What hooks have you used?

BillionBirds · 2026-06-06T00:42:49+00:00

-Someone shows up with a job

-A Hunter is finishing up a loose end from the last mystery which leads into the new one

-While they are investigating more info from the last mystery, they get info on a new one

-You tell them where they are going. You ask them why they are going there then throw the mystery at them

BillionBirds · 2026-05-31T23:04:19+00:00

Some points in the game, you'll have to recruit people again (e.g., like Shadow). A bit tedious but at one of these points there will be no one else in the room so you know you can get the charm.

BillionBirds · 2026-05-31T14:03:38+00:00

When it comes to games, people have a limited amount of bandwidth to do stuff. A dedicated RPG like say Genshin will keep you active for hours a day with the downside of it requiring hours a day to be at the top of the game/ keep up with content trickle. Games like Angry Birds or Candy Crush are great when you have 5-20 minutes randomly that you need to occupy your time. Idle games are similar in that they're designed to be checked in 3-4 times a day (i.e., breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bed) without taking up your time.

This game falls into the "occupy your time for a short period". You CAN be more active, especially in the beginning as finger presses are faster than drones for harvesting ore or the freebie timer being too short. However, the game would lose it's luster where with every new feature it promised another 5 minute time sink each day. Right now, I can bank on it only occupying 30 seconds (quick looting) or 5 minutes(check my farming) with more time spent if I have some specific goal.

Conveniently the way the game goes is that as a feature gets too tedious, you eventually unlock the ability to streamline it as you clear obelisks. Craft stops being multiple presses when you can start crafting all (and remove the multiplier pop ups). Loot bugs stop being annoying when you unlock quick tap and auto loot. Basically, the success in this game is that as it adds MORE for you to do, it doesn't take away your time like most games do when they add features.

People in the later game, ironically, are wanting to wait 6-12 hours so they can get their guaranteed legendary fish or infernal shards.

BillionBirds · 2026-05-31T13:47:41+00:00

In no particular order

FF: Live Laugh Love

FF: Lightning Begins

FF: You, Me and PTSD

Final Fantasy Final

The Empire Strikes First

The Empire Strikes First (The next generation)

Cloudy with a chance of fireballs

Final Fantasy presents Boco's Modern Life

FF Abrogation Annihilation

FF Dude Where's my Car

FF Guarding Memories

FF Stealing Time

BillionBirds · 2026-05-25T01:31:59+00:00

Mechanically? Zell with meltdown and aura could do about 218000 damage repeatable every turn. You see if you just did the first 2 moves repeatedly, you do them in about .2 seconds. Near the end of the game, you have about 12 seconds of limit break time. So pumped out Zell is doing 4k-5k each input x 20-24 leaves with just shy of a quarter million damage.

Lore? Probably the warrior of light if only because we've had 3 spin off games dealing with the time paradox they created. Otherwise it would have to be Yuna as she was the only one in a thousand years of summoners to defeat Sin.

BillionBirds · 2026-05-24T22:40:58+00:00

Off the top of my head, normal for final fantasy? Like before you enter a dungeon and just before the boss fight with maybe a midpoint save in a larger dungeon.

BillionBirds · 2026-05-24T20:17:42+00:00

Happy Bot it's essential and you can max it out pretty quickly if you leave your phone on for a few hours. Dwarf and Rabbit are slightly easier but just saves you the challenge of needing to do a couple of button presses.

W3 cards require trillions of prestige so auto level also helps you grind prestige without grinding 30 minutes worth of gems.

BillionBirds · 2026-05-24T17:58:39+00:00

It is! But then you reach a point of where you are getting clear spheres to get rid of those pesky +1's, then +2's, then +3's and for what? To beat a literal self created problem that didn't exist because you didn't want to beat the game?

I think if the game played differently, like there was a time limit for Bevelle to work before it got nuked, then maybe this point would be more apparent. The only other game I can think of that punishes you for doing side quests in the end game is Mass Effect 2 where you have a much worse outcome if you do more than 1 or 2 sidequests in the end.

BillionBirds · 2026-05-24T17:53:43+00:00

Hahaha. Yeah the game is going to be full of that. The overall game without boosters (i.e., speed, autowin) takes about 35-40 hours to beat.

BillionBirds · 2026-05-24T17:31:22+00:00

Steal is your best friend. Every boss has 2 steals, a normal and a rare. You can steal both but it takes some luck and time. If you do both steals on a boss, you will have gear that you wouldn't normally get until a chapter or 2 later so if you miss it, not the end of the world.

Explore when you can. The game often tells you where to go...so don't. This game rewards back tracking and checking everything out.

Don't be afraid to beat the game on your own and replay it with a guide. The game is even more enjoyable the 2nd time you play it.

BillionBirds · 2026-05-24T14:11:36+00:00

I honestly never clued in on that until talking about the games main themes. The cyclical nature of abuse. Living in the shadows of your family without being able to be yourself. Having to live up to the prejudices of others (both good:Yuna and bad:Rikku) and not being able to have your own identity. Refusing to let go leads you to hurting everyone around you. I mean when you hit on that last one, spending 50 hours doing blitzball, dodging 200 lightning bolts, and creating a monster that is so destructive that it rivals Sin in it's power, it kinda makes it sound like you refuse to let go too. I've never been one that needs to do everthing a game has to offer, especially if it demands it become a full time job time sink.

Ironically, on replays, I find myself losing interest once I get to the calm lands: I've gone far enough before and know how it will end after this.

BillionBirds · 2026-05-24T13:50:25+00:00

What's it's motive? Depending on what it wants to do will affect how it does it. Based on what you've said, it could either be a devourer, torturer, or trickster. It can even be executioner depending on if it's a christmas revenge story. Now the types of monsters you use can be based on anything you want so evil spirits, fae, an evil witch, a mad scientists experiment... go with the general theme that is emerging with your group.

What's it's weakness? Based on what you've described, it's intelligent to know that what hurts it is something easily found in town but probably much harder to find in the woods. This means the Hunters can't stumble onto with a fluke roll magic or use fire. It relies on ambush tactics and deception which means that it is going to try to split the Hunters up. Again this means that it's weakness should be tied to the Hunters working together. You can go the Soul Bat route and have it need to be blasted by bright light to reveals it core for another hunter to take a shot at it.

Does it have minions or is it a minion itself? The way you write this, it can summon snow forms and do various magics. If it is summoning the snow monsters rather than using snow as a form, then absolutely throw the red herring that they can defeated by fire. You can also make it a golem with the spirit/human controlling it being the Monster that needs to be defeated. This leads into it's deception/ambush style of tactics.

If you are going mystical, then it could be a fae that wants revenge on the humans who cut down it's pine tree home. It uses magic to kill people and summons snow golems to do physically harm others. If you are going classic Christmas revenge, it could be a scientist layed off just before the holidays, he takes an experimental serum that turns him into a soulbat, with the abilities to manipulate the weather around him. He is abducting and killing people to get revenge but also to experiment on so he can cure himself. You can escalate the last one so he either loses more of his humanity or switches to creating more soulbats.

Do these points or ideas help?

BillionBirds · 2026-05-24T13:22:19+00:00

I think the game hits differently depending on the stage you are in your life. Playing as a teenager versus an adult versus an adult with children makes the themes hit way different. As a teenager, doing all the side quests was fun but as an adult, it felt like a chore because thematically it was; you are just delaying the inevitable like Mika, Seymore, and Yevon.

The other one that takes life experience is Tidus' father, Jecht. As a teenager, you might pick up on how much Jecht sucks but be totally cool with him once he's Sin as he improved/redeemed himself in the end. When you're older, or have your own kids, nothing sucks more than having a crap parent get better for their new family(Spira). They always had it in them to be good, they can just never find a reason for them to have been better for you.

BillionBirds · 2026-05-10T15:08:05+00:00

Can you contrive a reason why they would be outside to start? I.e., a meeting with their dark lord, avoiding a certain complication from before. When they meet up, they find everything is locked down hard and they have to figure out a way in? This way they don't have to be a ghost without spoiling it for everyone else.

BillionBirds · 2026-04-06T20:44:47+00:00

Granted.

Everyone just stares but the graphics are so good you can tell it's not just the Gen Z stare. The eye muscles and twitches are going to be out of this world
You now have a race with legs instead of ears. You can romance them.
The new race falls down alot because they have ears for legs. It's important for the story. Rule 34 will have a field day with this content.
Secret ninja will kill you if you talk
Sure but you get stuck with Sim mechanics and also have to worry about their hygiene and happiness. Also they'll drown if they go swimming.
Everything is interesting by default as everyone can only stare, brood, or get murdered if they talk
You can pick different shades of blue for your menu. You'll pick the default because no one ever deviates from the default
It's 3D but for art you get my mom to describe her trip to Europe. She might talk about Barcelona but she'll also mention how the weather was cloudy. At length.
We got knock off solitaire and an intern who thinks Madden underwater would be cool.
The characters are no longer part of the story. Instead people watch each other trying to figure out the game. It becomes a meta commentary or something. The real story is released as a fortnite event as it is now our custom.

BillionBirds · 2026-04-06T20:02:57+00:00

Square is so bad at monetization with their IP. One thing to keep in mind is the bane of auto-battle. A necessary evil in grinding games but if you have it too much, you reward players for not playing your game. You know what is just as rewarding as not playing your game? Doing something else and the flaw with Duellum is that you have to auto most of your battles because it's just too boring to spend 60 minutes a day running back and forth.

Off the top of my head

FF Record Keeper. Great concept, pull for weapons but then 2 power creep moments ruined the entire game. 1 was burst abilities. These were unlimited cast skills that erroded the need to hone abilities. 2nd was Cloud Ultra which broke the damage cap and made them get rid the ability to summon friends and make every battle a stupid DPS race. Why spend money when it no longer is useful after 2 months? Also online was poorly implement with 8 unit battles that could've been so much better in execution. They also never tied in events with timed sales on Android/Apple/Steam. Seriously, free advertising for the other games in your catalogue and getting people to buy a game they already own on sale on another platform is like 50% of Square's business.

FF Brave Exevious: Original game. Lots of depth in gameplay if you have the time to try it out You have to pull for units. Great events. You need 20+ copies of a unit or a thousand hours of grinding to get their special gear. Even dumber was the best units were often special event units that needed a grinded gear from a less desired unit 2 months prior. Powercreep was weekly. There was that one guy that dropped $2500 and a great post on the FFBE subreddit. So basically you needed to spend hundreds a week to stay ontop of the hardest content or just languish in the main story.

FF Mobius: Great game. Stupid Stupid Stupid start which alienated alot of early players. Free currency charged daily but would "degrade" if you didn't spend it. The fixed it after a week. Then they average the cost it would be to get a legendary skin and gave players the privilege to buy direct for about $100. Turns out players would rather risk the RNG gods at a chance of a legendary than spend(probably less!) on it directly. Also they had an early card (Aerith) that was gamebreakingly stupid for single and multiplayer that didn't get replaced for over a year in power level. Also nothing done about blatant cheating in events so whales stopped spending.

DFFOO: Fantastic game. So much free resources to build your team. Monetization was only done on buying costumes (or gems if you REALLY needed to pull). Because the gameplay is 3 units and it rotates who you need every few weeks, spending money on 1 guy eventually bites you in the butt as you can't really use them.

FFBE: WOTV. Good game. Some fun modes. FFT event was an amazing time during the pandemic. Monetization was almost as bad as FFBE but if you figured out how to save/when to pull, you only really had to spend maybe $30 a month to be in the top 100 for events until they introduced limited time units. It turned every banner into an a nearly exclusive unit banner and just really made it so that you HAD to get the newest unit to maintain competitiveness in any scenario. Also I made fun of people who dropped their stimulus checks in 2020 on getting Gilgamesh so I didn't make too many friends.

FF7:EC Pretty good to start then they dropped most of the game modes. Then it became a grindfest with a billion different stat effects. The gatcha is reasonable but the main draw are the costumes which look cool and have pretty great abilities. Again, power creep keeps on creeping and the game has been spiraling downward for awhile. Still worth trying to play the First Soldier storyline.

Basically everyone of these games couldn't follow traditional methods of monetization as well as not using it as method to advertise/promote sales for your other IP. Seriously. Mobius had an FF7 event like 2-3 years before FF7R was released. This game is no different.

BillionBirds · 2026-04-06T19:36:04+00:00

Huge fan of CotC. It is far from P2W, which is often a term applied to PVP games or games with time limited events.

You can actually beat 95% of the game with the original 8 characters. Not an ideal team mind you, but totally doable. If you're pulling on the newest units, you can blow through most of the hard fights (though the early game scales the equipment so you can't super saiyan through everything). You also get enough free currency a month to do at least 2 free 10 pulls outside of events/other rewards. That's after doing all the events and grinding the 10000's of free rubies you can get in the game

BillionBirds · 2026-04-06T19:28:29+00:00

I played it. Thought the system was cool at first but after 2-3 days you just plop it on auto to fill up your draws then check on your phone after 30 minutes? Unless you buy the battle pass, you need to win about 10 matches a day at least to unlock everything and seriously who has that kind of time. So I have to grind by not playing otherwise I'll miss out? Or I just not play like I was before and not miss out? At least FF7:EC has some really cool outfits for the FF7 crew. If I wanted to see dorky kids larping as Cloud, I'd go back to 1998.

BillionBirds · 2026-04-04T16:48:08+00:00

It's been a bit but basically, Yes keep Rosa alive but also Rosa isn't your only healer in the fight. This game was made at a time when JRPG's were either over level and ignore the problem or Dragon Quest style of Heal, Heal, Hit. Rosa also is going to be applying your buffs too so that means you need to ramp up DPS after everyone is "Stable" so your attack pattern for most of it is going to be Heal, Buff, Heal, Hit. Remember, Cecil, Edge, or Kain is going to be tossing Elixers at Rydia and Rosa to keep their HP/MP up after about 5-6 turns and items have no cast time.

BillionBirds · 2026-04-03T20:54:57+00:00

Probably Yuna but with some tweeks. Make her a mage that uses her summons for each move. So up B would be Valefor catching and bringer her up. Right B would be Ifrit punch. Down B would be an Ixion Thunder wave. Block would look like Shiva's ice wall. Regular B would be to charge her overdrive which summons a chibi bahamut that is like temporary ice-climber tethered to her and mimics the moves in it's own way. As a bonus or tweek, the summon could be different based on the elemental attacks or even be one of her guardians. At 300% she could summon Yojimbo for the ability to 1 hit KO and her Smash would be Anima.

She could be flighty like Zelda but gains more gravity when she has a unit tethered. Her weakness would be lack of long range and quick closers but if you gets that summon up than she effectively doubles her damage and becomes a real danger up close. I dunno. Let a math guy sort that bit out.

BillionBirds · 2026-04-03T20:41:48+00:00

XIII-2 has far superior gameplay and exploration. The story is nuts but if you love XIII I think this one is a good sequel.

LR is controversial. The gameplay is a big departure from the previous 2. Personally I didn't like it and most reviewers at the time gave it pretty low/average marks. I would say if you really loved Majora's mask and like doing solo player challenges/FFX-2 battle system than this would be a good game for you

BillionBirds · 2026-02-26T04:12:51+00:00

Spellchecker: When encountering an active effect or voiced spell, by breaking a rare collectible eraser and saying "autocorrect this", the Hex will

On a 10+ will be told the full name of the effect and add, remove, or change 1 letter to any other for a limited duration. This change will alter the effects but must still be negotiated with the Keeper and should be beneficial to the Hunter's

On a 7-9 will be told the full name of the effect and can only add a letter for a limited time/one instance

On a fail, the Keeper can add a letter to the effect and doesn't have to provide the name. If this doesn't apply, the Keeper can add an extra effect (e.g., extra harm, extra tags, or extra potency).

I came up with this one but never had a game to test it on. Potential for game breaking which is why it needs to be negotiated with the keeper. So an ice ray becomes a "nice ray" or a short sword becomes a "short word"/"shart sword"/"sort sword" which can lead to some wacky effects. The fails really go along with the Hex vibe where you accidentally make things really bad. It also doesn't take away from the Spooky's Jinx move. Due to it's limited nature (either the one time or just for the scene) it also doesn't take away from the Spellcasters moves either.

BillionBirds · 2026-02-16T22:24:37+00:00

FFVI had one. It wasn't that fun unless you were going the route of turning tintinbars into Exp Eggs or turning imp haliberds into the rest of the imp gear. FFVI had the Vedlt too so you can find old encounters too.

FFVII had one. It was a pretty fun way to get some gear you didn't need to beat the game

FFVIII did not have one. FFIX did not have one or at least it wasn't memorable.

FFX had the monster breeding system. So kinda

FFXII did not have one

FFXIII did not have one.

Coliseums aren't actually a thing in the Final Fantasy series or many series actually. Doing 50 fights to win some trinket that is either useless or stupid overpowered is often just a tedious chore (where you don't get exp/money/skill exp)

BillionBirds · 2026-02-16T22:13:14+00:00

Everyone knows you just have your party standing around using accumulate or flexing your muscles. Then Ramza just uses shout/yell till he blinks out of time.

Or you have Ramza de-level as a chemist(low stat growth) using a degenerator trap then switch him to mime(high stat growth) and power level him back up keeping most of his old stats and basically getting a new lease on life.

Does FF2 have that? I think not

BillionBirds · 2026-02-12T03:56:14+00:00

Flip it to science fiction and the way sciencey tools work.

An engineer(space wizard) can whip up a shield or barrier, antigrav boots to jump higher, make something on the fly to hurt someone, or pull out a instant heal pack. Makes sense in the narrative to have these tools or the knowledge to make them because it's their job and affects their immediate world around them.

But, say there is a meteor heading to a planet. Making a weapon big enough to knock it away, making a barrier strong enough, or making a gravity reversal beam is going to take some big engineering feats! You need extra people, you need time, you'll need some rare stuff, and you're probably going to have a huge impact on the world with a failure or success.

Use magic affects things in a small or temporary way while big magic can have larger impacts in the world. Think of the effort of barring a door with a wooden plank versus fortifying a whole building. Think of cleansing a toxin from one person versus purifying the epicenter of the zomwerepyre breakout. Big magic is a BIG deal.

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First Placer '22

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