legend of endless fantasy
To celebrate my newly-earned unemployment I spent the whole weekend playing Final Fantasy IV Advance. The entire whole weekend. I started it on Friday and cleared the final dungeon this morning. It's been about ten years since I first played this game on the PS1 and just over five since I've touched any of the main Final Fantasies. It might be a little embarrassing to think of how addicted I got to such an archaic game with a plot that's as shallow as it is random and wildly erratic difficulty but I think, hidden inside for all those years, there is a part of me that still genuinely, unironically loves this genre.
I didn't actually mean to finish it when I did, that was kind of an accident. I was running low on healing in the last part of the final dungeon where the enemies just got ridiculous so I decided to run to the last save point ignoring treasure, because I had dealt with a lot of chest monsters up to that point, save and restore there and then backtrack for the treasure before fighting the final boss. Only there was no save point and I ran straight into the boss instead. There was no save point anywhere in the final dungeon, which was kind of a shock after years of expecting a save point before the final boss as a right but Final Fantasy IV comes from the tail-end of an era when the genre wasn't really known for user-friendliness (EDIT: there are two save points in the final dungeon, and I missed both of them because I was running straight ahead and not exploring the side paths. How ironic).
Other modern ideas from the series being added elsewhere probably didn't help my false sense of security. In FFIV Advance instead of being party-locked to Cecil/Rosa/Kain/Rydia/Edge at the end only Cecil is fixed and the others can be swapped out for any of the surviving PCs (Cid, Yang, Edward or the twins). I took this opportunity to switch out Kain for Yang when it turned out he was even faster than Edge and had a new Holy-element weapon that wrecked a lot of enemies in the last dungeon. The changeable party isn't quite as liberating as it sounds on paper though because it seems like I'll have to stick to the Cecil/fighter/fighter/W. Mage/B. Mage template to make a really effective team which makes Edward very awkward to use since he's a mage with no magic.
Meanwhile Card Sagas Wars released a new video and the project continues to be the purest form of gamer nerd porn in existence. There's a new Zelda stage on display along with the fancy flying tiles at the start and end of each round that all 2D fighters need to have and a marquee that pops up from the bottom announcing attack names which surely raises the potential for references even further. I like how they've managed to make CSW Link distinct from Smash Link. There's no two ways about how the bow/bombs/hookshot/spin should work but there's a few more unique attacks on top of those to make him stand out. One of his moves in particular (you'll know which one when you see it) is so brilliant Nintendo should be ashamed for not using it themselves, even though I'll admit it doesn't fit with the ZELDA IS SRS BSBS LET'S DEBATE THE TIMELINE AGAIN direction that's been forced on the series over the past few years. Cloud's unique ability is Real-Time Materia Change although I'm still not sure how it affects his moves.
On the other hand seeing CSW use a piece of music straight from an actual game suddenly makes me feel a lot less secure about it's existence. It feels like the sword of Damocles is hanging over a project that's unofficially used material from so many companies - although I'm mostly worried about Square-Enix here, since they have a record for doing asshole-ish things in this territory.
I didn't actually mean to finish it when I did, that was kind of an accident. I was running low on healing in the last part of the final dungeon where the enemies just got ridiculous so I decided to run to the last save point ignoring treasure, because I had dealt with a lot of chest monsters up to that point, save and restore there and then backtrack for the treasure before fighting the final boss. Only there was no save point and I ran straight into the boss instead. There was no save point anywhere in the final dungeon, which was kind of a shock after years of expecting a save point before the final boss as a right but Final Fantasy IV comes from the tail-end of an era when the genre wasn't really known for user-friendliness (EDIT: there are two save points in the final dungeon, and I missed both of them because I was running straight ahead and not exploring the side paths. How ironic).
Other modern ideas from the series being added elsewhere probably didn't help my false sense of security. In FFIV Advance instead of being party-locked to Cecil/Rosa/Kain/Rydia/Edge at the end only Cecil is fixed and the others can be swapped out for any of the surviving PCs (Cid, Yang, Edward or the twins). I took this opportunity to switch out Kain for Yang when it turned out he was even faster than Edge and had a new Holy-element weapon that wrecked a lot of enemies in the last dungeon. The changeable party isn't quite as liberating as it sounds on paper though because it seems like I'll have to stick to the Cecil/fighter/fighter/W. Mage/B. Mage template to make a really effective team which makes Edward very awkward to use since he's a mage with no magic.
Meanwhile Card Sagas Wars released a new video and the project continues to be the purest form of gamer nerd porn in existence. There's a new Zelda stage on display along with the fancy flying tiles at the start and end of each round that all 2D fighters need to have and a marquee that pops up from the bottom announcing attack names which surely raises the potential for references even further. I like how they've managed to make CSW Link distinct from Smash Link. There's no two ways about how the bow/bombs/hookshot/spin should work but there's a few more unique attacks on top of those to make him stand out. One of his moves in particular (you'll know which one when you see it) is so brilliant Nintendo should be ashamed for not using it themselves, even though I'll admit it doesn't fit with the ZELDA IS SRS BSBS LET'S DEBATE THE TIMELINE AGAIN direction that's been forced on the series over the past few years. Cloud's unique ability is Real-Time Materia Change although I'm still not sure how it affects his moves.
On the other hand seeing CSW use a piece of music straight from an actual game suddenly makes me feel a lot less secure about it's existence. It feels like the sword of Damocles is hanging over a project that's unofficially used material from so many companies - although I'm mostly worried about Square-Enix here, since they have a record for doing asshole-ish things in this territory.