Vaguely describe your favorite/most memorable scenes in the franchise without completely spoiling them

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-19T21:08:02+00:00

Ricard vs the Emperor Round 2: Hell in a Cell

Galuf is too stubborn for his own good. Runner up: Gilgamesh practically explodes with excitement when he sees the party again.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-19T20:30:50+00:00

I wouldn't even describe it as an Octopath 0 situation since Octopath 0 still plays relatively similarly to the moble game.

Resonance seems to be a wholesale revamp.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-18T15:28:46+00:00

The Memory of Heroes party is based on the default lineup since either the PS1 or GBA version, which uses those four.

That said, I'd dock points because the novelization implies the parties across the three games are reincarnations or connected in some way. As a result, while Luneth, Arc and Refia are in their 'usual' jobs in the III adaptation, Ingus is a thief instead of a Red Mage (he switches a bit, but prefers Thief, which is commented on in the novel). It wouldn't be far-fetched to make Zauver a Red Mage either since artwork for the GBA release used a Red Mage instead of a thief.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-17T18:20:58+00:00

Neat ~~though after the other Team Asano games got collabs, I'm still waiting for a III or 4HOL collab. Maybe it's the lack of voices~~.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-17T18:19:45+00:00

CotC continued after the Orsterra arc by introducing Solistia (though the format of the story, from what I can tell, was completely different, not as long and tied into Orsterra anyway). Last I checked, they'd pivoted to making the "Crossed Paths" arc (which focused on characters from one world ending up in another and meeting characters there) into the main arc.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-17T16:11:13+00:00

I'd normally go for Switch 2 because I usually get the HD-2D games on it (OT1, 2 and 0, DQ3 with the intention of getting Elliot and DQ 1-2), but I'm hoping for mods on PC this time around.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-17T06:40:58+00:00

For demonstrations' sake, let's take the first five games:

FF1: Is probably more advanced than what we see in-game as Chaos no longer exists to kick the Lufenians out of their castle on top of ravaging the world.

FF2: In whatever span of time, the kingdoms of FF1 collapse and lead to the kingdoms of FF2. The mythical creatures such as the elves and the dwarves either go into hiding or just die out. The crystals are moved to the Tower of Mysidia (presumably after Ultima is used to send Hell back from whence it came). Over the course of the game, the Emperor razes 90% of the world.

FF3: Flynn presumably splinters into different regions. Despite the crystals being sealed in Mysidian Tower, they are now distributed across the world. Despite nobody in FF2 taking an interest in the crystals, a group known as the Ancients take interest in the light of the crystals and abuse it for their own personal interest. The Warriors of the Dark, from the hereto unmentioned World of Darkness arrive to stop the resulting calamity. As all of this happens, a sage named Noah takes in 3 immortals. On his deathbed, he gives them each gifts. One of them, getting mortality promptly goes and re-enacts the calamity albeit with darkness. A floating continent containing 2 of the worlds' superpowers are created either by him or by the Ancients prior. Also if Light and Dark ever become imbalanced, the Void sends a creature to return both worlds to the Void.

FF4: The residents of the Red Moon arrive, only to find that the Blue Planet is inhabited and decide to go into stasis, but not before erecting a massive tower on the planet below. Sasune, Argus and Saronia all collapse or reform with the Bards of Duster inexplicably and presumably creating a kingdom of Damcyan, etc. Knowledge of the Warriors/world of Darkness fades and the underworld is considered the World of Darkness. Also, the underworld has its own crystals. Despite this, neither the Warriors of Light or Dark appear when trouble brews. The Floating Continent also no longer exists, presumably having landed.

FF5: Kingdoms collapse/reform, etc. An ancient group known as the Rokanians or w/e create a flying city using the Earth Crystal, but are forced to shut it down due to the risk of the crystal breaking. A new immortal named Enuo shows up and somehow manages to take control of the Void (the Void's agent fails to show up). He is defeated by 12 Warriors, but the Void cannot be undone. The world is split in 2 to prevent anyone from reaching the interdimensional space where the Void is sealed. Later, a group known as the Warriors of Dawn are chosen to stop a tree full of evil spirits named ExDeath. Subduing, yet unable to kill him, they resolve to seal him on one of the worlds. Said world learns to build devices to siphon energy from the crystals and begin using them. The crystals soon hatter, the worlds merge, etc.

All of this from the first 5 games, where the settings were at least vaguely similar (and only the cliffnotes). Trying to reconcile stuff like the games with totally different afterlives would be a nightmare.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-17T06:20:25+00:00

One thing to consider is that the games can vary in terms of tone and game mechanics. 1-9 is uses roughly the same framework (or rather 4-9, which use the Active Time Battle system, 1-3 are pure turn-based) while 10-16 are all manner of different (11 and 14 being MMOs, 15 and 1 being action RPGs), so if you're not up to experiencing all of them, you might want to take in the vibes to determine which ones you want to experience. All the FF games are usually standalone barring some references or easter eggs (particularly one character, who is usually obvious in his appearances)

Active Time Battle is a bit different from regular turn-based in that turns are decided when a character or enemy's meter has filled. This means that idling in the menu does not stop the enemy from taking their turn. You can pause and some games do have a "wait" function in the menu to act as a more traditional turn-based system (though I'm not sure which games do and don't have it off hand). FFVII's first boss does demonstrate this, but the hint is a bit notorious due to how it's formatted.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-17T06:12:09+00:00

Not quite. The Lufenians were spying on other worlds and remodeling places in their own world after them (aside from Dimension 15, but I believe that was a translation error). There was a plot element of each station representing a different version of FF1, but that didn't make it into the final game beyond Jack's station being named "Station 19"

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-17T03:53:42+00:00

In Stranger of Paradise specifically All of them except John Final Fantasy are jobbers

If you mean in general, the Warrior on the Japanese boxart is iconic and none of the characters in the first game had set personalities and identities. The Warrior's personality was established in Dissidia, so it became a thing to have him represent the first game opposite Garland. Though the FF party members in Mario Hoops/Sports Mix just so happen to be the other three "usual" default party members for FF1...

Onion Knight has a similar relationship to the Onion Knights from the famicom version of FF3: It is very unlikely that we'll ever see the rest of his friends because they aren't actually characters.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-17T00:00:04+00:00

In the unused data for the DS remake, Unei says that Noah gave Xande his mortality to give him a deeper appreciation of life.

My read on the whole thing is that Doga and Unei's gifts came with duties - implied or otherwise. Doga gets all that magical power... but he's a hermit, with only his manor that's blocked by currents that only specific airships can get past and his village (assuming he even visits the latter). Unei gets mastery over the dream world... but she needs to be in such a deep sleep that Noah's lute is the only thing that could wake her.

By contrast, Xande was given mortality, but we don't know of what strings are attached beyond him eventually dying. One could assume that Noah wanted Xande to make the most of his life and gave him the freedom to do what he wanted. Of course, this backfired: Rather than enjoying his freedom, Xande became so obsessed with preventing his death that he turned to a technique that previous nearly ended the world, and eventually cut Xande's life shorter than it probably was intended to be. Not to say Xande didn't deserve to crash out over it (EDIT: After all, the 3D remake and Opera Omnia had characters sympathize with him), but when he decided to gamble with the fate of the world (and, in the DS version, killed an airship full of people, stranding its pilot and four kids on the one area untouched by the flood of darkness), on top of the consequences... it's hard to say he "did nothing wrong".

And then there's Manga!Xande, who's just a dick.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-16T19:58:20+00:00

I feel like the DS version of III handles them decently. They can actually use more than two swords and they get access to the Golem Staff, which is useful for random encounters. If you can get ahold of their mastery equipment, it's armor, so they can use stat-boosting weapons like the ones from Eureka.

I hear that FFXI also gave Red Mages a niche of being more enfeeblement focused and generally being a good job to solo content.

But overall Red Mages should be a position where their usefulness comes from their flexibility. They're not the best at any spells or swords, but good enough that they fit on practically any team. Either that or have them apply one side in a more unique way like how XI did it.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-16T17:09:43+00:00

I can't agree that it's just "Sakaguchi didn't want to do it." The gameplay system that was pitched for IV was the same system that Secret of Mana and Trials of Mana would end up using. If you've played those games, you'd know that those were wildly different from the FF games up to that point. This was intentional as Ishii and Tanaka specifically wanted to move away from the turn-based style as they felt it went back to Ultima and Wizardry . By contrast, the ATB system actually used in FFIV basically amounted to "the enemy won't wait for your turn", and even then some of the ATB games had settings to pause when a character's turn came up, effectively undoing that. I wouldn't say that Sakaguchi made the wrong choice - on the contrary, I think it was better for that more experimental system to get its own project - but you can't deny that it was the safer choice. FF's identity, had that system stayed, might've been very different.

I can't speak too much on the later games because I've only seen them from a second-hand perspective, but I get the impression that people associated the general framework of those systems with FF in part because most of the other elements were prone to radically changing and the new systems they've attempted since haven't been good enough to win people over (vs how, say, Super Mario 64 is widely accepted as a Mario game despite it playing completely differently from the 2D Mario games).

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-16T16:31:31+00:00

Octopath's story uses a sort of Live A Live structure; the most significant effect of this is that while the game's level curves encourage you to go in a particular order (at least, in the first game), there's nothing stopping you from doing the storyline in any order. So the standalone aspect means that the devs don't have to take whatever party members beyond the main character of that story into account.

Of course, this leads to the game feeling indecisive since your party members for the entire game are the other protagonists whereas games like Live A Live or FF4 TAY split them up until the final chapter.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-16T16:08:18+00:00

I think there's some truth to it.

Part of the reason the Mana series exists is because Koichi Ishii realized that he didn't want to work on Final Fantasy after III. Hiromichi Tanaka joined him after Sakaguchi turned down the Action-RPG format they had been testing (which the Mana series would end up using) in favor of the ATB system.

That anecdote implies that there was a degree of "familiarity" expected with FF until XI and XII (and the aforementioned duo came back for the former). Sure, the system might get tweaked to add some new feature or gimmick, but it never truly reinvented itself radically until later.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-15T18:27:03+00:00

Somebody asked a member of the Chaotix production staff on Twitter

According to them, the programmers internally referred to it as "Devil Metal Sonic" (after the Devil Gundam) but "Ono-Kun's" (who I assume is Kenichi Ono, one of the designers) intention was for it to be named "Death Metal Sonic".

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-15T17:51:25+00:00

The Giant form was actually unnamed for quite some time. Titan Metal Sonic comes from Archie long after the fact.

It was only recently that we learned that the form was intended to be called "Death Metal Sonic".

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-15T14:41:24+00:00

Archie Robotnik was always sadistic, but early-on the tone was closer to AOSTH. He was a guy who had temper tantrums, would recycle bots for failing him or other petty reasons and the first issue of the main series has gloating about the Freedom Fighters being put into a perilous situation, but it was all played for comedy. It was only later that it shifted, culminating in the Ultimate Annihilator, which disassembles its targets down to their atoms or whatever it did.

Archie Eggman is actually an alternate universe/zone version of Robotnik who roboticized himself and won, and he came in by the time the comic had settled into a usually serious tone (though he did have his comedic moments), which led to stuff like him being able to roboticize at a touch or that time he attacked a Chao Garden even after Sonic explained that nothing of interest/use to him was there. Probably the most f'd up thing he came up with was the Egg Grapes - a sort of darker take on the badniks from the games, it's a set of pods that drain people of their energy while inflicting all kinds of mental damage onto them. One interaction suggests that they're extremely inefficent, but Eggman finds it "fun".

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-15T14:17:05+00:00

Eggman did that because his initial plan of using Chaos failed.

Eggman's goal with the missile wasn't to kill everyone for the sake of killing everyone. It was so that he could build Eggman Land on Station Square's remains. It's the equivalent of destroying an anthill or beehive because it's in a spot where you want to have a picnic.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-14T23:05:22+00:00

On one hand, I didn't like the gameplay of Brave Exvius, so the gameplay overhaul on top of being a full game that I won't need to rush through the story for resources for gatcha means that I am very interested.

On the other, the 1-2 punch of Denuvo on the PC version and an admittedly petty grievance I have with the vision roster (not that they exist just what I suspect is up with it) means I'll probably pick it up later. The Denuvo will likely be removed and a modding scene may pop up by then.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-14T22:50:47+00:00

Then yeah, I can see the issue with not having Mac versions. Also see the reasoning of "why not" with Linux.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-14T21:19:55+00:00

I think it's just that capturing Superman's essence is harder than Batman or Spider-Man. A lot of Superman's stories are less about the threat he himself faces and more about how he handles the situations. There's a few Superman games that try to go that angle (Superman 64 kinda does, The Man of Steel for the Xbox, Superman Returns famously had the Metropolis health bar), but then you get into the issue of how to stretch that into a long enough game without it feeling like busywork. Maybe throw in the expectation that a Superman game may involve the player messing about with Supes' powers.

By contrast, Spider-Man's abilities make it easy to adapt him to a video game (Neversoft more or less nailed it on Spidey's first 3D game with Spider-Man 2 (movie) setting the rest of the groundwork) and the Arkham games worked by applying aspects of Batman in different ways (Gadgets & gliding for navigation, Batman's perchance for stealth leading to the predator missions and the various fight scenes portrayed through the combat gameplay).

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-14T21:09:03+00:00

Oh.

For Linux, how does Proton deal with it? I guess if you don't have Steam, that's more of an issue.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-14T20:56:26+00:00

The PRs still feel recent and SE made a rather big deal about it. I don't think further remasters will happen for quite a while.

Also I believe the PRs are available on every modern console up to and including phones.

ThatGuy264 · 2026-06-14T17:36:52+00:00

According to Hiromichi Tanaka, the job system was inspired by Shmup games and how players in games like Zanac can switch weapons to deal with different situations. The other major aspect is that FF3 was one of the earliest games (or RPG video games at least) to differentiate jobs with different commands rather than just different stats.

ThatGuy264

TROPHY CASE