Together Retro: Final Fantasy Spin-Offs

[alienjesus]

So a big part of the appeal of FFMQ was the short length.

Are there other spinoffs people enjoy that can be beaten in 10-15 hours or less?

I adored Mystic Quest AKA Final Fantasy Adventure on Game Boy. It's about 8 hours or so.

[marurun]

Seiken Densetsu the first is indeed fun. I actually like a lot of the mechanics better than the sequels. The combat feels a bit more direct and visceral.

[alienjesus]

Yeah, it feels far more zelda like and less finnicky than Secret of Mana for sure. I liked it a lot more.

[nullPointer]

Dudes. I'm an idiot. In FFT: WotL I had assumed that Support Abilities were passively applied without any user input. Here I'm talking about Equip Swords, Equip Shields, Brawler, etc. Finally today I was trying to equip a sword onto a Dragoon and wondering why it wasn't working because he has the Equip Swords ability. Turns out you have to activate your chosen Support Ability in the ... Support Ability Slot. Holy crap no wonder I was feeling like the game is unbalanced in spots!

Most damningly this means that although I'd allotted the JP Boost (Job Point Boost) ability to nearly every character, none of them were actually getting the JP bonus! And this after I'd ranted at some length about the difficulty of grinding for Job Points! Not only that, but I'd also made it a point to work through the in-game tutorials! (Although to be fair, those tutorials were mind-numbingly boring, and I drifted off to sleep during more than one)

At any rate, this game just got a lot more interesting, lol!

[ESauced]

I started Tactics: War of the Lions on PSP. As I’ve mentioned before, I never really play games like this. And, I stared writing out my impressions, but they’re all just so negative and I don’t want to just rag on it. Long story short, I just don’t have the patience for this game. Maybe if I kept at it then it’d grow on me but after an hour and a half I don’t think I can go any longer.

On the plus side it was a good cure for the insomnia I’ve had the past few days (posting this so late only because my son woke me back up).

[TheSSNintendo]

As of last night, I have one crystal to go in Mystic Quest.

[pierrot]

I'm pretty disheartened by the lack of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles being played--. It's only about 20 hours. The story is really buried in the depths of each stage, but it's so fantastical. Also has the fluffiest moogles imaginable.

--

I think I've inadvertently stumbled upon some mechanical aspects of FFT: War of the Lions that I find less than enjoyable. So let's talk about the grind. There are two primary aspects of grinding in this game; grinding for experience, and grinding for job points which allow you to 'purchase' abilities specific to your current job. In many ways I'd say that grinding for experience occurs organically throughout the game, it's grinding for job points that can be tedious often to the point that it becomes necessary to 'game the system' to really gain any traction. And part of this is due to the implementation of random battles. In scripted story battles all enemy EXP/HP levels are static. So in this type of battle it's possible to win through sheer OP dominance. In the random battles however (i.e. the ones you encounter during attempts at grinding), enemy EXP/HP levels are scaled to (and are usually just slightly higher than) the character with the highest EXP/HP level in the current party. And this is where the trouble starts, because you can't just go into battle with a couple of OP tanks in an attempt to help the lower level characters advance. The enemies will be so powerful they'll one-shot the lower level characters no problem. It almost necessitates that you level up your party simultaneously across the board, and God help you if a much lower level character joins your party at some point because they'll have an uphill battle all the way.

So due to these shenanigans sometimes the most effective way to level up your characters is to have them fight each other. As in, you go into battle, leave one enemy alive, and then just have your characters start beating on each other or using pointless status effects ad nauseum. And to be sure FFT: War of the Lions isn't the first time I've seen this exact grinding strategy put to use, heck it's not even the first time I've seen it in a Final Fantasy game, but it always just strikes me as so mind-numbingly stupid. If the most effective way of leveling up characters is to completely break any sort of story immersion, maybe the system needs tweaking ... just a bit.

Tactics Ogre was like this too, but at every map, you could go into a sort of two player mode where you set your company up to train against each other, with no enemies, and no fear of losing units from their death. I spent copious amounts of time leveling up my units in those maps, after making a character a VIP in the story missions. Alternatively, once I got petrify, I could just petrify all the enemies, and start having my units beat the stuffing out of each other, but that's a lot more dangerous if one of them crit, or something.

Tactics Ogre had an awesome story, and production values, but I found the gameplay to be a real drag most of the time. Sounds like FFT is pretty similar. (Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, FFT, and FFT:A all share the same director, if anyone was curious about the relevance.)


--

I haven't really been able to play anything perfectly matching the theme, for a variety of reasons, but most people treat FFXI like a spinoff, so I may as well talk a little about it. I managed to get my first piece of HQ abjuration armor for Thief (Adhemar wristbands +1) because escutcheons have brought the prices way down on jinxed and voodoo armor. Waiting a bit to see if I can pick up voodoo finger gauntlets, for Carmine finger gauntlets +1, under 5 million gil. Would be very cool if I could get Lustratio +1 legs and feet for massive gains to my Rudra's Storm set, also. I have the abjuration for feet, but possibly not the money for the Voodoo boots; I have the money for the Voodoo subligar, but not the abjuration.

I've also been trying to do more Sinister Reign, but I either get screwed by the boss list, or screwed by the reward list, and have always come up empty handed. That's when a party will even stay together for more than one run.

[ElkinFencer10]

I finished Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest last night - coincidentally the same night as Sarge, it seems - and enjoyed it a lot more than I expected to. It's definitely an easier, entry-level RPG, and while it doesn't really stack up against Final Fantasy IV, V, or VI, it's not bad at all.

Unfortunately, as Mystic Quest and Legend were the only Final Fantasy spin-offs I hadn't beaten yet, and I'm trying to focus on my backlog this year, that'll be it for my participation in this month's Together Retro. What a great theme, though! There are tons of great options for this month.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I finished it too. Damn you guys are way faster than me. I may be done for the month as well, barring a Final Fantasy Adventure second wind.

[nullPointer]

I started Tactics: War of the Lions on PSP. As I’ve mentioned before, I never really play games like this. And, I stared writing out my impressions, but they’re all just so negative and I don’t want to just rag on it. Long story short, I just don’t have the patience for this game. Maybe if I kept at it then it’d grow on me but after an hour and a half I don’t think I can go any longer.

On the plus side it was a good cure for the insomnia I’ve had the past few days (posting this so late only because my son woke me back up).

Yeah it does strike me as one of those games that either clicks with you or it doesn't. I'm kind of forcing myself to give it it's fair shake, and I'm definitely enjoying it more than I anticipated, but yeah patience is the name of the game here. I'm spending as much time in party management and maintenance as I am in story and battle segments. It's a slow burner for sure. Based on my current pace, I'm not even sure I'll be able to finish it this month. I'm going to keep at it though.

I totally hear you about using it as a cure for insomnia as well, lol. I've nodded off playing it more than once especially during those stupid tutorials.

Tactics Ogre was like this too, but at every map, you could go into a sort of two player mode where you set your company up to train against each other, with no enemies, and no fear of losing units from their death. I spent copious amounts of time leveling up my units in those maps, after making a character a VIP in the story missions. Alternatively, once I got petrify, I could just petrify all the enemies, and start having my units beat the stuffing out of each other, but that's a lot more dangerous if one of them crit, or something.

Tactics Ogre had an awesome story, and production values, but I found the gameplay to be a real drag most of the time. Sounds like FFT is pretty similar. (Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre, FFT, and FFT:A all share the same director, if anyone was curious about the relevance.)

As I've been playing FFT, I've been wondering about Tactic Ogre due to the shared staff. Sounds like it handled the training segments a bit better! This actually touces on something that gripes me about FFT: WotL. One of the unique features of this game is that it allows for 2P PvP and/or cooperative play over wifi. In these modes you get to keep all the accumulated job points you earn, but you don't earn XP. My understanding is that you also automatically gain back any items you use in these modes. Basically it's the perfect grinding setup for earning job points and abilities, but it's only available through these 2P modes. It sure would have been a nice concession if they had somehow implemented these game modes with a 1P option, because I mean Final Fantasy doesn't exactly scream 'awesome multi-player experience' (at least not outside of its MMORPG releases). I can only guess that this had to be one of the more underutilized features of the game.