A Full Final Fantasy Fmarathon (Community Edition)

[Fynn]

So this is back! Since I had a big break and got distracted by a few games, I’ve decided to restart this with the pixel remasters! So far I’ve got the Nitro Powder in FFI. Rolling with a team of Warrior, Monk, Red Mage and Black Nage, and it’s been interesting! The Marsh Cave has been particularly tough, though I feel this is mostly due to the fact that I’m playing a version of 1 with Vancian magic for the first time

[Bubba]

The White Wizard of Fynn not opting for a white mage is the biggest shock since Janet Jackson got her nipple out at The Super Bowl.

[Fynn]

I’ve never done a run without a white mage in this game, despite having replayed it a lot, so we’ll see how that goes!

[Wolf Kanno]

I see you're doing my team I used my last playthrough of FFI.

No healing safety nets but damn does it hit hard.

[Fynn]

Yeah it hits super duper hard

[A Pint of Quinness (pissboy)]

Man, I remember way back when I did a full FF playthrough, though it ended early shortly before finishing 7. It was such a delight playing 1-6, though.

I really need to give it another shot one day.

[Fynn]

And there we go, FFI is done. The Pixel Remaster was a really cool way to experience this! I loved the graphical style and the music was just insane. Chaos was considerably more difficult than anything else, though I can see how having a white mage would have mitigated a lot of that Still glad I had the party I had because it made me think differently about a lot of the encounters.

[Wolf Kanno]

Slammed dunk that one pretty fast. Will be interesting to see how fast you'll move through the next two.

[Fynn]

It’ll probably take me a while, since just like at the beginning of this one year ago, I’m only doing it on weekends. But for I through III, I’m fairly sure I can do it one weekend per one game

Also, for those of you who are not on Discord, I named the Warriors of Light after EoFF friends. The warrior was Karifean, monk was Mooncat (Galuf’s new username), red mage was Jinx, and black mage was Sheetlebug. I was very pleased that they seemed to be so enthusiastic for this! For FFIII I’m going to do something similar with another batch of EoFF friends Unfortunately, I only name characters who don’t have default names, so III is going to be the last one where it happens, but I want all friends to know they’re valid and important to me, even if they don’t get to be an Onion Knight

[Fynn]

Started FFII! Once again the presentation of the pixel remaster is really doing it for me. I’ve reached Kashuan Keep and so far this has been the smoothest FFII experience I’ve had. I’m going with my old reliable team of Firion as a paladin/white mage type with sword and shield, Maria as a black mage who uses bows and Guy as a pure warrior with twin axes. Not only does auto battle make everything go by fast, but I feel like there’s much less grinding required. Spells like protect and shell, for example, seem like they have 100% accuracy right out of the box, so there’s no need to level them.

The minimap is also great as you can see all the treasures, so there’s less time spent getting lost in those terrible, terrible dungeons. On that note, the dead-end rooms no longer seem to have a booster encounter rate, so while they’re still annoying, they’re much less deadly. One tiny little QOL change that I love is that spell tomes are now color coded, so you can tell which ones are white magic and which are black without consulting a guide. Considering they work off different stats, it makes a big difference.

[Fynn]

Forgot to update this, but I’m at FFIII now! Final thoughts on II: still love it to bits and the pixel remaster might just be my favorite way to experience it. The battle system is now extremely smooth and I never needed to stop to grind, like not even once. The soundtrack rearrangement also really brings out the somber tone of this game. What’s interesting is that of all the Pixel Remaster soundtracks so far, this is the only one to pretty much just stick with an exclusively symphonic soundscape.

FFIII is great. I’m happy that we finally have a 2D version that has all the QOL improvement the Advance versions had. They added Phoenix downs for purchase now but funnily, still no tents in this game lmao. This is also the hardest game yet, since I and II were pretty much cakewalk. It’s nowhere near as challenging as the original OR the 3D version, but I’ve still had more game overs than in the previous two combined lol. It’s definitely not a frustrating experience though and with no capacity/adjustment phase, it feels really great to experiment with jobs.

Current team is WarZidane as a Knight, Pumpkin as a Ranger, Wolf Kanno as a Monk and Mr Carnelian as a White Mage. About to awaken the water Crystal now. There’s a lot of quirky jobs that’s about to unlock so I expect the party to look very different after that

[Fynn]

Ok, so this update is long overdue! Managed to finish FFIII AND FFIV in the meantime and just started V

So FFIII PR might just be my favorite version of the game. It’s still challenging (though I may have been underleveled), but because of the way saves work it feels much more fair. Cloud of Darkness was incredibly hard and required a ton of strategizing (and luck), but because I could quick save just before I appreciated that a whole lot more.

FFIV PR, on the other hand, feels like the easiest this game has ever been, but I think it’s still my favorite 2D version (DS still wins imo). It doesn’t have the jank of the SNES and GBA version, and it actually has consistent aesthetics, unlike the PSP version. And personally, I really don’t miss the extra GBA content at all. Biggest drawback probably is the script. It’s still good, since it’s pretty much identical to the GBA script, but it feels really weird going back to it and terms like Elemental Lords and Sand Ruby after the 3D version and the PSP version using the GBA script with 3D version terms swapped in.

Now FFV feels very good so far. Difficulty feels unchanged from GBA and the music is just to die for - par for the course for the Pixel Remasters, of course. Will try to take it slower here since VI doesn’t have a concrete release date yet (and I do just love playing around with the jobs). But after that it’s VI and we can finally move on to a game that I haven’t beaten last year