So... he cracked the top-five on speedrun.com. AND OF COURSE THAT'S HIS PROFILE PICTURE!
@zombiepie: long ago, I played through all the final fantasies through X. I think 3 is my bottom of the barrel even below everyone's least favorite 2.
I remember that final trek being awful and overleveling and overbuying items in order to make it through. Granted this was before pixel remasters so I didn't have a lot of quality of life improvements either. Eventually I'll go back to these games to rank them on my big board, but I sure hope its awhile for 3.
So... I plan to have a new feature on the site about Final Fantasy III but that's only because I decided to give the 3D remake a shot and it thoroughly kicked my ass. I still think the 3D remake of IV is the definitive version of the game, but with III, having fewer enemies with even bigger pools of HP and MP that hit twice is just no fun.
That said, some of the changes to the jobs the 3D remake and even the Pixel Remaster do are WILD! I somewhat forgot that the Pixel Remaster of III is one of the rare examples where the gameplay is not a shot-for-shot return to the original version of the game.
So based on what y'all are saying, if I wanted to play this series it might be best to start at FF4? I already played most of FF1 like 10 years ago so I won't play that one again. I've never played these games other than a couple hours of FF7 a few days ago and am thinking of playing them all since I am in the mood for this type of RPG.
I already have FF 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9 on various platforms so maybe I'll start there.
When I play 4, I think there's something to be said about that game being one of the most distinctly Japanese entries in the series. The structure of the story follows that of Japanese parables and stage plays more verbatim than any other game and even if games like X have unique iconography that speaks to Japanese culture, 4 is a game that evokes Edo era literature the most transparently. 4 is basically a giant extended Edo folk story. If you had a script of the game for Kabuki, I don't think anyone would bat an eye.
Love the write-up as always! o7 to you for making it to the end. I sure haven't been able to yet.
I feel that game design for sequels in the Famicom era in Japan was "Make the game weird/hard/time-consuming cuz we're bored with this game". Other than an anomaly like Rockman 2, I feel most sequels were a result of the game creators getting too "in their own heads" when it came to the games that made them famous. It's like they got bored of the game while playtesting and tried to make it a fresh experience for the sequel.
Super Mario 2, for example, instead of expanding on the scale of the world and gameplay, it went as if the creators thought "This game blew up and everyone spent a lot of time playing this game. Which means they've mastered the gameplay so let's make it 10x harder so they can get their money's worth." They righted the ship with Mario 3 but I shudder to think what the gaming landscape would look like if they didn't.
Legend of Zelda II: Let's make a side-scrolling action adventure game with a leveling system and magic and towns and that's great but did it have to be Zelda? Also, if you get a game over but don't level your character the correct way you're fuuuuucked. Big surprise they go back to the original game's format with Link to the Past and it's another home run.
Dragon Quest II is overly difficult with you having a party of 3 but one of your party members is pretty much useless unless you get him past a certain level, i.e. the average level to beat the game. The encounter rate is higher than normal so it just took a lot more of your time to advance. yadda yadda I could go on.
I'll someday try DQ3 based on your recommendation but, yeah, it's easier to recommend games from the SFC/SNES era when it comes to sequels because it's like something clicked with Japanese developers and they went and made better sequels more consistently by building on the foundations of the gameplay instead of making things hard/weird.
It's not so much that game sequels were harder but that Japan game developers felt like sequels could be anything they wanted them to. Sequels were sometimes meant to test the waters of new genres and it wasn't unique to the second game. You have Ys III: Wanderers from Ys which is the weird one for not being what every other Ys game is like. You also can't forget Fire Emblem Gaiden which is the least Fire Emblem Fire Emblem game ever made.
Also, Dragon Quest II is only really made hard because you have that useless sack of shit, the Prince of Cannock always dying in one to two hits. The minute you get the Princess of Moonbrooke, you are back on the gravy train. I find it endlessly funny that the Dragon Quest team know what they did with the Prince of Cannock as even in official promotional art, he's depicted as a coffin the characters need to drag back to town.
Great writeup! I love reading about the early Final Fantasy games because IV is the first one I played. As someone who stays away from FF rankings (why yes I am an VIII freak, how did you know), I always felt V was surprisingly great and underrepresented. Comparing this to V makes me want to circle around to it, but also that endgame sounds like the least parent-friendly area ever.
ever.
Final Fantasy V is great! It's honestly the last funny Final Fantasy game of the Hironobu Sakaguchi era and that game's job system is maybe one of the best gameplay mechanics developed during the 16-bit games. I have considered throwing my hat in with the Five Job Fiesta group but the timing has usually never worked.
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