Final Fantasy Adventure: Conclusions

Jo, the Baby Tree of Mana!

I just beat the final boss of Final Fantasy Adventure who was sadly a bit of a joke. I don't know if it was my stat build or if I'd just figured out how to be awesome but basically I just had to stand around and mash attack in order to win. Here are my final thoughts on the game...


Keys are a real problem in the game. In two different dungeons near the end of the game I ran out of keys and was stuck with a locked door between me and the boss. Early game a lot of enemies dropped keys which got me into the habit of ignoring my key count. I even vendored some keys at one point because I was looting too many from the mobs. But dungeons went from being filled with guys who dropped keys to having maybe one enemy who might drop keys.

I certainly could have solved this problem by just going to a town and buying a lot of keys. I had limited inventory space but I ended the game with my bags full of elixirs that I didn't need to use so I could have afforded the space for a few more keys. I'd advise anyone playing this game to carry around 5 or so stacks of keys at all times. If I play again I know I will.


The puzzles were interesting the first couple times around but it felt like they ran out of ideas and just recycled the same tricks over and over. Needing to bust down a wall to make a secret passage is fine and all, but having to poke every wall of every dungeon in case it's the way I need to go got tiring. I eventually resorted to a description of the last couple dungeons on gamefaqs instead of bothering poking walls. Needing to turn enemies into snowmen to use as weights on pressure plates is the same thing. Really neat the first time. Interesting when it comes up a couple more times as they keep you on your toes. But it felt overdone by the end. I eventually put a few points into wisdom in order to have more mp to cast ice spells for these puzzles.


The blood sword is stupid. It lets you heal when you do damage with sword swings but it seemed like the numbers were off. The big scary dragons at the end of the game would hit me for 1 with their fire and maybe 6 with their claws. I had 503 health. Each time I attacked I gained 13 health. So as long as I hit the dragon once for every 2 times he hit me I'd stay at full and he'd be dying. Follow the boss around mashing attack? Doesn't seem like a very deep strategy but it worked.


Some enemies were immune to physical attacks. Others were immune to magical attacks. So I was forced to constantly switch between my thunder spear and my morning star if I wanted to keep killing enemies. This required a lot of menu interactions which was annoying. Secret of Mana improved on this game greatly with the advent of the menu ring system. Hit one button to show a ring with all your weapons on it. Use the d-pad to rotate the ring so the weapon you want is on top. Hit one button. It also has item rings and magic rings which really worked.


The music was better than the music in the Final Fantasy Legend games I've played thus far but it was still a little tinny. I'm pretty sure the blame for this is with the Game Boy's primitive sound capabilities but that doesn't make my head hurt less. Having to keep the sound on so I could find the hidden walls was annoying and is part of what led to turning to gamefaqs for help.


The plot existed and made sense. There was an obvious villain that you grew to hate as the game progressed, you had a rough idea what he was trying to do, and the stories of the main characters wrapped up in the ending.


Overall this was a pretty good action-RPG game. You can tell it was made 20 years ago for old hardware but it was fun. I don't think it was better than any of the core games in the series thus far but it beats out the Legend games thus far for sure.

Final Fantasy Adventure: Traces of Final Fantasy

The Final Fantasy Legend games have pretty much nothing at all to do with the Final Fantasy franchise. They were originally released in Japan with another name and were rebranded when released in North America. They weren't designed with any features of Final Fantasy universes in mind and as a result don't really feel like Final Fantasy games. That doesn't make them bad by any stretch, don't get me wrong. It just means they are really Saga games.

Final Fantasy Adventure, on the other hand, was developed as a Final Fantasy game. An action-RPG game instead of a straight up RPG, to be fair. And one with its own very distinct world. But it was still created as a Final Fantasy game and there have been a few things I've noticed so far that make you really think you're playing a Final Fantasy game. Here's what I've noticed so far...

First and most importantly to me is the existence of chocobos in the world. One of the adventuring companions you can find in your travels is a chocobo. When you ask the chocobo for help you ride him around which lets you travel the overworld map at a fast speed while ignoring all enemies. It even plays chocobo riding music when you do!



At one point in the game your chocobo saves your life but gets seriously injured in the process. Fortunately for him you happen to be in a town with a mad scientist who uses machinery to upgrade your chocobo into a -- wait for it -- chocobot! Which lets your chocobo run across water! I guess since the Game Boy wasn't in colour they couldn't just have you find a blue chocobo like in later games...

The next thing that brings a Final Fantasy feel to the game is that some of the NPC sprites are essentially from the original Final Fantasy game. I've run into white mages and red mages thus far and there's really no mistaking them for anything else. One of your companions is even a red mage and he casts fireballs randomly in combat to help you out.

Finally the enemies can apply a wide variety of debuffs when they hit you. Most of these are standard RPG fare... Blind, poison, stun... But one of them, the most crippling of all, is to turn you into a moogle! This prevents you from attacking (though you can still move) and lowers your defense to nothing. I go from being able to take a couple hundred hits without dying to getting killed in 3 hits. It's brutal! I actually think this was the first game to have moogles in it (FFIII on the DS had moogles but I think they were added in with the port and weren't in the original game).

Pretty much all that's missing is a guy named Cid, an airship, summoned monsters, and maybe 4 elemental crystals!

Galaxy Legion: Permafrost Sub-Network

I mentioned yesterday that there are currently two holiday missions available in Galaxy Legion. The second one is called Beneath the Snow and has returned from, I believe, last year. I wasn't playing the game at the time so it's new to me. It's a mission with a pretty fantastic experience ratio: 65 experience for 25 energy. There are a few missions in the game which are better but not very many so it's worth considering doing the mission just for the experience even if it had no reward.

As for a reward... It takes 50 rounds to get a reward and you can get the reward 15 times. The reward is a planetary structure which takes up 1 space and provides 1 research, 50 cloak, and 50 population. These bonuses get doubled if built on an icy planet. (Note: If you build one of these on an icy planet and then convert that planet to an oceanic with a mass surface melter it will retain the doubled bonus.)

Any building with a 1-to-1 ratio and an added bonus is pretty good. A building with a 2-to-1 ratio and a pretty substantial bonus is amazing. You really want to have one of these on every icy planet you have with a reasonable research boost on it. Beyond that there isn't a huge need to get extras to put on other planets but they're still good to have on practically anything. A little cloak can go a long way towards protecting a planet, after all.

Given the great experience return on the mission and how good the building is I think everyone has to get one of these for every research icy they have. Beyond that I think it should be a relatively high priority to finish the mission off completely. I already have!

Galaxy Legion: Scruuge X-Deflector

Galaxy Legion recently added two new temporary missions. These aren't typical temporary missions which form a chain that will come into the game permanently. Instead they are special winter holiday event missions. I would guess they'll come back next year but that's going to be a pretty long delay if you want the rewards. On the plus side these missions last 3 weeks instead of 2 weeks to give people a better chance to collect them all.

The first mission is called Avarice of the Scruuge and is worth the standard 55 experience for 25 energy. It takes 90 rounds to complete it and can be completed up to 4 times. The reward is a fight with an easy NPC which drops a module. It's size 13 for 30 defense and 60 hull. Neither of those amounts are especially exciting but as a reader pointed out a couple months ago the upkeep cost on special modules is really small. For this module it's 3400 credits per day. Assign half of that value to the defense and you're paying 57 credits per defense per day. Compare that to my main defense module which has an upkeep of 107200000 per day for 626 defense. That's 171246 credits per defense per day which is more than 3000 times as much. My main modules are more space efficient but cost a ton more.

You do also get some hull. 60 hull is not a very big number. It probably doesn't even give me one more shot before I have to repair, but a bunch of small amounts do add up.

This module adds to two stats that I don't have a burning desire to max out but they are both also useful for almost everything I do. Given the small upkeep cost I think these modules are no-brainers to pick up and use. Especially given the fact that you only have 3 weeks to scoop them up before they disappear for at least a year and maybe forever and I think you should definitely get this done if at all possible.

All-Time Favourite Video Games Criteria

Mark commented last week that Final Fantasy Adventure was in his top ten favourite games ever. It got me thinking... What would be my top ten? What criteria could I even use?

I looked up the definition of favourite and it wasn't a lot of help. "(prenominal) most liked; preferred above all others" Should an all-time favourite game be a game that to this day remains a favourite game? Should it mean a game that was at some point at the top? Clearly the whole thing is going to be subjective but I don't want to just pull things out of a hat. Is it based on time spent? Times completed? Can a game that was a lot of fun but has practically no replay value count? I really liked the Professor Layton game I played, for example, but I'm not going to play it again. On the other side of that coin... I play Freecell every now and then. Does that make it awesome? I mentioned that I thought Secret of Mana was one of the best games all-time... But I actually have little desire to play it again. Should that lower it on the favourite-game-o-meter compared to something like Actraiser which I'd probably plug in and play right now if I owned it? What about innovation? I thought Portal was really cool! But I've only spent a few hours playing it. Compare that with the time spent on World of Warcraft...

I think what I want to do is go over each generation of video games and think about what games I preferred above all others at that time. A game may not have aged well, but it can still have a place as an all-time favourite. And then come up with some way to rank them after I've identified them all. The biggest problem I foresee is identifying all the potential candidates so taking some time and methodically going over things in small time periods should help with that problem.

Final Fantasy Trading Card Game

Did you know there is a CCG using characters and summons from the Final Fantasy games? I sure didn't, until very recently! It appears to be a Japan only CCG that came out early in 2011 and has already released an expansion set. I don't know why I'm surprised that new CCGs are still coming out or that they made one for Final Fantasy but I really wasn't expecting to find one.

I did a rudimentary search for information and it doesn't look like it's really for sale in Canada. And by really I mean at all. I found one guy out of California selling some opened packs on eBay but that looks to be it. I did a search of a couple generic 'import from Japan' sites with no luck. And wow... There are some really creepy things available from Japan. Like this lap pillow...








At any rate... If anyone happens to know of a way to get some cards for this game or sees them in a store somewhere please let me know. It doesn't look like a terribly good game but I figure since I love CCGs and I love Final Fantasy that I should at least give it a try!

Final Fantasy IV: Different Versions

Looking ahead to the next step in the marathon we have my all time favourite game: Final Fantasy IV. There have been many different versions of the game released and I need to decide which version I want to play this time around. I currently own 3 different versions of the game and would consider tracking down another one if it suited my fancy. So I thought it would be interesting to take a look at what actually changed between versions.

Original Game - This version is only available in Japanese for the Super Famicom. I'll use it as the base version and compare the other ones to it.

North American Release - This is the version that was released in English for the Super Nintendo under the title Final Fantasy II. (Actual II and III weren't released over here so in order to reduce confusion they renumbered this game. And now it creates confusion!) Many things were changed from the original version. A bunch of spells and abilities were removed to simplify combat somewhat. Most of the consumables in the game were removed. The status removers were consolidated into one item and the damage items were just taken out. Items were cheaper in stores. Weapons did more damage. A lot of violent/religious imagery was toned down or removed. A lot of the story was cut out due to space limitations on the cartridge. Also: YOU SPOONY BARD!

EasyType - The NA version was easier than the original and Square made another Japanese version based off of the easier NA one. It has almost all of the NA changes except the censorship. A lot of the gear got buffed which made the game even easier.

Playstation - This release was essentially the original with a couple minor tweaks like a run button and a memo save. The English versions of this release got a completely new and more complete translation.

WonderSwan Color - This was a Japanese only hand held system which got ports of the first few Final Fantasy games. The graphics were changed to account for the worse hardware and some bugs were fixed/added.

Game Boy Advance - This version is a remake of the WSC version. It got another new translated script but the big changes are the ability to change who's in your party and a couple of challenge dungeons.

Nintendo DS - Yet another new translated script. Cutscenes with voice overs. The airships can move in 8 directions instead of 4! Removal of limited inventory space. Some mini-games were added to buff a new summon added for Rydia. An augment system to make all your characters better was added. The difficulty was really ramped up by giving enemies more health, better abilities, and better AI. The loot changed. You can't change character names and Namingway is a sidequest instead of just a dude who changes names. There's a mini-map for dungeons. A lot of the abilities which were removed in the NA version are back but with different affects than in the original. Spells were rebalanced to be more useful. Two challenge bosses were added. And a New Game Plus, whatever that is.

Mobile Phone - This version sounds like the DS one except only in Japanese and on the phone. It readded the ability to swap party members and a bonus dungeon.

PlayStation Portable - Comes packaged with the sequel to the game and a mini-game to bridge the two. It went back to the script from the GBA. It keeps the party swapping and bonus dungeons from the GBA as well. Apparently it lets you choose to play the SNES or the DS versions of the music.


I currently have the original version, the SNES version, and the DS version. The reason I need to decide this now before I've even finished Final Fantasy Adventure is the PSP version is very tempting. I need to get a copy of the sequel at some point and this would come bundled with it. But I don't have a PSP and I have a feeling they'll drop in price when the Vita comes out... I'm leaning towards playing the SNES version since it's the one I grew up playing but I'm not sure...

Help With Correlations

I've been playing a lot of Roll Through The Ages on Yucata recently. It's a short dice game with a few reasonable paths to victory. I've cycled through some different plans as I've played games with reasonable success but I don't know what the optimal plan is. When I get beat I try to figure out what I did wrong and adapt my play in the future but I'm not sure what really works.

One of the neat things with Yucata is you can replay any game you've played in the past. I was thinking it would be useful to build a spreadsheet or database with the key parts of every game I've played and then crunch some numbers to figure out which choices correlate with winning.

One of the things you do in the game is spend turns building infrastructure for better future turns, but the game is really short. When is it right to shift from building more cities into scoring points? At 5 cities? 6? 7? Does it depend on what your opponent is doing?

If you had the choice should you choose to go first or second? There are definite advantages to both. Personally I like going second but I can't justify that stance. (Some aspects of the game are first come, first served so going first is good. But the end of the game is variable and the person who goes second can often end the game if they'll win or extend it one more turn if they won't.)

How about techs? Quarrying into engineering seems good. Quarrying into empire seems good. Agriculture and masonry seem good. But which wins more often? Does it matter what the opponent is doing?

If your opener is 4 goods and 3 food should you buy a 10 cost tech or save up? What if your opener is 2 goods, 3 food, and a coin?


I know from my sports nerdery that this sort of analysis is possible. (Did you know in the NFL that defensive penalties have no correlation with winning percentage? Offensive penalties on the other hand are negatively correlated, especially false start penalties.) But I don't know how to do it. I'm sure I could have taken some third or fourth year stats course that would have taught this sort of thing but I didn't take enough stats courses it seems...

So, my question to anyone reading this... Anyone know of any books I could buy that would help out?