Minwu!

[Fynn]

Who else thinks Fynn's court White Wizard is the most awesome White Mage ever? :cool:
The dude's just epic, what with his sacrifice for Ultima. Soul of Rebirth made him even cooler when it made him the lead character.
He is by far my favourite Final Fantasy II character. I mean, that's not saying much, considering how flat most of the characters were there, but I still consider him one of the coolest characters in the series. Hence my username :D

[Chris]

Wasn't his original name something like Mindhu, or am I completely off-track here? Like you said, the it's kinda slim pickings when it comes to the characters, but Minwu is a good choice. :D

[VeloZer0]

At the risk of offending you as you seem to be personally invested in the answer...

I thought Ultima basically disappearing from the plot after that made his sacrifice, and quite frankly the whole quest chain, seem really anti-climactic. It just seemed like a colossal waste of time. Which could have even fit in the game if they had just uttered some lines about Ultima not living up to expectations.

[Fynn]

Still, Josef aside, I think his sacrifice had the biggest impact, what with him being your earliest party member and hanging around for most of the game, and all that stuff :)
And I know that not everybody has to like him, so don't worry, I won't get offended :jess:

[Pike]

Minwu is great. He's a super underrated character and I'm glad to see him get some love :jess:

[Clyde]

Don't really cared about any character in FF 2.
I though he was a woman at first, lol.

[*Laurelindo*]

Wasn't his original name something like Mindhu, or am I completely off-track here? Like you said, the it's kinda slim pickings when it comes to the characters, but Minwu is a good choice. :DHis Japanese name is spelt MinU, as in "Mi-N-U".
This implies that his name is supposed to be MinWu, because if they wanted it to be "Mi-Nu" then they would have used the "Nu" syllable, and the U syllable is used for "wu"-sounds in Japan.

[KentaRawr!]

Meh

I thought he was dumb. Same with Galuf in FF5.

[Fynn]

Meh

I thought he was dumb. Same with Galuf in FF5.

I guess some men really do just want to watch the world burn...

[KentaRawr!]

Meh

I thought he was dumb. Same with Galuf in FF5.

I guess some men really do just want to watch the world burn...

Furthermore, Kefka and Sephiroth are both terrible as villains, and Vaan is an amazing male lead who remains relevant throughout the entire story.

[Pike]

Don't really cared about any character in FF 2.
I though he was a woman at first, lol.

FF2 is great! I liked all the characters in it. Even Guy. Yes, I said it.

[Fynn]

Don't really cared about any character in FF 2.
I though he was a woman at first, lol.

FF2 is great! I liked all the characters in it. Even Guy. Yes, I said it.

Can hardly blame you. Guy can speak beaver :cool:

[Roogle]

I like his character design a lot. Creative media has seemed to shy away from Arabesque designs recently, likely due to current events.

[Clyde]

Don't really cared about any character in FF 2.
I though he was a woman at first, lol.

FF2 is great! I liked all the characters in it. Even Guy. Yes, I said it.
Of course you can like the cast of FF2, but there is no denying that they are one-dimensional. So I never cared for them.

[Fynn]

Don't really cared about any character in FF 2.
I though he was a woman at first, lol.

FF2 is great! I liked all the characters in it. Even Guy. Yes, I said it.
Of course you can like the cast of FF2, but there is no denying that they are one-dimensional. So I never cared for them.

The game is old and cartridge space severely limited dialogue space.

[Clyde]

Don't really cared about any character in FF 2.
I though he was a woman at first, lol.

FF2 is great! I liked all the characters in it. Even Guy. Yes, I said it.
Of course you can like the cast of FF2, but there is no denying that they are one-dimensional. So I never cared for them.

The game is old and cartridge space severely limited dialogue space.

Yeah, that's obvious. It was a nes game after all.

[Fynn]

Don't really cared about any character in FF 2.
I though he was a woman at first, lol.

FF2 is great! I liked all the characters in it. Even Guy. Yes, I said it.
Of course you can like the cast of FF2, but there is no denying that they are one-dimensional. So I never cared for them.

The game is old and cartridge space severely limited dialogue space.

Yeah, that's obvious. It was a nes game after all.

That's why the characters are flat - there's not enough space to make them more rounded. And there's nothing you can really do about it in the ports that already happened, since that would probably change the game too much. I still appreciate the characters, since a lot was done about them for their time and your imagination can fill the blanks in characterisation. :D

[Roogle]

The game is old and cartridge space severely limited dialogue space.

I'm not sure if it being developed on a cartridge is a reason for its limited dialogue. I think that the attitude towards development of role-playing games was to make it resemble Dungeons & Dragons electronically with a basic story and basic motivations for its characters, and to leave more to the imagination of the player. I am pretty sure that dialogue takes up a small amount of space on any medium, including a cartridge. Role-playing games, and video games in general, weren't too focused on the story. It may have been a product of the decade; some movies from that time period are all about style rather than substance.

[Pike]

Interesting discussion and ideas here. There are upsides and downsides to the limited character development; the downside being that perhaps they are less memorable, but the upside being that they can sort of be a "stand-in" for yourself!

[Fynn]

The game is old and cartridge space severely limited dialogue space.

I'm not sure if it being developed on a cartridge is a reason for its limited dialogue. I think that the attitude towards development of role-playing games was to make it resemble Dungeons & Dragons electronically with a basic story and basic motivations for its characters, and to leave more to the imagination of the player. I am pretty sure that dialogue takes up a small amount of space on any medium, including a cartridge. Role-playing games, and video games in general, weren't too focused on the story. It may have been a product of the decade; some movies from that time period are all about style rather than substance.

I remember Sakaguchi saying something along the lines of him being better at delivering a good story. So I don't really think the first FFs had excuse plots - they were actually trying to concentrate on it. It's just that story-driven games were something new. That's why the sotry feels limited these days, and I'm pretty sure the cartridge space doesn't help.
You can really tell, by all the airships of mass destruction, castles from hell, evil emperors taking over hell, the prince thinking he's a coward but actually being able to prove his worth, and the white wizard sacrificing himself for the well-being of the world, that they really tried to give us an epic storyline with interesting characters. Personally, I think they succeeded anyway, even if the characters may seem flat nowadays ;)

[Ex Shadow]

Maybe i have some problem with name.
In PSX was listed Mindu but in mobile phone version i found Minwu.

And so , Gus or Guy ?
Gareth or Ricard ?

The only FF Series in which has a dual name character , i think.

[*Laurelindo*]

The game is old and cartridge space severely limited dialogue space.
That's true to some degree, but remember that the Japanese writing system can fit much longer sentences into less space, so the English translation usually becomes much more compressed.
I have played the Japanese original version 3 times and I must say the dialogues felt much longer and more detailed there.


Maybe i have some problem with name.
In PSX was listed Mindu but in mobile phone version i found Minwu.

And so , Gus or Guy ?
Gareth or Ricard ?

The only FF Series in which has a dual name character , i think.The exact Japanese names are written as "GaI" and "RiCha-Do", so it's safe to assume that the real names are Guy and Richard.

[Roogle]

I remember Sakaguchi saying something along the lines of him being better at delivering a good story. So I don't really think the first FFs had excuse plots - they were actually trying to concentrate on it. It's just that story-driven games were something new. That's why the sotry feels limited these days, and I'm pretty sure the cartridge space doesn't help.
You can really tell, by all the airships of mass destruction, castles from hell, evil emperors taking over hell, the prince thinking he's a coward but actually being able to prove his worth, and the white wizard sacrificing himself for the well-being of the world, that they really tried to give us an epic storyline with interesting characters. Personally, I think they succeeded anyway, even if the characters may seem flat nowadays ;)

Ah, that makes sense. I guess I hadn't considered it like that before. It does seem like there was definitely more focus on the story than the other two Final Fantasy games in this generation. I would say that my point still holds up for the other two games at least; there are memorable characters and storyline points, but there is no focus on the playable characters themselves, similar to a Dungeons & Dragons type of experience. Thanks for your response.

[Wolf Kanno]

Well D&D and Dragon Quest were the inspiration, so I feel the stories of FFI and III are more about the world than the player because the player characters are meant to be filled in by the player itself. I use to write little extensions to the plots of these types of game with my personally crated characters, like imagining what they talk about and do while fighting monsters on their way to the next dungeon. Is Black Mage really an evil Cultist trying to steal the crystals for himself? Is Onion Knight 3 and 4 secretly brother and sister? Silly things like that. The advent of more detailed movie style story, cutscenes, and voice acting have kind of killed any player involvement from the latest installments, I think it;s why games like Demon's Souls/Dark Souls and Etrian Odyssey are still doing so well, not to mention the Persona series that gives the player more control over the MC as an avatar.

Still, FFII had a pretty cool story going for it, with lots of betrayals, noble sacrifices (including our main White Mage Minwu of this thread) and one of the more badass villains in the series.

[ShinGundam]

Well D&D and Dragon Quest were the inspiration, so I feel the stories of FFI and III are more about the world than the player because the player characters are meant to be filled in by the player itself. I use to write little extensions to the plots of these types of game with my personally crated characters, like imagining what they talk about and do while fighting monsters on their way to the next dungeon. Is Black Mage really an evil Cultist trying to steal the crystals for himself? Is Onion Knight 3 and 4 secretly brother and sister? Silly things like that. The advent of more detailed movie style story, cutscenes, and voice acting have kind of killed any player involvement from the latest installments, I think it;s why games like Demon's Souls/Dark Souls and Etrian Odyssey are still doing so well, not to mention the Persona series that gives the player more control over the MC as an avatar.

Still, FFII had a pretty cool story going for it, with lots of betrayals, noble sacrifices (including our main White Mage Minwu of this thread) and one of the more badass villains in the series.
I don't know, characters in FF1 are still center of story events more than stuff like Dragon's Dogma, DkS and EO (which are more focused on NG+ or postgame).

[ReloadPsi]

I have reason to believe his name was supposed to be "Ming Wu."

There's a beta ROM of FF2 that calls him MingWu (truncated for space no doubt) and the game Chocobo Racing mentions a once great Mysidian mage named Ming Wu, though granted Chocobo Racing has a different Mysidia.

Minwu is probably the best transliteration they could manage considering the space limitations; "Mingwu" looks weird, and "MingWu" just screams "like hell we were gonna fix the interface for one character's name."

On topic, Minwu is freakin' awesome and I'm a bit surprised, good sir, that you've taken this long to post a thread gushing about him :P

[industrial]

In Japan, the character's name has always been "Ming-wu"; this is also reflected in the prototype translation.

Evidence is here: ????????? | ??????????? | SQUARE ENIX (http://www.finalfantasy.jp/discography/#ff2_character)

Because Japanese cannot perfectly transliterate a name like "Ming-wu", this resulted in all the varying names for him such "Minwu" (Ming in Japanese is spelled more like "Min"), and "Minh" (The translator probably got confused and mistook the final "u" sound to be silent).

But then again the translators of Square in America probably had access to text detailing the characters' official names in Japan; they likely thought "Minwu" and "Mindu" sounded cooler than "Ming-wu"

[Bolivar]

I really liked Minwu a lot, much like the rest of the cast of guest characters.

Tried playing that FFII rebirth extra episode... too hard for me to get into!

[Flaming Ice]

Tried playing that FFII rebirth extra episode... too hard for me to get into!


Yeah..it was sort of hard...especially since you had a limited time with those characters. As far as I recall the boss wasn't way too hard though.

[maybee]

Minwu is pretty neat for a very early developed character into gaming. During his day it was probably most normal for Link and Mario to not say a world so s character development was most likely huge and mind-blowing when the game was made.

We can tell that he was extremely intelligent, had the power to see into the future, and was quite honorable and respectful. While that is not the biggest character persona ever made into a video game, way back in 1988, judging by old Atari and NES games that it most likely to be huge.


I like him and Maria. And his death was sad video game media. Stop giving that Flower Girl and her Ex- Boyfriend all the spotlight.

[Evastio]

(I totally didn't take this from a previous thread)

Minwu is insanely awesome. His devotion to the rebellion, his mysterious yet noble looking get-up, his sage like wisdom, and his sacrificial personality (especially with his SoR line "We chose to die. But we did so that others may live.") really should earn him more fans than he currently has.