Earlier this morning I plowed my way through the last two dungeons in Final Fantasy IX, beat up the final boss, and saved the world. Woo! It took me a little longer to beat this game than I would have liked, but that's partially due to watching a lot of Olympics coverage and it's partially due to being sick since the Olympics ended. Concentrating on manipulating the ATB system wasn't the easiest thing for my frazzled mind to do, so I kept pausing and wandering off to read pro wrestling recaps because that doesn't take any real thinking.
I really liked how this game went back to a more standard class based system. The last 4 games have featured essentially interchangeable characters with small differences. Sure, only Locke could steal, but everyone in Final Fantasy VI could learn all the spells and max whatever stats they wanted. In this game each of the 8 playable characters has a wildly different set of active and passive abilities to learn that make them all significantly different from each other. If you want to blow people up with black magic spells you simply have to use Vivi; there is no other choice. They have a good set of characters too, that interact in good ways, so there are a bunch of viable parties. This time I wanted to really max out Vivi so I built a party to make him better. So I used Freya for her mana restore ability, Zidane because I think you have to, and Dagger because she would also make use of the mana restore ability and having a healer had to be a good plan.
It turned out that I entered the final dungeon sequence with 81 ethers in my inventory so it's entirely possible I didn't need Freya at all. She did less damage than anyone else which seemed bad, but she did have the most health and the best defenses so that was probably a good thing. If I had to do it again I think I'd want my party to include Steiner and Amarant instead of Dagger and Freya, but they'd both be good parties. And I know the first time I played I put a heavy emphasis on Quina because that character is just plain awesome.
I really liked the art style used in the game. It took a step back from trying to use the hot new Playstation graphics to make 'realistic' people and went for a more cartoony feel. The resolution for the gameplay wasn't great on my tv, but I don't think FFVII or FFVIII would have faired any better (and likely would have been a lot worse). The FMVs were awesome. And I think Garnet may actually be the prettiest character in any of the Final Fantasy games.
The game had tons of little throw backs to previous games. Key items named after characters from Final Fantasy III that let you play music from that game. A dwarf village like the ones in Final Fantasy IV. Two planets merging to become one like in Final Fantasy V. Souls becoming a mist and feeding the planet like in Final Fantasy VII.
It wasn't all good though. The ATB battle system was even more frustrating in this game compared to previous ones. The fact that the optimal way to play was to have one of your characters never take an action and instead open the menu to pause time during animations was pretty terrible. Even worse was when I had auto-regen on my whole team and the best way to heal up was to cast a long animation spell and not open the menu. Bahamut should not be my best healing spell! It really made having a 'healer' pretty silly, though at least Dagger had a long animation spell to be a good fake healer on top of being a potential real healer, too.
The random encounter system is complete garbage. Normally in a game like this exploring a dungeon completely for all the treasure isn't much of a chore. Maybe you take 40% more steps, which gets you 40% more fights. That's fine! In FFIX the random encounter counter resets each time you change screens, and most screens are pretty short. So short, in fact, that it's possible to beat the game with only 5 random encounters total because you can run through almost every screen without getting a fight. Fights also take a long time to load in. Fully exploring a dungeon is probably more like 20 times as long, not 1.4 times as long. Which is frustrating now that I know it, and it really makes limited resource characters like Vivi terrible if you're getting into a ton of extra fights. My playthrough this time was a little over 34 hours, and there's a reward for making it to the final dungeon in under 12 hours, and other than putting off the chocobo stuff and card game stuff until later the main way to save time is to learn the path through each zone to minimize encounters. I don't like it one bit.
The game also put in an homage to Beyond the Beyond, and not in a good way. In the middle of the game Dagger gets stressed out and can't talk. You can put her in your party still but she loses her trance bar and about half of the time she gets distracted instead of taking the action assigned to her. Can't move... CURSED! This was not a good thing. In retrospect I think Eiko would be a better healer since she gets esuna, full-life, and holy. And you can keep using her in the middle of the game! Holy should have a long enough cast time to be a healing spell...
The card game was disappointing and most of the timing based mini-games didn't work on my tv. Chocobo Hot and Cold was still very good. And I don't feel like I should ding the game because it doesn't work well on a new tv. The card game was disappointing on every playthrough though!
One thing that blew my mind was the final boss... His name was Necron and you learned that he existed 10 seconds before fighting him. Kuja and Garland both could be the final boss from the story... But no. They both end up helping you after you beat them up. But then there's just this random dude after you beat the final Kuja form. A dude who wants to put an end to the entire universe, to be fair, so you sure want to kill him. But where did he come from? Why is he there? Who knows. Kill the scary thing and win the game.
The ending was nice and happy. I still want to know how Vivi had kids. It was nice to see that pretty much all of the characters had a happy ending. Steiner loosened up a little and ended up with Beatrix! I was watching a speedrun of the game and someone commented in chat about how Steiner always starts off as everyone's most hated character but eventually comes to grow on people. No one there disputed that assessment, and I think it's true for me too. It helps that he's probably the most powerful character.
Anyway... Where should this game go in my little ranking chart? I liked a lot of things about this game, and it's definitely a worthwhile play. But it has some pretty big flaws too, and it's never really stood out in my mind one way or the other. I think it's definitely better than the NES era games but I think it has to slot in as worse than the rest of the core series. And Tactics, for that matter. So for now it gets to be #7 on my list. That's still pretty good, and I really think the reason it's so low is that the games ahead of it are all fantastic games with fewer glaring flaws.
Next up would be Final Fantasy X, but I'm holding off on playing that game until the HD version comes out on March 18th. I'm going to skip ahead to the next game, which is one I've been looking forward to playing again and which is really only tangentially part of the marathon anyway: Kingdom Hearts.
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy IX. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy IX. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
Final Fantasy IX: Chocobo Hot and Cold
Yesterday I finally obtained the airship in Final Fantasy IX and the story is building up to a big climactic battle where my party has to assault a stronghold in order to break down a barrier and invade another planet. Instead of making haste directly there I take the 'minor' detour to go play the chocobo mini-game! A little under 6 hours later I've dug up all the chocographs, found all of their treasures around the world, and have a ton of awesome new cards and gear.
Chocobo Hot and Cold has a fairly straightforward premise. You pay a moogle some cash and he lets you dig for a minute. When you dig in a location you get told how close you are to a randomly generated treasure by how excited your chocobo sounds. Use those sounds and future digs to narrow down the treasure. Once you've found it, mash the button until you dig it up. Repeat until you find 8 treasures or the minute runs out. Mostly the treasures are worthless junk like potions but every now and then you'll find a chocograph which shows a little picture of the world along with a hint for what is being pictured. Head out into the world, find that spot, and dig again to get the loot! Some of those outside treasures power up your chocobo to let him swim, or climb mountains, or fly. Each new ability unlocks a new way to dig up chocographs and opens up more of the world for finding chocographs.
Anyway, this is at least the third time I've done this. I find it pretty easy to zone out and play the mini-game. It's fun, and it gives good rewards. One thing that changed this time is I didn't have to look up anything on the internet in order to finish it off! There's this one chocograph where the picture is just ocean and the hint isn't very useful. And it's not that I remembered where it was, either... No, this time I just refused to give up until I'd searched the entire area of the ocean. And I did pretty much that, too... Not only was it in the last place I looked (because I stopped looking when I found it, duh) but it was pretty much in the last place I was going to look. I was just about to give in and turn to the internet once more when I got it. Woo!
Final Fantasy IX has a lot of little mini-games in it, and most of them have fallen pretty flat for me this time around. The card game is tedious and a lot of the games rely on precise button timing which flat out don't work on a non-CRT tv. But the chocobo game remains a lot of fun. Think about it more, it's probably the 3rd best mini game in the series...
Chocobo Hot and Cold has a fairly straightforward premise. You pay a moogle some cash and he lets you dig for a minute. When you dig in a location you get told how close you are to a randomly generated treasure by how excited your chocobo sounds. Use those sounds and future digs to narrow down the treasure. Once you've found it, mash the button until you dig it up. Repeat until you find 8 treasures or the minute runs out. Mostly the treasures are worthless junk like potions but every now and then you'll find a chocograph which shows a little picture of the world along with a hint for what is being pictured. Head out into the world, find that spot, and dig again to get the loot! Some of those outside treasures power up your chocobo to let him swim, or climb mountains, or fly. Each new ability unlocks a new way to dig up chocographs and opens up more of the world for finding chocographs.
Anyway, this is at least the third time I've done this. I find it pretty easy to zone out and play the mini-game. It's fun, and it gives good rewards. One thing that changed this time is I didn't have to look up anything on the internet in order to finish it off! There's this one chocograph where the picture is just ocean and the hint isn't very useful. And it's not that I remembered where it was, either... No, this time I just refused to give up until I'd searched the entire area of the ocean. And I did pretty much that, too... Not only was it in the last place I looked (because I stopped looking when I found it, duh) but it was pretty much in the last place I was going to look. I was just about to give in and turn to the internet once more when I got it. Woo!
Final Fantasy IX has a lot of little mini-games in it, and most of them have fallen pretty flat for me this time around. The card game is tedious and a lot of the games rely on precise button timing which flat out don't work on a non-CRT tv. But the chocobo game remains a lot of fun. Think about it more, it's probably the 3rd best mini game in the series...
Friday, February 21, 2014
Final Fantasy IX: Card Game Leveling
I'm now a little over 20 hours into my Final Fantasy IX game and I've spent probably 6 of those hours just playing the Tetra Master card game. One of the things I've never done in this game is acquire the 'perfect' card collector rank which involves owning one copy of all 100 cards, all of which at the A attack type, and all of which have a different combination of arrows. After playing 6 hours I have 6 X cards and 1 A card. Well, actually, I only have 5 X cards because I lost one of them and couldn't win it back.
Supposedly the odds of a card leveling from X to A is .56%. If I was playing with 5 X cards, and if they all have an independent chance of leveling after each match, I'd be looking at a 2.77% chance of getting an A after each battle. I need 99 more As, so I'd be looking at needing to play 3576 more games to turn 99 Xs into 99 As. Given needing to sort for the cards I want, actually play the game, and periodically save so I don't lose needed cards I'm probably looking at 5 minutes per game? So only another 300 hours...
But wait! I don't have 99 Xs to turn into As. I have 5. I need to turn 94 more base cards into Xs before I even reach that point! I'm a little less than 3 times as likely to have a cards upgrade to X than to A, so with really hand-wavy math I probably need 100 hours to have that happen...
But wait! I don't have a copy of all 100 cards yet! And I'd need to make sure they have the right arrows! And I'd need to not lose critical cards!
Yeah... This was an interesting thing to think about, but I'm throwing it out the window right now. Playing the card game isn't even very fun and I'm really sad that I lost that X in a story battle. Sorry Tetra Master, you are the weakest link. Good-bye.
Oh, on the plus side, I did run into a random dude in town who had this to say...
Supposedly the odds of a card leveling from X to A is .56%. If I was playing with 5 X cards, and if they all have an independent chance of leveling after each match, I'd be looking at a 2.77% chance of getting an A after each battle. I need 99 more As, so I'd be looking at needing to play 3576 more games to turn 99 Xs into 99 As. Given needing to sort for the cards I want, actually play the game, and periodically save so I don't lose needed cards I'm probably looking at 5 minutes per game? So only another 300 hours...
But wait! I don't have 99 Xs to turn into As. I have 5. I need to turn 94 more base cards into Xs before I even reach that point! I'm a little less than 3 times as likely to have a cards upgrade to X than to A, so with really hand-wavy math I probably need 100 hours to have that happen...
But wait! I don't have a copy of all 100 cards yet! And I'd need to make sure they have the right arrows! And I'd need to not lose critical cards!
Yeah... This was an interesting thing to think about, but I'm throwing it out the window right now. Playing the card game isn't even very fun and I'm really sad that I lost that X in a story battle. Sorry Tetra Master, you are the weakest link. Good-bye.
Oh, on the plus side, I did run into a random dude in town who had this to say...
Tuesday, February 18, 2014
Final Fantasy IX: Graphics
One of the things I'm noticing on this playthrough is just how 'bad' the graphics are in Final Fantasy IX. I know there are a bunch of mitigating factors causing it to look worse than I remember, and worse than FFVII and FFVIII, but it's still a little jarring to play.
The first difference, and probably the most important one, is I'm playing the original PSX version of the game on a PS2. When I played FFVII and FFVIII I played the downloaded versions on my PSP. I don't think the games were changed in any way for the PS Network downloads but screen size and AV connection differences are probably a big deal. I do remember being impressed by how good the games looked on the PSP; maybe it is helping in some way.
I'm connecting my PS2 up to the tv with standard composite cables. I don't know the details behind it but people in the know say it's a pretty bad option. The steaming FAQs I've been reading place it above only the old AV cable switchbox thing from the really old days. S-video, component, and hdmi get better and better. I don't think the PS2 can do hdmi, but it can definitely do the others. I actually went looking for an S-video cable when I went out this weekend to visit Sky but the two game stores near where he live didn't have any. I'm probably going to order one online at some point. So probably I could get a better picture with better cables, and I can believe the PSP internally uses a better connection between GPU and the built in screen than whatever the PS2 is doing with the composite cables.
Resolution is a big deal because the PSX output images in 240p resolution and a 4:3 aspect ratio and my big screen tv is happiest with 1080p and 16:9 ratio. I figured out how to force it to go 4:3 by ignoring the sides of the screen but it's still upscaling the gameplay pretty heavily. Everything is pretty pixelated. It's still totally playable, don't get me wrong, but it looks off. I don't remember having quite the same problems with the SNES games, probably because while those games looked super outdated they were super outdated 2d games and felt more retro than low quality. Again, the PSP screen was undoubtedly built with the right dimensions and proportions for the games I was playing.
At any rate, the characters and combat and stuff seem pixelated but every now and then they play an FMV sequence and just like the other PSX era games the FMVs in this game are pretty fantastic. The blockiness from the regular game is gone, so I wonder if the FMVs are in a higher resolution or if the prerendering did something good for them. Here's a video from a sequence not too far into the game when the evil queen Brahne has finally figured out how to use summon magic and decides to use Odin to completely obliterate a poor town full of innocent dancers... And he's pretending to be the aliens from Independence Day!
The first difference, and probably the most important one, is I'm playing the original PSX version of the game on a PS2. When I played FFVII and FFVIII I played the downloaded versions on my PSP. I don't think the games were changed in any way for the PS Network downloads but screen size and AV connection differences are probably a big deal. I do remember being impressed by how good the games looked on the PSP; maybe it is helping in some way.
I'm connecting my PS2 up to the tv with standard composite cables. I don't know the details behind it but people in the know say it's a pretty bad option. The steaming FAQs I've been reading place it above only the old AV cable switchbox thing from the really old days. S-video, component, and hdmi get better and better. I don't think the PS2 can do hdmi, but it can definitely do the others. I actually went looking for an S-video cable when I went out this weekend to visit Sky but the two game stores near where he live didn't have any. I'm probably going to order one online at some point. So probably I could get a better picture with better cables, and I can believe the PSP internally uses a better connection between GPU and the built in screen than whatever the PS2 is doing with the composite cables.
Resolution is a big deal because the PSX output images in 240p resolution and a 4:3 aspect ratio and my big screen tv is happiest with 1080p and 16:9 ratio. I figured out how to force it to go 4:3 by ignoring the sides of the screen but it's still upscaling the gameplay pretty heavily. Everything is pretty pixelated. It's still totally playable, don't get me wrong, but it looks off. I don't remember having quite the same problems with the SNES games, probably because while those games looked super outdated they were super outdated 2d games and felt more retro than low quality. Again, the PSP screen was undoubtedly built with the right dimensions and proportions for the games I was playing.
At any rate, the characters and combat and stuff seem pixelated but every now and then they play an FMV sequence and just like the other PSX era games the FMVs in this game are pretty fantastic. The blockiness from the regular game is gone, so I wonder if the FMVs are in a higher resolution or if the prerendering did something good for them. Here's a video from a sequence not too far into the game when the evil queen Brahne has finally figured out how to use summon magic and decides to use Odin to completely obliterate a poor town full of innocent dancers... And he's pretending to be the aliens from Independence Day!
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Final Fantasy IX: ATB System
One of my earlier blog posts back in 2006 complained about playing Final Fantasy IX and being unable to have my white mage shell up the entire team. Before she could cast shell on the third guy it had worn off of the first. Spending an action to halve the damage taken by 25% of my team for 2 turns is not a very good use of time. Chance are pretty good that the enemy won't even attack someone with shell on them! I noticed the same thing this time when I decided to try out Bungo's vanish blue magic spell. By the time it was his turn again the spell had already worn off! This sucks!
The problem comes down, unfortunately, to the ATB combat system. Time passes even while inputting commands for your characters and that includes the time for buff duration. It's actually a pretty frustrating system. The enemies don't seem to obey quite the same ATB rules and it definitely feels like they get to go way more often than they should. Probably because of how long my team spends with a full bar waiting patiently for their turn to resolve an inputted command! While their limited duration buffs tick away!
When I was reading the 'all the things' guide on gamefaqs one of the things that stood out for me was their strategy for gaining levels once they had the best stat boosting gear. They listed four characters and the actions they needed to be taking in order to win quickly. One of the four people's job was to do nothing. Any time any action was resolving on screen that character's job was to open the item menu which would pause the ATB system. It wouldn't pause the game so the long animation attack would keep resolving but the enemies wouldn't get to ready up attacks in the meantime. That this exists as an optimal strategy is stupid and I really want to play a game with a better system. FFX! You need to come out soon!
There is another way to abuse the ATB system which was pointed out to me by Dave. One of the things that keeps ticking as a long animation is played is the regen spell. He pointed out that the final boss actually couldn't possibly kill him when he had an item equipped that provided regen automatically. The time spent casting a spell would give enough time for regen to completely heal the damage done by the previous spell!
I did some poking around on the internet to find some of the formulas used for these things. The shell spell lasts for 360*spirit*4/14 ticks and the vanish spell lasts for 240*spirit*4/14 ticks. I get an action every (60-speed)*160/14 ticks. At least right now speed and spirit have similar values for each character with Bungo having about 15 of each. So vanish on Bungo would last 1028 ticks and if no time was ever wasted he'd get an action 514 ticks. That it wore off before he got a second action means I'm wasting at least half of my time! But it also means that even with optimal time use he'd only ever be able to have it up on two people at once. As we level up those stats should approach more like 50 each, so vanish would last 3428 ticks and Bungo would get an action every 114 ticks. That seems like maybe it would let him vanish up the whole team! Especially if I was abusing the item menu thing to keep it from ticking away during animations.
How about regen? It restores 1/16th of your max health every (60-spirit)*40*4/14 ticks. So it procs once per action if you have equivalent spirit and speed and no wasted time. With wasted time it'll proc over and over again. At max spirit (which is 50) it'd restore 1/16th of your max health every 114 ticks. With some of the lengthy attack animations that exist in games like this I can really see how that could make one completely invincible to anything except immediately lethal damage!
The problem comes down, unfortunately, to the ATB combat system. Time passes even while inputting commands for your characters and that includes the time for buff duration. It's actually a pretty frustrating system. The enemies don't seem to obey quite the same ATB rules and it definitely feels like they get to go way more often than they should. Probably because of how long my team spends with a full bar waiting patiently for their turn to resolve an inputted command! While their limited duration buffs tick away!
When I was reading the 'all the things' guide on gamefaqs one of the things that stood out for me was their strategy for gaining levels once they had the best stat boosting gear. They listed four characters and the actions they needed to be taking in order to win quickly. One of the four people's job was to do nothing. Any time any action was resolving on screen that character's job was to open the item menu which would pause the ATB system. It wouldn't pause the game so the long animation attack would keep resolving but the enemies wouldn't get to ready up attacks in the meantime. That this exists as an optimal strategy is stupid and I really want to play a game with a better system. FFX! You need to come out soon!
There is another way to abuse the ATB system which was pointed out to me by Dave. One of the things that keeps ticking as a long animation is played is the regen spell. He pointed out that the final boss actually couldn't possibly kill him when he had an item equipped that provided regen automatically. The time spent casting a spell would give enough time for regen to completely heal the damage done by the previous spell!
I did some poking around on the internet to find some of the formulas used for these things. The shell spell lasts for 360*spirit*4/14 ticks and the vanish spell lasts for 240*spirit*4/14 ticks. I get an action every (60-speed)*160/14 ticks. At least right now speed and spirit have similar values for each character with Bungo having about 15 of each. So vanish on Bungo would last 1028 ticks and if no time was ever wasted he'd get an action 514 ticks. That it wore off before he got a second action means I'm wasting at least half of my time! But it also means that even with optimal time use he'd only ever be able to have it up on two people at once. As we level up those stats should approach more like 50 each, so vanish would last 3428 ticks and Bungo would get an action every 114 ticks. That seems like maybe it would let him vanish up the whole team! Especially if I was abusing the item menu thing to keep it from ticking away during animations.
How about regen? It restores 1/16th of your max health every (60-spirit)*40*4/14 ticks. So it procs once per action if you have equivalent spirit and speed and no wasted time. With wasted time it'll proc over and over again. At max spirit (which is 50) it'd restore 1/16th of your max health every 114 ticks. With some of the lengthy attack animations that exist in games like this I can really see how that could make one completely invincible to anything except immediately lethal damage!
Friday, February 07, 2014
Final Fantasy IX: Stealing
One of the things I found myself doing obsessively in a jRPG is trying to get all of the things just in case I happen to need one of the things in the future. This means running around to get all of the treasures, buying all of the stuff in a store, doing all the side quests, and stealing all of the things from all of the enemies. Stealing tends to be rather slow, especially since often my best offensive character is also the one who can steal. Certainly Locke and Zidane were heavy hitters as well as the only people who could steal. I guess Rikku didn't do much damage? So for the most part taking the time to steal from enemies can drastically increase the amount of time it takes to get through a given fight. Especially some boss fights with a low percentage chance for steal to succeed where I'll just stop attacking with anyone else until it works!
With those factors taken into account I'd think stealing would be something that wouldn't happen in a speedrun but I've been seeing a lot of runs where people have been stealing stuff. They don't steal all of the things by any stretch of the imagination but they definitely know of a few things that are worth the time invested in stealing. I think the guy who I was watching play the start of FFIX was stealing things from bosses in order to sell them! I imagine skipping every treasure and running from every fight can leave you a little tight on cash.
Anyway, I am getting all the treasures and fighting all the fights and stealing all the things and I'm still tight on cash! But most of my stealing has boiled down to getting potions and debuff removers and not anything of actual value. I'd really prefer to start actually attacking most fights and keep the stealing for things that actually matter. So, how does stealing work and when should I really care?
Stealing in FFIX works under a two roll system. First you make a check to see if you succeed in your steal attempt. This check is based on your level, the enemy level, and your spirit. It's also a check that gets skipped if you have a certain passive ability equipped and I do have that ability so I get to skip this check entirely. Then if you succeed you roll a d256 to see what you steal. Each enemy can have up to 4 items, one in each of 4 categories of difficulty. If you rolled a 1 then you get the rarest item. 2-16 is the next rarest. 17-64 is the next rarest. Any other number gets you the common item. On the plus side you're allowed to steal multiple items from each enemy. On the minus side that means I feel the need to try to hit the 1 in 256 lottery over and over and over and over again. On the plus side there is a second stealing related passive that turns the 1/256 and 16/256 slots into 32/256 slots and has empty slots get passed over. I don't yet have that ability but I wants it so badly!
One other ability that's interesting is thievery which does damage equal to the number of successful steals over the course of the game time half of Zidane's speed. I don't have this ability yet either, but it's not inconceivable that this could be a really high damage ability if I keep stealing from all of the monsters.
How about stuff that's particularly important to steal? From what I can tell pretty much every boss has something worth stealing in a rarer slot, but worth is pretty subjective. For the first 3 disks it's all stuff you're going to be able to buy in a town or two. So having it will get you better stats and abilities a little faster, and it will save you the money of needing to buy it yourself, but you aren't really missing out on anything if you leave it behind. Trash mobs all suck. I read something that indicate this would no longer be the case on disk 4 but I just went through a list of every single item in the game and they all had alternate ways to get them other than stealing them. Maybe it was the 'all the things' guide that said something about stealing on disk 4 since it looked like a few of the items were only stolen or obtained from the chocobo mini game so to have n+1 for 'all the things' you probably need the stolen ones.
What does this mean? Well, I should probably stop worrying about stealing. Either that or I should keep stealing non-stop in an attempt to really max out that one attack whenever it shows up. I think I'm going to stop stealing from the random encounters but I'll keep giving it a few goes on the bosses just to pick up some gear on the cheap. I do like cheap...
With those factors taken into account I'd think stealing would be something that wouldn't happen in a speedrun but I've been seeing a lot of runs where people have been stealing stuff. They don't steal all of the things by any stretch of the imagination but they definitely know of a few things that are worth the time invested in stealing. I think the guy who I was watching play the start of FFIX was stealing things from bosses in order to sell them! I imagine skipping every treasure and running from every fight can leave you a little tight on cash.
Anyway, I am getting all the treasures and fighting all the fights and stealing all the things and I'm still tight on cash! But most of my stealing has boiled down to getting potions and debuff removers and not anything of actual value. I'd really prefer to start actually attacking most fights and keep the stealing for things that actually matter. So, how does stealing work and when should I really care?
Stealing in FFIX works under a two roll system. First you make a check to see if you succeed in your steal attempt. This check is based on your level, the enemy level, and your spirit. It's also a check that gets skipped if you have a certain passive ability equipped and I do have that ability so I get to skip this check entirely. Then if you succeed you roll a d256 to see what you steal. Each enemy can have up to 4 items, one in each of 4 categories of difficulty. If you rolled a 1 then you get the rarest item. 2-16 is the next rarest. 17-64 is the next rarest. Any other number gets you the common item. On the plus side you're allowed to steal multiple items from each enemy. On the minus side that means I feel the need to try to hit the 1 in 256 lottery over and over and over and over again. On the plus side there is a second stealing related passive that turns the 1/256 and 16/256 slots into 32/256 slots and has empty slots get passed over. I don't yet have that ability but I wants it so badly!
One other ability that's interesting is thievery which does damage equal to the number of successful steals over the course of the game time half of Zidane's speed. I don't have this ability yet either, but it's not inconceivable that this could be a really high damage ability if I keep stealing from all of the monsters.
How about stuff that's particularly important to steal? From what I can tell pretty much every boss has something worth stealing in a rarer slot, but worth is pretty subjective. For the first 3 disks it's all stuff you're going to be able to buy in a town or two. So having it will get you better stats and abilities a little faster, and it will save you the money of needing to buy it yourself, but you aren't really missing out on anything if you leave it behind. Trash mobs all suck. I read something that indicate this would no longer be the case on disk 4 but I just went through a list of every single item in the game and they all had alternate ways to get them other than stealing them. Maybe it was the 'all the things' guide that said something about stealing on disk 4 since it looked like a few of the items were only stolen or obtained from the chocobo mini game so to have n+1 for 'all the things' you probably need the stolen ones.
What does this mean? Well, I should probably stop worrying about stealing. Either that or I should keep stealing non-stop in an attempt to really max out that one attack whenever it shows up. I think I'm going to stop stealing from the random encounters but I'll keep giving it a few goes on the bosses just to pick up some gear on the cheap. I do like cheap...
Thursday, February 06, 2014
Final Fantasy IX: Tetra Master
The card game in Final Fantasy VIII was a pretty huge success I think which caused Square to stick a card game into Final Fantasy IX as well. But they didn't want to just do the same old thing so they added all kinds of crazy things to the mini game. Rather than have 4 directions of influence they added in diagonals to make it 8 directional. They made it so each card didn't necessarily work in every direction, instead it would have some combination of the 8 directions. They gave cards an attack value, a physical defense value, and a magic attack value. They made different cards attack physical or magical based on what the card represents. They added in a random component so even a weak card could sometimes beat a strong card. And they let the cards level up and get more powerful as you used them. They also removed pretty much any benefit you could get from playing the game. FFVIII had tons of powerful stuff you could make out of cards. FFIX has pretty much no reason to play the game other than the fun of playing it or the OCD need to 'catch them all'.
For the most part from the things I've read and the people I talked to about these games back in the day the changes were, by and large, a flop. The FFVIII card game was awesome and I can't remember talking to someone who hated it. But the changes in FFIX tended to remove player control from the game. You can't see your opponent's hand and sometimes you just lose to random chance. This is bad for the player because games are played for ante and while the computer can just restock and doesn't mind losing something leveled up the player can't just restock and certainly minds losing a card they've invested a lot of time into leveling. The computer will tend to use the cards they win so you can win them back, but you did lose with your best card... Your odds have to be worse with your opponent having it instead of you.
The randomness can be frustrating, so I don't know if I'm going to stick it out, but I'm going to try to build a maxxed out collection. There's a collector level in the game that awards you points based on owning cards with certain criteria and there is an absolute maximum level you can reach. It involves owning exactly one copy of each of the 100 cards in the game. Each of those cards needs to have a unique combination of the 8 possible directions (there are 2^8=256 such combinations and you can save/reload before earning a card to cause it to spawn with a new random combination) and each of them also needs to be leveled up to the maximum attack type. Each card has a 1.56% chance after each fight of upgrading from the starting attack type to attack type X and each X card has a .56% chance after each fight of upgrading from X to A. That's a lot of card battles... Especially since you'll need to be winning fights with some low level cards in order to level them up. But I think I'm up for the task! Maybe!
The most important thing to start with is making sure I can actually get my hand on one copy of every card. I certainly remember from playing before that some cards can only be found in one spot or in ante from one opponent and I need to make sure I don't miss any of them. I couldn't find an immediate list of cards that might be missed but I did find a list of locations for every card in the game. So I decided to go through that list and make note of anything I need to make sure I don't miss. Lots of cards, especially the low level stuff, can be won in random encounters or can be trivially won in a card battle so I don't need to worry about them at all.
It looks from the list like a lot of stuff can actually be won from guys in the card arena on disk 4. I'm going to assert that guys like Beast Master Gilbert is actually able to be fought many times to pay out the large number of seemingly rare cards he owns and therefore not worry about them. If that turns out to not be true, oh well, and I will learn for next time!
Here's what I do need to worry about:
Namingway card is the only one that can't be won in a card battle on disk 4. You can win it from Mario in the card tournament on disk 3, or you can find it in the desert palace/sanctum on disk 3.
Wow. I hope this card list is right. It feels so strange that you can just go and card battle dudes to win basically every card in the game. This certainly wasn't the case in FFVIII! I guess that's probably because the unique cards in that game could be converted into powerful items and here they're not worth anything at all except having them?
I'm a little worried there's something wrong with this card list but it would explain why I couldn't find a list of missable cards anywhere and why the only card really called out in the 'do absolutely everything' FAQ was Namingwary.
Oh, and on a side note... Apparently some German company actually made a board game version of Tetra Master! The BGG comments make it sound pretty bad, but I still have this urge to try to track it down...
For the most part from the things I've read and the people I talked to about these games back in the day the changes were, by and large, a flop. The FFVIII card game was awesome and I can't remember talking to someone who hated it. But the changes in FFIX tended to remove player control from the game. You can't see your opponent's hand and sometimes you just lose to random chance. This is bad for the player because games are played for ante and while the computer can just restock and doesn't mind losing something leveled up the player can't just restock and certainly minds losing a card they've invested a lot of time into leveling. The computer will tend to use the cards they win so you can win them back, but you did lose with your best card... Your odds have to be worse with your opponent having it instead of you.
The randomness can be frustrating, so I don't know if I'm going to stick it out, but I'm going to try to build a maxxed out collection. There's a collector level in the game that awards you points based on owning cards with certain criteria and there is an absolute maximum level you can reach. It involves owning exactly one copy of each of the 100 cards in the game. Each of those cards needs to have a unique combination of the 8 possible directions (there are 2^8=256 such combinations and you can save/reload before earning a card to cause it to spawn with a new random combination) and each of them also needs to be leveled up to the maximum attack type. Each card has a 1.56% chance after each fight of upgrading from the starting attack type to attack type X and each X card has a .56% chance after each fight of upgrading from X to A. That's a lot of card battles... Especially since you'll need to be winning fights with some low level cards in order to level them up. But I think I'm up for the task! Maybe!
The most important thing to start with is making sure I can actually get my hand on one copy of every card. I certainly remember from playing before that some cards can only be found in one spot or in ante from one opponent and I need to make sure I don't miss any of them. I couldn't find an immediate list of cards that might be missed but I did find a list of locations for every card in the game. So I decided to go through that list and make note of anything I need to make sure I don't miss. Lots of cards, especially the low level stuff, can be won in random encounters or can be trivially won in a card battle so I don't need to worry about them at all.
It looks from the list like a lot of stuff can actually be won from guys in the card arena on disk 4. I'm going to assert that guys like Beast Master Gilbert is actually able to be fought many times to pay out the large number of seemingly rare cards he owns and therefore not worry about them. If that turns out to not be true, oh well, and I will learn for next time!
Here's what I do need to worry about:
Namingway card is the only one that can't be won in a card battle on disk 4. You can win it from Mario in the card tournament on disk 3, or you can find it in the desert palace/sanctum on disk 3.
Wow. I hope this card list is right. It feels so strange that you can just go and card battle dudes to win basically every card in the game. This certainly wasn't the case in FFVIII! I guess that's probably because the unique cards in that game could be converted into powerful items and here they're not worth anything at all except having them?
I'm a little worried there's something wrong with this card list but it would explain why I couldn't find a list of missable cards anywhere and why the only card really called out in the 'do absolutely everything' FAQ was Namingwary.
Oh, and on a side note... Apparently some German company actually made a board game version of Tetra Master! The BGG comments make it sound pretty bad, but I still have this urge to try to track it down...
Wednesday, February 05, 2014
Final Fantasy IX: Plan
Ok, time to play some Final Fantasy IX! The question I've been mulling over the last couple days is how do I want to play it. There are all kinds of different options for how to play this game in particular. There's the standard stuff like trying to play with one character, or trying to play at low level. Given my recent obsession with watching speed runs I could try to win as fast as possible. (Not even a stretch for my Final Fantasy marathon since that's how I approached FFII. My time of 15 hours and 44 minutes pales a 'little' in comparison to the record on SDA of 2 hours and 32 minutes, though...)
Final Fantasy IX follows well in the footsteps of VII and VIII in that it has a ton of mini games like FFVII and a super extensive card game like FFVIII. A true speed run would skip these things and I don't know that I want to do that. On the other hand I know that every time I've played the game thus far I've done all of that stuff. Do I need to do it again? Do I want to do it again?
There's also the concept of a 'perfect' save file which I've been reading about on gamefaqs. FFIX has one item that is only available if you make it to disk 4 in under 12 hours. It has another item that is only available if you open practically every treasure chest in the game, many of which you have to open as you pass them on previous disks. On top of that people obsess about getting everything anyway, and getting max stats, and all sorts of other things. One group of people worked out a way to actually get everything you could miss while still getting to the end in under 12 hours, and then pick up all the other stuff you can still get. It sounds interesting and tedious and fun and boring which seems to be right up my alley... Except they then estimate it took them probably 800 hours to do. Not that I wouldn't spend 800 hours on a game, but I have the HD versions of FFX and FFX-2 showing up at my door in a month and a half and I don't want to still be on FFIX when that happens!
My biggest problem with watching speedruns of the Final Fantasy games has been that one of the things I really like about the games are the stories and the side quests. And while I am intrigued by eeking out small gains of time and pushing to be the best at something I don't think I want to do that on a game when it's the first time I'm playing it in 8 years. I also really don't think FFIX would be my game of choice for a FF speedrun... In fact it might be near the bottom of the list.
I think the answer is to just play the game straight up. I remember it has lots of little throwbacks to previous games and I'd like to have the chance to find those and enjoy them without worrying that I need to skip the dialogue or the cutscenes or whatever. I could do low level but it sounds like low level is actually pretty easy in this game so it wouldn't be adding too much challenge. If I want added challenge I want lots of added challenge, not just piddly bits. So it's going to just be a nice, casual playthrough.
Maybe I'll put a special focus on the card game this time around, make sure I don't miss anything in it and see if I can't max it out...
Final Fantasy IX follows well in the footsteps of VII and VIII in that it has a ton of mini games like FFVII and a super extensive card game like FFVIII. A true speed run would skip these things and I don't know that I want to do that. On the other hand I know that every time I've played the game thus far I've done all of that stuff. Do I need to do it again? Do I want to do it again?
There's also the concept of a 'perfect' save file which I've been reading about on gamefaqs. FFIX has one item that is only available if you make it to disk 4 in under 12 hours. It has another item that is only available if you open practically every treasure chest in the game, many of which you have to open as you pass them on previous disks. On top of that people obsess about getting everything anyway, and getting max stats, and all sorts of other things. One group of people worked out a way to actually get everything you could miss while still getting to the end in under 12 hours, and then pick up all the other stuff you can still get. It sounds interesting and tedious and fun and boring which seems to be right up my alley... Except they then estimate it took them probably 800 hours to do. Not that I wouldn't spend 800 hours on a game, but I have the HD versions of FFX and FFX-2 showing up at my door in a month and a half and I don't want to still be on FFIX when that happens!
My biggest problem with watching speedruns of the Final Fantasy games has been that one of the things I really like about the games are the stories and the side quests. And while I am intrigued by eeking out small gains of time and pushing to be the best at something I don't think I want to do that on a game when it's the first time I'm playing it in 8 years. I also really don't think FFIX would be my game of choice for a FF speedrun... In fact it might be near the bottom of the list.
I think the answer is to just play the game straight up. I remember it has lots of little throwbacks to previous games and I'd like to have the chance to find those and enjoy them without worrying that I need to skip the dialogue or the cutscenes or whatever. I could do low level but it sounds like low level is actually pretty easy in this game so it wouldn't be adding too much challenge. If I want added challenge I want lots of added challenge, not just piddly bits. So it's going to just be a nice, casual playthrough.
Maybe I'll put a special focus on the card game this time around, make sure I don't miss anything in it and see if I can't max it out...
Friday, January 20, 2006
Limited duration buffs make me sad
At the start of disk 2 of FFIX there's a fight pitting Garnet, Steiner and Marcus against an insane black mage. Having recently acquired protect and shell and assuming (correctly) that a huge black mage might attack with spells I decided to shell up my team. It cannot be cast on more than one person at a time (presumably I will learn shell 2 or shellra eventually) so I started out by putting it on Steiner, then on Marcus. By the time I'd cast it on Garnet the one I had cast on Steiner had worn off. Worn off! I could not have my entire party shelled at the same time! (And this was only a 3 person group, not the full 4 that is possible.)
So, from that point on Garnet just beat down with her lacrosse stick and healed when needed. It's probably all she'll ever do. Something that really frustrates me is when game designers put spells or abilities in a game that you should not ever use. Why even bother giving me the spell if it only lasts 2 rounds of combat?
Another peeve is Scan, which has missed on every single monster on which I've cast it. At least I can foresee a use for that spell... If I ever have both Garnet and Quina in my party at the same time it will make eating things easier.
Also, I managed to buy Foror's Compendium of Dragon Slaying for 1350g yesterday. Now I just need to get into a top-end guild or bum my way into an Onyxia kill.
So, from that point on Garnet just beat down with her lacrosse stick and healed when needed. It's probably all she'll ever do. Something that really frustrates me is when game designers put spells or abilities in a game that you should not ever use. Why even bother giving me the spell if it only lasts 2 rounds of combat?
Another peeve is Scan, which has missed on every single monster on which I've cast it. At least I can foresee a use for that spell... If I ever have both Garnet and Quina in my party at the same time it will make eating things easier.
Also, I managed to buy Foror's Compendium of Dragon Slaying for 1350g yesterday. Now I just need to get into a top-end guild or bum my way into an Onyxia kill.
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
Party in San Juan!
One of the best parts (or at least the silliest parts) of the game Puerto Rico is the little space on your play mat marked 'San Juan'. When you have extra slaves with no fields or buildings to make them work they get to hang out in San Juan. It's a party!
A spin-off game named San Juan came out a while ago. It plays similar to Puerto Rico but with a lot more randomness, a lot less predicting opponent's moves, and a shorter play time. I played a few games with Mike before Games Day got kicked off yesterday and 3 more yesterday morning on BSW.
In one of the games yesterday my opponent managed to pull two different 6 cost buildings off of his gold mine. I hate the gold mine with a passion. Of all the randomness in the game, losing to lucky gold mines is the worst. As it turned out, however, I still won that game. And by a fair margin. Zumft Hall (Guild Hall for you non early or German BSWers) plus a whole lot of production buildings was just too much.
Which in and of itself is probably the second worst part of the game. Drawing an early Guild Hall and just holding on to it while you build any production buildings you draw just seems too strong.
But when games take like 15 minutes or so to play, I don't really mind so much that sometimes randomness is the deciding factor. Heck, I don't really play non-random games anyway, so I must like randomly winning games on some level. It's the randomly losing that isn't so nice. ;)
As an aside, I'm done disk 1 of FFIX. I still don't remember too much about what will come, but I am being reminded of how much I dislike or don't care for many of the characters. It's not like other games from the series... I mean, I wasn't a fan of Gau or Sabin or Strago... But when you have Locke, Celes, Setzer, Shadow, Edgar, Mog, and Terra (to name a few) it's a lot easier to ignore the ones you don't care for. So far in IX there isn't really a character that I want to latch onto. Quina is still funny, but is more annoying this time through for some reason. Steiner and Freya are both awful. Dagger and Zidane are rather shmeh. And while Vivi is amazing he just doesn't have the mana pool to be both fun to play and fun to have on screen.
Not from this game, but important to remind you nonetheless...
Kimahri wants EXPERIENCE!
A spin-off game named San Juan came out a while ago. It plays similar to Puerto Rico but with a lot more randomness, a lot less predicting opponent's moves, and a shorter play time. I played a few games with Mike before Games Day got kicked off yesterday and 3 more yesterday morning on BSW.
In one of the games yesterday my opponent managed to pull two different 6 cost buildings off of his gold mine. I hate the gold mine with a passion. Of all the randomness in the game, losing to lucky gold mines is the worst. As it turned out, however, I still won that game. And by a fair margin. Zumft Hall (Guild Hall for you non early or German BSWers) plus a whole lot of production buildings was just too much.
Which in and of itself is probably the second worst part of the game. Drawing an early Guild Hall and just holding on to it while you build any production buildings you draw just seems too strong.
But when games take like 15 minutes or so to play, I don't really mind so much that sometimes randomness is the deciding factor. Heck, I don't really play non-random games anyway, so I must like randomly winning games on some level. It's the randomly losing that isn't so nice. ;)
As an aside, I'm done disk 1 of FFIX. I still don't remember too much about what will come, but I am being reminded of how much I dislike or don't care for many of the characters. It's not like other games from the series... I mean, I wasn't a fan of Gau or Sabin or Strago... But when you have Locke, Celes, Setzer, Shadow, Edgar, Mog, and Terra (to name a few) it's a lot easier to ignore the ones you don't care for. So far in IX there isn't really a character that I want to latch onto. Quina is still funny, but is more annoying this time through for some reason. Steiner and Freya are both awful. Dagger and Zidane are rather shmeh. And while Vivi is amazing he just doesn't have the mana pool to be both fun to play and fun to have on screen.
Not from this game, but important to remind you nonetheless...
Kimahri wants EXPERIENCE!
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Games Night in the Lounge
Last night was our first scheduled games night of the term. We played a 4 player game of Puerto Rico (I was 4th chair, got off to a good start but then misplayed my position in midgame, allowing the boats to end up indigo, tobacco, coffee with me holding 7 corn. I ended up last with 51 points.)
Then we played a 6 player game of Apples to Apples, which is a silly fun game. Not a good game. We had some laughs though, so it's all good. After a quick trip to the local all-day breakfast diner we returned to play a 6 player game of ZOMBIES!!! It's a fun concept but it takes too long, in no small part due to the vast number of cards designed solely to hinder the progress of other players. 4 people were running for the helipad leaving Byung and myself each trying to reach the 25 zombies goal. After several turns of being prevented from moving at all by other people's cards I got annoyed and tried to help Byung kill his zombies by using my destructive movement cards to move him where he wanted to go anyway. He ended up being killed by the 23rd zombie.
To pay back that deed he spawned 10 zombies in the streets around me, giving me an actual chance to get lucky and kill them all. (Note:Spawning 10 zombies around someone is almost always very destructive in this game. It tends to result in them getting killed by zombies.) But, a combination of 3 destructive cards meant I couldn't even ATTACK them for 3 full turns, which ended up being enough time for both Mike and Jeff to make it to the helipad for a joint victory. Also a fun game, not a great game.
I restarted playing Final Fantasy IX again, as I do not remember much about it from when I beat it shortly after its release. The graphics are distinctly underwhelming at this point in time though. Gameplay is still fun.
World of Warcraft is still taking up copious amounts of my time. I made plans with two of my roommates (Pounder and Andrew) and with Byung to make a group of 4 characters to play together in instances on a new server. It should be fun, especially since I get to be the shaman. Shaman being one of the classes I have not played with much at all.
Then we played a 6 player game of Apples to Apples, which is a silly fun game. Not a good game. We had some laughs though, so it's all good. After a quick trip to the local all-day breakfast diner we returned to play a 6 player game of ZOMBIES!!! It's a fun concept but it takes too long, in no small part due to the vast number of cards designed solely to hinder the progress of other players. 4 people were running for the helipad leaving Byung and myself each trying to reach the 25 zombies goal. After several turns of being prevented from moving at all by other people's cards I got annoyed and tried to help Byung kill his zombies by using my destructive movement cards to move him where he wanted to go anyway. He ended up being killed by the 23rd zombie.
To pay back that deed he spawned 10 zombies in the streets around me, giving me an actual chance to get lucky and kill them all. (Note:Spawning 10 zombies around someone is almost always very destructive in this game. It tends to result in them getting killed by zombies.) But, a combination of 3 destructive cards meant I couldn't even ATTACK them for 3 full turns, which ended up being enough time for both Mike and Jeff to make it to the helipad for a joint victory. Also a fun game, not a great game.
I restarted playing Final Fantasy IX again, as I do not remember much about it from when I beat it shortly after its release. The graphics are distinctly underwhelming at this point in time though. Gameplay is still fun.
World of Warcraft is still taking up copious amounts of my time. I made plans with two of my roommates (Pounder and Andrew) and with Byung to make a group of 4 characters to play together in instances on a new server. It should be fun, especially since I get to be the shaman. Shaman being one of the classes I have not played with much at all.
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