Together Retro: Final Fantasy Spin-Offs

[MrPopo]

It certainly does.

[dsheinem]

Hey, does Final Fantasy Adventure/Sword of Mana count?

yes

[Nemoide]

Is Kingdom Hearts a Final Fantasy spin-off? I think I remember that Cloud and Sephiroth are in it? Maybe Tidus? I need an excuse to get started in that series.

One game I've been playing that I assume not many folks around here have: Theatrhythm Final Fantasy All-Star Carnival, the arcade exclusive incarnation of Theatrhythm. As a music gamer who has played the first 12 main-series FF games, I feel like Theatrhythm for 3DS should have been my jam, but it never quite clicked for me. I didn't understand the RPG mechanics, the default difficulty and the unlocked next-level-harder difficulty are too easy for my taste. But meanwhile the hardest difficulty was maybe TOO tough I feel like I'm supposed to utilize those RPG mechanics that I had been ignoring. Maybe I'll pick up the original again and give it another go.

But All-Star Carnival is something a little different. It DOES have a touch-screen, but you don't use it for the gameplay. Instead, you put both hands over a little orb-joystick and have your thumbs stretch over buttons; THAT'S how you play. The Event sections are cut out, so it's all Field-music or Battle-music, which I'm 100% okay with. The orb-button controls are pretty awkward on the medium difficulty, but I'll try to put some more effort into stepping up my game. It has a pretty extensive song selection with tons of characters and unlockables. It's a pretty sweet machine! (But when I go to the arcade, I'm usually I'm spending all my money playing Beatmania IIDX.)

[noiseredux]

Sure it is.

[Exhuminator]

It seems like this is a somewhat divisive game, but also one that some players find themselves really enjoying despite their own complaints.

Keep in mind, the remastered versions of Type-0 are re-balanced to be less grindy (and easier) than the PSP original. I think that's a big part of why folks enjoyed the remaster more.

[noiseredux]

That does make sense. Especially considering your over grindy complaint of the original.

[Exhuminator]

I put an hour into Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings tonight. Been a while since I played a DS game, those little screens seem to get smaller every year. Anyway, I enjoyed what I played thus far (finished chapter I). The presentation is about as good as you could hope for given the platform, I like the plot OK, and it's good to be in the company of FFXII's cast again. I can see some potential issues with the RTS battle system already (why can't I pause the action to issue commands?!), but thus far it's manageable. Consider me intrigued at this point in time.

[noiseredux]

That looks cool. I played a fair amount of FF DS games years ago, but that was never one of them.

I hear you on the DS screen size, though. The last one I owned was a 3DS XL which was fine, but the only one in the house nowadays is my wife's original 3DS model which feels so tiny to me.

...

I did play some more Final Fantasy Type-0 last night, and happy to report that I'm liking it more than my first impression. I think that getting the hang of dodging made all the difference. Once I got the timing right the battle system started to click more. Of course I will ALWAYS prefer turn based combat in an RPG. That's just me. But this is fine.

The music has gotten even better. Honestly, so far the music might be my favorite thing about this game. It's such a good mix of like bombastic orchestral stuff, and sad Japenese folk music meshed with some of these old throwbacks. Hearing that old FF I music kick in when I first got to Akademia felt so right. I don't care if that song is 'overused' in FF games.

Now the story... my goodness, what a fucking mess. There are so many characters. I'm honestly confused about who is a good guy and who is a bad guy and who is doing what and why. Sometimes you'll have this like 10 minute cut scene that's really impressively animated, the next you have a still frame with voice over. Sometimes you have voices and other times you're reading text like in a visual novel. It's such a mish-mash of ideas and systems. In a way, it kind of feels like an endearing mess.

I mean even the concepts. You've got this grim war and then all the sudden you're running around FF's equivalent of Hogwart's. So far I feel like this game is far from great, and yet I'm almost just really happy that it manages to exist. It's so chaotically weird that I kind of think it's awesome that it ever got made.

Oh, and here's a little something for you Moogle lovers...

[Exhuminator]

I hear you on the DS screen size, though. The last one I owned was a 3DS XL which was fine, but the only one in the house nowadays is my wife's original 3DS model which feels so tiny to me.

I had a 3DS XL a few years back, but the dismal PPI was too distracting for me. I sold it, and went back to a Cobalt & Black DS Lite. If I really wanted large screens with high PPI, there's always DeSmuME or DraStic. Thankfully my eyes are still good enough to handle the DS Lite's screens presently.

Now the story... my goodness, what a fucking mess.

Your only hope is wasting time reading up on everything in the Rubicus. All I can say is, when developers create a game with such a byzantine fractured story, that they have to include a plot encyclopedia, they're doing it wrong.

[nullPointer]

Second day of the month, and we're already three pages deep! This is going to be a good month!

After much deliberation I finally decided on this as my main title this month:

I play most of my RPGs on handheld consoles these days, so the allure portable was really the deciding factor with this title/version. With any luck it will mean I'm that much more likely to finish it. I'm told that there are a couple of issues with this version mainly due to long load times and a stretched aspect ratio. I tried patching a copy of my ISO (with this), but my PSP didn't agree with the change (Pro CFW 6.60). So it looks like I'll be playing the unsullied version! In truth I'm not terribly bothered by it. The stretching doesn't seem to be too noticeable, and several folks have reported that the slow loading is remedied by running the ISO off the memory card (which has been working fine so far).

I'm looking forward to digging into this one. SRPGs really aren't my cuppa tea most of the time so it will (hopefully) be nice to step outside my comfort zone for a bit.