Game Debate #182: Final Fantasy

[RH | 4,903]

Remind me, how much talking did Link do in Legend of Zelda?  Oh wait... remind me of how much talking Link's done?  Ever?

The NES was very much a transition system from the very barebones days of the 2600 and the future when there would be "loads" of memory for games for systems like the SNES or Genesis.

There are compression tricks you can do tiles, sprites and even some game mechanics but text dialog is heavy.  Line-for-line, there's little to no compression you can put in a RAM cart from that era, so having "silent" protagonists makes a lot of sense.

So what is an RPG going to feel like if text is kept to a minimum?  Well, it's going to feel like a colorful, interactive story where you fill in the descriptors that are missing.  You imagine the dialog and you engage the story on a more mentally creative level.

It's definitely not a perfect game but it is a great game for it's time.  I've not read the manual, but I know it's big compared to standard NES manuals.  I assume most of those pages are dedicated to setting up story context to help you fill in the imaginative gaps of what's going on.

[NostalgicMachine | 235]

11 minutes ago, RH said:

Remind me, how much talking did Link do in Legend of Zelda?  Oh wait... remind me of how much talking Link's done?  Ever?

The NES was very much a transition system from the very barebones days of the 2600 and the future when there would be "loads" of memory for games for systems like the SNES or Genesis.

There are compression tricks you can do tiles, sprites and even some game mechanics but text dialog is heavy.  Line-for-line, there's little to no compression you can put in a RAM cart from that era, so having "silent" protagonists makes a lot of sense.

So what is an RPG going to feel like if text is kept to a minimum?  Well, it's going to feel like a colorful, interactive story where you fill in the descriptors that are missing.  You imagine the dialog and you engage the story on a more mentally creative level.

It's definitely not a perfect game but it is a great game for it's time.  I've not read the manual, but I know it's big compared to standard NES manuals.  I assume most of those pages are dedicated to setting up story context to help you fill in the imaginative gaps of what's going on.

In Zelda II, Link tells us that "He found a mirror under the table" .

[Webhead123 | 675]

1 hour ago, RH said:

Remind me, how much talking did Link do in Legend of Zelda?  Oh wait... remind me of how much talking Link's done?  Ever?

This guy would like to have a few words with you.

I kid...I kid.

[Tulpa | 3,494]

2 hours ago, RH said:

I've not read the manual, but I know it's big compared to standard NES manuals.  I assume most of those pages are dedicated to setting up story context to help you fill in the imaginative gaps of what's going on.

No, it's a full blown walkthrough for like half of the game (if not more.) Imagine the Gamefaqs page with full color pictures and whatnot.

In fact, I just looked it over; there's not much lore stuff in it at all. Mostly "go here, use this, do this, hit this menu option, etc."

Edited December 15, 2023 by Tulpa

[Tanooki | 4,933]

3 hours ago, RH said:

Remind me, how much talking did Link do in Legend of Zelda?  Oh wait... remind me of how much talking Link's done?  Ever?

The NES was very much a transition system from the very barebones days of the 2600 and the future when there would be "loads" of memory for games for systems like the SNES or Genesis.

There are compression tricks you can do tiles, sprites and even some game mechanics but text dialog is heavy.  Line-for-line, there's little to no compression you can put in a RAM cart from that era, so having "silent" protagonists makes a lot of sense.

So what is an RPG going to feel like if text is kept to a minimum?  Well, it's going to feel like a colorful, interactive story where you fill in the descriptors that are missing.  You imagine the dialog and you engage the story on a more mentally creative level.

It's definitely not a perfect game but it is a great game for it's time.  I've not read the manual, but I know it's big compared to standard NES manuals.  I assume most of those pages are dedicated to setting up story context to help you fill in the imaginative gaps of what's going on.

I still own my original manual and poster maps, and I'll say this much.  It's an 80 page handbook of a manual with everything you need to get started and go a ways into the game either not totally blind.  I also was bored one weekend in the 90s, and I typed the entire thing out, even the image box descriptors all in a text file and uploaded it along with in that era a number of others.  It can still be found online, but that one was by far the most time consuming.

FF1 just works without personalities and talk, though I do like they seemingly do have actual preferred names for the characters which I only recently discovered.  The thing is, it took the D&D approach, create who you want, name it how you want, and YOU be that link, not just more script fed to you.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,073]

4 hours ago, fox said:

So you roll up to the table to play DnD and leave the character background blank, no traits, no ideals, no bonds, no backstory.    That is what breaths life in the game.  You are just going to play a mute amnesiac and not even make an attempt to role play in a role playing game.  If you are just here to roll dice, we can play Yahtzee or something. 

As others have pointed out, doing such an in-depth role-playing experience on 8bit hardware is extremely tough and FF was a relatively early games. It tried to approximate DnD just like how many CRPGs of the late 70s and early 80s did, but at the beginning they could hardly do more than just lifting the mechanics from DnD. It took years and several installments until games like maybe Ultima IV offered actual moral choices to be made. So why would you hold the first entry in a series and an early console RPG from '87 to the same standards?

Also, there are some of us who enjoy this style of game even without the actual role-playing elements. Simply rolling dice, however, is awfully boring. I could also say the same for other kinds of games. Why do you enjoy fighting games? You just press a few buttons. Why don't you take actual martial arts lessons and fight against real people? Why do people enjoy Tecmo Super Bowl, where you only press one button to set a strategy, then watch the computer players do their thing and if you're lucky you might run after the ball with your avatar. You could just go into a park, throw balls around and run after them. Duh!

I could go on and on with similar examples for different kinds of games. But it always comes down to different people enjoying different kinds of things. I'm just sick of people talking smack about people who enjoy the more "gamey" side of RPGs. Dungeon crawlers like Etrian Odyssey etc. are super enjoyable to me and just saying that it's like rolling dice doesn't do it justice.

Besides, if you wanted to be nitpicky, you could argue that even modern CRPGs don't allow for the same amount of freedom as real DnD with a skilled dungeon master. Because ultimately you're always just playing a blank slate main character who can interact with pre-designed characters. Maybe a game is fancy and you can chose some minor background elements, like with Master Shepherd in Mass Effect 1. However, with a human dungeon master and some other imaginative players you could do all sorts of whacky shit as long as you can imagine it. So far no computer program can fully emulate that. They're just trying to get closer and closer to it. Maybe with AI this will eventually be achieved. But who knows?

[DefaultGen | 5,405]

6/10, probably tied with my other favorite NES RPGs Ultima 3 and 4. It's good but all old RPGs have an amount of tedium that some newer games have managed to mitigate.

[NostalgicMachine | 235]

17 minutes ago, DefaultGen said:

6/10, probably tied with my other favorite NES RPGs Ultima 3 and 4. It's good but all old RPGs have an amount of tedium that some newer games have managed to mitigate.

Wow I totally forgot about the Ultima games on the NES; at one point, I those carts on my shelf.

[koifish | 556]

Yeah I'm with you @Sumez , I like the first final fantasy because it doesn't waste my time with big story arcs or with what the characters are feeling. I only wish characters were more disposable like in SaGa 1 and 2 or Wizardry, so if I decide to change my party it doesn't cost me starting the game over.

I've only played the WS version of this to any serious degree, but it feels like a good game. You can tell why it became a long-running series from how the first one plays out. I also like how it incorporates weird sci-fi stuff, like Ultima and Might and Magic did. It's not a game I would run to play though, simply because RPGs are only so interesting to play for someone who prefers dexterity games.

[Bearcat-Doug | 5,105]

2 hours ago, Tanooki said:

FF1 just works without personalities and talk, though I do like they seemingly do have actual preferred names for the characters which I only recently discovered.  The thing is, it took the D&D approach, create who you want, name it how you want, and YOU be that link, not just more script fed to you.

I always thought that was a positive for the game as well.

Edited December 15, 2023 by Bearcat-Doug

[Tanooki | 4,933]

1 hour ago, Bearcat-Doug said:

I always thought that was a positive for the game as well.

I mean what it came out I think in 1990 for us like 3 years later than overseas.  At that rate I was 13, and I had tried briefly at jr high to do a little classic DnD, so I get the whole nameless faceless built it character so it worked for me.

The only thing I ever truly hated in that period, the garbage MP system, I was used to having magic points and rolling for them to hit/save/backfire.  The caps just seemed counter intuitive and stupid, forcing me to keep like a crap load of 50HP restore bottles when taking a dungeon or cave seriously.  The XP/GP never bothered me in many places, but one that really ground me down was the ogre hunting outside of Elfland to handle that stretch in the area as it felt like an odd wall.  So when Origins, Dawn of Souls, mobile popped up I was all over the XP/GP improvement due to lack of as much free time as a kid, and the real magic system to keep things interesting at the same time.  Sure it streamlined it, but the core charm of the game outside wasn't tarnished, it's why I keep the cheapo digital copy on iOS all these years since it came out.  Like I said I have 2 ratings for it, and averaged it as it seemed most fair.  It was a last ditch game for the company, but also a learning game, as much as FF2 (fc) was as much so if not more on what NOT to do (which they didn't bone again so badly until 8.)

[fox | 1,667]

3 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

 So why would you hold the first entry in a series and an early console RPG from '87 to the same standards?

Cause it is 2023 and there are other alternatives

[Reed Rothchild | 9,526]

1 hour ago, fox said:

Cause it is 2023 and there are other alternatives

What have you done for me lately game!

[CMR | 519]

9/10

The first time I played all the way through FF was on the PS1 with FF origins even though I've owned the NES game longer.  I actually prefer the limited story in FF and Dragon Warrior over more story heavy games.  That said, I thought FF had a really cool twist ending for such an old game.  It genuinely surprised me and I loved it for that.

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

10 hours ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

I could go on and on with similar examples for different kinds of games. But it always comes down to different people enjoying different kinds of things. I'm just sick of people talking smack about people who enjoy the more "gamey" side of RPGs. Dungeon crawlers like Etrian Odyssey etc. are super enjoyable to me and just saying that it's like rolling dice doesn't do it justice.

Yeah, this is the pivot point for me.  I'm the type of gamer who doesn't like hugely intricate stories and long cut scenes in RPGs; if I want to follow a story, I'll watch a movie or read a book.  For me, when I play a video game, what I do is the story, so for FF, I'm only a blank slate when I show up with my crystal ball; after that, everything I do is the story.

"Orco was limping back to town with 14 HP left after a hard fought battle with a nasty group of wizards, just desperately trying to haul his plunder and the bodies of his three dead friends back to the priest, when he was suddenly ambushed by a lone ogre just outside the town gates.  Well Orco tried to run but the ogre struck first, though as luck would have it, this is the one time in his life that the world's weakest black mage was able to dodge an attack, and he made it back to Elfland by the skin of his nose..."

That's the story when I play Final Fantasy.  I haven't read any of the townspeople's dialog in so long that I don't even know what they say anymore.  Nor do I care, as FF is so refreshingly a video game: free of cut scenes and story arc, and all but the briefest of dialog (note that no character in the game ever says a single word more than what can fit - without scrolling - into the little blue box at the top of the screen).  Just let me make my party and drop down into a mysterious world and I'll tackle all of the challenges to come...

Final Fantasy is a gamer's RPG, and that's why I love it to death.

Edited December 16, 2023 by Dr. Morbis

[AstralSoul | 502]

The original is hard for me to play. It's just too damn slow. But I enjoy the remakes in FF Origins/Dawn of Souls. The remakes give it just enough QOL improvements and graphic uphaul to make it an enjoyable game. Original: 5/10, Remake: 7/10. I average it at 6/10.

[T-Pac | 7,543]

I've tried playing Final Fantasy a couple of times, but always got bored or frustrated pretty early-on.

That being said - is there a party-lineup that I could use to steamroll my way through the game? Or are all the combinations pretty similarly balanced?

I want to finish this one someday just for its significance in "classic gaming" (even though I don't like actually playing RPGs haha).

[T-Pac]

[Splain | 2,569]

I remember playing this one in college, with my roommate standing over my shoulder telling me not to ever equip the Monk with weapons, so that his bare fists would become OP at around level 10. I didn't believe him but he basically watched my entire playthrough, so I went with it. Sure enough, the monk got real strong, and I never gave him a weapon. I later googled it and it looks like you can equip weapons all you want, just un-equip them at level 10 lol.

[Gloves | 11,777]

1 hour ago, T-Pac said:

I've tried playing Final Fantasy a couple of times, but always got bored or frustrated pretty early-on.

That being said - is there a party-lineup that I could use to steamroll my way through the game? Or are all the combinations pretty similarly balanced?

I want to finish this one someday just for its significance in "classic gaming" (even though I don't like actually playing RPGs haha).

[T-Pac]

There are plenty of bad parties, and the good ones are mostly "okay". The go-to most well-rounded party which can manage the whole game easily enough is almost the default party. Swap the Thief for a Monk and you're in a good spot:

1. Fighter
2. Monk
3. White Mage
4. Black Mage

Some people swear by the Red Mage and while it's a competent weapon user and a competent enough mage, the Monk will out-dps it in the long run bare-fisted. The monk is actually best with literally nothing equipped, including no weapon - he'll hit many times per attack, and accurately so.

There are  a few key points in the game at which you can grind levels quickly/easily in order to give yourself the advantage. To maximize stats you'd want to wait to grind until you have done the class upgrade via Bahamut, but this requires relatively significant progress through the game and I'd not suggest rushing it for a beginner.

I'd be happy to go into detail on how to make the original NES game easier/more manageable if you like, but for now the above at least fits as a response to your initial question.

[DefaultGen | 5,405]

2 hours ago, T-Pac said:

I've tried playing Final Fantasy a couple of times, but always got bored or frustrated pretty early-on.

That being said - is there a party-lineup that I could use to steamroll my way through the game? Or are all the combinations pretty similarly balanced?

I want to finish this one someday just for its significance in "classic gaming" (even though I don't like actually playing RPGs haha).

[T-Pac]

Thief is OP. Go 4 thieves.

[DefaultGen | 5,405]

Don’t actually do that, I like you. 

[T-Pac | 7,543]

1 hour ago, Gloves said:

There are plenty of bad parties, and the good ones are mostly "okay". The go-to most well-rounded party which can manage the whole game easily enough is almost the default party. Swap the Thief for a Monk and you're in a good spot:

1. Fighter
2. Monk
3. White Mage
4. Black Mage

Some people swear by the Red Mage and while it's a competent weapon user and a competent enough mage, the Monk will out-dps it in the long run bare-fisted. The monk is actually best with literally nothing equipped, including no weapon - he'll hit many times per attack, and accurately so.

There are  a few key points in the game at which you can grind levels quickly/easily in order to give yourself the advantage. To maximize stats you'd want to wait to grind until you have done the class upgrade via Bahamut, but this requires relatively significant progress through the game and I'd not suggest rushing it for a beginner.

I'd be happy to go into detail on how to make the original NES game easier/more manageable if you like, but for now the above at least fits as a response to your initial question.

 

1 hour ago, DefaultGen said:

Thief is OP. Go 4 thieves.

 

1 hour ago, DefaultGen said:

Don’t actually do that, I like you. 

Well ... I just remembered why I don't do RPGs...

[T-Pac]

[Philosoraptor | 468]

I'm not the biggest RPG guy, especially early, pre-PS1 ones. I've started multiple versions of FF, but I never got through any of them. I gave it a 7/10. If I don't feel like finishing an RPG for whatever reason, it's hard for me to give it anything higher than that.

 

[Gloves | 11,777]

20 minutes ago, T-Pac said:

 

 

Well ... I just remembered why I don't do RPGs...

[T-Pac]

A potential part of a good RPG experience IMO is the social aspect. Talking with friends about character builds, what spells to get or avoid, what spots are good for grinding, etc.. Often times a stressful experience can be made fun with a friend at your side. 

I will always remember when I was in college and Final Fantasy 13 released, a friend and I made a friendly wager of $5 to see who could get the platinum PSN trophy first. The game turned out to not be great, but the daily conversations were a highlight for the week or so it took for him to get all the trophies in the game (I never actually finished). That interaction took a game I didn't like very much at all and made it an enjoyable, and even memorable experience. We'd laugh at the ridiculous circumstances and characters in the game, complain to each other about it basically being the most linear RPG we'd ever played, stuff like that. Camaraderie. 

This all to say - maybe just remember you're part of a community of people, many of whom would be happy to share the experience with you, provide tips and tricks, etc.. 

FF1's magic system in particular, ignoring the limited use spells, can be pretty frustrating if you go into it unaware of that a handful of the spells in the game literally do nothing at all (they were programmed incorrectly), and one or two actually even benefits your enemies. Can make it a bit frustrating when it feels like your Black Mage is useless cuz his spells don't work half the time.

[CMR | 519]

@T-Pac

2 fighters a red mage and a white mage make the best party.  Fire2 will take care of most things until you get to the ice cave then you want ice2.  Yes, monsters in ice cave are weak to ice2.

Go watch a Gyre speedrun for some useful strategies if you're struggling.

Edited December 17, 2023 by CMR