A Full Final Fantasy Fmarathon (Community Edition)

[Christmas]

I remembered if you do it right, you can avoid the fixed encounters though. Need to enter a secret room or something.

[Fynn]

So this went by fast. Just beat FFIX, and I just couldn’t put the game down. It’s another one of those games that just gets better every time I play it. Now I’m warm and fuzzy and can’t even find the right words lmao

I beat Ozma and generally did most of the optional stuff, which I’ve been pretty good with on this marathon so far. Next up is FFX, which might be long or very long, depending on whether I actually try to beat the Dark Aeons and Penance this time. Then a quick playthrough of X-2 NG+ and I’ll be venturing into unknown territory with XI

[Christmas]

FFIX is relatively easy. The dark aeons in FFX may require you to get your stats to a certain level which may take some time.

[Fynn]

Ok so big update. I beat FFX! And also, I beat Penance! I’m happy I did this, it was a terrible experience!

I’m honestly glad I got this out of my system because I always felt I was missing something by not doing the FFX post game, so now I finally did it I know what I’ve been missing out on and it was an absolute travesty. Honestly, in this run of FFX I actually appreciated the story a bit more but the battle system has completely and utterly failed me. I was bored out of my mind through most of the game, then spent literally half my playtime grinding in the stupid monster arena, hoping everyone was right and the CTB system would really shine with the optional bosses, but it never did. In fact, that section only exposed how deep the flaws of CTB go and I just longed for death. But now I’m finally done and never have to go back to it ever again

So now I’m doing NG+ in X-2 and I’m honestly just so burned out on Spira. I just want to move on to XI so I hope I can make this quick

[Wolf Kanno]

Yeah, I don' know what it is, but the Spira entries are weird for how much acclaim their battle systems are when they are in fact, not terribly good or better than what came before them. I still argue that Xenosaga 1 and even 2, do the CTB concept better. Hell, SaGa Scarlet Graces has a much better version of the system as well.

[Fynn]

It’s all the aesthetics, honestly. CTB has all the aesthetics of strategic gameplay without actually giving you in-depth strategic turn-based gameplay we now know is possible through stuff like Megaten. X-2’s iteration of ATB is all about the aesthetics of fluidity, later evolving into XIII’s ATB, but ATB is a hybrid system that’s meant to be a blend of the speed of real time and the depth of turn-based battles, and those two elements just skew it way more heavily towards action - meanwhile, XII’s ADB feels way more like a natural successor to that, but it’s also less flashy. So yeah, aesthetics

[Fynn]

I got so into XI I forgot to update my status here lol

So I finished X-2. By doing NG+ and only doing what you need to do, it took a measly 8 hours. So a personal record. It was pretty fun. Having everyone use a mastered Mascot completely wrecked the game and Shuyin went down in one single hit My opinion hasn’t really changed. It’s still a decently fun game with a campy vibe, though once again I don’t really understand why people love the job system as much as they do when there’s better iterations of ATB in the series, but that’s all subjective. Good dumb fun, overall, and the 1000 Words scene always gets me. On that note, by now the soundtrack has well and truly grown on me.

Now I’ve moved on to XI and having fun there! Rolled a tarutaru red mage. Will probably post more in the other thread WK made and come back here once I’m done with that and start XII. This will take a while