More Final Fantasy

[dathon]

Oblivion looked awesome, for example, but the bizarro leveling system was a major turnoff.

I really liked Oblivion, but like you, I had problems with the leveling system. I also disliked how the enemies leveled with you. Thankfully, both of these problems have been taken care of in the modding community. There are two mods for leveling, AF and Kobu's; the former is more user-friendly, but the latter (which I use) has more options. As for balance changes, there are two main overhaul mods, Oscaru's and Francesco's. I liked the latter for vanilla Oblivion, but can't get it to work with Shivering Isles, even with the version that's approved with it. As such, I actually haven't played SI yet, but it's on my list for this winter

If the leveling thing is the only thing keeping you from the game, I would highly recommend you play with either of the leveling mods. They both remove the nonsense, and make it what it should be.

dathon

[Sullla]

Hey, if you want to do variantism with one of the SNES FFs, it's gotta be Final Fantasy V. "Final Fantasy V's story is retarded." "WHAT WAS THAT? I'M SORRY, I CAN'T HEAR YOU OVER ALL THIS JOB SYSTEM."

Well I had to give this a try, right? Long short short, I loved Final Fantasy 5! Mmm, yummy job system. With vastly better documentation available online, I was able to understand the job system a whole lot better, and craft a finely tuned party of walking death machines. "Abusive" doesn't even begin to describe some of the stuff you can do in this game, heh heh.

A quick summary: I played through the game one time under no variant restrictions to learn the system and familiarize myself. I decided early on that I'd have two characters (Butz and Faris) specialize in melee jobs, and the other two (Lenna and Galuf/Cara) focus on magic. That was already a major step up from my initial attempt at the game, where I randomly assigned jobs all over the place with no rhyme or reason.

Anyway, Butz became a Ninja/Magic Knight/Hunter to open up the incredibly abusive 2-Handed + X-Fight + Magic Sword combo that T-Hawk mentioned in his earlier post. In the final battle, he was duel-wielding Excalibur and the next-strongest sword (Enhancer), attacking 8 times per round with X-Fight and buffed up with Flare Sword on each. Fun stuff. Faris went the Monk route instead, initially to provide a change of pace, but quickly turning into a powerhouse in her own respect. I ended up with a Monk/Dancer/Knight combo there, using Double Grip on the Brave Blade (attack 150 if you never run from a battle!) and using the Sword Dance... uh, dance, for massive damage. Double Grip is 2x damage, and Sword Dance is 4x damage, and those *DO* stack together (unlike Civ4's +100% mods) for 8x damage! Every attack with Sword Dance did 9999 damage. More goodness.

I could detail what I did with the magic users, but we'll just leave it with X-Magic + Quick + Summoning = a crapload of Bahamut summons in the same round.

So even though FF5 is, indeed, a rather difficult game, I whipped the final boss and sent him crying home to mommy. Faris got the final blow with a Sword Dance that would have dealt well over 20k damage if it didn't get truncated to four digits. Conclusion: I now know how to power-game the system to build a kickass team.

One of the coolest things about FF5 is that you win based on the skills you choose to employ - leveling has relatively little to do with it. A standard playthrough will see a team finish the game at levels 38-42; I was at the high end of that (42) because I had the added challenge of never running from battle to keep up the strength of the Brave Blade. You CAN power-level your team if you want, but it doesn't do very much to make your team stronger. I find that immensely appealing from a gameplay perspective.

In other words - time to get cracking with the variants! I've got plenty in store to keep my busy for a few weeks, and we'll see how long it takes me to get bored. Maybe we'll see about Oblivion and the like after that.

[T-hawk]

Well I had to give this a try, right? Long short short, I loved Final Fantasy 5! Mmm, yummy job system.

Awesome! Yeah, FF5 is like FF1 on steroids, with considerably deeper game mechanics and customization opportunities. Yet it still has all the old-school fantasy charm of its 8-bit predecessors and none of the cyberpunk angstyness of the later FFs (including FF4.)

You played the SNES fan translation version, I take it. I might recommend the GBA port, which is generally agreed as the best version. It has a few more jobs and an extra dungeon at the end - bonus content that's a nice addition yet entirely compartmentalized from the original version. I played on an actual GBA cart (not recommended for taking screenshots ), though the GBA ROM shouldn't be hard to find. I'll warn you that if you don't, we'll endlessly collide and disagree on the differences in naming and translation between the versions.

If you want a variant community for FF5, the Gamefaqs boards are actually still fairly active for it, same as for FF1. The board for the GBA port ("FF5 Advance") has more traffic. One of the more common - and extreme - variants is the pure Bare/Freelancer game; that is, no jobs allowed at all. Apparently it's doable and roughly akin to four white mages in FF1.

Maybe we're just writing for each other, but I'm certainly a waiting audience for whatever you come up with. And I owe you a writeup for FF1, will try to get to that sometime this week...

I also read your FF4 Solo Cecil report, but afraid that I don't have anything to comment there as I've never actually played the game myself. I've seen most of FF4 at one time or another, with first my brother and then later college roommates playing through it, and never really had desire to do it myself. And it's behind Chrono Trigger on the list of SNES RPGs that I've never played but really need to.

[Nystul]

Sorry for the belated reply, but nice work! I can't say the idea of FF1 without magic appeals to me very much. I'm also the type to buy potions by the barrel, so it would certainly be a change of pace.

My main challenge game with NES games is to try to make it through without "dying" or using continues etc. Not exactly creative, I realize. Recently I tried with Zelda. I was able to make through the first 8 underworlds and collect everything that isn't in spectacle rock. I got disoriented in underworld 9 without really accomplishing much there, got myself in too deep to get out for a refill on medicine, and came up a bit short. I had a Dragon Warrior game like that where I made it to the Dragon Lord before dying to his true form.

[Deceptus]

About variants... I promised myself that after I win BGII, I'll consider pulling off a solo Bard.

[T-hawk]

OK, I finally got around to that FF1 writeup:

http://www.dos486.com/ff/brawlers/

[Sullla]

Well done! I think you've reaffirmed that two fighters + two black belts can overcome just about any variant handicap possible. The physical classes are definitely more powerful in essentially every way compared to the magical ones. Well, except the Thief anyway...

I'm hoping to get my variant character through the final boss in FF5 today or tomorrow, so we'll have more to chew on in this thread after that.

PS Why is your text font different on the last page of the report?

[T-hawk]

I'm hoping to get my variant character through the final boss in FF5 today or tomorrow, so we'll have more to chew on in this thread after that.

I notice a very telling lack of plural in that sentence...

PS Why is your text font different on the last page of the report?

Oops, lost the stylesheet reference with some bad copy and paste in the wake of that little javascript trick on page 3. Fixed now, thanks.

[Sullla]

You sly dog. I can't sneak anything past you.

Took two tries tonight, but I was successful. Report coming this weekend.

[Sullla]

My Solo black belt is back... in FF5 form.

http://www.garath.net/Sullla/FF/SM1.html