anything on him. And he only gets stronger from there on out.

Don't give him any kind of weapon. The thief with high agility and evasion. The white mage for all sorts of protective spells. The black mage for offensive spells. And then the red mage is this... hybrid of like able to learn black and white magic but as a result in combat it's not necessarily as effective as either the white mage or black mage may be at its particular spells

I think the Red Mage is the most interesting. But stronger physically too. Yes, yeah. But the Red Mage to me is the most interesting of the classes because it is the hybrid class. It was the most intriguing for me. It was the one that I actually did. Say like, okay, I'm going to make sure that when I'm assigning level one, level two, level three spells to my red mage, that he is going to have that mix of black and white magic and put him at the bottom.

of my party. So this way, you know, if anything should happen, at least he might be protected to be ready to either go on the offense or, you know, protect another party member. I really enjoyed the Red Mage class specifically. Were there any other highlights or not-so-highlights of these classes, ones that maybe confused you for their purpose?

Well, I am sure that the red, again, it's been a long time since I've used the red mage, but I'm sure he does a similar thing with its, like, level three spells. But I found the black mage very good for grinding, because you can... You run into a horde of, you know, whatever, 16 enemies, and you can use higher level, level 3 and above offensive magic.

to hit everyone, area of effect hits, you know, like, were basically very good for black mage. So, like, that was very helpful just when I'm out in the field, you know, just ready to fight anyone. That was helpful for leveling up the whole party.

Yeah, I think you kind of have to get a little bit into the details of the battle system, which I'm sure we'll do more of later. But I think my lowlights... for all the mages is just the magic system where you don't have like an MP and you don't really have like the equivalent of an ether that's like just dropping here and there. you have charges. And unless you're just sort of circling a town, just grinding, like say you find yourself deep in a dungeon.

those charges can run out real quick. So I think that that turned me off to most of the magic. I mean, I still used it because you have to. But in terms of how satisfying it was, it was like, oh, I really don't want to use this because I don't want to burn a charge on something that might not even hit, you know?

I hear what you're saying, yeah. That was definitely aggravating at times. But to play the devil's advocate, I did sort of... I sort of liked the no MP, that basically each spell has its own MP or its own charges, because... That did make me, yeah, like, I'm not going to use my high level magic on this random thing when I'm in a dungeon. I'm going to wait for the boss or, you know, use it when I feel like I need to. And then when I did use it, it was...

I did get a little satisfaction because I'm like, well, yeah, that's not something I can do all the time. You know, that's like, I went for a high-level attack here where I couldn't have, or I, you know, I was saving that for this guy. I mean, I see it both ways. That's one thing I like about the Final Fantasy series is that every battle system is always different, and this made me think differently than I do in other Final Fantasy games. Thank you.

So after you pick your characters, the game starts and you are literally dropped into the overworld. You're not like talking to the king and he's explaining your mission. You are just free. to roam the battlefield, if you will. However, you don't have any equipment just yet. So you might not want to explore too far. That might be a push.

in a weird direction, but it can certainly happen that someone would think, I'm not going to go see that town directly in front of me. I'm going to just go explore. Obviously, they do put a giant castle and a small set of... houses around that castle. It was interesting that when you walk into this area, nothing happens. But then when you walk into a particular house, that just takes you to the town as a whole. Well, it's the Magic Kingdom, Mike.

Yeah, but it does look like that a little bit, right? You're walking down Main Street right up to Cinderella's Castle, but you walk into the castle. It's Kingdom Hearts before Kingdom Hearts. It's Disney and Final Fantasy combined. The Disney game we played where it's literally the Magic Kingdom. Oh, yes. Adventures in the Magic Kingdom. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But there's no Final Fantasy in that. True, true. That you know of. True. I didn't play it.

But yeah, so, you know, just an interesting observation on the world map and how it works that, you know, the various little houses will just bring you to the same town, the castle, of course, bringing you to the king.

uh where you can learn about your mission or just not like it's up to i guess it's up to the player right like i i naturally had to to go to the castle and talk but i guess you don't it's not a necessary requirement But it is a requirement to go into the town and talk to the townspeople and load up on your first equipment with the small amount of gill you have.

And again, it's a small amount of gill. There is a way to screw even this part up very early on, right? Like, for people whose first time it is. Soft lock the game, pretty much. But if you have... I say that half in jest. Maybe people don't have it internalized yet, but we've already seen Dragon Warrior. We've seen... We've seen these 8-bit RPGs. There is some amount of instinct to go to town, go talk to the king, go to the dungeon, come back to the king.

once you clear the dungeon, and I appreciate that they kind of put you in a little pen. You're kind of on a tutorial island here, and you're not going to get that far without learning how the game works. But of course, we powered on and we did equip the right stuff. You know, we don't have to get into every time what we do and, you know, did we...

Did we try to buy everybody just the weapons and move on? Did we go for the armor stuff? Did we buy some magic? That stuff can all be divvied out in time by just... grinding out uh right in front of the towns this way you're never too far away from an inn and eventually you'll just be able to move on But I want to go back to what Joe was maybe dropping earlier about that these guys really are just like stand-ins. They don't play a role in the story necessarily.

Other than the fact that they are the four warriors of light who were one day like predicted that they, you know, a prophecy was told that they would come and, you know, and basically save the world. Right. It really is like they just drop into the story. Like there's no explanation for like where they came from. They just show up in the grasslands. You have to come up.

You have to fill up all the gaps of the party. The world is alive, the townspeople will tell you things, but your party is faceless. Yeah, as far as your party, for me, it all comes down to your imagination.

Like, that's what it is. And I will say, like, I do have little, like, stories in my head of, like, how these characters get along and what they're each like, because I need that when I play a Final Fantasy game. But yeah, it's not there for you at all. Yeah, maybe I don't have the same level of... of imagination as you guys, because I just took that as like, oh, it's an old game. They didn't really care. Yeah, they probably didn't. Yeah, I think that's me doing the work for them.

But I do it anyways. But I would have a problem with the idea of just like, you know, four beings were teleported to this entrance. Like, I don't need to know. Please, never create any kind of... Final Fantasy 1 prequel on PS5. We would hate to see that. But...

But I don't need the explanation. Has anyone even looked at that? I remember hearing about that, and I just ignored it forever. Yeah, that's all he wants to do is just kill Chaos, Joe. That's what it's all about. No, I know. I am obviously talking about that game, but...

But let's not let's not deviate too far because we can wind up talking about a lot of Final Fantasy games as we keep going on. I don't need a backstory. I agree with Joe. I like to just kind of create my own story. But, you know, it's the same thing of like.

what's mario doing in the mushroom kingdom right like thank goodness nintendo didn't feel the need to like put a cut scene before you start world one one right like it's just he's just there and he just knows he has to go save the princess and that's actually very similar to what we have to do right at the start of the game the king tells you you got to go save his daughter so you set out on this quest you have to grind for quite a bit to get up to the level

So I think now is naturally the best part to start talking about the turn-based combat because this is something you're going to do over and over again. It is the gameplay loop. And while depending on... Which classes you picked, your gameplay loop will differ. Certainly if you are four fighters, you'll have a much different game than having to manage your party in the sense of...

Which magic spells should I use? Who should I assign to? Who should be in the front? Who should be in the back? But these are all things that you will have to think about as you're playing Final Fantasy. So thoughts on the... turn-based system and you know feel free to look ahead but also you know look into the past too we did have dragon warrior lay out a turn-based system that isn't too different from this but now we're a party

Well, I'm happy that I can finally see my guys. With Dragon Warrior, you don't have that. And even going into the Super NES with Earthbound. You don't see your guys. I think that's really important for me. I kind of need to see my characters in action. Again, I don't have the same level of imagination as you guys, so it's really important.

And I think that goes a long way, like just seeing like when you press attack or you cast a spell and there's slight differences in their animation and you see the fire or you you see the ice. or you see the sword for a split second when your fighter takes a swing, it actually makes it feel more like a game instead of like a program. uh, that, that is a video game. I don't know if that makes any sense, but, uh, so I, I really appreciate that. Um, and you know, the, you get into, uh, the, the,

The menu makes sense. The fact that you choose who you're attacking and you can back up in the menu. Just a lot of quality of life improvements from...

from earlier games. It felt very manageable. Yeah, I mean, like, from just the most cursory view, it's a very fine battle system. Yeah, I'm... I feel similarly, I think I'm in this kind of weird in-between situation where when I compare it to games we've played on the NES, I think it's the best turn-based battle system that we've had, in my opinion, by far.

But it's also hard for me to not compare it to future Final Fantasy games. And there I do see, where I see all quality of life improvements compared to older games that we've played, I see all the quality of life opportunities that they could fix. from later games. You mean ineffective? What's that? You mean ineffective? I don't understand the question. Oh, okay. No, I'll get into it. Sorry, go on. It's a problem. Oh, ineffective. I thought you said you mean an-effective. Ineffective, yes.

That's exactly what I'm getting at. I was going to word it differently. But yes, that is like my first, not just in the battle mode, but just in general, this is my first quality of life pet peeve about this game. Where if you attack the same person with two of your characters...

and the first one kills that character, the other one will just, like, attack the empty air. Uh-huh. And it'll be ineffective and won't do anything. And nobody is that stupid, right? Like, we can't believe that they would actually attack air because our brains originally told them to hit the air.

enemy that once was there I can get a little bit into the devil's advocate thing here too now it really depends on how you're viewing this Now, if you're saying that this is, like, you're all kind of, your turns are all happening concurrently, then you might all think to attack the same place, but, like, only one of them kills him, and the other guy's just stabbed in a dead body.

Now, that's just the devil's advocate. No, I completely agree with that on the functionality, what's actually happening here. When I play a Final Fantasy game, I don't imagine that they're actually standing... in a straight line and waiting for their turn to attack and attacking. And I get that functionally. But me, the player, I am seeing it turn-based. And yes, I get it. How would they know?

I'd like to think that they're coordinated enough to make those decisions. Well, apparently you weren't. I guess not. But this bothered me. But it also did lead to... different ways you got to think about it and i don't know if this is really like i'm not going to say this is a feature and not a bug it's definitely a bug but like yeah i did have to think about like

How can I spread out the damage I'm doing to do the most damage without wasting a shot on anyone? Which works out well sometimes, but also other times it's like, it would be nice to just overkill this guy. But I never know if, like, I'm going to just waste a whole shot. So, like, it would be nice to, like, get less people on, you know, enemies on the screen right away by just, like, attacking one person. But I do end up saying, like, okay, my two hardest hitters.

are going to have to attack different enemies, even if they don't take out either of them, and just lower their HP on the first two turns, so the next two turns they take out both of them, I'm not wasting a whole swing.

even if it's not a bug right like even if it is like oh it's intended right like you shouldn't well there's a reason they moved over to attack redirect you know right right but that's what i'm saying is like there's never an implication for like a scenario where you shouldn't hit that other enemy right like there's never a like oh and and because you hit that enemy now you're poisoned right like enemies can poison you but not from physical attacks

So there's never a reason to say like, oh, well, thank goodness he didn't accidentally deal some damage to the enemy behind him. It's like you always want to be dealing damage. But I do agree, though, with Joe's...

developer-apologist answer. Because, yeah, it does kind of create, intended or not, emergent strategy. Now, maybe if this game had... more like less battles i i could i could have the patience for it but you're gonna be in this screen all the time and i even just like when you choose to you this this game has random battles

Whether you're in a dungeon, the overworld, or whatever, you're going to keep falling into this. And unless you want to run away a lot, you're going to have to do this mental math each time you fight. And, you know, when you're grinding, you don't want to have to do this. So... Yeah, they finally got together. They implemented attack redirect somewhere down the line. Don't know if it was FF2. You guys would have the better answer for that. Because, yeah.

When I was talking earlier and said, like, great battle system, I kind of just meant the vibe, the UI. That is such a pain in the ass. It kind of spoils things. Yeah, that's why, I mean, I think that it would have spoiled things a lot more for me if I wasn't so reliant on my black mage. Because that made it so it's like you could do a lot of area of effect. Not worry about that.

And is the combat system too simple compared to modern? Obviously, modern turn-based RPGs are mostly becoming ARPGs, but even just from a RPG of any kind of combat standpoint, is it too much of just... Oh, do the physical attack if you're this guy. Oh, do the magic attack if you're this guy. Like, how varied can the individual battles become? It really turns into, like, there's...

You can tell by the philosophy that they kind of grant the higher level encounters and that you kind of see foreshadowing early on when... There's maybe just one enemy or two enemies in the screen, but they're like in the back in the corner. You're like, Oh God, is this whole field going to get filled up? And then lo and behold, the whole field gets filled up. And really the way that they kind of scale things at this.

throw more enemies at you. And I, I think that that, that shows you that the battle system is very simple and there are, you know, there's status effects to be. wary of and there are strengths and weaknesses that these enemies have but like there's no like interplay between enemies where One keeps healing the other, so you kind of have to prioritize this that you'll see in later games. It's really just attrition.

when you're in these battles. I don't know if you agree. Yeah, I don't want to be rude to all turn-based RPGs at the same time, but it's amazing that we ever had the time.

to do all this. Like we've all, we all played these kinds of games at some point in our life. And we all kind of agree to the contract of the game, that this is the gameplay loop. And eventually, you know, you probably like... figure out a way to just zone out and do it or you just get so good at it that you know you don't mind the grinding of it but it is kind of crazy now as an adult with a job

and and a family you know and like like things to do outside of the like potential you know today i'm gonna play final fantasy all day right like that used to be a thing that we could do But now it's like, wow, how did we ever used to do that? It's not even that it's so simple that it's bad. I do think that this is a great combat system for the NES's time.

especially because it does make each class of character feel unique, something that is a bit... of a concern right that like well what if everybody's just like this guy's holding a sword and this guy's holding a cane and this guy's holding a hammer right it's like no they actually do different things and it's fine uh it's you know you can just make them attack but they also have different roles

Here, I think it's just, especially with the grinding that's required, there is just a time commitment that needs to be recognized even just early on to get to. uh the title screen role uh at the beginning of the game which we'll talk about just to get to that moment requires a fair amount of grinding yeah the grinding i'm never a fan of grinding but i just i think

This isn't a... What we're talking about isn't a problem with the battle system. It's a problem with encounter design, which can have a good battle system attached to bad encounter design, and... When I say that, I mean, let's just throw a bunch of enemies at you. Now, when I say that that's not a problem with the battle system, that's not to say that this doesn't have problems in the battle system. I think that...

The fact that we, I think we need to acknowledge that the version of the game that we're playing is broken in many ways. Beyond belief, actually. Like, there are core stats. Things that level up when you level up that do not work. Yeah, and that's why, sadly, you really need a guide for this because there's a lot of things you can buy, too. A lot of things that are just because this is broken, don't bother. Yeah.

I have a whole list here of swords that don't do what they're intended. Okay, so you have the were sword, right? Well, that doesn't inflict any additional damage on were creatures. So that doesn't, that does nothing. You have the rune sword. which doesn't inflict more damage on magic using or supernatural creatures. So that's broken.

This continues to trend for eight more swords. Like, the ice sword doesn't do more damage to ice-weak creatures? Oh, well, then maybe it does it to fire creatures. Nope, not there either. The intelligence stat does nothing.

nothing yes i'm already certain that the ice sword is supposed to like in later games do they fix it yes all these things are fixed which is why they're reported bugs in the version that you played yeah to be fair this is the nes version like we're talking specifically about the nes

version i haven't cross-checked the famicom version but my understanding is that at least more than a few of these did not exist in the original uh japanese release of this game and became an issue when putting it on the nes really Yes. You would think it'd be the other way around. Yeah. Right. That they could take the time to fix the bugs. I mean, it's been three years, guys. This game came out in 87 and here we are in 1990 and we've got it.

worst game now granted there's some charm probably and some people like the bugs just like there are bugs in Pokemon red and blue right Joe like there are known stats uh that don't necessarily work the way they want or that like every every attack no matter if it has 100 chance or not can technically still miss like those are fun things but i don't think it's fun when you buy equipment

that is supposed to do something and does nothing or the opposite. Or, yeah, spells that will actually make it harder to complete a fight than give you a buff on something. It's pretty wild. There's no real way to see what they're supposed to do or to... There's no real way to even figure out that it's not working because you buy a sword and there's no stats visible on that sword.

So you still don't even know. I guess this was just a bad sword. It's not really doing anything. There's a lot of... That's more quality of life stuff where it's like I need to know what this spell does before I buy it. You know? And then when I buy it, it does nothing. I'm like, I guess I'm just not figuring it out. I guess I just don't. I can't figure out when the right time to use it is. But really, it's just a bug. And so bugs aside, grinding aside, you know, just another.

I don't want to say it's an early strike against the battle system, is that the only inn you have access to is back at the first town, which is called Conaria? Cornelia? Cornelia, I think is what they call it later, too. I don't know. Anyway, that's funny because Cornelia is also the first planet you go to in Star Fox. All right.

Never mind that. Yeah, that's the inn, right? But if you are trying to get there without grinding to the first dungeon, I guess you would call it. It's a one-floor dungeon. To get there is a... lengthy uh series of combat encounters that will most likely have you returning back to the inn to be healed up to eventually try to get a little bit further in the grass and maybe that's the intended way to like understand

how the game works that like you're you know you're kind of being pushed by the game to say hey you're not quite there yet like these encounters are getting harder these enemies you're not quite ready for like maybe get to level four maybe get to level five etc uh That's fine. But that is not necessarily a trend that continues throughout the game. It's just in this first area. From there on out, it's always kind of like, well, you...

You can grind nearby to a town and stick there, or you can go to a dungeon and come out of it. It's not necessarily... uh as being dropped in on level one as the start of the game is and so that was another thing i noted of just like it is taking a while maybe get the game going maybe you just grinded

For longer at the beginning than me. But for the first few hours of this game. I found myself consistently under leveled. And would have to grind again. I do have a problem with grinding. I do it a lot. Oh, oh, I see. Yeah, like I do usually... I would love to try something underleveled, but I've never done that in a single video game. I probably have always been...

five or ten levels above the recommended final boss fight. I do that now with games I'm familiar with just by virtue of playing the game efficiently, but never in blind runs, I don't think. I think also, were you guys both using guides? Yeah, well, here and there. The first time I played this game, I used a guide. This time I did not use a guide.

I just didn't want to get everything. I didn't want to be like a 100% guy again. Right. I knew where to go, so it didn't matter. Right. I started out not using a guide, and I think that made me level up a lot more in the early era. stages of the game because I was always just getting into fights as I'm exploring where to go. I'll go to the wrong place. Going to the wrong place means 45 more battles.

I was... I think I might have been over-leveled for a large part of the game also, but not because I was going out of my way to grind, but because... you know, the first quarter of the game, I wasn't using a guide. Then I started using a guide and I felt it catch up to me. But, but even like the four fiends up until, up until the, um, what's his name? The, the wind fiend.

Whatever his name is. I don't remember. Not Bahamut. Hold on, hold on. I've got this. Me too. Windolio. Tiamat, right? Oh, yeah. Yes. But all the fiends were... I was like... surprised each time when I beat them. I was like, well, that really wasn't that hard. Well, there's also some pretty significant difficulty spikes. Once you go into that cave, that was where I was just like, alright, I guess I just gotta...

I just got to sit at this town and grind five levels and try again. Um, because like I would just get curb stomped whenever I set foot in there. Yeah, for me, the first difficulty spike I experienced in the game is when you're trying to wake the elf prince and that other guy, I think Astos is his name.

he like you think you're talking to the elf prince and then it's like surprise boss fight like i don't know if i just wasn't ready for that or whatever like i'm sure i didn't have a full health party but like

that fight was also just like, wait, this is way harder of a battle than I've been running into with the random encounters. And that was the first time I like... wiped out uh like as a party and said like wait when was the last time i saved like what was i doing like am i in trouble like see i think my difficulty spice came more less from the boss battles themselves and more from

the dungeons like yeah first like earth dungeon that kicked my ass and like not because any individual battle was tough but it's like you're getting poisoned here and there and you didn't buy a shit ton of pures and Right, and that's the first time I had to really learn to manage the spells I'm using more carefully, because by the time I get to the end, okay, yeah, I got to the boss, but I got nothing left to attack it with.

Or like people are dead or, you know, so I had to really learn like, okay, this is a lot about preparing before you go into these dungeons. And the game does wall you off early on of like what you, where you can go, right? Like, so at the very beginning of the game. You're at Corneria, and then you have to go to the Temple of Fiends to rescue Princess Sarah, and that's where you fight Garland. Tutorial Island, yeah. What's that?

tutorial island yeah tutorial island right and you fight garland and you beat him and that's it you did it you beat the game it's incredible right like the princess has been rescued everybody's thanking you and the king is like hey wait a minute hold up

You guys are those four warriors of light, aren't you? My daughter's been telling me about you guys, so why don't you go... get those four crystals and they don't say anything they're like yeah sure probably right joe what was your imagination answer for that did they say yes you had a pipe my imagination answer was that the well i got a different answer for each character but my my party leader which my fighter was

all about it yeah good okay and and then and then you continue past the temple of fiends yet again to go over the bridge and when you go over the bridge all of a sudden it's like a cut scene of sorts where like you actually see like little silhouettes of the final fantasy party not necessarily yours like it would be kind of cool if they made it like four fighters or whatever but they just give you a ragtag group of people about to cross over a bridge

And there's a little scrolling text, kind of like Star Wars in a way, right? Like the opening scroll. It's like, you know, and so they went on, right? And the Final Fantasy theme, which is not a... franchise theme yet it's just the theme for this game but it will appear in every single Final Fantasy game starts rolling and I'm just like

okay now this is cool like that is that is early on and it's yeah it's a cool moment in the game something that is something that is almost saying like yeah we know we got a good adventure ahead like you might have thought yeah that like what we laid down was kind of basic but wait till you see where this game goes and i think that is the strongest thing about this game is that it continues to go it continues to push further

as the story progresses. It's funny how often that trope has been used in games up until even now. You played... like a good half hour, or even an hour, or even two hours of a game, and then you get the title drop. And I feel like this is the first time we're seeing that. I mean, this is really the first time it could have happened, right? I can't think of another example. How many other games have we played where there's even an hour of gameplay involved?

Yeah, I love that kind of thing, though. I love when I see that in a game. I think that love started for me with Kingdom Hearts 2 when it's like, yeah, you're like three hours in when the title appears. But also, I...

I find it very cool that they start this game with like, you need to save the princess. Just like every other game. So many other games have saved the princess. And yeah, when you get to this point, it's like... this story is going to evolve and it continues to evolve over and over and over again like every time you think like okay I know what I'm doing I know what this is like no there's like a bigger thing happening here that you don't know about and that

I think, is in the DNA of Final Fantasy. I think, like, most, if not all, of the Final Fantasy games that I've played, you kind of start out on this, like, small little journey. You feel small, but then, like, as the game goes on, you're like, well, this is a massive... world-ending, world-saving, time-loopy thing that, like, we're doing, you know, and it's just, I love that about the series, and it's cool to see, like, this is how it started.

Joe, it's funny that you mentioned that about the princess thing, too, because that's even potentially a shot at rival developer Enix, who made Dragon Warrior. And in that first game, the whole thing is save the princess, right? Like you finally bring her back and you marry her or whatever. And like that was the game.

And Final Fantasy is kind of laying that down as like, no, that was just chapter one. Like now you got an even bigger journey ahead of you. And I think that also says something about how like Dragon Warrior. with art by Akira Toriyama of Dragon Ball fame, is more, like, cartoony and silly and friendly. You know, the slimes and stuff like that. Like, it's more lighthearted. Whereas Final Fantasy...

with Yoshitaka Amano's art, which, you know, he's a much more serious gothic kind of illustrator. You know, that art leads into a more... You know, obviously he didn't do the pixel art, but like the pixel art even itself is darker in tone. Those goblins and everything that anything you would have ran into in Dragon Warrior. It's more...

Dungeons and Dragons-esque, which makes total sense when you understand that Final Fantasy, as we know it, the game, was basically just ripping from a Dungeons and Dragons bestiary of the time, right? Yeah, and that kind of also echoes in the fact that you're creating your party. Your party doesn't really have any set connection to the world. I see the... The parallels there. But also, I believe they literally took...

Like, exact names and potential stats from the Dungeons & Dragons books. Stats? Yeah, into the game. Oh, wow. Okay. Final Fantasy on the NES, or, sorry, on the Famicom, whatever version. I don't mean to single it out, but... Final Fantasy 1 under the code probably has a lot of explanations for why it's so buggy and broken because I was surprised at how many calculations and stats are being run.

in the background through this game where every every enemy is kind of designed you know we're always talking about looking for those curated gameplay experiences and platformers where it's like yeah enemies aren't just spawning they were placed there to do this thing uh when when you run into that part of the stage in a way final fantasy can't do that because of its random encounter system But I was surprised at like how every time you try to evade, like there is an actual.

Beyond a dice roll, there's a calculation of like, well, what's the enemy's evasion score? What's your evasion score? Roll this number. What's that number come back as? Okay, then that means that they successfully evade. There are a lot of stats.

behind uh the curtain here that uh build up like this actual uh turn-based combat gameplay you think the one that was most visible just to i guess the more untrained eye is the whole concept of absorbed, which I guess is kind of like a defense measurement, where it's kind of just like a one-to-one how much HP does...

you're okay so how much damage do you do and how much of that gets absorbed and that's like i was just seeing like i was either doing one damage two damage one damage and then oh i crit and i finally did 34 damage There's really no way for that to make sense unless there's just like some very basic additive property going on there. So I was able to at least learn what was going on there.

So if you look at, like, I'm just going to pull up the goblin, the very first enemy you'll probably run into in the NES game. Its common stats are HP 8. Defense 4. Evasion 6. Magic Defense 16. Attack 4. Accuracy 2. Hit number 1. Crit 1. Experience 6. Gil 6. and then it's immune to undead spells. There are other elemental affinities it could possibly have and status affinities it could have, but that is a lot.

of information being programmed for, like, every single enemy in the game. Yeah, it's funny because none of that really means anything to the player, so I guess it doesn't matter that you don't have that. Of course not, yeah. Is that more than Dragon Warrior?

Well, see, that I don't know, but I guess what I'm saying is that, you know, with the Dungeons and Dragons element of it and everything, that everything is getting, like... rolls and calculated i think i just i think that's what that's the argument i was making not necessarily that like this is the first video game to give defense stats to enemy oh okay yeah no it's still impressive and you can kind of you can kind of feel

the computer, the console chugging with how slowly it does take to output those calculations sometimes, but that could also be there for dramatic effect. Yeah, but then also it's... It's like a blessing and a curse because it is cool that all that's happening makes it so much more robust. But there's a lot of spells that will up some of those stats or lower stats of an enemy or up your evasion or...

your defense. But again, you don't know what those do and they're all just like three letters. So like, it's cool that it's all in there and it's all part of it. But like, if I, you know, if I didn't have a guide. Yeah. Those would be useless. I would never use them. I don't know what BRA does, or BRAK does, because it's supposed to be break, which I still don't know what that does, but, you know, unless I look it up. I think the counter-argument to this is that if...

if we'd have played it for longer and we're super fans, then we'd know and we'd be able to take advantage. But this, this sort of like reminds me of playing like Nobunaga's ambition and romance, the three kingdoms and like, I don't know what this is doing, but it's changing some stat, and I don't know how it's changing that stat, but I'm doing it wrong. Right, right. And I don't know if you need to care, you know, that like, okay, so I loaded up another one here, the sandworm.

It even has a script of what it should do. It has a 50% chance of attacking, and it has a 50% chance of using the spell Earthquake, right? It's like, those are things that are... You know, at least thought of on a developer level of like, how should we balance this? Right. And then there's also morale checks of like how how an enemy decides if it should flee or not. It has a morale score.

checks that against the party. And then like, for instance, to go back to the sandworm, if, if the party level is immediately anybody's over level 23, it's like, yeah, I'll leave. That's cute. Bye. Yeah, I didn't realize that either. I think I saw an enemy flee, like, once, and I didn't really... I just thought, oh, this must be an enemy that does that. But I didn't realize that it was built in that way. Like a cactor. What cactor is in this game?

Yeah, no cactos, no chocobos. Yeah, this is fake Final Fantasy. But there was something, there were two things. Oh, there was, did they mention, I can't remember if this was in the PSP version only or if this happened. Did they mention Sid as, like, the airship? Oh, that's a good question. I don't remember Sid. I think it might have just been in the remaster. Yeah, I don't remember Sid being in this game. But the other thing I noticed, Ochoos.

I think it was called an Ocho, but those are common. I see those in every Final Fantasy, and that was an enemy. Okay. That's pretty cool. I'm getting the vibe that maybe that's only a me thing, but I always recognize the Ochoos. But I'm like, oh yeah, they're Ocho. Ocho, Ocho, I don't remember. I'm glad that you appreciated it. That was it.

Yeah, there aren't a lot of the staples. So it makes you wonder, what are the staples of Final Fantasy that are in this game? And I guess the only one that comes to mind right away is Bahamut. Yeah, Bahamut. Bahamut, the Black Mage design, the... But isn't the Black Mage design there? I know, it's just nine. No, I know, but isn't nine, like, didn't they make Vivi that way because of an homage to one? So you can't be doing the 2,000-year time loop, Sean.

You can't go the other way. Airships. Yeah, airships, that's a good one. Crystals. Crystals, yeah. I mean, orbs. They're orbs. Well, you know, orbs are basically just... Spherical crystals, right? Right. And the music. Yeah, the music. Okay, good call. I like that we were getting into the airship, though, and Bahamut and stuff, because we really should talk a little bit more about this.

uh for lack of a better word uh open world exploration here uh because it's not it's it is gating you but it is gating you in a way where you could theoretically like go to towns out of order like you can't go to the end of the game but you can go to an area that you're not quite ready for and get completely trounced on or maybe speak to characters that you don't have the key item for yet uh so there is some exploration but the way the exploration opens up is of course first in

After you defeat Garland, you get the bridge opened up for you. You're not able to cross that bridge beforehand. I don't even think it's there. I don't remember if it's there or not. But anyway, there's a way to... Yeah, so now the bridge is added. You can cross over that. So it's like, what are they going to do? Just constantly open up dungeons and add bridges to the game map? No. They won't do that until 10. We're going to give you a boat.

Right away. It's like the second town is, you know, there's pirates there and you got to defeat the pirate and his crew. And then you get the ship and now you could just go sail the sea. And that's the amazing moment where you like build this idea in your head of like the, you know, like the world, right? Like, cause you can kind of, you can't dock anywhere, but you can see most of it. And you probably are saying like,

I wonder how I can get to this or, you know, there's not enough in the overworld that's like interesting to say like, oh, I want to, I want to go there, right? Like if there was actually like visually different towns, that would be kind of cool.

But it is still cool to immediately not get like, oh, and now you guys have a bike, right? It's like, now you have a ship and you can actually just go around all the water in the game. I do really like the setup and how... kind of absurd what's happened to that town is just like oh we got attacked but we got taken over by pirates and they need to go talk to the pirate guy and it's like yeah i took over this town

What are you going to do about it? And then you fight him. He's like, all right, we'll go. And then I don't even know how long. How much later it's like, oh, our town got taken over by vampires. I'm like, what is going on here? Well, also, you can go back and talk to the pirates later, and they're basically like, yeah, we're being good now. But they're still in town.

Do you think that that would just be one episode of the Final Fantasy anime? Or would that be like 10 episodes of them just fighting the pirates? That's a good question. It would be one episode. This is all Pokemon style. It'll be one episode. It'll be like, oh, we gotta help the townspeople, and then they leave. Monster of the Week. It's like a team rocket, but they choose a different thing to be each time.

So once you have the ship, then you meet the elves in Elfheim, and their prince is cast under a sleeping spell. Sorry, I should have mentioned, by now we've also probably met Matoya, who has the absolute most legendary song in Final Fantasy. I love that song. Do you guys know that one? It's the one that you're about to play, right? Yeah, I'll play it, but I could also just hum it because I'm so on it. It's the one that's like... You know that?

Do one more bar. It's not only in Matoya's cave. Yeah, it's not only in Matoya's cave, but it's the theme. Okay. It's Matoya's theme. Come on. Somebody else. Is Matoya a man? You know, I thought it was a woman. I'm saying woman. I'm putting my foot down on woman. I accept. Who can't see, so you need to get the glasses, right? Yeah. That's funny.

It's not like, uh, you know, you have to get, like, I can't find my glasses. Yeah, you can't, you don't have to get, like, the sorcerer's eye or anything. You have to get a pair of glasses. Yeah, and it's got to be her specific glasses, and they're on some other continent. They just wound up there. I don't know how to explain it. But also, she has all those broomsticks just sweeping around, and is that also a Kingdom Hearts reference?

Yeah, yeah, that's Sorcerer's Apprentice. Yeah, there you go. 2,000 year time loop, right? Yeah, they did it. It was actually, everybody here got Norded. I was just going to say, like, we're joking, but like... You know that Nomura is going to connect that time loop to Kingdom Hearts 4 somehow. And it's going to turn out like, oh, yeah, Sora is...

Sora is the four warriors of light. Those were his master valor and wisdom forms. In Final Fantasy VII Reuters. Yeah, right. That's where it's really going to all come out.

All right, so after you do all that, I mean, I'm not going to give all the story beats or whatever, but then you start fighting the actual fiends to get the crystals and everything, so that's kind of important. These fiend boss fights, are they... the hardest in the game or is is it just like the hardest in the game is when you fight nine wolves and you have like very little HP I think it's very similar in difficulty right like there's just like a bad timing though of just like

you know one boss when you're all like fully healed and everything is mostly okay versus like when you go into a random encounter and you just see nine enemies and you're like son of a bitch Yeah, because you're going to have a chance to try to run, but during those chances, you might get hit nine times and then still not run and then still have to get hit nine more times. You really got to just...

At that point, weed out as many enemies as you can. There's no running from those without taking significant damage. And after you get the boat, naturally you would want to get the canoe. Doesn't that feel a little strange? The order? It does. It 100% does. But it works in the way that they make these things work. It's like the boat lets you travel further and then the canoe lets you travel to more specific places. But it is weird to be like, yeah, I've got a ship.

And a more impressive vehicle. Like, okay, you got this pirate ship for the ocean, maybe a riverboat, like, with an old-timey steam engine for the rivers. Yeah, but then I'm thinking... Then I'm thinking, how are they carrying this riverboat with them everywhere? Like canoes, people carry canoes. That's true. You have to make it mobile. Right. And everything else about this is realistic, so I want to make sure that it stays that way. It's the one hitch. Yeah.

Yeah, right. And then you get the airship, which I'll be honest, the first time I played Final Fantasy one.

The airship is obviously a huge part of Final Fantasy 4 as well, and most Final Fantasies. Most Final Fantasies, yeah. If not all of them. But I did, when I first played Final Fantasy 1 for the first time, I did like... have a moment where i was like you son of a bitches did it you know like i was still impressed that it was in the very first game yeah and that's something we're doing is like we're actually flying above

Able to go wherever we want, like certain areas that you could have never gotten to otherwise are now free to go. That was so cool. Yeah, and I think they, I mean, I was a little surprised how early you did it. But I do think they did a great job of, by the time you get it, you're probably just getting tired of your methods of exploring the world and how long it takes you to get everywhere.

And you've probably seen most places and you're like, it takes me forever to get here and forever to get there. And it is so satisfying to like first take off and be like, there's going to be no right of encounters and I can go anywhere.

You know, like I can land anywhere I want. Now that I have an idea of the world, now I can access all of it. And I think that that was a very well-designed moment. And it's one of those things that it's just, again, so in the... the blood of Final Fantasy as a series and they always they mostly always nail it as like a as like a moment of satisfaction and Not so much mastery, but like, okay, now I'm playing the game. That in 7, in 8, in 6, or whenever you get these vehicles...

Just that feeling you get that when I finally got to the point where you get the quote-unquote airship in Final Fantasy X, and it just gives you kind of like a map where you can click on a place of the cursor. I felt like I had actually been scammed. Like you robbed me of this classic Final Fantasy feeling of getting the airship. You don't quite know what you got until it's gone.

To see that that started here is really funny. That underlines my overall problem with 10 altogether. The broader sense is that there is no overworld map. That sounds petty or whatever, but I think there's ways to do it without an overworld map, but to make it so linear hurts a lot. I still want to finish 10 one day because I think I'll really like the story and I really like the combat, but...

That has always been such a hard thing to get past. And honestly, since 10, I'm like, they got to get back on this somehow. And I think they're only just doing it now. Yeah. Final Fantasy 15 also had a weird thing where you, in order to get the airship, which is your car turns into a flying car, in order to get that, you have to beat the game.

I mean, that's weird, right? Like, hey, here's the cool thing. It happens after the game's over. Right. At that point, it's almost just like a wink and a nudge. Right. Now, I will say we tried not to get too far off. We will get back to Final Fantasy one after this Final Fantasy franchise talk. Seven remake part three.

does have an opportunity to completely reinvent the airship or make it like Final Fantasy X's pick a location and now you can just fly there. I have a bad feeling that it's just going to be... the final fantasy 10 pick a location fly there because that's what the the bronco was uh but well you did get to yeah yeah that's true you did get to go around eventually in the boat bronco

That's true. Do you ever fly the Bronco in the original Final Fantasy? I thought it breaks before you ever get into it. It did break before you got into it. It was a cutscene. You never got to fly the Bronco. But I'm saying that, like, if, like, I mean, I guess the airship, you're right. You're right. I just don't know how they're going to do it. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like, it's like, I didn't play 16, but this is free to spoil it. Joe, is there an airship in 16?

No, and 16 does... I was pleased with 16 because my expectations were so low. 16 has a lot of things that don't feel Final Fantasy, and one of them is the way that the open world, you go to... areas that you can walk around but not areas like like seven rebirth where they're like massive open world areas in their own respect these are like small like

you just go to this area and it's like a field and there's stuff to do. Yeah. And then you go to this other area and some of them are bigger than others, but like it is, you call up a map and, and you.

select this location you go there and it's a pretty small location and there's battles there and whatnot i i at the time thought like okay this is like the the seeds of a good solution of how to make these massive ps5 level worlds when you can't you know you're doing so much else that you can't make it like a full open overworld like final fantasy of old and i was like yeah this is a good step in the right direction it wasn't until

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth came out where I was like, okay, no, this is a good step in the right direction. This feels like we're back on track. fully now. The overworlds are dying and we need to tell them to stop. Yes, that can be the plot of the next Final Fantasy movie. Overworlds are dying, we need the crystals to save the overworlds.

Back on Final Fantasy 1. Since we were talking about story beats and everything, I think this is not a story beat, but it is an interesting glitch in the original game. And in most versions of Final Fantasy, this is left in.

And it is the best way to grind in the game. It is known as the Peninsula of Power. Did either of you take advantage of the Peninsula of Power? You know, I read... the words peninsula of power at one point in the guide and like luckily this is the peninsula follower that you're passing by and I was like I don't know what that is and I I don't isn't there like one tile or something powerful enemies or something yeah it's a little

section of a map i've only seen i i didn't really spend any time there i've seen videos about it how like you can pretty much uh like it's just a crap load of experience and gold that the enemies here drop I like that it's sort of knowing about future games that there are similar locations just on overworlds that I really like that concept. I just didn't take advantage of this one.

dropping all this experience because they're very difficult battles or is it just yeah they're very strong enemies so you do have to be able to take them on but granted uh you know it's not it's not impossible so provided you're a full health party and you go in there and you just go to that one tile and then you know use a use a tent or something immediately after and take on the next one you could you know level up very quickly that way and the reason why it is those three tiles or whatever

is because the game map is divided into like area enemies, enemy areas. So there's like a square. And for whatever reason, where they put these powerful enemies... It just bleeds into the top of that peninsula, just those three tiles. And then the rest of it's on a separate area, but it's just there. So where you would normally run into enemies that should be your level.

Instead, you'll just hit those three tiles that will register in as a stronger enemy area. That's funny. So it's not intentional at all. Not intentional at all. And one of those things that you would have never... Found out unless by accident or reading one of those, like, you know, NES guidebooks. Joe, you recently bought one of those. Yeah, but it was a PlayStation. A PlayStation 2. Oh, you're talking about that guidebook. Okay, I bought a...

Ratchet and Clank. Yeah, you know, I'm talking about NES tips. Yes, okay, I did buy the unofficial tip for NES, but unfortunately it does not go as far as 1990. I think it ends at like 1988 or something. That's funny. I thought that it was just there as, like, you know, because, like, in the... I remember, I think it's Final Fantasy VIII. There's, like, the heaven closest to heaven and the island closest to hell. And those have, like, super powerful enemies and, like, they drop...

rare stuff. I thought this was like their version, the first version of that, but no, it's just a map glitch. That's funny. I mean, maybe it was like, okay, this map glitch happened, but let's just make it intentional in later games. But it's funny because I was going to mention...

The island closest to heaven and the island closest to hell as well. But as you said, I'm wondering, is it ever... Is that just like the community named in those? No, if you open up the map, it tells you that's where you are. Oh, it does tell you. Okay. Open up the menu, yeah. Gotcha.

Moving along in the story, so we have some boss fights, and we don't have to talk about every single one of them, but it is worth mentioning Garland the first fight because the only frame of reference you have at that point... is that he's just who you have to beat because they've made him this bigger deal, right? It's not another enemy. It is a boss fight, but it's not particularly...

a challenging fight or whatever. He's pretty easily taken care of and you move along in the story. Then, you know, I mentioned Astos later on because he casts Fire 2, which... can pretty much depending on what levels you are it can instantly kill a party member and uh you know i think that was the problem i ran into is like i already didn't have full health on everybody and then you lose one party member

And now you have three people dealing somewhat moderate damage to a guy who can very likely just cast fire two again and kill another party member. And so you kind of just like erasing him on whether he'll cast these powerful spells or just attack. Yeah, it would have been nice if there was like a phoenix down you could throw. Absolutely. Well, there's a life spell, right? There is. I don't know if you would have it in time for Astos. No, you definitely wouldn't have it at that point.

But I asked because I never bought it. So I wanted to make sure that it does what you think it would do, where it revives someone who's died. Yeah, right. Yes. Because you have no idea what these things are actually going to do when you buy them. Or just have like a man award or something. You know, like these defenses. Offensive status things that don't exist. Sean mentioned that you have to take down a vampire, which is interesting.

you know vampires being in this world was that uh that wasn't weird right we already had like other undead enemies it's like okay sure dracula can show up too yeah yeah uh yeah i mean if we're gonna have four it's funny because Yeah. And it does feel something about it. Maybe it is the vampires and the dwarves and the elves. It feels a lot more like, yeah, these are all just like the, the top line generic fantasy beings. Whereas like a later final fantasies. Yeah, you're right. Yeah.

But later Final Fantasies start to feel like they have more of their own world building. And you know what? Actually, I did look up what an Ocho was, and I do recognize them for later games, Joe. Ah, yeah. And so, yeah, that would be one of the most iconically Final Fantasy guys. So I grant you that. But he's not a boss. Thank you, yeah. And they always look similar to Mauro Burrows or whatever.

running into bahamut is important though because it is another uh this game can be pushed even further moment where uh you have to uh complete his challenge and as a result when you come back to him he will upgrade the class of all your characters to their next stage, and that is...

Hugely important for finishing the game. They're a small stage. Yeah, but yeah, they all grow up. They were like boys before I didn't realize we were playing with 12-year-olds and now they're like men, you know? Yeah. Speaking of which, I always thought that the white mage was a woman. Yeah, I did too. Am I wrong? I believe in the PSP version that you played, Joe, I believe it does assign names to them.

If you choose not to. And I believe that the white mage name is Sarah. Oh, but you're saving Princess Sarah, aren't you? It's something like that. I don't know. I might be speaking out of turn. I didn't play the PSP version, so I might be speaking out of turn. But that was my understanding as well, that the White Mage is a woman, at least in later versions of the game.

But they get, like, a cool, like, graphical upgrade, and, you know, they got big muscles. Yeah, they're not mages anymore, they're wizards. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I gotta say I'm a little sad, though, when the black mage, like, takes his hood off, and you don't see the, like... the VV look anymore. I love that look. And it's like, oh, he's got a mohawk or something. That doesn't look very wizard-y. Still in oversized garments. Yeah. I dig it.

I was just trying to find out if the White Mage ever got a name, and I'm not doing great on it. Pixel Remaster. Yeah, I'd love to know, but... In the Memory of Heroes novelization, I don't even know what this is, the White Mage is named Flora. So maybe. I mean, and also, looking at the... The sprite for the white wizard. I mean, it could be a woman. Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

I still even playing the NES version I thought it was woman and it just dawned on me like recently I'm like I guess you can't really tell if it you know whether it looks traditionally male or female but um But, I mean, then I was looking at, honestly, even the other sprites could go either way. Yeah, this is a gender-neutral game. Yeah, exactly. But, like, yeah, I'm looking at, I mean, the Red Mage, I mean, that could be a woman.

Moving along. Long pause there. Yeah, we, you know, the classes, regardless of their gender. Let's just focus on that class change. Now, other than just an obvious stat boost and everything, it is an important turning point in the game. It's communicated well, I think, as like, you know, the importance of it and all that. But did it actually, did your characters feel different? You had been playing as fighters.

and as uh you know black belts and now you now you've upgraded did it feel like they actually upgraded or did it just feel like oh it's a name change and a sprite look yeah i had no idea how it was different was certain that somehow they were different, but I didn't feel it. At least psychologically, though. If you're getting that kind of visual change and you've just been bestowed this by a dragon...

It has that psychological feel to it. That's a good point. You're getting upgraded by a dragon. It's not like the king. It's not like you went back to Corneria and now the king is like, hey. You know, you want to be class changes, and he just says, now you're a black wizard. And it's like, thanks. You know, it's not like a Wizard of Oz moment. It's like an actual dragon granted you these powers. Yeah.

I remember when I first played the PSP version, I was expecting it to be almost Pokemon-esque. I thought, okay, when the fighter gets to level 14, he becomes the knight or whatever. I thought they were each... level up and grow into their next class at their own particular level.

So it was weird that there was like, oh, all at once it's just going to happen because I went and talked to this dragon. And speaking of which, can you miss that? You have to do that. You know, I was looking into that. I don't think it's 100%. I think you don't have to do that. That's the kind of conclusion I came to as well, but I didn't test it in my game. I did upgrade my class, probably just because I wanted to see everything through.

I couldn't find anything that said that you can't do it. And there are certain, like, spells that only, like, only the red wizard could learn these spells. The red mage could not. So, like... It does seem like there is an incentive for, like, why you should do this kind of thing, other than just, like, stat boost and stuff, but... That'd be a pretty wildly major thing to be missable, but...

From what I remember, there's nothing gated. It's not like unlocking some future gated moment. I don't know. Yeah, it does feel like it would be a pretty big missable thing, but it also feels kind of in line with games of this era. It's like, yeah, you can just not do that and go through the whole game as your weaker form.

I'm looking it up right now. While Joe's looking that up, we will jump right to the end here. After the four fiends are defeated, you have to go and take on the big final boss. who is chaos as, like, the entity chaos? Like, chaos itself? Or is that just, like, a name that he gave himself? Like, I'm chaos. Like, because it's kind of...

Kind of real low energy to name yourself chaos. No, instead of being the concept of chaos, you know what I mean? Like he was, he was like when people talk about chaos. That's what's happening, actually. This evil time-traveling... entity was always chaos not necessarily like oh and he just calls himself chaos but he's actually garland well either you know either you named yourself something or your parents did so maybe garland

Like, or Chaos's mom and dad just really wanted to name Chaos, you know? You can't really, like, judge people on this kind of stuff. I took it as...

Like, he somehow became chaos after, you know, the whole... the whole time loopiness of it and uh forgive me if you said this i was half paying attention and half trying to figure out if you need to upgrade your characters and i still don't know the answer so that's what i'm talking about i tried to do it and i couldn't like get a get a concrete answer on that but maybe that just proves that it's

not possible to skip it. Like it was, it would be like not worth mentioning because you have to do it. Right. But maybe chaos is just like a name. And then like, he was so powerful that we just named the concept of things being. disorderly and full of strife that's what i want it to be that's what i want it to be so what happens is is you're at the big final dungeon and then all of a sudden

It's a flash, and you're back at the Temple of Fiends, only it's 2,000 years in the past. And that's pretty freaking cool. And then you bump into Garland from the beginning of the game. And that's pretty cool, right? Like, whoa, the guy that we beat so easily and kicked off this whole game. He's the big bad. I like that. But not to be a downer here, I just feel like this is the perfect time for two guys that are pretty into time travel to just explain it to me.

I don't think it all checks out here. I think I'm missing something. No, I think you're right. Okay. I think you're right. Sadly, as much as cool as I think this is, I think you're right. Can we just dream drop back there? So that's a Kingdom Hearts reference for those of you keeping score. The only one I know, by the way. The way Chaos describes that it works is that when we defeated him at the Temple of Fiends.

The fiends themselves brought him back 2,000 years to the past, where he then sent them 2,000 years into the future, creating this time loop where they live forever. But how could they have ever first sent him? Well, okay. So that part, yeah, that part doesn't check out in the way that any time loop doesn't check out. And I think that's deliberate. And that doesn't bother me because like.

That's where there's like this mystery of it. Like they even say, nobody knows how it started. Nobody knows how it began. That part, like, fine. Like that's like the weird anomaly is like that there's a time loop and nobody knows what first kicked it off. What bothers me more is that the time loop, the end of the time loop happens before you start your journey to save the world and restore light to the orbs or the crystals or whatever.

So by the time you go back, you've restored light to the orbs or crystals. And the sages tell you that Garland has started this time loop and that's what's happening. He's in that time loop. But you've already passed the time loop. So it doesn't matter. It would have mattered back then, but we already passed that time, so stopping the time loop won't change the present now. That's what bothers me the most. Like any conversation about time travel, uh...

It's all nonsense because like it, you have to do three or four conclusion jumps just to, so like, let's just, they didn't think it through. They, it made sense to them. I have my headcanon. I fixed the problem, at least in my head. I don't know if this is true, but my headcanon is that this time loop, even though they restored light to the four crystals...

That was not enough to restore the damage that's been done over the past 2,000 years of stuff being gone. So the only way to stop that is to go back to the stories and stop it from ever having happened at all. So then you have to destroy the time loop. Why is this guy... Garland with level six base stats in the beginning of the game.

When he could be chaos if he keeps getting sent forward and backward. Let me just headcanon this. I'll give you my headcanon. This is a meta headcanon. You square. This is just what they do. They have to get you from point A to point B. Point A is you're just a bunch of nobodies and you're just walking around a grassy field. Point B is you kill God.

And this is just their first attempt at doing that. They kind of fumbled the ball a little bit here, but they got there. Later, they get a little bit more, like, it makes a little bit more sense how you kill God. but it just gets more and more ridiculous how you get there. This is just a sloppy way to get to killing God. Yeah, I mean, I totally see that, for sure. But as you were speaking...

I came up with another problem that I have with the time loop. And I'm just going to keep throwing these. I can't just be like, well, you know, it's fine. It was their first attempt. The other problem that bothers me is that Garland goes back in time.

And maybe back there, that's when he merges with these forces or whatever, and that makes him chaos, whatever. That part doesn't bother me so much. But what bothers me is like, yeah, so he's living out this 2,000 years over and over again. But if he's...

The one traveling through time, isn't he aging? I mean, shouldn't with each loop he be getting older? It's not like... If the idea is he went back 2,000 years and lived all the way back to the beginning and somehow forgot about the 2,000 years ago...

Why isn't he 2000 years older? No, I don't think that's happening though. I think he's being sent to that moment. Oh, he's being sent again to the future. Right, right. And that he's okay. I don't know. I just don't know what the end game is. It sounds like for him. He is stuck in a perpetual state of dying to the heroes in 2,000 years in the future and just waiting for them 2,000 years in the past and not existing at any other point. So what's the point?

Right. That's my point. If he starts out at dying and goes back to make this loop until he dies, but then the heroes destroy all his stuff in the future anyways, his loop is self-contained. He's not taking over the world. He's taking over...

He's taken over that loop of time, but the rest of, you know, he has no future in this. I just like what you said there. The heroes broke all his stuff in the future as if they just kind of broke into his house and just... ransacked like they broke like a chandelier or something now i i guess the i guess the actual like intention and i'm gonna be kind here maybe this wasn't theirs but i'm saying i guess the actual intention was

That this isn't an infinite loop. And that instead the idea was Garland is not necessarily chaos when we first encounter him. We kill him there. But the fiends recognize that he can be something more. So they bring him 2000 years to the past to make him into this chaos being. They go into the future. To cause all this, for lack of a better word, chaos. Well, we continue to grab the crystals and everything. And that brings us 2,000 years to the past.

where chaos now garland now as chaos hopes to kill us so that it doesn't continue a loop with with the heroes so that essentially he can then go back to the moment where he had Princess Sarah captive, and the four crystals that they've now brought to him, and the power of the four fiends all at once. But why was he so weak back and forward? I think that's a great explanation. He wasn't chaos yet.

The fiends made him care. Now, why they chose him and not the pirate, go figure. I feel like that's another prequel game we're waiting to find out about. These guys are just not very smart. What's that game called? Final Fantasy Origins of Chaos? What's it called? I forgot. I don't remember. It's called something of chaos, right? Final Fantasy Chaos. Sorry, guys. I gotta do this live on the show.

It's from Strangers of Paradise. Strangers of Paradise. There you go. I'm sure that it's got to be explained a little more in that game, right? I don't know. Yeah, I would imagine that, yes, they would update it with some really convoluted thing. Yeah, it doesn't make any more sense than what you just said, but there's going to be dozens of hours about it.

Yeah, exactly. But I like what you just said. I think that, you know, and I'm kind of shitting on this whole time loop thing, but I will say that when I first played it and I got that time loop part, even with like... Even knowing it's not the perfect time travel thing, I really like the idea of it. Thank you for saying that. It's a cool twist. Yes, because I think that needs to be recognized, is that not everybody needs to think about the time part that much, and it is just a cool twist.

twist to lay down in a game where they didn't necessarily lay out God right like they like it was never anything else So it is kind of unexpected that the first boss you beat is actually the final boss. That is a cool change. I don't like games where and I think I think this happened in the first Breath of Fire, where all of a sudden the final boss is just a character you never heard of. I don't like that part. To go back to the whole god thing, Final Fantasy VII...

does that fantastically, I feel like. I feel like I totally understand who Sephiroth is, who Jenova is, who we're fighting when it's just shirtless Sephiroth versus Cloud at the end. I think all those things work out great. I feel like sometimes the god thing does just wind up being like, and why should I give a fuck? Like, I thought I was fighting, you know, it could be chrono trigger levels, right? I just wanted to play cards.

Yeah, exactly. Chrono Trigger takes it in a fun way, though, where you think Magus is the big bad, and then you can have him join your fucking party. Go for it. You know Lavos is the actual big bad. It's not like, oh, and... You know, I guess actually there is a moment for Chrono Trigger spoilers here.

Lavos isn't like, then eventually it's like an alien that you fight in the second stage or whatever. But that's fine. I never thought Lavos was of this. But that's part of Lavos. Yeah, I never thought he was part of this planet. He's eating the planet. You know, and I'll say, again, without spoilers, I know that there are people that have issues with the, rightfully, issues with the Final Fantasy VIII final boss and being kind of like a little bit out of left field.

I don't know, maybe we should do a spoiler cast about Final Fantasy VIII at some point, because I actually, I think I can defend it at least. I really like it, and I think there's a lot more reading between the lines.

Yeah, and there's a lot more you have to read between the lines and kind of... It's a lot more you have to interpret it than it being like, okay, it's Sephiroth, and Sephiroth is becoming godlike. It's like, okay, who is this person and why? But, like, I think it just depends on, like, how... how you want to read into it, but I really, really like it in Final Fantasy. I just had to throw a little defense of that out there. Bye.

I had to, while Joe was doing that, just read a little bit of this Strangers of Paradise stuff just to try to understand chaos a little better. And I don't. I understand him less now. Final Fantasy, Strangers of Paradise. where Strangers of Paradise Final Fantasy Origin, as it wants to be called, is a alternate universe prequel.

to the first Final Fantasy game, which is just great, right? Shouldn't they all be alternate universe prequels solo? That was an alternate universe prequel for Star Wars. Where they have asymmetric street wear. that your main character wears right now are you ready for this the main the main character the guy who wants to kill chaos right the guy who says it like a thousand times in the game and that's all we know this game for at least

I played the demo and I just thought it was nonsensical garbage. But the main character's name is, get ready for it, Jack Garland. So knowing what you know about the Final Fantasy, where do you think Strangers in Paradise is going to be? Does he become chaos? That's kind of cool. He becomes the darkness. He goes into the dark.

darkness manifest and becomes a demonic being that resembles the chaos entity well yeah if you if you end up going into the darkness manifest what do you think is going to happen But do you know why? It's like a parent reprimanding your child. Well, you went into the darkness manifest. Why? Do you know why he went to the darkness manifest? Why? Because the Lufenians, remember them? Yeah. The people in the flying tower thing? They actually are the reason for chaos.

And they have goaded Jack and his party into helping them kill Princess Sarah in this alternate universe. Oh. So he becomes... Honestly, we're poking fun at this. I think I got to play the game. I'm invested. So he becomes... Chaos and is disgusted by the Lufenians manipulation. And now Jack and his other buddies and whatever use the darkness to become chaos and collaborate.

With four new warriors of light and train them on being able to take down the Lufenians. The Lufenians. Yeah. So how about that? Wow. We got it. It's like, you know, every. Every story has two sides. It's like the Wicked of Final Fantasy. Yeah, that's the Wicked. Isn't that what happened, right? Didn't they at one point want Final Fantasy XV to be a musical?

Is that so? I'm pretty sure, just like, Google that for me, Joe. You can't be serious right now. I'm pretty sure at one point they were working on that. I'm sure Final Fantasy XV the musical is like one... absolutely necessary piece of lore that you need to finish Final Fantasy XV. You have to go see the Broadway musical. Well, there was like a Netflix anime you had to watch because that was actually going to be like chapter seven of the game. Yeah, there's like a book or something.

There is a long book. There's canceled DLC. Compilation of Final Fantasy XV. I mean, this is just the first thing that comes up. It's on Reddit, so who knows who said it. It says, I know that Tetsuya Nomura wanted Final Fantasy XV to be a musical during development, but got completely shut down. by the higher-ups in Square, and I didn't even click on the link, so I can't read further. Are you guys saying that there should...

He wanted there to be a companion piece that was a musical, or that the game itself was going to be a musical. I was joking about that, but according to this... Random Reddit user. Don't worry about the random Reddit thing. Don't worry about the random Reddit thing. I've got IGN. June 13, 2013. There's a strange parallel universe where Final Fantasy 15, or maybe Versus 13.

Turns out to be a full-blown musical. Song and dance numbers, choreographed movements, and a lyrical look into the human condition. Sadly, this game was only a pipe dream that existed in the mind of Tetsuya Nomura for one day a few months ago after coming into the office the morning after watching last year's film version of Les Miserables. Well, okay. Here's the thing, though. All the PS1 Final Fantasies, 7, 8, and 9, they do, when I play through them, give me more of the feel of a play.

than a movie. I've always gotten play vibes. Well, Six has a fantastic opera. Six also, yeah. Seven has a great play. Eight has a concert you can go to. Yeah, and you can be involved in a concert. That's true. But I don't mean musical. I just mean the way the stories are told, the way that it's presented reminds me of a stage play.

Now, did Final Fantasy 1, the game we're talking about right now, did that feel like a stage play? It did not, because there's not enough character, individual character development yet. Agreed. It felt like it. like a book, but like a book that was written a long time ago. It's like, I can't really relate to the way that they're telling the story. Yeah. It's like, it felt like, like I'm reading the odyssey or something where I'm like, yeah, it's a good story, but like, this isn't how we talk.

That's funny. We talked about all the bosses, but do you guys know about the secret super boss? Yes. No. War mech. It's a giant mech. Also known as the Death Machine, is located inside the Flying Fortress. Okay, I think I saw footage of this. Yeah, it's on the bridge leading to Tiamat, the Final Fiend. It has a 1 in 64 chance is maybe the Pixel Remaster. It looks like 3 in 64 chance, which is weird. 3 divided by 64. I don't know if that's...

Those are better odds than one in 64. Anyway, it has an extremely rare chance of appearing, but it is the most powerful random encounter in the game, and it's... I think it's more powerful than any of the game's bosses, too. Yeah, it is. I watched a video about the history of a super boss, which is another one of those threads that connects it to the other Final Fantasies. There you go.

But it's not quite that because it is just a random encounter. And it's really just there. I'm pretty sure that they didn't intend for you to ever beat this thing. Like, it's there to screw up your plans. And to just party wipe you. If you don't run away. Because you don't get anything for beating it. It's really just for bragging rights. And brag to who though too. Like I feel like nobody. You could just tell them.

You beat it. Like, who's going to be there for it? I mean, you know, you could tell anyone. You don't want to get a trophy. No, no, because, like, you have to say you beat Ruby or Emerald Weapon, but then, like, someone's going to come over your house and say, show me. Okay, then I guess you could show them in the same way you beat Ruby or Emerald. You get the Polaroid. Yeah. Until you snap a photo. Ruby and Emerald give you something, though. You're right, you're right, you're right.

This is a random encounter, not a boss fight, so it kind of... I don't know. It kind of blends into that territory. But I think it is still a super boss, but I really don't think they intended for you to beat it. Yeah, that sounds right because looking at the stats here, we're looking at 2,000 HP, 80 defense, 128 attack, 200 accuracy.

Yeah. What's the point of going above? 100. Anyway, it looks like max accuracy is 255. So 200 is pretty good, but not great. Wait, it sounds like max accuracy is... Oh, wait, 255 is the max of everything, I think. It's not a percentage. Yeah, it's some integer thing. Zero to 256, but the first bit is zero. Yeah, so 256 is the overflow, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Isn't that why isn't that why there's a chance of there's a one in whatever chance in Pokemon of missing even when you have 100% accuracy because they like did that math wrong. Right. They forgot about zero. They forgot about it. So, yes, that's why even if it. Even if it says it's 100% accuracy, it still has that 1% chance. Here's what also makes Warmech so hard. It has a 48% chance of using Nuke.

So that is the strongest black magic spell in the game. And it will obviously just do an incredible amount of damage on not just one member, but the entire party. So I'm not really sure, you know, what you do there. It seems mean. Yeah, the range of damage is anywhere between like 80 and 360 and...

While that won't wipe out your party in the first hit, when he has a 48% chance of casting it, and it casts your entire party, that does mean that you could be as few as three turns before your entire party's dead. Like, I get... tucking him away in the corner and it's kind of like I dare you to fight me but to make it a random encounter in a place that you have to go through to beat the game

And like three out of 64 is just under one of 16. So it's not really, it's not crazy that you would run into them. It just seems mean. But this is the stuff of, this is how like legends are made, right? Like this is. This is like something where like somebody would tell you that they fought a mech in Final Fantasy one and you would never believe them. Yeah, I love that. I mean, he says that.

Bringing it back to Final Fantasy VIII, which, you know, obviously is clearly my favorite because it's the one I'm talking about the most. There's a time when I was playing after playing for years and I ran into a battle. There was nobody on the other end of the screen. It was just my party alone. And then up for like two seconds, a flying saucer UFO flies by going.

And I was like, I was like shook. I was like, what on earth was that? And then the battle ended. And I didn't have the internet at the time. So it wasn't until like years later that I was able to Google that and find out it's a thing. And it's very rare. That's funny. I never had that happen to me. Yeah, I guess there's four possible places you can run into that. But yeah, this is like one of those kinds of things. Except the UFO doesn't nuke you. It doesn't nuke you, no.

We have to talk about the music a little bit more than me just humming it, though, because this is... We've had games where Nobuo has been the composer on them for Square on the NES so far, but this is... gotta be like probably one of the best NES soundtracks I've ever heard. Like there are songs that should be annoying when they play for a long time.

And yet the song for the ship when you're not the airship, but just the regular boat when you're riding around in that. I don't care. I'll fucking leave the game on and I'll just do I'll just do something else and just listen to that. That is like. There's so much joy. Why don't you hum that one? He, well, it goes do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do. You know? So it's like, I can do them all. I can do every song, Sean, because they just.

They bleed into one another and they remind me of like a feeling that is more nostalgic than it has any right to be. I played this game for the first time when I was like 24. Like it shouldn't be nostalgic. Same with me though. Same with me. They feel like nostalgic songs even the first time you're hearing them. I mean, the town theme, it just feels so cozy. It's so cozy. I do think this is one of the first games we've played where...

Every track really does a lot of work in giving you the feel and vibe of where you are. You know, the cave themes and everything. It's like, okay, you're cozy, you feel good, everything's happy.

then it's like, yeah, the water theme does feel very adventurous when you're on the boat and everything, and the cave themes are eerie, and, you know, a lot of games go for those things, but I don't know, there's something specifically about these ones that... feel like we've we've moved into a new era of video game music to me it was really nice to boot up the game and pretty much immediately be greeted by prelude which you know we've heard very many different renditions of

Um, but just that very simple, like arpeggio or whatever it is, I guess scale run, uh, over and over like that feels like home to me. And I have to give a shout out as some guy who has like 60 Final Fantasy albums on my iPhone. I have to give a shout out to all sounds of Final Fantasy 1-2. which is not available on any streaming service. You will just have to find a way to buy this or download it. But it came out in 1988, right after Final Fantasy II came out.

And it is just the music from those games of Final Fantasy 1 and 2, which is nice in itself to listen to the 8-bit tunes. But there is two tracks on it. The first track, Welcome to Final Fantasy World, and the final track on the album, track number 49, Farewell, Final Fantasy World.

Those two tracks should just be played next to each other because they literally bleed into one another. And they are, like, orchestrated, but... rock versions of all the tracks from final fantasy one and two as a medley that just like bleed into one another and it just rocks it just makes me think of like

I'm like transported to New York City, like Chinatown Underground Mall where I just like go buy some Dragon Ball action figures. Like that's what it sounds like. It sounds like that mall in Chinatown, which I know is like exclusive to me, but like it just feels.

like that and Final Fantasy has a way of doing that like a lot like the first time I hear a song from like Final Fantasy 5 before I ever played it I heard the main theme and I was just like yeah that's a vibe like i want to play that game just because of the theme song and like that's how good nobuo mezzo is at his job here

of making these songs like instantly register with you on a way where I just don't even think about any soundtracks that way, you know? Yeah, to the listeners that may feel like they're missing out and they don't want to... you know, track this CD down. Fear not, because after the show wraps up, Mike's going to hum the entirety of it. So don't you worry. Yeah, we'll record it. We'll put it for patrons. They can listen to the whole...

album of Mike's hummed Final Fantasy. I would rather hum the Black Mages album, which is Nobuo Emetsu again as a rock band with a few friends, and it's like proggy.

prog rock but uh they do they do most of for the first album at least final fantasies one through seven uh tracks and they do have a great rendition of final fantasy two's main theme but also final fantasy one's battle theme which is great, but it does make me think about something else with the music, and that is, once again, similar to, like, in a weird way, Castlevania, the music here is not, like, it's not...

movie soundtrack score you know orchestrated like i i know distant worlds exists and that's like with a live orchestra doing these things but like i don't ever feel like that's the right tone for this final fantasy music it is kind of dancey and loose and and more like i don't know like it's more fun than like a hearing a bunch of violins do it like yeah it's nice to hear um

you know, the Advent Children strings and everything, but it's also just as much fun to hear the, sorry, the One Winged Angel version of Advent Children with the rock guitar. Yeah, like the dubstep remix. Yeah, it's more, you know, like it's fun to hear that. no i mean i agree it's fun to hear that but i do think that the the vibe for me maybe because i started with final fantasy 8 really and that does have like an actual orchestra you know sound in it that like yeah when i hear it i i

I do think it gives me the vibe of like orchestrated music, even though it's just, you know, eight bit stuff. Yeah. I just wish they would lean, go, go back a little bit more into the silliness. Like there's this one track. It's funny. So final fantasy seven rebirth. Came out with like an eight CD version of their official soundtrack. And on those eight CDs, the song that plays where you're riding the dolphins under Junon.

does not play on any of those eight CDs. And that's a travesty because how did we get eight CDs and we didn't get that amazing track that plays when you're doing that little dolphin minigame under Junon? Here's what's weird about it. That song sounds to me a lot like Sonic Adventure 1. It's not even like Final Fantasy-esque. It's like Sonic Adventure 1-esque. That's Sonic Adventure 2. But we forgive you, King.

Don't call me that. I've come to make an announcement. We should probably move on because it seems like I'm the only one who wants to gush about the music. No, no, it's good. Can we talk about what's your favorite Final Fantasy tracks overall? Ooh, overall.

I have a million of those. I don't even know if I can pick one, but I'm curious what you guys think. I think I would give it up for the Final Fantasy V main theme on our way. I do really like that. There is also Final Fantasy VII's on our way. which is the track that plays when you get to calm and I really do like that as well I considered having that be like one of the songs that plays in like my wedding procession that's how much I like that song but actually

The theme of love from Final Fantasy IV is also really good stuff. So sorry for the biased answers. I'm obviously picking games that I played, but those are three solid ones. I'd say, for me, it would either be City of the Ancients from Final Fantasy VII, or The Extreme from Final Fantasy VIII. Good choices, for sure. I'd probably... One that always sticks in my heart is Terra's theme, kind of like the main melody of Final Fantasy VI. But that just...

has this feel of, like, a quiet beginning to, like, a, to an adventure. Maybe because it's, like, takes place at night in the winter on a blustery day. But, um, but also, you know, I gotta love, I gotta love, um... Liberty Fatale from Final Fantasy VIII. And one that I forever thought was from Final Fantasy XII and just realized it was from Final Fantasy XI. And I'm trying to remember what it's called. I think it actually is like the origin of the...

termed distant worlds um god shit of course i'm blanking i gotta go to my spotify and look at it real quick i was just kidding earlier with my answer it's actually just the gold saucer theme on repeat, which I'm pretty sure could be used as a form of psychological torture. See, everybody hums on this show. Yeah. The other one I was thinking of was Memoro de la Stono. I don't know how I forgot that one. How the hell could you?

But fantastic. Sorry. Real quick, since we're all Final Fantasy VII fans here, Tifa or Aerith's theme? Aerith's theme. Hands down. Hmm. I don't know. I do like them both. They have such different... The use in Genova. I don't know. Team Fist is kind of that quieter, sadder...

I don't know. I thought I liked Tifa's theme, and then as I was, like, as I was pulling it out of my brain, I started, like, transferring it into, like, I was humming Eretz's theme instead. So I think I have to give it to Eretz. Well, it's harder for me to call up Tifa's theme, but... It's like... Yeah, the flute. The MIDI flute. Wow, I'm tone deaf, by the way, so sorry for my terrible...

What's weird is I knew exactly what you were doing there, but nobody else would. But if you're going to use a theme that's out of tone... In a boss, just this soft, sweeping song during a boss after an emotional event, that just drills into your brain. That use of music is... is beyond anything else I've seen in the video game at that time. Yeah, it's very difficult for me to decide between the two.

Anyway. Yes. Beyond even the music of the game, though, too. I talked earlier about Yoshitaka Amano's art for this game, which is actually kind of crazy because... Final Fantasy 1, you mean, right? Yeah. Sorry, what was I... Yeah. Cool. What was I talking about? Oh, 7, 8, 10, 12, 4. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, yeah, because he does them for a very long time. He does them from 1 all the way to, I think he's still...

I think he still does the logos. Yes. Yeah. I've even seen some concept stuff with like cloud and stuff. Oh yeah, no, he did a lot of Seven stuff, but unfortunately that was also when Nomura was like, I'm the character designer. And so there's like two totally different looks, like some of those characters that Amano draws as like, this is Aerith, it's like...

Isn't that just Terra? Yeah. But he has a history of doing that in general. I don't want to go on a tangent about this, but I just want to say that I could also talk forever about the logos. Well, I think we should. I think that's where I was heading with this. We should talk about just the logo, hopefully, for Final Fantasy 1, because the box art that we got in North America is not representative of...

Amano's art style or even like the Final Fantasy franchise, I actually for the longest time, having never held it in my hands, you know, like having just looked at it from like a small JPEG. The original, like, North American box art for Final Fantasy I. I always thought that was, like, a ninja holding a sword and an axe. Like, behind the orb? I thought the orb was like the ninja's head. No, it's very, like, the one we got, it's very, you know, Tolkien.

sword and sandal kind of thing almost like going in that direction and the uh like the the typeface while it's interesting in its own right It just isn't Final Fantasy. But if we go over to the... Is it the original? The one with the font choice that we're used to and... Like the very colorful knight. Is that the original box art?

The original box art for Final Fantasy 1 doesn't, well, it wouldn't have like Final Fantasy written in English. It would have it in like this, it would have it in kanji, but it would be like blue icicle look, if you know what I'm. okay does that make sense yeah um and it would have the um one of the warriors With his sword, and he's like a side profile. Okay, so it is that art at least. Yeah, presumably Princess Sarah is the woman in the background.

Well, that's cool. I gotta look it up, because I don't think I've ever seen the original Famicom box art. Or logo, or whatever. Oh, okay, yes I have. Yeah, you have. You probably haven't seen it like that. Yeah.

Because eventually they would go back and just like Star Wars would go back and number them. That's what they did with Final Fantasy I as well. And they would eventually adopt those Roman numerals and everything would be... the Final Fantasy 1 with the then like the logo in Amano's style behind the words Final Fantasy right but I mean I'm happy with like the yeah the

updated George Lucas remastered versions of the logos for like one and two because I love the connection. I love the way that all the Final Fantasy logos have that like... that simplicity there's like one element that is like from the story behind the font and that's really it yeah it's something about that just like feels really simple and

sparks my imagination every time and i love that each one has a different thing and there's like a different way that you learn as you're playing how that logo how that image behind the the font is connected to the story And they all kind of have to do with something that is really driving the theme of the story. And I think that's so cool. And I do feel like they've, in later, more recent Final Fantasies, they overcomplicate it a little bit. Do we know what...

Do we know what that dragon thing is on the Final Fantasy 1 art? Like over the shoulder? I think maybe it's... Oh. This is in the later versions of it, not the original Famicom release. I'm just trying to figure out what is that supposed to be. I don't even think it's a dragon. Maybe that's his hair.

No, his hair is clearly... No, even on the original artwork... Oh, you're talking about that little thing that, like, thing is literally coming off of his shoulder. Yeah, off of his shoulder. It's like a crowbat. Yeah. I have no idea what that is. It's a little Charizard. No, maybe it's the bats that are the five sages or whatever, the five people from the old civilization that were turned into bats that you find at the very end of the game.

Oh, okay. Maybe. Did we know that the Warriors of Light all looked like Jeremy Allen White? Yeah. No, I think that's stated by... Look at the hair and the nose. It's there. I don't understand. I see it. But also, that doesn't look like a warrior to light of Mia at all, like in the game. No, none of them have that light.

Cool. Yeah, the helmet. I guess the, well, the fighter, right? He kind of has a helmet. He's got hair, doesn't he? Or no, he's got hair. Oh, that's right. So that's, I'm saying, like, they should have made, like, Chaos, the back logo for this, but I guess that's...

That's just, like, not the way that they were designing these logos. Yeah, that's kind of like what they did in Final Fantasy XII. Well, the point of the whole, like, Amano thing anyway is that, like, he was just going to town designing all these things.

And then they were like, yeah, we can't turn these into pixels. And they even asked them at one point like to make pixel art as well. And I guess it just like it's a different it's a different kind of skill. So they didn't go with that. But for Final Fantasy one. to i think all the way up to maybe maybe four i think up to four he was doing like full bestiaries of like every enemy you would run into like in his style which is like really cool to see like

This is what Amano thinks a bomb looks like. This is what Amano thinks a Chocobo looks like. That is cool. I like those things, but it is also interesting to see how... They just never used it. Yeah, like the pixel art team then has to like, oh shit, like how do we make this? And they just make something completely different. Follow that up with, you know, a lot of Final Fantasy, especially one.

relies on you know to go back to what joe was talking about in the beginning it relies on imagination it does rely on you kind of building out this bigger story like how when i hear the music it means something more than me than just riding a ship around in an 8-bit art game, right? It's so much more than that. I think that's what Amano's art does really well, too, is expands the idea of what you did in this 8-bit game.

and makes it into feeling like something larger, something that you can picture in your head, something that thankfully... doesn't have like a movie based on it where everything is spelled out for you and you get to kind of create your own story. So what I think Final Fantasy 1 is and what Joe thinks Final Fantasy 1 is and what Sean thinks Final Fantasy 1 is are all different. Huh.

Sorry, I'm just staring at an image of all the logos of Final Fantasy. We've lost them. And I can't take my eyes off of it. Yeah. But yeah, no, I mean, it is. It's all about imagination. End credits. I did want to take a minute to... No, we're not there yet. I did want to take a minute to go over the ports for the game.

So obviously there was the Famicom version first. That was in 87. Then before even the NES version, there was a version released for the MSX in 1989, which has an improved color palette. uh a whole new like sound to it like the msx was capable of more sound so i think we talked about this in the metal gear episode as well but like i don't know it just it's not even higher fidelity it's just like it actually is like a different arrangement of

prelude and the main theme and matoya's theme and all those different things so it's worth checking out if you do like that music as much as i do just to hear those differences it's the kind of thing where we've heard the original so many times that like to hear the msx versions a little like

That's not prelude, but it could have been if that was the more popular version. I mean, I guess it's just like a different sound chip that's going to give everything a different timbre. Right, right. Unfortunately, the MSX one has like... Not like loading screens where you actually see. No, you don't see like a loading bar or anything, but it does take longer to load into. random encounters that will just kill a game right like the fact that it like goes to black and waits like

three to four seconds before the battle emerges is bad. No, that's untenable. Yeah, well, at least there's not a lot of random encounters. And then we got our version in 1990. And then we get the Wonder Swan color version in 2000. That is the next time Final Fantasy 1. In 2000? Yeah, Final Fantasy 1 is released again for the Wonder Swan color in 2000.

with again just for the first actually for the first time really enhanced sprites like the the msx version was was the same sprites but like with more like more colors The Wonderspawn color version actually is like enhanced sprites and new backgrounds and obviously a whole new script and everything. They expanded on the dialogue. So that's pretty cool. And then we got Final Fantasy Origins on the PlayStation.

Which added those cutscenes to the game. So, Sean, having played that, do you remember the cutscenes? Or at least the opening one? Like, did it grab you? I mean, my memory of it is so faint. I vaguely remember, like, maybe it was actually the one for two. Like, there was a guy with a bandana, I think. Where... I have, like, little faded Polaroids in my brain. But no, I don't remember anything about the Final Fantasy I ones, at least.

It is funny that this would be a thing that they would continue to do, though. They even did this with Chrono Trigger on PlayStation. They were like, yeah, this needs full motion videos. That'll sell them. Well, I mean, it did sell. The Chrono Trigger was like anime, right? Yeah, those were anime. This was like CG. But no, Sean's right. They did sell. It was like that was so impressive. When they were going from 7, 8, 9.

Into starting a movie business. And tanking. Almost killing the company. With the movie. Yes. Spirits Within.

Like, that was the way that they were moving the business. Yeah. Yeah, FMVs were all the rage in the PS1 era. Well, it is like a known thing, though, too, of like... for square games it was always the beginning and the end of the game like i always remember especially even with kingdom hearts like getting to the end of the game being like i can't wait to see what the what the cut scene looks like because that's where they're gonna put all the fidelity

There were a couple more sprinkled in throughout some of them, but yeah. Those were the ones that they poured the most money into. Go for it, Joe. Do you have a thought? In 2004, we had the Game Boy Advance version. That is Final Fantasy 1 and 2 Dawn of Souls, which includes four new dungeons, an easier difficulty, and probably... either controversial or very well received, it finally changed the magic system from a...

you can use level three spells this amount of time to just this normal MP system that had become known in the Final Fantasy world by that time. So they were like, yeah, now you just have MP and... Every magic spell costs a certain amount of MP, and once you run out of MP, you can't do any spells. But what do you think? Is that controversial to change Final Fantasy 1 in such a... I think so.

Yeah, because that makes it different. That makes it a different game. That's what made... That's what one of the many things that sets this battle system apart from Final Fantasy 2s or Final Fantasy 3s. I mean, Final Fantasy 2, we know.

has a lot of other things that set it apart but like yeah that bugs me a little bit and now I'm actually trying to remember if the PSP I think also did that and I just didn't you know it was that was like 15 years ago that I played that so I consider it an improvement But I also understand that it is a pretty significant fundamental change. So I understand where you could take that, but I'd be happy with that.

okay sean well then where do you stand on four new dungeons and not just for final fantasy one like what do you where do you stand on like the hey we're re-releasing this game and we've added a post-game dungeon like do you have to go there no it's a post-game dungeon

Oh, post-game dungeon. Yeah, sure. Yeah, sure, right? I think I agree with you. It's harmless, so please include them if you want. But that doesn't sell for me. Even Chrono Trigger on DS, which was the first time I ever played Chrono Trigger. I think by the time I got to that new post-game dungeon they added, I was just like, I think I'm done with Chrono Trigger. Yeah, I'm burnt out on this game. I don't think I need any more than what they originally intended to give you.

Something like Chrono Trigger I'm much more interested in because Chrono Trigger, you know, let's face it, is a lot more fun to exist in the Chrono Trigger world and run around and level up and explore than Final Fantasy 1. Final Fantasy 1... Like, I think once I'm done with the story, I'm like, that was, I'm satisfied, you know? Yeah, I understand that. The PSP version that Joe played, Joe, you are right. The MP system is there. Actually, everything from the Game Boy Advance version is there.

But the music got a remaster as well. And the visuals now are like, it's not 3D. The only ones I can think of that are 3D are like those DS games that got like completed. graphical overhauls but it is like the highest It's the one that, like, everything afterwards is based on, right? Like, is that a good way of describing the PSP version? With the Pixel Remastered? Yeah, it's like 2.5D in a way, but not really. Yeah. Not even that. Yeah.

I was going to say, like, I have a hard time differentiating what the PSP version looked like compared to what the new Pixel Remasters look like. I'm sure it's different, but that's kind of what I, that's what my memory. tells me it well it's funny because again the pixel remaster one actually is a lot different because it goes back to the like pixel art but like making it look much prettier whereas the psp i wouldn't quite call that pixel art

Yeah, it's almost like little marker drawings. Yeah, yeah. It was fine, actually. They did it pretty tastefully. But the PSP also had at least one FMV at the beginning. Yes, but I think it was the same FMV as the PlayStation. What I remember distinctly is a guy with a sword...

tiredly fighting a dragon. He's like stumbling as this dragon is coming at him and like attacks and then it says like Final Fantasy. He's just like really cool. It has nothing to do with the game. Yeah, he is. I remember him like kind of stumbling as he's like being tired. But... But you don't fight a dragon, like, really, right? I guess, like, Tiamat is sort of like a dragon thing. Yeah, I'm sure there's dragons.

And there's dragons that help you and that you talk to. We didn't actually play the game. It's all right. No, hold on. What about that? There is that dragon. Where is he, though? Where do you fight that dragon? Where do you fight this dragon? There's a couple different dragons, I thought. Nah, maybe not. It made me think that this was going to be like the final boss of the game or something. It's the dragon, yeah. Oh, this is like a big part of the story is this dragon. And I'm like...

I mean, they made an FMV. The only FMV is about this dragon. Yeah, I guess... I can recall a few dragons, but I think they're just called, like... dragon and whatever that one with the w is that i don't really know how to say a weaver or whatever wyvern wyvern wyvern what why i always say wyvern i think it might be wyvern wyvern yeah i always like the sound of wyvern well what's what's the other one worm

Oh, yeah. So those are in the game, right? I'm not making this up. I guess, yeah, those are dragons, but I don't remember there being a wyvern. Yeah, I think there is. I think it's just the worm, but it's blue instead. Gotcha. I'm not saying, like, I know what you're saying. You're saying you fought a big dragon as, like, a boss fight or something. Like, that's what the FMV wouldn't say. Like, you know, okay, for the opening cutscene.

Let's have an epic fight with the heroes and nine goblins. That's not what they're going to let down. They're not promising that, you know? Uh, and moving along, then we have the mobile versions of, uh, Final Fantasy one, which just added like the touch controls and stuff like that, but also a controversial feature even to this day, probably.

the auto battle feature. What do you think about auto battling in a game where the balance wasn't intended for you to auto battle? I think if you're trying to sell this to the kind of person that will play a game for the first time on a cell phone, you're probably going to want to put some pretty crazy quality of life features in there because these people are playing the game on a commute.

Or, you know, like, or if they're a fan, they don't particularly need to experience the grind. Like, I don't think that it's a crazy, like, uh... sacrilege to put something like that into a mobile game yeah i i agree and i've come full circle on this or I guess 180 on this from what my opinion used to be, because I used to be like, absolutely not. That is stupid. That's against the spirit of the game. But some of these where it's like, yeah, if you're just grinding...

As long as the auto battle doesn't actually help you in difficult battles, as long as it's just like, yeah, I'm going to just auto battle through this to get some experience or whatever. I'm just going to have it on auto battle until I get to a dungeon or something, you know, where like then suddenly.

you're at a disadvantage if you're auto battling and you got to shut it off and you got to actually make decisions. I'm okay with it. I'm okay with it to help with grinding. The NES classic edition version just takes the actual NES game and just puts it on.

the nes classic yeah everything included so uh wishful thinking if it was going to get any upgrades and that leads us with the pixel remaster which uh You know, it has the ability to switch soundtracks between the PSP version and the original.

songs uh it has some quality of life improvements like the auto battle feature from the mobile versions but also just saying hey turn off encounters for a little bit like you can literally just go in the menu and say no no encounters and then just continue on your way you can say you know what

Experience, give me like four times the amount of experience that you would have given me for each battle. Or you could say, just keep it the same, but actually gill, give me four times the amount of gill that you would have given me. You can balance the game however you personally please. And I think that leads to a pretty slippery slope if you're not careful. But most importantly, for whatever reason, nobody asked for it, but the Pixel Remaster decided...

Power of Peninsula stops here. And they removed it. The only version of the game that doesn't have the Peninsula of Power. is the Pixel Remaster, which doesn't make sense, because they would have to go in and fix those three tiles. That one thing, yeah. That's weird. But they said, you know what? To hell with it. We don't want it anymore, but...

Go ahead and ask for four times experience upgrades. I think going back to all of those features that like that you were mentioning about the most recent version about like.

give me four times experience. I don't want to butt fight anything. Uh, I also think there might've been a point in this podcast where I would have like really been upset by something like that. But I think now like the games, Like if you want to experience the game the way that's meant to be played You don't have to use that stuff and you probably shouldn't but in just purely a

a uh like a video game what's the word i'm looking yeah well you're looking for the yoshi mode you know you're looking like you can't die and like you just play as yoshi and nothing hurts you The museum version of the game. Exactly. That's the word I'm looking for. You have a better word for it. It would be video game, not restoration, but... Preservation. Preservation.

That's it. I brain farted, couldn't find that word. But that's what it's there for. It's like, experience this, it has meaning, play around with it, but... The actual experience is also here if you want it. Yeah, I'm just not sure how much of the game exists once you turn off encounters and say, give me four times experience every time I fight things.

Like, I'm just not sure how much of the game remains for Final Fantasy 1 in particular, you know? Yeah. I mean, I guess what you could do, and I can see myself even doing this, don't tell anyone, but is you could... play through the main parts, but then when you get to a point where you're like, okay, now this is a time where I would just do a bunch of grinding, and I don't want to do that because it's boring.

Turn experience up to 20 times, do three battles, and be like, okay, I did all that grinding, but I just got it out of the way much more quickly. I would have done it anyways. It would have happened. I just saved time. You know, however you got to make yourself sleep at night. and then turn it back off and then play more of the game. Yeah, there's shortcuts to show your son that won battles. Remember, this is what we used to do, son. I don't know what I'm doing. We've been talking for too long.

You may be asking why this episode is so long, right? What are these guys, why do they want to talk about Final Fantasy so much? And that's because this is the only time we get to talk about Final Fantasy on Nostalgia. There will be no Final Fantasy 2 as we know it on the NES or Final Fantasy 3. There is a Final Fantasy 2, which is technically Final Fantasy 4. It's all very complicated. But for the first time...

I would like to explain that away, the notion of maybe why there was no Final Fantasy II Japan release in North America. Will you guys humor me?

Sure. Yeah, this is the first time you're dropping this news. This is the first time it's ever been officially revealed. This is the first time it's ever been revealed. I'm making a compelling argument for it, okay? Okay. Okay. First, Final Fantasy I. was released in 1987 in Japan, 1990 in North America, and really mostly a push on Nintendo's part after the success of Dragon Warrior and everything.

The delayed entry was mostly because RPGs weren't seen as something that would sell incredibly well in the States. we get Final Fantasy 1 on the NES, it's going to take time to find out if there's an audience there in the States for it, right? By that time. Final Fantasy 2 was released in Japan in 1988.

Okay? Final Fantasy II had more, you know, like, probably more advanced technology on some level or whatever, but I don't think that there is a technical limitation for the NES cartridge. Instead, I think... that Final Fantasy 4, what we know as Final Fantasy 4 in Japan, Final Fantasy 2 for Super Nintendo, that's like, that's coming. That's coming real fast. Final Fantasy... Yeah, that's true. Final Fantasy 4.

is 1991. So why would you waste your resources on debating bringing over Final Fantasy 2 and 3, where 2 wasn't even really that well received, and 3 is now an older NES game? When you could be delivering Final Fantasy 2, your next big entry in the series for this new market in North America, as a Super Nintendo game. Not that much longer after the release of Final Fantasy 1 on NES. I think this is where the lines get blurred a little bit. And people don't realize just how close we are.

to the release of the Super Nintendo. That's next year, right? Like that's kind of crazy. 1991, we're going to have the Super Nintendo and we're going to have a Final Fantasy 2 slash 4 on our hands pretty quickly after that. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, in terms of what would you rather use your localization resources on, I don't think that there's really an argument to be made for these older games when you have...

Something brand spanking new right around the corner. And I don't know the exact date of when Final Fantasy 2 slash 4 came to America, but I... The latest, I could think, is 1992, considering it came out July 19th, 1991 in Japan. So, you know, again, that's only two years. After the events of after the release of Final Fantasy one. So you have to think the reason two and three didn't come is just because they wanted to move ahead and, you know, doing the kind of like.

megaman 1 2 3 4 5 6 all on the nes before megaman 7 on the super nintendo isn't like as solid a strategy as uh capcom might want you to believe and it's also not like they're they're serialized like they're all their own story so it's super easy just to slap a different roman numeral on it yeah don't you think that's actually the greatest thing about

final fantasy as a series like dragon dragon quest can't say the same thing uh some of those games are trilogies uh to my understanding you play as the same or you know you play the same main character erdrick or whatever um across like three different games or something like that yeah they exist in the same world whereas the greatest thing about final fantasy is that every time they get the chance to start fresh both

story game mechanics and then there are just these tropes that we've been discussing with chocobos moogles all that that they just get to continue to kind of well this is how we keep it final fantasy i i just love it it's pretty hot Yeah. I mean, I, I, I agree. That is my, there is just, it's hard for me to put my finger on like how much of this is just me being a fan boy and how much of it is real, but like.

There's just something. When you hear, for a long time, when you hear a Final Fantasy story is coming, you know it's going to be its own new world, its own rules, its own lore, and its...

But it's still going to feel like a Final Fantasy. It's still going to have all these connected themes and everything. And that's why I'm always so excited to play a Final Fantasy that I haven't played, because they're all these different stories, but they're all also these... the same level of like epicness to each of them and like up until yeah what we were talking about like 11 through 15 you kind of always expect like a really high quality story experience You

And there's still people who are just like, hey, I still play 11 online to this day, you know, or people who defend 13 or defend, you know, 12 had it's like. 12 had a weird run, and I feel like the Zodiac version really helped it fall back into favor. I mean, people swear by 12, and I still really want to play it.

That's from the game. Don't worry. It's all good. Yes. You should really play 12. I think 12 is fantastic. The Gambit system is another, like we're saying, it's another really fun way of reimagining. The Final Fantasy Combat System. Yeah. And that's the other thing. It's not just the story. They reinvent the gameplay system like every time. Like they go really hard. Like Final Fantasy 7.

to Final Fantasy 8, to Final Fantasy 9. They're like completely different games, but they still feel similar. Yeah, if every game had materia, I'd be fine with it. If every game was the materia system, I'd be like, yeah, what's up? I want them to keep changing things and evolving it and seeing different ways to do similar things. That's what I love about it, is learning the new system.

And two and three are different, and they were released in Japan. So there is a chance on our Nostalgia Bites podcast, which is only available. It's going to happen. Just admit it. It's only available at patreon.com slash nostalgia. I don't know if it'll hit like two plus hours of talking about those games, but yeah, it's going to happen. Sean's right.

We're going to play probably every RPG that never came out here on Nostalgia Bites because we just eat those things up. But yeah, if you want to see that, the best way to tell us is on Patreon, patreon.com slash nostalgia. And I think I feel pretty good about everything we talked about for Final Fantasy 1. Is there anything, any moment...

That we didn't touch upon that you are surprised this many hours into the show that we didn't bring up. Like the fact that they removed all the crosses and changed the churches to clinics. And the last level is now a triangle instead of a hexagram. And Medusa's not topless. Aww. Yeah, but the mermaids are. Well, mermaids, of course, they have to be.

Why do they have to be topless? Are they really topless? Are they actually topless? The sprites look like that. As much as six pixels can be topless, but yes, it looked like it to me. I'm looking into it. I want to pull up the original NES sprite. Yeah, they're topless. But they don't have boobs. I think Medusa had boobs. It's just a few pixels. Yeah, Medusa was like the...

When you're actually fighting Medusa, this was a bigger sprite, right? Yes. So naturally, she'd have to be covered. Right, right. That's another funny thing. There's just like a mix of... mythologies as well, right? Like, there's Christianity, there's Greek mythology, there's vampires. There's werewolves. Zomboles. Zomboles. You name it. Goblins. Like everything's in this game. This is like Smash Brothers. Everyone is here. Every religion is here.

All right. No, for real. Smash Brothers for Religions. Which one? The Essential Games list? It would be kind of funny to say no. It's not essential. Be kind of funny at this point. Don't really know what ground I'd have to stand on. But I did think about, well, what would the haters say? The haters would probably say, how is Zelda 2?

not essential, but this is. And I think my only argument there has nothing to do with Zelda 2, so forgive me to those people that might say that. He just had to bring it up. He just had to bring it up. But here's the argument, okay? When I talk about like, we're wondering if these games are still like playable today or do they still hold up today? I never say that like I'm directly comparing.

Final Fantasy 1 to Final Fantasy 16. That is like a fool's mission, right? It's just the developers had completely different timelines. They had completely different skill structures. They were in the industry at different times. technical limitations it doesn't make any sense to do it that way that's not what we're saying but instead i'm offering when you have the opportunity to play final fantasy 16 and final fantasy 1

Should you play both, or do you get what you need out of Final Fantasy XVI? And I think that's what makes Final Fantasy I so interesting to me, is that... Right here in the very first entry in the series, which seems kind of obvious now in hindsight, like, of course, there would be 16 plus countless spinoffs if a franchise knocks it out of the park.

But they really did here. They really did knock it out of the park. Yes, it's incredibly grindy. Yes, it's incredibly buggy. None of that stuff bothered the fans when the game first came out and created a group of diehards.

And it still really doesn't matter today. It does suck a little bit that... uh you know you buy a spell that you think is gonna do one thing and it does another or because of a like integer overflow this thing doesn't actually work or this stat doesn't mean anything like those things do stink

But the game still completely works. It is playable. It is beatable. It is enjoyable. And I think when I'm talking about like, are these games still playable today or still worth playing today? Sorry, still worth playing today.

I can't think of a reason to say, no, Final Fantasy 1 is best left in the past. Like, maybe that's true. Final Fantasy 2 and 3, and that's why they never came to North America to begin with. I have my own explanation for why that is. But Final Fantasy 1... whether you're playing it on the original NES or you're playing the Game Boy Advance version, which looking over all the different versions is probably the next one I would try, or you're playing the PSP version like Joe or the...

PlayStation 1 version, which I think has load times or something, something weird about it. No matter what version you play. Even if it's the Pixel Remaster, you can't go wrong here because you're still getting the Final Fantasy 1 experience, which is definitely an experience worth having for any gamer who's into. you know, exploring the classics. This is a classic. That's what gets it on the Essential Games list. Joe? Yeah, it's...

I won't bury the lead, like, obviously. I'm a big, big fan of the series and this game in particular. I will vote it onto the Essential Games list. I'm just going to say that the, you know... I won't pretend that there aren't a lot of quality of life flaws. You know, things we didn't even mention. Like, you can't select how many peers or how many heels you're buying. You have to go through the menu.

You want to buy 99 heels? You got to like menu that 99 times. Like it's to the point where like I'm doing 99. I'm like trying to stock up on my heels. I'm watching a YouTube video while I'm just like pressing A over and over again until I'm done. It takes time to do stuff like that. So there's plenty of room for improvement, but it's all quality of life, and none of it outweighs just how great the game is. And, you know, sort of... piggybacking on your points mike the fact that they're all like

You can't really compare this to Final Fantasy 16, which may be a weird example because that's such a departure from the regular series anyways, or any Final Fantasy. You can't compare it to Final Fantasy 7 or Final Fantasy 6 or 10 or whatever because... For one, they're all different stories and they're all different gameplay things. They all have their own things to offer. And looking at this in a vacuum, I mean, I don't think...

If you can get past those quality of life things, I don't think anyone walks away from this disappointed, you know, unless you hate JRPGs or something. So I think this is just absolutely a play it. It's really cool, especially for a Final Fantasy fan, especially like... someone like me born in the 90s and like not really having played this 1990 game it's really cool to go back and see the origin of it and to see how much it holds up

So yeah, absolutely essential. Sean. All right. So it's an essential game now. I feel though... I have an obligation to at least plead the case that the rules and regulations for the Essential Games list...

We always have our back and forths about what it actually means, and in one episode it might mean one thing, in one episode it might mean another. It doesn't matter, because we make the rules, and you have no say. But... you know, if we want to pretend that it has rules, I can't compare this game to Final Fantasy 15, 16, 17, 12, but I can compare this game to its remakes.

or not even just the remakes just the remasters and if we're going by the letter and spirit of the law this is not how you should play this game the original NES version is not how you should play it Play it on something more modern that fixes the bugs. Maybe it looks a little better too, but that's just a taste thing. But, like, there are objectively better versions of this game than the NES version. But...

In the spirit of Final Fantasy love, I will ignore those rules of the Essential Games list. And just headcanon that to be like, oh, it's all just the same game. It's really just the same game, right? It's all the same thing. So yeah, it's essential. I'm voting it essential, but... Do not play it on NES. Play it on something else. I recall making a similar plea on the Shadowgate episode and almost getting shadow banned from the Discord.

That's a joke, obviously. I control the Discord. No worries there. It's fine. But I did say that Shadowgate best played on a PC with a mouse. Instead of the NES functionality. But that's fine. That's fine. I'm glad that you chose the Final Fantasy episode to have an episode. I voted for it to be essential. Yeah, yeah. In a weird way. You're weird. Okay, that's cool too. Would you vote Final Fantasy VII PS1 to be essential? Or would it have to go to like...

What, for like an essential PlayStation 1 game? An essential PlayStation 1 list. Yeah, because the remasters didn't change the game and fix bugs. Yeah, I guess I was just trying to look for like a weird... Like Final Fantasy 7 PC port. They had to fix the game. That's it. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, gotcha. Gotcha. That's true. That's true. In fact, they actually broke a game that wasn't that broke. Right? Like the Famicom version.

Which is pretty okay, apparently, by all accounts. So what happened here? See, Sean, I was thinking the same thing of like, yeah, this isn't maybe the definitive version. But, you know, but I'm going to ignore that in the sake of Final Fantasy. But I was ignoring it by ignoring it. You brought it up. You brought it to everyone's attention. Now I feel like, oh, now I got to defend this. You don't have to defend it. I'm just saying.

You don't have to defend your stupidity. I'm going to defend it to myself now because I was just trying to not even think about it. And that way I could be like, yeah, I feel great about this. Now I'm like, oh, shit. I've got to think about this now. So I'm just going to pretend I didn't hear you. With Final Fantasy and Super Mario Bros. 3 out of the way, what's left to really look forward to? Dictionary. That's next. That's like three weeks from now.

Okay, Pictionary 2. Okay, that's fine. I don't know if that's coming, but what did you say? What did you say, Joe? I said Tim Follin. Yeah, oh, I thought you said, I thought you said, like, another game. Well, there should be a game about Tim Paul. Tim Paul and the NES game, yep. No, come on. What are you really looking forward to? Oh, let me look ahead here. Is it Dragon Warrior 2? Snake, rattle, and roll. Gun.smoke.

That's the past, isn't it? No, Snake Rattling Roll's coming up. Okay. I'm going to say it. I'm looking forward to Castlevania 3. Dracula's Curse. My eyes just landed on that when you said that. I think that that's going to be... A pretty interesting thing because of the hot mess that Castlevania 2 was. Castlevania 2 was a great game if they just got rid of that part where you have to listen to the townspeople to figure out where to go next.

Yeah, all those RPG elements. Yeah, if they just got rid of the RPG elements, that would be a great action game. Error. You know one that I'm looking forward to because I've heard about it a lot? And I don't know anything about it, really. StarTropics. Okay. No idea what it is. Great. I am, too. No, no, no. You have to give us an answer that's not... I don't have the list in front of me.

Kickle Cubicle? Kickle Cubicle. I mean, that's one, obviously. I know you're a big Kickle Cubicle fan. You won't shut up about it. Kickle Cubicle? Is that really the name? Kickle Cubicle is the name. It's a puzzle game. You know, bear with me right here. How about... How about North and South? Doesn't mean anything. Great. Civil War game. Oh, shit. Okay. Say something, Final Fantasy, for the end of the episode. You sure am messed up, Cloud.