I finished playing FFLII last night. I have a bunch of random thoughts about the game and I'm not going to hold anything back with regards to the plot so bewarned. If you've been holding off playing a 20 year old game and don't want the ending to be spoiled you should look away!
The character 'Dad' is odd. My main character was a robot but NPCs on different worlds kept commenting on how much I looked like him. He's obviously a human with a pretty cool hat. I'm a giant metal box with random stuff glued on to me for stats. Maybe the box shape is just how my sprite is represented and really I'm an android? But then how can I put on 7 pairs of gloves? 'Dad' is also living at least three lives. He has families on two worlds and a job high up in the military on a third. And can apparently pass through the magi-restricted gates without having enough magi.
At the end of the game I manage to convince him to come home to mother. And then in the ending sequence he gets bored and wakes me up in the middle of the night to say goodbye before he jumps out the window again. He's going to look for the Lost Ark. (I'm also pretty sure he was equipped with a whip when he first joined my party...) My character decides to go with him and then so does the mother. And they all jump out the window instead of using the door despite there being no one to sneak away from anymore!
In all it seems like 'Dad' is a crazy mix of Dr. Soong, James Bond, and Indiana Jones.
Item balance in the game is way out of whack. Near the end of the game I was able to buy dragon armor from the store. It gave immunity to the 4 elements! I'd started encountering monsters that would hit everyone in my party for elemental damage. Each attack would do about 70% of my max health. I'd run into groups with like 10 guys who could cast these spells. Surviving those fights was practically impossible without dragon armor. And completely trivial with dragon armor since I took no damage at all from them. It really feels like the enemies should be scaled down a little so they can't just insta-gib you. And then the gear should be scaled down too so it doesn't make you completely invincible.
In one of the last dungeons I found the weapon Excalibur. In most Final Fantasys this weapon is pretty sweet. In the original FF, for example, it had 13 more and 5 more hit than the sun sword. It was a pretty reasonable damage boost, especially if that 5 hit gave you an extra swing. But since a lot of your damage came from stats and level it wasn't really unreasonable. (Masamune was a much bigger boost in that game, especially since any character could use it.) In FFLII, however, Excalibur is really over the top. Most weapons in the game require you to have high agility in order to hit and high strength in order to do damage. A couple weapons did damage based on agility and is what my human was using. The best one in the game does damage equal to agi*13. Xcalibur does damage equal to str*15. Ok, not such a big jump. Very reasonable even, especially since it uses a new stat and you still need agility to hit with it, right? Turns out no. Xcalibur is guaranteed to hit when you attack with it. So even with 1 agility you'd be hitting every time. Oh, and if your strength stat is less than 70 it's actually treated as being 70. The max stat for a human is 99. My human didn't even have 70 agility and had spent the entire game attacking with an agility weapon! On top of the weapon not being able to miss, it also can't be blocked. And if that wasn't good enough it also does AE damage and hits all enemies in a group! Oh yeah, and it has infinite uses. The only such item in the game.
My human used to do around 300 damage to one monster, sometimes missing, and sometimes being blocked if they used a defensive ability. Each time I did that it cost me 220 gold. And I had to spend inventory space lugging around extra weapons for when the current one broke. With Xcalibur she started doing around 800 damage to a group of monsters. Every attack. No way for them to avoid the damage. She pointed at one group of monsters and they died.
I'd say a 14-fold damage increase from one weapon on top of quality of life increases from unlimited uses is a bit of a problem. Certainly not balanced!
The final boss was really random. He has three phases. The first two essentially do nothing. The third casts an AE spell on your party that hits for anything from 70-700 with no way to mitigate the damage. That's a damage range that is way too big! My characters had between 600 and 900 max health so the weakest one could just get killed from full if the boss got lucky.
I ended up being sketchy in order to win. I made excessive use of save states in order to play the fight through using my very limited amount of healing at opportune times. I felt like this wasn't really cheating since I could have just gone back to town, bought more healing staves, and won with ease. (I filled my inventory with them but the second last boss had me use up almost all of them. I should have gone back and bought more but I was lazy.)
If I play again I'm going to drop the human from my party. She seemed to gain stats faster than the mutant but not having any non-consumable actions until I got Xcalibur was really annoying. Robots were definitely cool.
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy Legend II. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Final Fantasy Legend II. Show all posts
Thursday, December 01, 2011
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Final Fantasy Legend II: The Good!
Most of my posts about Final Fantasy Legend II have been rather negative thus far. You might get the impression that I hate the game, and I would understand thinking that way, but I really don't. It has some good parts to it and some bad parts to it and I've mostly felt like discussing the bad parts. Today, let's talk good stuff.
I really enjoy combat with mutants. My mutant right now has the following possible actions:
The random encounters are really unbalanced in terms of difficulty. Sometimes I fight one dude. Sometimes I fight three groups of three dudes. This could be terrible, but just getting into fights can proc stat ups for my human and mutant so I don't mind the small fights. My robots are built pretty much full on defense so I don't die to the 9-pulls, my mutant can kill most of them with one spell, and I get a lot of gold to spend on powering up my robots so I don't mind the big fights either.
The story is interesting thus far. It's still not clear why I'm doing what I'm doing other than I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps and gather magi. The game uses the same world make-up as the original FFL with a tower in the middle connecting a series of very different worlds. It's a neat way to make sense of having a desert dungeon, and a water dungeon, and a giant town, and so on. Often in games like this they're all crammed onto the same world and it doesn't really make a lot of sense but I find it works here. (The random barriers preventing entry to the next world until I get enough magi don't make sense... How can anyone else advance between worlds when you need every single magi on the planet to open the door? I have it all!)
I fixed my sound problem by muting the emulator entirely. I now run a youtube playlist of music from a different Final Fantasy game while I'm playing.
I like that it has three saved game slots. Now that I've hooked an xBox 360 controller up to my laptop and use it to control the game it's annoying to use the emulator save states function. I can save everywhere that isn't in a fight do so I don't feel the need to save state at all.
I really enjoy combat with mutants. My mutant right now has the following possible actions:
- Cast a big damage spell that hits all the enemies. (15 times between rests.)
- Cast a big damage spell that hits one group of enemies. (15 times between rests.)
- Cast a bid damage spell that hits one group of enemies with a different element. (15 times between rests.)
- Attack for mediocre damage with a weapon that breaks after 50 uses total.
The random encounters are really unbalanced in terms of difficulty. Sometimes I fight one dude. Sometimes I fight three groups of three dudes. This could be terrible, but just getting into fights can proc stat ups for my human and mutant so I don't mind the small fights. My robots are built pretty much full on defense so I don't die to the 9-pulls, my mutant can kill most of them with one spell, and I get a lot of gold to spend on powering up my robots so I don't mind the big fights either.
The story is interesting thus far. It's still not clear why I'm doing what I'm doing other than I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps and gather magi. The game uses the same world make-up as the original FFL with a tower in the middle connecting a series of very different worlds. It's a neat way to make sense of having a desert dungeon, and a water dungeon, and a giant town, and so on. Often in games like this they're all crammed onto the same world and it doesn't really make a lot of sense but I find it works here. (The random barriers preventing entry to the next world until I get enough magi don't make sense... How can anyone else advance between worlds when you need every single magi on the planet to open the door? I have it all!)
I fixed my sound problem by muting the emulator entirely. I now run a youtube playlist of music from a different Final Fantasy game while I'm playing.
I like that it has three saved game slots. Now that I've hooked an xBox 360 controller up to my laptop and use it to control the game it's annoying to use the emulator save states function. I can save everywhere that isn't in a fight do so I don't feel the need to save state at all.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
Final Fantasy Legend II: Consumables
Lots of games have consumable items in them. Final Fantasy III actually had a really wide variety of consumable items in it. You had items you could use in combat to cast an attack spell on an enemy. You had items you could use in combat to cast a buff spell on yourself. Bows permanently used arrows. If you had a ninja you could turn all of your weapons into consumable attack spells. Then you had the standard suite of restorative items. Potions to restore health. Antidotes to cure poison. Eyedrops for blind. There were individual items to cure stone, cursed, mini, and frog. There were elixirs to restore health and mana. Phoenix downs to bring people back to life. Some of these items could be purchased in town but most you had to find in treasure chests and there were a limited number of them in the game.
I hated it! Having a limited number of phoenix downs put a lot of pressure on me to not lose people in combat in the early game since I was only going to be able to bring them back to life 43 times over the course of the entire game. (Well, eventually you learn a raise spell so you only need to burn a phoenix down on the healer or in a rough boss fight.) I used a few of the attack spell items on the first couple bosses (until I was able to change jobs) and I used a bunch of buff items on the final boss fight but for the most part they went completely unused. Why? Because maybe there was going to be a better time to use them later! If I could find a way to win without using them I should do that instead of using up a permanently limited resource.
As another example, Rikku from Final Fantasy X should have been my favourite character. I've always loved thieves and she had the steal command. She plays with machines. She's hot. And yet I never really put her in my party. Why? Because her ultimate revolved around using consumables. In many cases mix was stupidly overpowered but I didn't want to use it because it might 'waste' precious consumable resources. (And besides, Khimari needed experience.)
Final Fantasy Legend II is unfortunately annoying me in a similar way. Practically everything a human can do is consumable! With monsters I had a limited number of uses for each ability but if I rested in an inn they all came back. With robots I can equip items which have their number of uses halved but then get refreshed when I rest in an inn. My mutant can learn abilities and they come back when I rest just like monsters abilities did. But if I use weapons, spellbooks, or shields on either the human or the mutant the use is permanent. I was so annoyed when I found out that sleeping in the inn didn't refresh the number of uses on my cure spell.
Ok, fine... I should just buy lots of spare weapons and spells then. Unfortunately both gold and inventory space are very limited. I have 2 robots in my party and they aren't equipped in the best stuff I can buy from the store so I can turn cash into power there.
I don't know... I feel like if I just had to pay to repair my weapons when I slept at the inn I'd be happier. Then I wouldn't have to micromanage my inventory to make sure I had enough swords to keep fighting. I know this would remove the limited use nature of loot found in dungeons so it would be a power level change to the game but I'm pretty sure I'd be ok with that. (You could also assign a huge repair cost to end game loot.)
At one point I had to go back down to the starting world in order to save an NPC friend. And then my good sword broke. I could buy a new one from the item shop... On the previous world. If I wanted to buy something from my current world I had to downgrade. Now, my character ended up still killing enemies in one attack with the worse sword so it wasn't actually a big deal but it was a little annoying.
I have found one way to cheese the system a little. If I wear a sword down to almost broken I can then equip it on one of my robots. Then when I sleep in the inn it gets restored! The designers of the game thought of this and added in a penalty to make this hurt a little... When your robot unequips an item it immediately loses half of its current uses. Coupled with the fact that the number of maximum uses is cut in half when the robot puts it on and you're only able to recharge an item to 25% of its normal base. 12 uses of my good sword is better than nothing though, so I've been doing it. And feeling a little dirty in the process.
The only exception to the whole halving thing is with martial arts attacks which actually get more powerful the fewer charges remain on them. (My first thought was to have a robot put on and take off a punch to power it up for my human but it turns out that doesn't work.)
I hated it! Having a limited number of phoenix downs put a lot of pressure on me to not lose people in combat in the early game since I was only going to be able to bring them back to life 43 times over the course of the entire game. (Well, eventually you learn a raise spell so you only need to burn a phoenix down on the healer or in a rough boss fight.) I used a few of the attack spell items on the first couple bosses (until I was able to change jobs) and I used a bunch of buff items on the final boss fight but for the most part they went completely unused. Why? Because maybe there was going to be a better time to use them later! If I could find a way to win without using them I should do that instead of using up a permanently limited resource.
As another example, Rikku from Final Fantasy X should have been my favourite character. I've always loved thieves and she had the steal command. She plays with machines. She's hot. And yet I never really put her in my party. Why? Because her ultimate revolved around using consumables. In many cases mix was stupidly overpowered but I didn't want to use it because it might 'waste' precious consumable resources. (And besides, Khimari needed experience.)
Final Fantasy Legend II is unfortunately annoying me in a similar way. Practically everything a human can do is consumable! With monsters I had a limited number of uses for each ability but if I rested in an inn they all came back. With robots I can equip items which have their number of uses halved but then get refreshed when I rest in an inn. My mutant can learn abilities and they come back when I rest just like monsters abilities did. But if I use weapons, spellbooks, or shields on either the human or the mutant the use is permanent. I was so annoyed when I found out that sleeping in the inn didn't refresh the number of uses on my cure spell.
Ok, fine... I should just buy lots of spare weapons and spells then. Unfortunately both gold and inventory space are very limited. I have 2 robots in my party and they aren't equipped in the best stuff I can buy from the store so I can turn cash into power there.
I don't know... I feel like if I just had to pay to repair my weapons when I slept at the inn I'd be happier. Then I wouldn't have to micromanage my inventory to make sure I had enough swords to keep fighting. I know this would remove the limited use nature of loot found in dungeons so it would be a power level change to the game but I'm pretty sure I'd be ok with that. (You could also assign a huge repair cost to end game loot.)
At one point I had to go back down to the starting world in order to save an NPC friend. And then my good sword broke. I could buy a new one from the item shop... On the previous world. If I wanted to buy something from my current world I had to downgrade. Now, my character ended up still killing enemies in one attack with the worse sword so it wasn't actually a big deal but it was a little annoying.
I have found one way to cheese the system a little. If I wear a sword down to almost broken I can then equip it on one of my robots. Then when I sleep in the inn it gets restored! The designers of the game thought of this and added in a penalty to make this hurt a little... When your robot unequips an item it immediately loses half of its current uses. Coupled with the fact that the number of maximum uses is cut in half when the robot puts it on and you're only able to recharge an item to 25% of its normal base. 12 uses of my good sword is better than nothing though, so I've been doing it. And feeling a little dirty in the process.
The only exception to the whole halving thing is with martial arts attacks which actually get more powerful the fewer charges remain on them. (My first thought was to have a robot put on and take off a punch to power it up for my human but it turns out that doesn't work.)
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Final Fantasy Legend II: Music
Over the last week I've been on a bit of a Final Fantasy music kick. I spent Wednesday listening to stuff from Final Fantasy VIII, Thursday on stuff from Final Fantasy VI, and Friday from stuff from Final Fantasy VII. It's all great music! I could listen to One Winged Angel on repeat forever without getting bored.
The music from Final Fantasy VI is probably the best total collection of music from a video game. Every character/town has their own music and hearing any of those songs again immediately evoked memories of the game. I _really_ want to play that game again after listening to the music.
I wish I could say the same about the music in Final Fantasy Legend II, but I can't. I actually find when I'm playing that I need to take my headphones off lest I get a headache from the music. I don't know if it's because the music itself is lower quality, or if it's because the Gameboy only had 4-bit sound instead of the 16-bit sound on the SNES. Maybe the emulator I'm using is screwing with it in some way. But it's coming across as being very tinny and annoying instead of awesome like I'm used to which is keeping me from just sitting down and playing the game for a long period of time at once.
One nice thing I noticed today while I was playing is it comes through in stereo with different sounds playing in each ear.
Here's a sample of the music, this from inside the tower that bridges the gap between different worlds.
The music from Final Fantasy VI is probably the best total collection of music from a video game. Every character/town has their own music and hearing any of those songs again immediately evoked memories of the game. I _really_ want to play that game again after listening to the music.
I wish I could say the same about the music in Final Fantasy Legend II, but I can't. I actually find when I'm playing that I need to take my headphones off lest I get a headache from the music. I don't know if it's because the music itself is lower quality, or if it's because the Gameboy only had 4-bit sound instead of the 16-bit sound on the SNES. Maybe the emulator I'm using is screwing with it in some way. But it's coming across as being very tinny and annoying instead of awesome like I'm used to which is keeping me from just sitting down and playing the game for a long period of time at once.
One nice thing I noticed today while I was playing is it comes through in stereo with different sounds playing in each ear.
Here's a sample of the music, this from inside the tower that bridges the gap between different worlds.
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Final Fantasy Legend II: Magi Variance
I acquired my first set of magi last night and was disappointed to find that the game wouldn't tell me what they did. They were named power, speed, and mana so my first guess would be that they buffed strength, agility, and mana but it didn't seem to modify the actual stats. I did notice that the person who equipped speed went from doing about 15 damage per swing with an agility weapon to 170 damage per swing which is a pretty ridiculous boost. I decided I wanted to know what they did so I risked that an FAQ would tell me where to find them all and checked out what they did.
I ended up being disappointed for a second time since it seems there aren't actually 77 unique magi in the game. At least the descriptions of what they do only listed 15 different ones so either there's a whole bunch of placeholders or there are a bunch of duplicates. That my magi inventory list gives a quantity certainly implies the latter.
I am enjoying combat and watching my characters get better by doing things. My mutant has spells that hit all the enemies for more than their max health which is a little overpowered but he's slow and goes last so the human gets to skill up too so it's all good.
I ended up being disappointed for a second time since it seems there aren't actually 77 unique magi in the game. At least the descriptions of what they do only listed 15 different ones so either there's a whole bunch of placeholders or there are a bunch of duplicates. That my magi inventory list gives a quantity certainly implies the latter.
I am enjoying combat and watching my characters get better by doing things. My mutant has spells that hit all the enemies for more than their max health which is a little overpowered but he's slow and goes last so the human gets to skill up too so it's all good.
Saturday, November 05, 2011
Final Fantasy Legend II: Item Shops
I made it to the first town (it was quite trivial to do so since they give you an NPC to help clear out the first dungeon and he was awesome) and checked out the item shops. There are no stat boosting potions around and coupled with the fact my human randomly gained some stats in the first dungeon, well, I'm pretty sure they work more like mutants than humans of the first game.
I also found out the game doesn't tell me what the gear in the shops actually do. Is a given weapon or armor an upgrade? I have no way of knowing without buying it and trying it on. I don't like this sort of mechanic so I've decided to find an item listing online from which to shop. I'm still intending on finding the magi on my own if I can, but looking up an item list is just going to save me time and/or money. Or sanity.
I'm a little sad that the human mechanic changed between games but on the plus side that means more money to buy twinky gear for my robots!
I also found out the game doesn't tell me what the gear in the shops actually do. Is a given weapon or armor an upgrade? I have no way of knowing without buying it and trying it on. I don't like this sort of mechanic so I've decided to find an item listing online from which to shop. I'm still intending on finding the magi on my own if I can, but looking up an item list is just going to save me time and/or money. Or sanity.
I'm a little sad that the human mechanic changed between games but on the plus side that means more money to buy twinky gear for my robots!
Thursday, November 03, 2011
Final Fantasy Legend II: A Plot Hook!
One of the things that sort of bothered me about The Final Fantasy Legend was that I didn't really know who I was or what I was doing. There didn't seem to be any character backstory going on and I didn't know why I was trying to get access to this big locked tower. I suspect some of that stuff was found in the manual which I didn't have. (I recall the Final Fantasy IV manual having a lot of character stuff and a walkthrough of the first few plot points to get you started.)
Final Fantasy Legend II started off with a little introductory cutscene where my father tucked me into bed and then jumped out the window to go adventuring. I grew up and wanted to follow in his footsteps. (I swear this introductory plot hook is used in a lot of games but at least it's something!) It was a little odd since I'm a robot and I can't see why I need to go to bed at all let alone why I was shown as a child but whatever...
He also gave me a piece of magi which seem to be a bunch of quasi-powerful items you can collect over the course of the game. The one he gave me tells me how many other magi are nearby which is pretty useful since I don't plan on looking up an FAQ on where they all are. I believe an NPC told me there are 63 of them in the game which is quite a number of things to go collect. It reminds me a bit of The 7th Saga crossed with Suikoden and I definitely want to go catch them all.
I've done a few fights and it looked like my human was actually leveling up the same way as mutants did in the last game: random stat ups after a fight. I have yet to find an item shop to see if they removed stat potions from the game entirely. If they did then I guess the difference between humans and mutants is that mutants learn spells at random?
Final Fantasy Legend II started off with a little introductory cutscene where my father tucked me into bed and then jumped out the window to go adventuring. I grew up and wanted to follow in his footsteps. (I swear this introductory plot hook is used in a lot of games but at least it's something!) It was a little odd since I'm a robot and I can't see why I need to go to bed at all let alone why I was shown as a child but whatever...
He also gave me a piece of magi which seem to be a bunch of quasi-powerful items you can collect over the course of the game. The one he gave me tells me how many other magi are nearby which is pretty useful since I don't plan on looking up an FAQ on where they all are. I believe an NPC told me there are 63 of them in the game which is quite a number of things to go collect. It reminds me a bit of The 7th Saga crossed with Suikoden and I definitely want to go catch them all.
I've done a few fights and it looked like my human was actually leveling up the same way as mutants did in the last game: random stat ups after a fight. I have yet to find an item shop to see if they removed stat potions from the game entirely. If they did then I guess the difference between humans and mutants is that mutants learn spells at random?
Sunday, October 30, 2011
Final Fantasy Legend II
Next up on the list is another game I've never played before: Final Fantasy Legend II. From what I've been told about the game it's actually very similar to the first Final Fantasy Legend with the addition of a new class: ROBOT!
Now I haven't done very much research at all but I believe the human, mutant, and monsters classes work pretty much the same way as before. Robots scale entirely with the gear they have equipped. I'm torn with regards to how I feel about this. On the one hand it actually seems like a great way to design a game such that the characters are always at a good spot against the enemies. Their power is strictly capped at gear from shops plus what you can loot from dungeons so there's always an upper bound so things don't get out of hand. Assuming you tune the enemies properly they can always be capable of winning fights. Maybe you need to grind a bit for cash to buy the new gear from the shops but that's quite reasonable.
On the other hand I have no faith at all that the game is actually balanced in such a way. After my experience with monsters in the original game I really worry that a full robot party will either be trivial or a real pain. I'd like to play a game with that system which I was confident was designed with just that system in mind but this game has four leveling systems and I fear the robot one was just tacked on at the end.
That said, what should my party be? With four leveling systems and four character slots it seems like one of each type would make a lot of sense. Unfortunately I really soured on monsters with my four monster party last time and really don't want to write another leveling program to work out how to optimize one character. Even worse, if I did optimize a monster in the same way it would mean some mindless searching for meat at the start and then trivial random encounters the rest of the way up until eventually the monster became bad and I'd just have to hope the other characters have caught up.
I do want one of the other three though and I think I will make the fourth a robot because robots are awesome. I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up being worse characters in general but I hope they should at least be competitive most of the time. Time will tell!
Now I haven't done very much research at all but I believe the human, mutant, and monsters classes work pretty much the same way as before. Robots scale entirely with the gear they have equipped. I'm torn with regards to how I feel about this. On the one hand it actually seems like a great way to design a game such that the characters are always at a good spot against the enemies. Their power is strictly capped at gear from shops plus what you can loot from dungeons so there's always an upper bound so things don't get out of hand. Assuming you tune the enemies properly they can always be capable of winning fights. Maybe you need to grind a bit for cash to buy the new gear from the shops but that's quite reasonable.
On the other hand I have no faith at all that the game is actually balanced in such a way. After my experience with monsters in the original game I really worry that a full robot party will either be trivial or a real pain. I'd like to play a game with that system which I was confident was designed with just that system in mind but this game has four leveling systems and I fear the robot one was just tacked on at the end.
That said, what should my party be? With four leveling systems and four character slots it seems like one of each type would make a lot of sense. Unfortunately I really soured on monsters with my four monster party last time and really don't want to write another leveling program to work out how to optimize one character. Even worse, if I did optimize a monster in the same way it would mean some mindless searching for meat at the start and then trivial random encounters the rest of the way up until eventually the monster became bad and I'd just have to hope the other characters have caught up.
I do want one of the other three though and I think I will make the fourth a robot because robots are awesome. I wouldn't be surprised if they ended up being worse characters in general but I hope they should at least be competitive most of the time. Time will tell!
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