Ender
09-05-2006, 07:20 PM
Well, I just finished the NES ROM version. Blood Sword = Total Ownage
First I'll start out with the questions, so those of you uninterested in hearing another "random encounters" rant can skip the rest.
1. Where is the Masamune? I pride myself on opening every door and every chest and talking to every character (over and over), but somehow I missed this one. Ironically, I missed it in FF I the first time through as well (possibly the one cooridor I overlooked in the entire game holds the weapon I've been looking forward to getting from the start! :D )
2. Where is/are the Chocobo(s)? I wandered the wide world as much as I could stand and never encountered it/them.
3. There is a chest sitting in a jail cell in the airship. When I try the door it says the jail is empty. Is there any way to get to the chest or is it just there to drive players nuts?
If you want to revel in other's misery regarding all the battles one fights in this game, read on, otherwise, thanks for your help!
<rant>
FF II was one of the worst gaming experiences of my life. Except for a desire to complete the entire series of numbered (minus XI) FF games, I would have stopped around the time I was doing the airship level. In short, IMO, this game is NOT fun.
Yes, the story was interesting, and for its time may have been revolutionary. Deviating from the standard "go to the temples, defeat the bosses, and retrieve the [keys] that will unlock the way for your final confrontation with the big bad villain (ie FF I and many other fantasy/adventure games)" to tell a real story with the characters is what FF is, and should be about, and this was the start of that, so it deserves applause for that regardless of how "loose" the story was in places.
On the other hand, they took a plot that was probably worth five to ten hours of game and turned it into a forty hour odyssey, not by adding any fun diversions or interesting areas or developing characters or locales, but by making you fight battle after battle and so on and so on. I fought a battle approximately every twelve steps/tiles while on foot. TWELVE!!!
Now consider a noob, who has done some research into the stat-building system and has a decent grasp of it such that he doesn't find the individual battles overly difficult, but who is not consulting a walk-through. Even having built stats such that I hardly got touched and was never in threat of a "game over" situation after the early going, the battles become an exercise in supreme patience.
Having never played before, exploring the dungeons to find each of the treasures was a maddening process. Twelve steps down a dead-end cooridor is two extra battles, 120 steps is twenty more, which is a huge disincentive to check out that chest that you can see you missed once you reach the exit of the level but which requires you to walk all the way through a maze-like level and passed the entrance, all because you decided to take the right fork instead of the left. And I swear, the dungeon designers were experts in gamer psychology, because they always seemed to know that I would be taking the long path to the exit first rather than the short path to the treasure. Throw in the fact that Warp doesn't work in all of the dungeons and it gets maddening really fast.
Finally, the monsters were just not interesting or fun to battle. For the most part it seems they just took random monsters of a particular difficulty level and threw them in a map area or dungeon to fit the stage of the game you were at. For the most part they lacked thematic consistancy in terms of matching the type of monsters with the locale or with each other. Lots of generic undead, soldiers/captains/generals, bombs/grenades/etc., puddings/mallows/etc., and later they might throw in a gigas or golem but I miss seeing, for example, what kinds of fire monsters they could come up with in the Volcano of FF I, etc. etc. Rather, it felt more like the designers decided to throw at you whatever would be the biggest pain in the butt...and oh, we'll make most of the battles inescapable too. :mad:
At any rate, one of the good things that can be said for FF II is that it feels truly refreshing to get started on FF III, where I actually have to seek out battles to level up rather than have them thrust on me over and over and over again.
</rant>
First I'll start out with the questions, so those of you uninterested in hearing another "random encounters" rant can skip the rest.
1. Where is the Masamune? I pride myself on opening every door and every chest and talking to every character (over and over), but somehow I missed this one. Ironically, I missed it in FF I the first time through as well (possibly the one cooridor I overlooked in the entire game holds the weapon I've been looking forward to getting from the start! :D )
2. Where is/are the Chocobo(s)? I wandered the wide world as much as I could stand and never encountered it/them.
3. There is a chest sitting in a jail cell in the airship. When I try the door it says the jail is empty. Is there any way to get to the chest or is it just there to drive players nuts?
If you want to revel in other's misery regarding all the battles one fights in this game, read on, otherwise, thanks for your help!
<rant>
FF II was one of the worst gaming experiences of my life. Except for a desire to complete the entire series of numbered (minus XI) FF games, I would have stopped around the time I was doing the airship level. In short, IMO, this game is NOT fun.
Yes, the story was interesting, and for its time may have been revolutionary. Deviating from the standard "go to the temples, defeat the bosses, and retrieve the [keys] that will unlock the way for your final confrontation with the big bad villain (ie FF I and many other fantasy/adventure games)" to tell a real story with the characters is what FF is, and should be about, and this was the start of that, so it deserves applause for that regardless of how "loose" the story was in places.
On the other hand, they took a plot that was probably worth five to ten hours of game and turned it into a forty hour odyssey, not by adding any fun diversions or interesting areas or developing characters or locales, but by making you fight battle after battle and so on and so on. I fought a battle approximately every twelve steps/tiles while on foot. TWELVE!!!
Now consider a noob, who has done some research into the stat-building system and has a decent grasp of it such that he doesn't find the individual battles overly difficult, but who is not consulting a walk-through. Even having built stats such that I hardly got touched and was never in threat of a "game over" situation after the early going, the battles become an exercise in supreme patience.
Having never played before, exploring the dungeons to find each of the treasures was a maddening process. Twelve steps down a dead-end cooridor is two extra battles, 120 steps is twenty more, which is a huge disincentive to check out that chest that you can see you missed once you reach the exit of the level but which requires you to walk all the way through a maze-like level and passed the entrance, all because you decided to take the right fork instead of the left. And I swear, the dungeon designers were experts in gamer psychology, because they always seemed to know that I would be taking the long path to the exit first rather than the short path to the treasure. Throw in the fact that Warp doesn't work in all of the dungeons and it gets maddening really fast.
Finally, the monsters were just not interesting or fun to battle. For the most part it seems they just took random monsters of a particular difficulty level and threw them in a map area or dungeon to fit the stage of the game you were at. For the most part they lacked thematic consistancy in terms of matching the type of monsters with the locale or with each other. Lots of generic undead, soldiers/captains/generals, bombs/grenades/etc., puddings/mallows/etc., and later they might throw in a gigas or golem but I miss seeing, for example, what kinds of fire monsters they could come up with in the Volcano of FF I, etc. etc. Rather, it felt more like the designers decided to throw at you whatever would be the biggest pain in the butt...and oh, we'll make most of the battles inescapable too. :mad:
At any rate, one of the good things that can be said for FF II is that it feels truly refreshing to get started on FF III, where I actually have to seek out battles to level up rather than have them thrust on me over and over and over again.
</rant>