Time for a poll!

Of the four games completed so far in this journey, which did you have the most difficulty with? For me, I’d have to go with Final Fantasy IV (GBA). I had a bear of a time taking out the last boss, and got stuck for an hour or so with another boss in the final dungeon as well. I found it harder than any of the previous three games that I played.

Time for a new poll! I’m now approaching the mid-point in Final Fantasy IV, and I thought it might be appropriate to see what everyone here thinks is the best of the early Final Fantasy games. Along those lines, which is your personal favorite of the first four Final Fantasy games?

I’m holding off on voting at the moment, until I finish Final Fantasy IV.

Japanese culture loves numbers in games, and one of the neat things about the first two Final Fantasy games is that they come complete with monster almanacs, which record not only what type of monsters you’ve killed, but also how many of each type.

In my neverending struggle to rid the digital world of all forms of goblins, I thought it would be interesting to keep track of how many of the little beasties I kill as I travel this quest to play all the Final Fantasy games in Japanese. Along those lines, I present…

The Goblin Graveyard
Final Fantasy II Goblin Kills
Goblins: 320
Goblin Guards: 207
Goblin Princes: 3
Total: 530

Final Fantasy I Goblin Kills
Goblins: 230
Goblin Guards: 127
Black Goblins: 628
Total: 985

Grand Total: 1,515 Goblins Killed to Date!

At this rate, we’ll could very well kill 10,000 Goblins if we make it all the way to the end and the number of goblins in the series stays consistent with the number in the first two games.

Now that’s an accomplishment to put on job applications!

Picture Credit: www.3DRT.com

(written on September 11, 2006)

I don’t know what happened to all the guys dancing in the woods, but let’s face it: they couldn’t have been all that concerned with the plight of the world in the first place if their response to worldly peril is to go dance in the woods all day long. I can just see it now.

Townsfolk: Evil monsters are attacking our world!
Heroes: Oh.
Townsfolk: What should we do?
Heroes: Um, let’s go stand in a circle in the woods and dance.
Townsfolk: Huh?
Heroes: Eventually some real heroes will show up and we can tell them what to do.
Townsfolk: Huh?
Heroes: Someone get the repetitive Japanese game soundtrack and let’s go!
Townsfolk: Huh?
Heroes: Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to dance we go!

I’ll just assume that they are still out there, dancing in the woods.

The game took me a little over 46 hours to finish. I’m guessing that about 10 of those were spent Cluelessly Lost, which isn’t bad for me.

My characters reached Level 87. I cheated three times.

Overall, I liked the game quite a bit. The random encounters were gentle enough, the puzzles were decent, if not easy, and the variety of fighting and locales was good. There is a lot of exploring to do in the game, and it’s all quite fun.

Having said that, there are some playbalance issues with the game. Since I’ve finished the game, I’ve read a bit about it, and apparently the four dungeons that are unlocked after you get each of the four crystals are actually bonus dungeons that were not included in the original game. While these four dungeons were entertaining enough, the experience gained and weapons earned in them make the core game ridiculously easy. The final battle was over in a matter of seconds, which is a shame considering how tough of a fight the boss was in the third optional dungeon. Also, most of the random combatants in the back half of the game could barely touch my party, and we had enough cash to buy a small planet by the mid-point in the game. All these factors added up to make the game easy on the whole. The tricky part was figuring out where to go and what to do.

Overall, though, considering the age of the game, I’ll give this remake of the game a 75%. Enjoyable, but not great. I wish there was an option to turn off the bonus dungeons, or a better way to tell the player that the dungeons are optional.

Up next…

Final Fantasy II

(written 1 September 2006)

Victory! Khaos has fallen. Balance has been restored and our heroes have triumphed!

Shortly after I wrote the previous entry, we stumbled onto the last level of the final dungeon. Khaos showed up and gave us a long speech about time-travel and such. We sharpened our swords and waited around patiently while he droned on and on. I’m not quite sure of everything he said, as I always get confused with time travel plots in English, forget about Japanese, and we all knew that this was simply a prelude to mixing it up, so we figured listening closely wasn’t all that important. Sure enough, eventually he shut up and we got down to the business of trying to kill each other.

Surprisingly, the final battle was anticlimactic. Within a minute or two, Khaos crumbled like a Jenga tower in a tornado. My first reaction was he spent too much time figuring out how to time-travel and not enough time figuring out how to fight us. But anyway, we were then taken to a final screen where some scrolling text complemented us on our great job and told us that all was right with the world again. Good for us.

Done! Yeah! One game down and um, humm, I don’t even know how many games are in this series. Oh well, one down and more to go!

Picture Credit: Final Fantasy Compendium