Ep 99: Final Fantasy 2 and 3: The Forgotten 8-Bit Adventures

While we were stomping Goombas and hunting ducks, Japanese gamers were embarking on epic NES adventures. When the missing Final Fantasy 2 and 3 were finally released to the West, fans were excited. Finally, we could try those missing 8-bit epics without downloading sketchy emulators and learning Japanese. 

While the reality never lived up to the hype, the NES sequels earned the respect of the community, even if they didn't quite live up to the loft standards of 1 and 4. On this edition of A Gamer Looks at 40, we explore this JRPG two-some and do some memory mining of our very own.

STARRING (All handles from Twitter)

Aiden Moher (@adribbleofink)
Barry Carenza of Premium Edition Games (@HawkHellfire)
@Dancarnate
Greg Sewart of the Player One Podcast and Generation 16 (@sewart) 
John Trenbeath (@crazyjohnt)
Mekel Kasanova (@MekelKasanova)
 Mike of the Distorted Illuminations YouTube channel (@MadMonarch_DI) 
Moses aka @thewellredmage of the-pixels.com and Gamelogica on YouTube
Nate McLellan (@natedoescomedy79 on TikTok)
Ryan aka @GameswCoffee

SONG COVERS

FINAL FANTASY II: 'Town' | Classical Guitar by John Oeth Guitar - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZwJ-Ap82Fo

Final Fantasy II - Tower of the Magi (Harp Solo) by Harpsibored - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdMwNDcl1Bs

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Chapters

• 0:00 Intro
• 2:27 FF2 and 3 Discussed as a Pair - Coffee, Moses, John
• 15:07 FF2 and 3 Discussed as a Pair - Mekele, Barry
• 23:43 FF2 Overview - Dancarnate, Greg, Moses
• 30:46 Patron Shoutout
• 31:46 FF2 Gameplay - Coffee, Aiden, Dancarnate
• 39:15 FF2 Gameplay - Nate, John, Coffee, Moses
• 1:00:09 Podcast Shoutout
• 1:01:29 FF3 Overview - Dancarnate, Barry, Aiden, Moses
• 1:13:39 FF3 Gameplay and Jobs - Greg, John. Nate
• 1:22:11 FF3 Moments - Nate, Dancarnate
• 1:27:59 FF3 Versions - Coffee, John, Moses, Mike
• 1:43:27 Outro

Transcript

0:13

The time Final Fantasy 1 arrived on North American shores in the year 1990, it was already a franchise in Japan. Three years earlier, the original game shipped in the East and had two sequels, Final Fantasy 2 and Final Fantasy 3. Over time, North American gamers realized they had been duped. The Final Fantasy they knew and loved in the late 1991 was actually the f - fourth game overseas. So the question then became what happened to those other two games and why didn't American and Canadian gamers get the full experience? In fact, Western Final Fantasy fans would never get a taste of those lost titles unless they were early adopters of emulation until the new millennium. Two was released in North America on the PlayStation via the Final Fantasy Origins Collection in 2001. and 3 wouldn't see the light of day until 2006 with a Nintendo DS remake. And both of those were 3D reimaginings. The traditional 8 -bit experience wouldn't come until years later. Which leads me to the central question of today's episode. Were we missing anything special? Or was Nintendo of America saving us all from a grindy 8 -bit headache? On this episode of A Gamer Looks at 40, we examine Final Fantasy 2 and 3 from both a historical and experiential perspective. Yes, these games are crucial parts of the Final Fantasy landscape, but are they actually worth our time today? We have a spicy one ahead of us, so let's run to our computers, boot up an emulator, and hope our fan translations are halfway decent. as we embark upon episode 99, Final Fantasy 2 and 3, The Forgotten 8 -Bit Adventures. Nowadays, Final Fantasy 2 and 3 are closely linked as the Japan -only titles, so let's start by sharing some opinions of the games as a pair. Starting us off is Games with Coffee, followed by Moses of ThePixels .com and the brand new GameLogica series on YouTube, and finally John, aka BKronez, on Twitter. So to kind of tie the other 2 and 3... And we were not going to talk about four because I definitely want to camp out on four because four is just four is huge. Wonderful. Yeah. And four we can spend a lot of time on. So because I know we're almost up on time. Yeah, for sure. But I do want to chat a bit about two and three because for me two and three, I feel like in four they took the best of two and three and made four. I think four was the lessons learned from the first three. They combined and refined and made best possible version of all three games. What would, what would your take on that as the, as the first three as kind of like that initial trilogy, where is it placed in kind of the cannon to Final Fantasy and its importance maybe? I mean, Final Fantasy 1 absolutely is the most important of those three games. Because again, it sets the tone of how all the other Final Fantasies kind of evolved from the first title. Second, Final Fantasy 2 was the... How do I put this? Final Fantasy 2 is where they started to level up on the narrative. So they took the bones of Final Fantasy 1 and then they're like, okay, let's try to combine this with a story, but then let's also go out of left field and completely change the entire system too. Just so we can say, hey, we're doing something different. I don't know. I guess it was, I think there was something in the water or something, but every time just like sequels just have to do something new. That's so funny. I love that. See, I also have Zelda 2. Yeah, see, there you go. See, Zelda 2. And then with 3, I think what makes 3 amazing in and of itself is the job system. Absolutely, the job system is what makes... It's basically also what kind of makes Final Fantasy Final Fantasy in some way, shape, or form. Each character has their own specific duty. Some characters they can change their duties depending on what the depending on what the situation is required but Kind of established like Final Fantasy 3 kind of helps establish for the next series of games after it Just like how characters are defined by their specific Arch types so like I mean we're gonna talk about Final Fantasy 4 like Cecil he was a Dark Knight so he's DPS with sacrificing HP then he becomes a paladin which also was high attack power, but also the ability to protect Other characters in that regard so they play they play to the strengths of each of their characters based off of the jobs and the job system wouldn't exist without Final Fantasy 3 tying it all back together Sure, it was hard. It was difficult. Yes, we get I get it but Ultimately, we got to give credit where credit is due with Final Fantasy III for introducing the job system, the class change system. Because we wouldn't have gotten all of these amazing characters, and we wouldn't have gotten all these amazing customization abilities in subsequent series. I mean, going back to VII. VII, with the materia system, you can basically create your own jobs in that regard. We wouldn't have that without Final Fantasy 3. Final Fantasy 3 created the archetypes. Final Fantasy 1 really was the birth of that, but 3 refined it where you have a summoner, you have a paladin, you have a dragoon. I think you have dragoons in 3. I'm pretty confident you did. Yes, dragoons are in 3. So you have all these staple roles that have persisted throughout Final Fantasy as a series for the subsequent 25, 30-something years. So yeah, I wholly agree. I think the jobs system is definitely the biggest contribution three made where I think I would even argue made the stories a little better or two maybe in then three, but definitely the jobs are where where it shines and boy, oh boy, it doesn't get much better. I mean, as far as combining narrative and jobs and roles and found fancy for, and we will talk about that another time, my friend. Let's first talk about Final Fantasy 2 and 3. When was the first time you experienced either one of those or what's your history with the ones we never got? Right, yeah, the ones we never got. In the West. Yeah, I regret that I missed the FF1 episode. Not that I have strong feelings about FF1, actually. I played that as an adult, really, for the first time. And I just like the Red Mage, that's all. Yeah. How could you not? But Final Fantasy 2 and 3 are the ones we never got. I started with Final Fantasy Legend. It was not even really a Final Fantasy, but as was the style at the time. Final Fantasy 2, I believe I first encountered on PS1, right? They put out... Was it origins? Origins, yeah it was. Cause Chronicles is the one I always mention, the one with Chrono Trigger. I have it somewhere here. I have it. That's a must own. Load times are crap. But anyways, Anthology was the one with 6 and 5, I want to say. Which we also didn't get on Super Nintendo. That one I was very excited to play. But found that when I got origins, I was like, oh, they didn't bring these over because they're not very good. This is my initial flexing of critical muscles because I played those in what early 2000s, late 90s and hadn't yet attempted to think about video games in terms of a critical craft. But didn't jive with them at all. No, really, really didn't like it. Again, this was I. don't even know that we had dial -up internet at the time. So getting into Final Fantasy II without really knowing too much about how its leveling system works, how you could literally just wander a little bit south from the starting town and get murdered right away, and what little they teach you in the game, and how your brain instantly goes towards, how can I abuse this as quickly as possible? Didn't really didn't really work out for me and same thing with three. I think I tried it. I was like, I don't like onions that much. So then later on, that's a joke. But later on, much later on, actually, Final Fantasy Pixel remaster series rolls out and I was initially critical of it. Still critical of the font choice. I mean, what a. What were you thinking? What were you thinking? No, but but music's really good visually. I understand now that they created a visual consistency that uplifts the majority of those starting six and kind of downgrades six a little bit in order to make it uniform. But what you gonna do? Yeah. So that version of Final Fantasy two pixel remaster is actually the first time I beat. Final Fantasy 2 and having gone through the whole thing now with an adult understanding of how it works really came around to appreciate it. I think I was surprised that I enjoyed it as much as I did. It's really the first time that they got kind of like real characters and real drama in there. You know, there's a lot of firsts for FF2 that we just didn't get back in the day. I think it's the believe it's the first time we get chocobos. It's, you know, it's got the series permadeaths starting already. Everybody wants to talk about a certain person with flowers, but, uh, um, was it, uh, there's a, there's a guy named Josh Joe, something that one of those Jane Joseph, he gets crushed by like a huge boulder and dies. And you're like, Oh, well, that's, that's premonition for the rest of the series, I guess. So. In a lot of ways, I think it's a it came across as a really kind of wistful when sorrowful kind of game. It kind of has like a lot of sadness to its music. I don't know that I'll rush to play it again, but I think it's a worthy entry in the series. And, you know, if we're going to talk black sheep's to it's only the second entry, you know, in the numbered series, at least. So that's, you know, it's kind of like Zelda 1 to Zelda 2. Is it really changing up a formula if the formula's not really there? So I can't blame it too much. Did you play Final Fantasy 2 and 3, either emulation or remasters? I did. I did. So my first experience with those was, gosh, back in, I think, 2000, maybe 2001. It was my first time ever doing emulation. And those were the first two games I went to was Final Fantasy 2 and 3. Didn't know anything about them other than that they existed. and got him on, God, what was it back then? Maybe Nesticle was the emulator. I can't even remember now. Nesticle was one of the big ones. That was one of the big ones in that era, yeah. Okay, so that's probably what it was. And fired him up and was like, because the first thing you do in the second game is die. You fight that party, you can't beat. And I'm like, am I playing the right game? What is happening? And got decimated, started the game. I was like, okay, this is a little different, whatever. Started playing Final Fantasy III just to see what it was like. And I'm like, what are these dopey looking kids? Like, what is the Onion Knights? What is this? And so I never really gave them a shot. And the other thing too was I found out very quickly that I didn't think I liked to play games on emulator because the crappy joysticks that were available at the time were just that. They were very bad. You know, the input controls were horrible. The D -pads were terrible. And the other thing was if you played for a little while and you didn't touch... the keyboard or the mouse, the screen went black. So like if you're playing Mike Tyson's Punch -Out and you're fighting Bald Bull and he's about to do the bolt charge and the screen goes black, well, you just got knocked out. So I was like, I don't think I like this very much. So I dropped playing those games. Continuing the conversation is content creator Mikhail Casanova and Barry Karenza of premium edition games Then I want to play Final Fantasy the real Final Fantasy 2 I wanted to play 3 and it just at the time there wasn't a way to play it other than like Importing it. So, okay. So this is what we this is why I did We stepped into DeLorean went back in the past. All right. Hey, man, this is what I do. This is this I I'm lucky I know what date is. Cause especially when I'm in interviewing season and this is interviewing season, don't ask what the date is. The date is 25, 30 years ago. That's where I'm living right now. So it's all good. Go for it, man. So, so here's what I did. Like I had, um, so, so one of, um, my dad's friends had a Famicon and his, his, um, his wife was very fluent in Japanese. So, When I wanted to play Final Fantasy 2 and 3, I would say, Dad, can you call your friend? Can you call Uncle Rich and ask if Aunt Angie is available? And he's like, why? I want to play Final Fantasy 2. And so he was like, but you have Final Fantasy 2? No, the real Final Fantasy 2, but it's only in Japanese on the Famicom. He's like. Oh. Yeah, yeah, let me go do that and so she was not a gamer, but she would get into it. She's like oh, this is interesting. Oh So I would play and I'm like, okay Auntie Angie, what did it say? Okay, I don't understand it. This is like also this is going on here here and This is I'm like, okay. I think I need to name my character. I don't know what these characters will hear hear hear hear I'm like but no I need the character to have the default name. Just like, no, you name your character. I don't want to be me. Like, I'm not one of those, okay, so I don't like games where I have to create a character because I want the story to be presented and I'm along for the ride. I don't want to self -inject. I am the, I am literally the, I am Mr. Default One. I am Default Face One, Default, I don't engage in character creation. I... I mean, I just want to get into it. It's like time. I don't need to spend just give me Right the basic basic character one is fine. Give him no hair. You're good. It's me. It's fine It's anyway, so but yeah, so so for you So you were so you didn't were aware you had to actually name the character because in Final Fantasy one Do you have to name the characters in Final Fantasy two and three? I think you're allowed to I think they do have like default names, right? They do they do. Yeah, but I was just like so I was just like Mash mash mash and she's like wait wait wait Just name them. I don't want to and then she just took the controller name the character. I was like alright I'm like I don't know what the character's name is because I can't read that bar I just read the story to me. So she literally would come over every day for me to play Final Fantasy 2 and it took me Two weeks two and a half weeks to beat it because for those of you who've not played Final Fantasy 2 It's very different. Very different. The mechanics of Final Fantasy 2 and the way experience works blew my mind because it's very, very, very different. I mean, the best way I can describe to anyone who wants to dive into Final Fantasy 2, it's very much a saga game, in my opinion. More so than anything else. It's very experimental. And I think that's kind of the theme of Final Fantasy, like when people like, oh, this is Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy is ever changing constantly. But it was very different. But I enjoyed it. I think I enjoyed two more than three. Three. I didn't mind the job system, but it was so different. So that one took me two months just because Auntie Angie got kind of tied up for that. But she. You know, she helped me along with Alvin and she was really getting into the job system and then it got to a point where I would play and then she would take the controller from me because she started getting into it and she's not a gamer, but it was, you know, it was good for her. But yeah, so like I really was and this is all original hardware. That's cool. That's so cool. I love that. And it also sounds like it was a really cool opportunity for you to connect with your own. Yeah. like it was really cool to spend time and it sounds really fun. She was into it. Like she was getting into the story and she, it wasn't a, cause I've, I have a seven year old son and he's now a very good reader. But when he was first playing games, he was not a very good reader. And it is hard to read a video game to a child. It is hard cause it is, you would think it's like, I wish I had this kind of like, not their parental instinct. Oh yes. I'm going to this bonding moment. I'm going to read my son, Pokemon sword and shield. And I'm like, I got to read how much of this dialogue out loud and do a voice. I'm like, I, well, I, you know, I just figured out you have to learn how to read now, kid. Cause I can't, I can't, I can't. So, but, but she was super into it. That sounds, it's really cool. It's very sweet that she was into it and you had that shared experience with Fawn Fantasy two and three. on the original hardware. You're rare, my friend. You're rare. Am I? I don't know many people who played it on original hardware, not of its time, obviously, but even just original hardware, most people emulated it or played the remakes that came out after the fact. That's really, really cool. And you were able to get through both of those. Yeah. Yeah, that's really cool. Now, did you end up ever playing Final Fantasy 2 or 3? These episodes will be combined into one, those two games, because not a lot of people play them of its time. But did you ever get around to those at all at any point? I did. Yeah. When did you play 2 or 3? The first time I played 2 and 3, played them close together. I was in high school, so it was like 98. 97, 98. And at that time, You know, the internet was just starting out and emulation was starting to be a thing and there was fan translations and to find out, you know, because now that we have the internet, now we have this knowledge we have, oh, you know, Final Fantasy two and three that we knew were really four and six. There was a two and three on the, the Famicom. What? So I found fan translation as a kid, you know, I didn't have a lot of money. And I loved Final Fantasy. So I'm like, oh, these are two games I'm now getting for free because of downloading in English and I get to experience them. So I got to do those in two. I remember finding very difficult when I first did it because it was very different. And three I enjoyed, but I didn't finish either of them. It was kind of like I was, I was playing 64 at the time and it was like, I got a new game and I kind of shifted it and I lost. lost going back to it. So then I next played two on the PlayStation with Final Fantasy Origins. I was like, oh, now an English, like a full official translation and the quality of life. And again, I started it and I just, I got about halfway through and I fell off. But then the PSP came out and Final Fantasy 2 came out for that with the new sprites and new update. I'm like, I'm doing it this time. So I sat down with the PSP version and that's the version I finally beat the Emperor and I went through and I, you know, Constantly grinded kidding myself over and over and over and over again. Yep smacking yourself in the head and curing yourself. So much cures. the original Final Fantasy with all new storylines and game elements. Final Fantasy 1 and 2 Dawn of Souls only for Game Boy Advance. Rated E for everyone. 1988 Square followed up the success of the original game with Final Fantasy 2 and often ignored entry in the full series canon. To talk about their first impressions with the game, regardless of when they played it, is Dan Karnet, followed by Greg Seward of the Player One podcast and Generation 16 series of videos, and finally Moses returns to share his initial impressions. What was your take on 2? What people don't like to, I get it, but I'm curious what your take on it is. I think that two is, it's almost like the, it's almost like if Babe Ruth never hit the ball, but went for it. Like two tried to do so many things and yeah, with hindsight, it could have been implemented better, but. Two had a lot of really good ideas under the hood. It just wasn't executed. It wasn't executed to what we would now expect a RPG or a storytelling medium to be executed to. And I think that's the big thing about Two, because it toyed with, you have characters that are permanently dying, it had dungeons that you had to do specific things. but then it had a leveling system that would be great in a game like Oblivion. The world wasn't ready for it yet, and they weren't ready. There were just certain aspects, especially when it comes to magic. One thing that I really harp on especially is the fact that you have to use Essena like four million times. before you can cure, what is it, like stone and stuff like that, you know, cause all you can do is just poison and blind. And somebody has to have the status ailment for the spell to count as one of your things. So it just, a lot of tediousness was in it. And then of course - Extremely tedious, yeah. And of course you had, you know, beaten the crap out of yourself to level up as being the most effective way. to level. It's, it's, it's so funny. It's a very good way of saying it. It's as if Babe Ruth called his shot, but, but, but just bobbled it to first. Like, yeah, it has that feel. They really, really went for it. They tried, but for some reason, I think bobble to first isn't the best analogy. Maybe like a single, like a ground rule double, like it wasn't as it didn't, it fell short of the, of the main Mark. But they really go. I have a lot of respect for what they were trying with Final Fantasy 2. I think it was so different. It was so out there. So, of course, the explanation of that is they issued experience points. I want to say the traditional way of leveling up, but I mean, how traditional was it? This was like still. Like Final Fantasy II came out, I think, in the late 80s. I think Final Fantasy II was out in Japan before we got the first one here. So, you know, I mean, when it's the first sequel in a series, I don't know how you can call anything traditional. But anyway, it eschewed experience points for building different aspects of your characters based on their actions. So if you took a lot of damage in a fight, your character's HP limit might go up. If you used a lot of magic, your character's magic point limit might go up. You know, if you cured people, if you, if you attack, if you did a lot of physical attacks, then your strength would go up, that sort of thing. So it was really neat and on paper it's fascinating and on paper it works. And in practice, it doesn't work at all. No, it doesn't work at all. It's, it really isn't. I think it's a very respectable game. I don't think it's as bad as the world says it is. I really don't. It was, it was starting to take some risks with storytelling. It was really reaching far. Um, it's intrigue and yeah. And just how I just, like you said, I think having a system where, and again, this wasn't quite job system, but yeah, but like you said, that main system of if the more you do things, the better you get at it. Yeah. But now you've pigeonholed your character to the point where you can't do anything else. Right. And it's. Exactly. Exactly. And I think it made the game more difficult than it needed to be because that system was so obtuse that it took so much to wrap your head around it. But like what you just said, I think is really important because going back and playing the Pixel remasters again, it kind of hit me. And I'm sure I had this thought back when Dawn of Souls came out too, but it kind of hit me how when you look at kind of the structure, the storytelling structure of Final Fantasy 2, It's a very prototypical Final Fantasy IV. Final Fantasy IV was just like, it was like a film. You constantly got characters coming in and out of your party and it's very dramatic, it's very anime, and that was kind of its draw. Final Fantasy II was doing all of that. Not at the scale of Final Fantasy IV was, but with Final Fantasy II, you had your three main characters and then you always had that fourth party slot that was... you had this rotating cast of characters coming through based on what the story needed or the story demanded. Well, it's what you would think of as like stretching your stretching your legs, you know. Yeah. The first one. And I can admire this about a lot of video game series where, you know, with the first one, it's a it's not necessarily a huge hit. I think some of the discussion about FF1 being, you know, the saving grace that saved all these careers and the company is somewhat overblown as as a mythology. But. You know, they could have just remade ff1 and called it ff2, you know, they could have did the exact same thing and they chose not to Maybe they did do the exact same thing a little more with three But with two they decided to try different things and I think that's admirable Creativity involves risk and sometimes you take those risks and it doesn't always pay off But the freaking pandemonium theme is fantastic. So it's really good, yeah. Yeah, it really is good. It is time once again to give a shout out to my wonderful patrons to thank them for their wonderful patronage. Because it is indeed wonderful. Starting off with Greg Seward of the aforementioned Player One podcast and Generation 16 series of videos. The Let's Play Princess. Tim Knowles, formerly of the Lidist. Seth Sergel of the All -In Podcast. Julian of the Stage Select Podcast. BT Gobbles. Games with Coffee. Terry Kiner and the one and only, fabulous Pete Harney. If you'd like to learn more about our Patreon and join in on the fun, go to patreon .com forward slash agamerlooks at 4040, check out the tiers, and if you feel led to donate some hard -earned moolah to this humble little podcast that you hopefully enjoy so much, then feel free to sign up for a tier and join the family today. Now while the issues with Final Fantasy 2 are well documented in the world of video game lore, what isn't are people's experiences with the story and the gameplay. To go deeper into the inner workings of this strange and less than beloved title, we'll start with Games with Coffee, followed by journalist and author Aiden Moore, and then Dan Carnett shares more of his Final Fantasy 2 story. Final Fantasy II, I played it, I tried to play it on the, I never had the PlayStation Origins, but I had the Dawn of Souls for the Game Boy Advance. I remember playing it and I think I soft-locked myself as well at some point, where I just wasn't, because I still didn't understand the leveling system, which we can talk about because the leveling is really very strange in Final Fantasy II. Yeah, it's so weird. Really weird. I get what they were trying to do, but it doesn't quite work well, and you can easily cheese it. But. The story I was impressed with, I played it for the first time maybe last year, and I was impressed on how well they went for it. And by the way, real quick, this will be a very quick aside, how did you name your Final Fantasy 1 characters? I'm asking everybody. Oh, how did I name my Final Fantasy 1 characters? Okay, so I was really big, I still really am kind of big, I was really big into the samurai manga called Rurouni Kenshin. Okay. So I named all my characters based off the characters off of Rony Kenshin. That's great. That's great. I love it. I'm asking everybody how they named their Final Fantasy one characters because you had no choice but to, there was no default. But in Final Fantasy two, you know, you have characters dying, you know, it opens with death and really tense situation. Whereas, you know, I think Maria is the Maria is like the young girl who, two tags along with you for a while, characters come and go and leave and you have that kind of rotating fifth slot. They really go for the fences narratively in Final Fantasy 2. It was very surprising. I think for the most part, they succeeded on the narrative side of things. The leveling system, yeah, maybe that could have been their weakness, but the narrative was the narrative, the bones for the narratives. Yeah. Future installments. They were there. They were right there in that game. Absolutely. But the mechanics of it are where I think it falls short. The concept of you have to use it in order to level it. Man, that you can really bone yourself if you if you if you really. bone yourself. Yeah, you can really get into a very sticky situation. But you can also completely break the game too if you know exactly what you're doing and how the mechanics work. You can just totally break the whole game and then just cheese the rest of the game. That's what I did for time purposes. I found out about that hack and I'm like, wait a minute. So I thought about it and I looked it up. They're like, oh yeah, you just cast Cure on yourself constantly and your Cure spells goes through the roof and you can attack yourself and you're and I'm like, this is, but yeah, I was playing for a deadline and I'm like, I gotta get this done. So I was able to skate through a lot of that friction. But I do remember when I first played it on Dawn of souls, I locked out because I was not leveled properly. My armor wasn't, you know, I didn't do a sword properly and I couldn't do this. And yeah, it's a, it's very interesting kind of idea, which I wasn't a hundred percent successful. And this was the Final Fantasy that introduced the the ever beloved blood sword. Yes Blood sword so good you have to do power. Oh my god. You gotta have the blood sword. It there's just no there's no getting around it No, absolutely. No, you're the blood sword. It's pretty much a requirement to be too Two is interesting because like they let kawazu do his thing. So the systems are like baddie, right? Yeah, it's powering up like by you know, hitting yourself in combat and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it's wild I don't like like and like I Don't like kawazu games, but I love kawazu games like I love the way that he thinks about just like experimenting and I think he's very rarely successful, but I really admire the way that I he doesn't fit into any boxes. So, yeah, I think is is is sort of a drag to play sometimes with the fact that it introduced like more like structured, like character narratives into the game is interesting. It was just named characters, right? It's the game in the series that I have the least experience with. It's probably, you know, it's I don't know if it's my least favorite, but it's the one that I find there's always. Other. reasons to play other Final Fantasy games. It's not terribly fun smacking yourself for hours on end to build up leveling when you realize, oh, that's how I level in this game. It's not terribly fun. Yeah. And another thing that I thought was real odd about that game and I don't know how much are we going into spoilers on stuff? Oh, we can spoiler away. Yeah, this is well established a spoiler show. So, okay. Um, so like every time you get a fourth character, they're dead. Like basically they're, they're just, Like either they die in the story or their stats are so low they might as well just be dead because they're going to take a hit and you're not going to you're not going to take the time to actually revive them because they're not going to be in your party long enough. I should have counted how many times the fourth character of your party swaps in and out other than Minwoo, who's like the first one. And almost all of them are trash like they're like. And so, yeah. And especially by the end of the game and mind you, you know, I played the pixel remaster version all the way through. I did play the the Famicom version one time prior to that. And I am I did not get very far in it. But when I played through the pixel remaster by the end of the game, I want to say my you know, my party had, you know, HP pools of like 4000 or something. It's something like that. And then like my fourth character was like 800. I was like, you know, like a light breeze. He's going to just fall over and die. Like, so I would just bring him into the parties, rezzed just so that he took one hit from somebody else. And then he just laid, he just laid there dead. He just laid there dead. That's so funny. So, you know, the character's only good to take one shot away from somebody else. Yeah, well he couldn't live through the shot and you don't get the level up unless you live. You have to survive the hit. And so I was like, okay, well I guess you're just permadead. You're just dead forever, sorry. Continuing and expanding the conversation to include story beats and big moments is comedian Nate McClellan followed by John then games with coffee and finally Moses from the pixels. What's your take on two and three? We kind of discussed it briefly to not beloved by the by the Final Fantasy community for good reason. It's got some weird mechanics, but what's your take on it? Cause you did say it's better than you expected. Oh yeah. Like going in just. Everyone like going like all the worst Final Fantasy game and they're wrong. That's actually eight but Yeah, listen, I hate everything that happens in the story of eight like after the second disc starts And the junction system is not good. But Final Fantasy 2 just opening up with your characters like fighting horses fighting like I don't know what they're called like horseback riders and they just Annihilate you yeah, and then you wake up and you're like all of a sudden part of this You're not even part of the resistance team the the person running the resistance is like no you like almost died out there I'm not sending you to like, you know fight the Emperor You have to prove to her like actually I can I'm actually really good at my job. I Yeah, what an opening and like the story is Like for an NES game is really good and like engaging More engaging than you know, like one is pretty engaging but two was just like they I think they nailed that story I'd love to see a remake of two, you know, I agree. Yeah, and the Emperor is like that's what a cool villain, you know, like I I mean, I don't know. He wasn't, he wasn't a chaos ripoff. Like he was just like, I'm conquering this land and anyone who gets in my way is going to die. If he, you, you end up and forgive me. I think I'm correct in that you end up in hell, right? Like you end up at, you end up in the palace of hell. I'm looking it up. Yeah. And as known as pandemonium, that is where you end up. Like that game. goes places. And yeah, the journey of the emperor, I think is actually, while it can be, I can see it as like a one -noted kind of antagonist, it's a scary and powerful antagonist and it definitely drives the story forward. Oh yeah. If I remember correctly too, even at the end, like you beat his first form and he just like refuses to die. He's like, no, he literally says no, which is like, that's cool. You know, like he wasn't like, I mean, I'm sure there was if I played it again, I'd be like, oh, yeah, there was some magic powers involved in this, but it was just like, no, I'm not dying. I'm going to kill you. I also thought it was really cool what they did with like the fourth character slot. And they just like I thought that was a really good tutorialization of like, you know, if you practice hard, this is what your characters can become. I guess like you can you can be very powerful in magic. You can be very powerful with your fists like. Yeah, I think the Drogon dude was my favorite. And they had no problem just killing him too. Like, like, which I thought was cool. You know, like it just they weren't afraid to just be like, all right, we showed you this class and like you went through a dungeon with this guy, but a boulder is actually going to crush him. Yeah, I mean, they people are getting people getting whacked left and right in Final Fantasy two. It's it's pretty, pretty intense. And they do a lot with the story and they do a lot of the characters, obviously. The idea of you have to use your skills in order to develop them is inherently flawed because that means you're using skills. If you raise your strength too much, you don't need to raise your cure spell enough, you get to a point where your cure spell is not good enough and you lose. So there's so many opportunities to soft lock yourself in Final Fantasy 2 just because of that gameplay. Now, when I played it for the first time on the Pixel remaster, actually, no, I'm sorry. I played it on Donna Souls and I got through maybe a third of it. And I was like, yeah, I soft locked myself. I couldn't get anywhere. I just didn't get the mechanics. But, you know, you can easily game the system, but that's not fun. That's not fun. Hitting your party over and over again and just casting Cura on yourself for hours on end to build your Cure spells. Not terribly fun. No. But it's an interesting concept, right? They went for it. Yeah, but like also you I mean you don't have to hit yourself like I fought a lot of battles Like I basically never run from a fight in Final Fantasy Yeah, unless like I'm like I know I'm gonna die, you know like And my health was just fine the the cool thing I did like towards the end of the game where I was just getting stomped was just equipped two shields on everybody and just raised my evasion stat. Like just went, oh, I'm like little, little goblins and then just raised my evasion stat, you know, interesting, uh, to where like, okay, now I'm very speedy, like technically. So nothing can hit you. That's interesting. Yeah. And that's interesting that you actually use the system. Cause most people I talked to about to have the experience I did where it's like, well, I just figured out how to game it and kind of got through it in service to the story and playing it and everything else. You actually took some time and kind of like figured it out like, OK, well, I guess I'm just going to raise my evasion. That's actually a really interesting way of using that system. Very creative as well. Well, thank you. All I did was like Google how to raise evasion. Oh, OK. Well, I mean, I was Google and like, does evasion work in Final Fantasy 2? Can I avoid attacks? So. Hey listen, listen, you know what? You're a modern gamer, you have the opportunity, you have these things, it's fine, don't struggle, where other people have struggled. Final Fantasy origins came out on the PlayStation PlayStation. Yep. And yeah, so I got you know played that and I loved Final Fantasy one on that like the updated music and graphics and the Quality of life Upgrades they had with that. I thought that was fantastic. And I was like, okay, you know, I'm gonna I Saw what the slog, you know, so what some of the issues were with? Final Fantasy 2 and I had read some things about how it worked with the leveling up, you know, you can attack your characters to get better defense and better attack and you know, I saw how all of that grinding was much much different. It made sense, but it was a pain in the butt really. But I did. You know, I was like, you know, I'm going to use a strategy guide. I've got it. So if I start getting stuck a little bit, I'm going to use it. So I, you know, it kind of, you know, marched forward in the game and made it through. And the first time I played through it, I was like, man, I don't know if I want to do this again. This was kind of a kind of a slog. I thought the story was much more story there than in Final Fantasy I. That was the first time you really get characters with names and you're playing through the game with most of the same people the whole time and you've got characters that are actually dying for the first time in the series. And I appreciated all of that. I appreciated the effort that they were trying to make. but the execution was just off in terms of how you level up. Because for someone out there who's never played the game, like we were just kind of saying, if I want my attack to go up, I have to attack things, whether they're my own party or they're monsters. If I want my defense to go up, I have to get hit. If I want my magic to go up, I have to use it. If I want my magic defense to go up, I've got to get hit by magic. And then the proficiency with each weapon. You know, if I want to get good at using a bow and arrow, I have to use a bow and arrow, same with swords and axes or whatever. So it may it makes sense. It's just frustrating because that's not how I want my game to be played. It's and it's it's it's a it's a good idea in theory. It's like a good idea on paper. Right. Practice makes. Yeah. You can't just pick up a bow and arrow and be good at it immediately. Got to work at it. Fine. But that's not really fun. at all. And it takes away one of the defining characteristics of an RPG, which for me, at least at the time, and still to a certain extent is you get new shiny thing. I want to try new shiny thing. And if new shiny thing is not better than the thing I have, I throw it aside. So this idea that, and then you can game the system very easily by hitting yourself with, you know, hitting and curing, hitting and curing and doing all sorts of weird exploits. But then now you're just gaming the system and it's not as as fun. And so too, for me, I was very taken by how they went for it with the story because boy, did he go for it. They really go. I said people are dying and you have different characters coming in and out and it's actually pretty cool. I think, I think the second one is when you end up in hell, right? I think, yeah, yeah. I think even in the PlayStation version, I think they call it pandemonium. Yes. Right. It's hell. But it's hell because I think when the emperor returns after you defeat him, he says, you know, like now I'm the emperor of hell and you're coming with me. He literally claims to be the emperor of hell. I mean, come on, that's going for it. That's going for it. Pretty bold claim. And I will say, though, kudos to him for having just died and already taken over hell. That's really ambitious, sir. Seriously. I mean, good job on the. on the job upgrade. Either nobody wanted the gig or that was he's a master of the coup. Either one like he has dirt on the previous occupant or else there's no way he would be able to get himself in there that fast. It's like you know Satan I've got these pictures of you. You don't want these get out on Twitter. You better just hand it over to me right. Oh God no. Let's see. Come on let's bargain a little deal with the devil here. Yeah. Yeah. You like making deals. Come on. 2. Now it sounds like you played it basically right after because you had it on the Origins series. What people don't like 2. What's your take on Final Fantasy 2? Alright, okay. So 2 is an interesting one because for some reason it seems like sequels are kind of my jam. Like Zelda 2 is my absolute favorite Zelda game. Yes it is. Sonic 2 is my absolute favorite Sonic game. And Final Fantasy 2 is not my favorite Final Fantasy game, but it's one that I like. I actually like Final Fantasy 2. And that's because it was the first one that really tried to tie together a cohesive story. Of the rebel underdogs taking on this all-powerful emperor. and then taking it down. What was cool, what I think the most memorable part about that, okay, there's two memorable moments, right? Because first memorable moment, you can soft lock yourself horrendously. Really? Yeah, if you're not careful with like, you know, stocking up on potions and stuff like that when you're going from place to place. And you're basically at the next story event, but you're basically weakened. Everyone's at critical HP, no magic charges, no nothing, can't heal, can't do anything. All you can do is run or power through and hope to God that you survive. And you're just smacked out in the middle of nowhere and you're right beside the dreadnought, which is like, I guess... I'm going to say about a third of the way through the story. I will tell you this happened to me. I will tell you I spent hours upon hours agonizing on how am I going to get back to the city without getting killed? How am I going to get back to the nearest city without getting killed? How am I - do I go forward this and see what happens? All my characters have stabbed like either double digit or single digit HP left. No. I soft lucked myself. No. I was like oh no. It was a reason why I just I could not come back and play Final Fantasy 2 it took me about like maybe I'm gonna say until I got down until I got down on the souls That yeah, it took me all the way until that so it was like maybe three or four years after that They picked up Final Fantasy 2. It's like, alright. Okay. I'm gonna finish it this time. I'm gonna finish it this time But that's funny that's funny. Yeah, that's so that was the first one. Yeah The second memorable moment was when the Emperor comes back from Hell to be like, hey, what's up guys, I'm back! Literally returns from Hell. He's like, I'm a King of Hell! Brings pandemonium into physicality. It exists as a magical construct in Hell and the only way to access it is if you go through the Jade Passage within Hell. to go into Pandemonium and then go and defeat the Emperor from there. I'm like, wow, that is cool. Yeah. That was a really impressive moment. And if you look back at it back in the NES days, Famicom days, that would have been a very... That was very out there storytelling. Yeah. When you look at it back in 1988, 1989, around that area. So, yeah, that was a complete and total left... Like, totally out of left field moment there. Do you think with two and with three because they are kind of I kind of see them one in the same almost because even though they are very different games With very different mechanics and everything else. Those are kind of in the two that got left behind Yeah, do you think they would have been well received in the US if they had come out of its time? Yeah, that's a good question I don't know. I don't think anybody knows right but I think You could arrive at an answer by looking at the NES RPG canon and kind of imagining how it would or would not fit in with that and which of those games were the most successful. So I actually think, I mean, I love the NES. It's one of my top five favorite consoles, but I don't think it has great RPGs. I think it has some really, really, really good RPGs. And it's where a lot of really good RPGs got their start in terms of a series, obviously. Talk about one. But there's a lot of really awkward systems, dense systems. It's early on. JRPGs, especially, are in their youth. CRPGs were mostly confined to PC. And so you get some of those ported to a system that has two action buttons and a D-pad. You're going to lose a little bit of... Of the the complexity that's needed and that's even true the Super Nintendo like for those that don't know I've done a lot of research recently on exploring the Super Nintendo RPG cannon and it does have some PC ports There's a dungeon master on there a huge game old game Best -selling a me Amiga game. I think it was but when you port it to Super Nintendo, which You know has a mouse but does not have a keyboard There's difficulties, there's difficulties. You know, they got to trim down the UI and stuff like that. And so with the NES though, I don't know. I think that, and I'm only saying this because this is my experience, I know, but I think that's a game that's really best served by having access to the internet, you know, so you can kind of get a little extra help with it. Yeah, I thought that makes a lot of sense. Wasn't Drakkar, isn't Drakkar another one that was? Are you the reference? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's like this. It's this faux 3D. It looks like it was on the PC. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really functions of the Super Nintendo controller. And it was a launch title. I think I launched when it was. Yeah, it's the first. Yeah, the first RPG on the Super Nintendo actually. By my estimate. Did you play that one? I did. Yeah. I beat it in a couple of days, like two days. Okay. There's a auto leveling trick that I was just like, um, We were in chat and someone was like, you know, and I was like, can you auto level here? And we kind of like brainstormed it at the same time because there are enemy just keeps responding. So did that blew through it. I think it's a fascinating game, but it's also really like you want to say the term artifact that game belongs in a museum, not in people's systems. I tried it. I tried it and I think I spent 20 minutes with it. I said, I don't, I just, didn't have the brain space to tackle it. It was just like, whoa. Well, too. I mean, one thing you also have to admit is that as adults, we play games differently than we did as kids. Totally. You know? So like now we're like, I only have X amount of time and I have 20 billion games to play. So you better impress me right away or I'm going on to the next one, which that's not a bad thing. I'm not saying that like you're evil. If you do that, I'm saying you're an adult. And I'm an adult. Just the reality of life. Like we don't have as much free time as we did when we were kids. And our selection is huge by comparison. So if I had Final Fantasy 2 on NES as a kid and it was all I had, I would play it and I'd be thankful. You know, that would have been the way that it is. I wouldn't have had the luxury of saying, oh, I have 14 other ones that I can pop in. Exactly. Exactly. No, I agree. And I... And I think it's very interesting and I feel like whenever we talk, we always lead into this conversation about the criticism and things like that. Cause it is, I always try to steer it in that. It's one of our favorite topics. I love this topic. It's literally one of my favorite topics. You it's fine if I say, Hey, I just don't have the brain space for two, but I can't now say two is a bad game or dragon is a bad game. Right. Because I didn't have the brain space to figure it out. That's not. That's not the game's fault. I didn't have the requisite time to invest in it. Right. If you don't have the patience for it, that's more of a you thing than like the game exists. If you never played it, the game exists completely fine on its own. Right. Like your patience has nothing to do with its intrinsic. Completely irrelevant. Yeah, exactly. Like there is nothing and people don't get this. You can shake your fist at God as much as you want or at dragon. And neither cares. Essentially, like, Drakken will just continue to exist without you. Yes. You know. Perfectly fine. Yeah, yeah. And let me ask you a semi -serious question. Are you a real gamer? If your answer is, who are you and how did you get into my living room, then you should check out the Fake Gamer Girls podcast. Join hosts Samantha, Aaron, and Josie as they talk about anything and everything in the world of video games, all through a lens of inclusivity and openness. because as they're fond of saying, there's no actual requirement for being a quote unquote real gamer, and this is my insert, unless you're a jerk or a weirdo. In which in that case, you shouldn't be listening to this show in the first place, because I have no time in my life for jerks or weirdos. Fake Gamer Girls podcast may give you whiplash as the host vacillate between serious discussions about women in gaming or debating whether they would smash her past Bowser. But neck injury aside, Fake Gamer Girls is a podcast guaranteed to show you a great time. Listen to the show on Spotify or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. When discussing Final Fantasy III, it's often referred to as the good one of the duo. Final Fantasy II required a mountain of grinding and injuring your friends, but III is the birth of our beloved job system. It feels like it's the sophisticated's favorite and a game that's increased in popularity over the years. But is the praise truly warranted? Starting our conversation with an overview is Dan Carnet, followed by Barry, then Aidan, and then finally Moses gives what may be a very unpopular opinion. I feel like three is the blueprint that would define what we would eventually call a Final Fantasy. I feel like it really hit on a lot of key points that later games use. to their full like first off you have a job system. I am a whore for a job system. Oh really okay. You put a job system in a game and you've just increased my amount of time I'm gonna play it by probably like 30%. I just love the customization of being able to change up your party makeup for what's best for the situation and trying to play with min maxing like okay, what's gonna work best for my team? So I mean, if Final Fantasy 3, you have a lot of the jobs that are now staples of just the Final Fantasy idiom with, you know, you have Dragoon, you have Summoner, you have various, but Dark Knight. And then you even had like end game, you had optional content for the first time in Final Fantasy 3. Like one and two, there was nothing that was really optional unless you accidentally stumbled upon Warmech. or something like that. But 3 had optional content with tangible rewards like, hey, you can now summon Leviathan. That's pretty dang awesome to have something like that in a game. And that's where it started. And I feel like that's the, to me, that's where, even though I've only played through Final Fantasy 3 once, and it was in the last two or three years, But I really feel like that was when SquareSoft really, really found something. Final Fantasy III, the next time I did get to play it was the DS remake and I played through and completed it there and I loved it. I know a lot of people give III a hard time, but I think III is underappreciated. It's short, but it's still, I feel it's underappreciated for what it did with the job system. Summoner is my favorite class and it's a first appearance, the caller as they called it. And yeah, I really like it. I love, you know, seeing the cloud of darkness, Andy, the warriors of darkness. I love that whole storyline. For me with three, one of the big things is it was almost a Final Fantasy one moment where you're going through the world and you feel you're going to beat it. Like, wow, this was short. And then you realize you're on a floating island and like, oh no, this is just a small part of the bigger map. And I'm like, oh, that was cool. I did not see that coming. I didn't either. I tried to play three on the DS, the DS version. I bounced off hard. I bounced off real hard. I didn't like job systems and I always felt like I was wasting time. And I've only recently come around to job systems to be perfectly honest, like after like Bravely Default. And now I appreciate it a lot more. I love how both two and three from a narrative perspective, they go for it. Oh yeah. They go for it. I mean, two, there's people dying left and right. There's a very tense beginning. Three, they're going for it. You have to get the floating continent and you have the different sides. By the time I did play them, like took to completion, I had already played 11 and 11 borrows 2's skill mechanic. So I was very, very used to it. And 11 also uses just like five, you know, uses 3's job system. And so... I was very like, Oh, this is like second nature to me by this point. So it was like, all right, this is easy. Let's go. But you're right from a narrative standpoint, it steps up. It's, it's funny. If you look at final fantasy one, uh, it, it had a story in it. It had a, you know, a decent story, especially for its time, but it's characters where you created the party, you know, in the official works, you have the warrior of light that we see in like the city and theater rhythm and stuff like that. worlds of final fantasy, but whenever they need a second character, it's always princess Sarah. And it's like, you know, why not have a mage of light or, you know, you know, one of the, there's six jobs, all six of them, you know, it's always the warrior and, uh, who, who's using a sword and a shield when the warrior was more like axes and, and, and bigger weapons. Um, but it's, it's, uh, it's funny. Like they had to, to use this generic war and he's, he's gained a personality over time. as the FF1 protagonist, but it's just funny. Like they didn't have that one FF2, you know, had Furion and Guy and Leon and had like actual characters to tell a story. Minwu, of course, everyone loves him. And then Final Fantasy 3 had the Onion Knights again, went back to generic. And that's one thing I loved about the three remake on the DS is it actually created characters. They're not... just generic onion nights. They are four characters. They actually have backstories and personalities. Granted, they're not the most in -depth personalities, but at least they're something. And that's why it's always weird when games like Dissidia or Theater Rhythm where it's just onion night. And it's like, why don't you use those four characters? You created these. Like if you want onion night and have alternate skins of them, fine, but at least acknowledge that you created. Characters main characters and now you're just forgetting about Final Fantasy 3 I think is great because it introduced the job system, which is the best part of Final Fantasy. Yeah. Like anything that veers away from the job system is bad in my mind. Anything that steers as closer towards the job system of Final Fantasy is good. And so like just introducing that is good. And I also just like I'm a sucker for sort of the high fantasy fairy tale -esque. story and world in Final Fantasy 3. So I really like it. The job system's not great, but the fact that it was released on the Nintendo, like the NES, like pretty impressive. It's a marvel. It's a marvel. Yeah. It laid the foundation for the best job system in the series, which is Final Fantasy 5, right? And then Final Fantasy Tactics took that as well. So yeah, I think that they all like, they're all really interesting in their own ways. I think they're varying levels of fun, especially which platform you play them on. But, but I think it's a real shame that the West never really got Final Fantasy III early on because I think it really kind of set the series identity in terms of what it would go forward to become. And then Final Fantasy V was just the best. It was so good. I like three because as a introductory to the job system, as a first stab at that kind of thing on a console, I think it's pretty successful. I think they do it better in five. Five, I think they evolve it and I think they make it better. Three is another interesting game though. I think the soundtrack to three is really good. I was surprised how good the soundtrack to three is. That was the big one for me. I was like, wow, this sounds great. Uematsu did not phone it in. You know, they're like, by the way, no, these games aren't going to America. He's like, all right, just give him the ring tone treatment. No, he he wrote full on scores for these and they're excellent. So three, you know, you go, I don't know if you have strong opinions, Bill, I have strong opinions on everything. And if I don't, I can make it up. I know three, I think is the worst numerical Final Fantasy. You know, people will say 13, at least 13 has the goal to have a story. Three, maybe there's just a curse with threes, you know, like what if Final Fantasy 23 is, is terrible as well. But yeah, no, I think that, I think that three is really truly awful. I've not played the remake. So that's off the table, you know, some people will say, well, they named the characters, there's dialogues, not talking about any of that. Talking about OG three. I again played it on on some of the re releases and was like, nah, and then and then beat it for the first time with with the pixel remaster. And that was really because I was streaming. Honestly, if I was playing it on my own, I would have bounced off of that thing. Now, pros, though, not the fact that you play as like four Power Rangers that have no personality, but. The job system, right, is a natural, logical expansion of what we saw in FF1. And it really feels like the sequel to FF1 in that regard, where you not only choose your job at the start of the game, but you can change jobs throughout the game. And I think that that system is what is integral to Final Fantasy. And so I, you know, we needed three in order to get to five, which doesn't much more elegantly, I believe. But the downside in three is that you'll have jobs that have like one use or you'll have jobs that don't really have any synergy with each other. So now I'm thinking of Final Fantasy tactics where it makes sense to have different kinds of jobs for most of the time, kind of mixed together to have a functioning team in three. Most of the game there's an objective right choice to make with the jobs despite the fact that you can interchange them. Once you get the final ones, which were, uh, was it Ninja and Sage? Yes. Sage is one of them. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure it's Ninja and Sage. Yeah. I think it was once you get those, what are you doing using anything else? There's no, there's no point. There's literally no point. Uh, Dragoon. We all love Final Fantasy Dragoon. There's like one boss fight to use that on and that's it. You know, And you have to. It's almost like required. You have to. If you don't do it, it's very challenging to get through that. Yeah, 100 percent, which I'm not sure what that's trying to tell the player. You know, I'm not sure what what is kind of the point of decisions like that. They're cool on paper, you know, like if we can. Oh, what if they had to use Dragoon in order to beat this boss? And that's neat, except it makes Dragoon worthless. Ninety nine percent of the game, you know. So, again, baby steps. I can see that we had to get through it to get to where we're at. Like I said earlier, if there's one thing Final Fantasy 3 is known for is the beginnings of the job system, those beginnings are pretty great. The talk about the nuts and bolts of this mechanic is Greg, followed by John, and concluded by Nate. I feel the exact same way as what you're, I am not a big jobs, job system guy. I've never really been in a Final Fantasy game. I think the first time I tried three, I might've tried again, a translated ROM on an emulator. And it didn't do much for me. But then I played the DS version and I adored it. I loved it. I just, something about that worked for me and I played through it and I still count it as one of my favorite games in the series, but that was really the first time when the DS version came out that I gave that game any real, real time. My problem with it on the DS version was... I think I played it at a time where I wasn't going to be as charmed by the cute characters and the design, which I think I would be more now. I don't think that would bother me now. I think maybe at the time perhaps. And secondly, it was the job thing where I spent all my time, you know, my night is my night, my mage is my mage. Then all of a sudden, very early in the game, there is a section where you have to become mini to get through a certain section. Like you have to cast mini on yourself because you won't fit through the door. And when you're mini, you have no physical abilities. And I guess the game is trying to tell you, Hey, you need to have a well rounded. You can't just be a unit task or you need to be well rounded. And I remember going, Oh, forget this, forget this. What am I supposed to do? Like sit here and level everything up at all times and nothing but grind. Yes. I really jumped out. Yes. And the answer is yes. Yes. The answer is you were exactly right. That's that is, that is what you're supposed to do. I remember that game getting really difficult near the end for some reason. It's that final dungeon is insanity. It's yes complete Insanity to the point where I think I ran from every encounter at that point. I think I guess I'm the boss I think you're right I think I did the exact same thing where is this like I'm just gonna sprint to the boss and hope that I don't take too much damage on In three, I was really all about the black belt. I use black belt a lot. And I don't know why I black belt them being I want to like the lot. And going through the list and Dark Knight, I think I use quite a bit too. I like the Dark Knight a lot. And I think just the regular night I used a bunch. And then at the end, you know, when you've got when you've got, you know, two ninjas and two sages. That's it. Yeah, I think that's the. That's like the last two. Yep. Yeah. And you can use all the weapons, you can cast all the spells and yeah, you can throw stuff and you know, so that's, you know, just the ideal party, but you don't get that until the very end. If you got that a little bit sooner, I think that would have helped that game a little bit just to go through those last two dungeons instead of getting those part way through the last dungeon. So. I liked 3. I think I liked much better than 2. I think the music's a little bit better overall. And I did like how in 3 I wasn't expecting to be on an island and then have the whole world open up and it's like, oh no, this is just like the beginning of the game. I did really enjoy that. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah, I've never played the DS version, so... I don't know how to compare that to how it was on the Famicom or the Pixelware Master, but I did enjoy the Pixelware Master and I do think that one is definitely worth playing. Two is up in the air. I would play through everything else first, if you've never played it, and then maybe try to just to see what it's all about. Yeah, I consider it a very supplemental material. I think you can get through to... In like, I think 15, I play games slow relatively. I think I threw 15 hours maybe for two, probably the same for three. We're not at the point where we're at these like 60, 80 hour things. No, we're not there yet. You know, but so there's no, yeah. Even even four, I think is like what a 20 to maybe a 30 hour game at most. Like if you're just really wandering around, just trying to get to like level 99, maybe. We're up on time, but I just want to maybe spend a little a few couple minutes talking about Final Fantasy 3 and your and your thoughts on that game Especially the job system. What's your what's your take on three? I like I like three I think five does a better job with the job systems overall but three has some very interesting uses of the job system like the one where you have to Cast mini mini on yourself. And so you're very like weak through that whole dungeon, so you want everybody to just be like mages and use magic. So I think they have some very cool situations with the job system. Yeah, I never loved job systems until I played Bravely Default, and then I was like, oh, okay, I think I kinda get this now. And that made going to Final Fantasy III and V much more palatable, you know, a couple years ago when I did it, for sure. Yeah, I was... I was like, yeah, job systems are cool, but like, you know, I think they penalized it way too hard with just like having you weak, like, because then I never wanted to experiment with new jobs because you would have to go through some fights. Exactly. Underpowered. And it's like when you're near the end of the game and you're unlocking like the final set of jobs, it's like, oh, I don't want to switch because then, you know, like I could I could take a nasty hit and die and then I have to waste resources. It's just like, I'm just going to stick with what I got. Yeah. Yep. And that's always the trap I fall into when it comes to the job system is like, well, why would I start from scratch on something? And I love the way Five does it because Five, nothing you can apply skills from old jobs to your current suite. So if you have something you really like, you can keep it. And I think that's amazing. It's such a smart way of implementing the job system. I think it's great. It keeps everything current. You're never really wasting time. You're still developing abilities. Yeah, I think it's I think it's really a very smart way of of doing it But three I think sets some really great ground rules, and I think it's it's again It's got a really the story is fun. You have Zanday. I think it is is the antagonist. He's uh yeah You know I got another big bad. I just remember I just remember. I think this is the first Final Fantasy where they Have like a fake out baddie cuz like at the end of the game. It's the cloud of darkness That's all I remember. I couldn't tell you. Is the Cloud of Darkness is the main big bad at the end of the game, correct? It is one of the first ones where they had the fake out. Which that, I mean, I know we've talked about the music. That music for the Cloud of Darkness is so cool. Like it's like a prom song. Yes. It's incredible. So many like waves, I guess. I'm like, this is crazy. Yes, that theme is ridiculously good. It's actually known in Final Fantasy world as like beloved that is so good. Oh, yeah, so it's a well I always feel weird when I'm just like I Don't know where it's like how many people probably played three because I never came out here until like later So I like but the the boss team the final boss team and that is really good than just stats and levels, Final Fantasy III also has some big moments that stuck in our collective brains. Let's rejoin Nate and Dan Karnet as they share some of their favorites. Were there any standout moments of III that you remember vividly? Did you want to share? Yeah, so like when I was playing, you know, like I was once again, I was using a walkthrough because I was trying to go through all of these. Right, right, right. Before you know, I was like I got to do all of them before 16 comes out, you know And I spoiled myself on one moment like but just reading it like, you know I was like looking at bosses like just a boss list and there were two characters and I don't remember their names but like I had already met them and I was like, oh I was like, so these guys are actually bad guys and then it turns out no, they are they sacrifice themselves? so that you can get stronger to take on the cloud of darkness. And I wish I could remember their freaking names. But oh, yeah, that moment stood out to me that it wasn't just a standard switcheroo. You know, they were like, no, you have to kill us. And like when kind of your characters are like, no, we're not going to do it. And then they start attacking you with like powerful spells. They're like, you kill us or you die. You know? Yeah. which I thought that was kind of a, that was a powerful moment, you know, it was just like, dang. They don't mess around. They're not messing around. Did you play the DS version? I did. Did you like it? I couldn't stand it. I tried it of its time when it was released and I'm like, yeah, this is not for me. Again, jobs. It just messes with me. Yeah, it was fine. I was frustrated by like, because I guess the best class, the Onion Knight is locked behind stuff that you can't do now. Yes. Yes. Like the DS wireless stuff, which sucked, you know. But I thought it was fine. The gin. boss battle at the very beginning kicked my ass like I wasn't expecting that you know cuz I was like oh this is the first boss you know like there'll be like some tough moments but not this guy was like attacking twice in a row like lighten my team up and I was like I gotta go grind yeah yeah requires a lot of that for sure Yeah, I think I always like to say that two and three basically combined square took two and three, I guess pieces of one, two, but really two and three and combined it to make took the best aspects of both and made for and of course for is I would say perfect, but it's it's it's amazing how good that game plays still. I'm going to talk about another day. I want to spend a lot of time on for any standout moments from three when you played it most recently in that in that playthrough. I think the biggest standout moment for me is how they play with the different worlds where you start off and you're like on this floating island. But, you know, to me it kind of plays with perspectives because you don't realize that you're just on this island. Yeah. And it kind of reminded me of... Like hypothetically, if you were doing, was it World of Warcraft and you did like a panda, you're on the back of like a turtle and you don't realize that until you get to the point where you are leaving said island and or turtle. And that's kind of an interesting idea to me because you could relate that into life and that, you know, your world is only as big as what you see and what you do until you do something different. That's a really interesting way of putting that. I really like that. I think that's a very interesting way of expressing. Yeah, that's really interesting. I think that's really cool. You're right. You only know as much as you're exposed to. And one of the beautiful things about Final Fantasy and especially, and especially three, cause three, if I remember correctly, that's the one where you can kind of go off the map. Did it have the underground in that one? I can't, again, they. I played them fast a year and a half ago. So they kind of meld together a bit. So three is the one with the flooded map. That's it. Yes, the flooded map. I love that concept of. that discovery that is very rare and rare in a game that of that vintage, you know, we're still talking. Well, Final Fantasy three was 90 maybe 1990. I was saying something like that. Yeah. 8990. Yeah. It's, it's still really early on to have that kind of, um, just that sense of adventure and discovery. Yeah. The funny thing about Final Fantasy three is that it was coming out, uh, in Japan. The same year as Final Fantasy one was coming out in the States Wow, that's how that's how long it took to localize it but also how quickly they put out the next ones and thus to explain it to everybody is why the numbering system was messed up for us as kids because Because we didn't get it until thriving three was basically already done and they needed a they needed to really put everything forward for the for for Since Final Fantasy 3 was the last of the 8 -bit games to get a state -side release, the hype was pretty high when it finally reached these shores. Long story short, we end up getting quite a few of them. To talk about the different versions of Final Fantasy 3 and wrap up this episode is Games with Coffee, followed by John, then Moses, and finally Mike of the Distorted Illuminations YouTube channel makes a last -minute appearance on the show. to share a very quick, yet important truth. So yeah, 3i played that through the Nintendo DS. So this was an enhanced version of... hyper -advanced version, we'll just call it. It was basically a remake of the original Final Fantasy III. So 3... We still had the dichotomy between light and darkness and stuff like that, but the characters in 3 originally, they were much more generic. They were more similar to characters in Final Fantasy 1 where you just name them and there you go, there's your characters, set them off on adventure and go nuts. For the DS version, they actually tried to underpin a story within the realm of Final Fantasy 3. So you have four characters. Let me see if I remember. I remember the first character's name is Luneth. And I feel like the girl character her name is Maria or Mara or something. I don't remember. I gotta look it up again. But yeah, four characters, they're each individually named. They have their own individual personalities and that sort of thing. In fact, even the fourth character actually, the fourth character is a knight for prince, a knight under Princess Sarah. Who was in, yeah, this was in Final Fantasy. This was in, yeah. So when you have to go fight the genie. in that village to free everybody from the from petrification. Right, right, right. He joins you from the castle and he becomes your fourth party member and from there you go on, you rescue Princess Sarah, free the villagers, defeat the genie, that sort of thing, and then he joins your party as your fourth character. So I was like, oh, okay, that's different. And then from there, it's again, it's on the DS so you can use the Silas to choose commands and stuff like that. But what was really interesting and really limiting, I would say, about the DS version was the network communication stuff that was included in that. So playing off of Final Fantasy IX, they had like this magnet mail delivery system where you can connect. your DS to the internet using the Nintendo, the Nintendo Wii networking. So let me say this right now, dongle. Dongle. Yeah. So they had the Nintendo, they had the Nintendo, the proprietary networking dongle, which you connect to the computer, then you connect your switch, your connect your DS, sorry, to the dongle. And then you can access the internet from there and you can, basically trade mails with different players, with different DS owners. And then depending on the number of mails that you send and receive, corresponds to new and unique side quests, new jobs that you can pick up, and even the most powerful weapons and armor. I think they were locked in this mail system. So it's like, okay. Interesting. So there are certain jobs you couldn't get unless you were engaging in the mail system. Yeah, wow. That's really OK. I played for the first time on the DS version when it came out. Okay, I couldn't I couldn't stand it I was like, what is this again like little chibi characters? I didn't like the job system. I didn't I just I didn't like it So what was your take when you played three for the first time? so I actually Got it on one of my old cell and I still have it on one of my old smartphones and Because you know trying to play NES games on a smartphone is very difficult, unless it's an RPG, because you don't have to be very precise with your button inputs. You can be very deliberate on how you're pushing things. So to me, that was great. You know, I can save it whenever I want and, you know, do save states and, oh, this boss really killed me, or, you know, I need to do something else. So I can go back into my save state, load it up and either try something different or go get something else and go back and do it again. The reason 3 intrigued me is because when I learned about that it had the job system, I loved the job system in 5. And I got the Final Fantasy anthology that has 6 and 5 on the PS1 and really enjoyed the way that job system works. So I was curious to see how it originated. And I liked 3 a lot, even playing it on the phone. I really enjoyed the job system. The thing that does suck in that original version though is if you change jobs, you get penalized if you go into a different kind of job. So if you're a fighter and then you go into a wizard role, you lose a bunch of your battle points I think or your ability points. And that was frustrating. Whereas like in the pixel remaster, they've taken all that out. You can change jobs as much as you want to. And it doesn't matter what type of job it is, you can go into it and it's fine. You're not being, like I said, you're not being penalized anyway. So I appreciate that. But the story... It... It does try to take a step forward, but it also takes a step back at the same time because you're playing unnamed characters. And yes, when you first start and seeing the little chibi characters, it's like, yeah, what is this? But once you start giving them jobs and you can see what they're supposed to be, okay, yeah, you can be a fighter, you can be a mage, you can be a monk, you can, you know, you get to be a dragoon for the first time, a dark knight. So... Seeing all the different sprites that you can be in that game, I thought was kind of fun. And granted, there are some characters or some jobs that are, to me, are just useless. It's like, I don't want to use this. Don't make me be... I'm even trying to think of what, to me, are some of the more worthless jobs. Was it like a... Is it a scholar? Or maybe that's in five. Know I know you were like The one I'm thinking of maybe it's in three and five it looks like so you're wearing like a dumb hat like you're wearing a Like a beanie with a little ball on the top of top of your head. Oh Gosh, I can't remember right now. Is that the chemist it might be the or the the geomancer? Maybe? Geomancer is definitely in three. That thing is useless. Yeah, so like, you know, there's times that you have to be that. And it's like, I don't want to be that. Yeah, Geomancer has the little like, toque thing that has the pom pom on top of it. Yes, yes. I didn't know how many people understand toque, so I tried to avoid it. I grew up in North Dakota and like two miles from Canada. So like, I know what a toque is. Yeah. But yeah, I mean Overall, I enjoyed three now. I didn't know this at the time when I was playing it on my phone that the whole last Bit like the last two hours of the game You cannot save anywhere in there So like you like from the time you save the game from outside of the last dungeon and it's like the the done The dungeon that goes into the last dungeon, like you have to go through all of that. And I didn't know that until way later. And I was like, oh God, that would have been terrible trying to go through that for the very first time. Like on the original NES, like you couldn't use save states or something like that. So for those people that played that on the Famicom traditionally, God bless you. Yeah, I can't imagine. I don't think I would have wanted to do that. No again for the pixel remasters. It's you know you you've got some more options you can save it and Not have to go all the way back Now I guess the option you could do is every time you fight a boss You can go all the way back and save it and then go home all the way. You know where you were and keep going Yeah, who wants to do that though? No, no not many people? Now the real clincher, well besides for the story being middling at best, it's hard to, you know, I think they tried for like a grander story, but if you're still using kind of stock characters like with FF1, it just does not, there's nothing really there. Yeah, but the clincher is that ending dungeon. Holy crap. Oh, the just my brain hurts just from thinking about it. It is. I think is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. And to think that in the original version, there were no save points. And you have you have a final boss who spams like a like a death move that that hits everybody. Well, not like a death move, but like a really dangerous move that hits everybody. Yeah. It's just nuts. Imagine spending like four hours in that dungeon, not knowing where you're going, because this pre internet, you don't have any maps or nothing unless Nintendo power got you back or something like that. Uh, you're just going to be wandering around and then you get to the final boss and boom cloud of darkness wipe. I'd have been pissed off. Yeah. And I died in that dungeon on the, on the pixel remastered version. So it would have happened to me as well. It's, it, it's one of those, again, those challenge spikes that Defines and people calling NES hard, you know, like yeah, it's hard, right which you know I think is again extremely subjective, but that's where it's unfair. Right? Yeah, that's that's NES unfair Right, right, right doesn't have anything to do with what people usually say like oh they were more like arcade games So they made them really hard or whatever. No, it's just a mean -spirited cruel dungeon four hours I think it took me like three and a half hours to get through it or something like that. It is way too long of a period of time to allow the player not to have a save point. Um, it's insane. Yeah. And then even with having save points on the pixel remastered version, um, and, and all that, it's just not fun. It's just not fun. That's exactly where you land on that. This is just not, this is not a good time for me. Yeah. It's basically you butting your head up against, you know, a bunch of random encounters. and some pretty brutal boss fights up until a final boss that uses one move. And and that's it. So it feels like a lot of work for nothing ultimately, except to say I've beaten Final Fantasy three. You know, it turns into a checkbox on the list. Yeah. And and, you know, again, I did it a year and a half ago when the pixel remasters came out. By the way, the pixel remasters, did you know that up until very recently? The steam versions of the pixel remasters did not have all the fun sliders. The switch version has or the physical versions have. I don't know if I forgot about that or not. What you mean like sliders like what sliders like I can increase experience points or I'd like to shut the shadow. I call them sheets, but the the boosters may be a better way of putting it. She's the one I want to anybody. Cause I was going through two and three, three especially. And I'm like, all right, where are my cheats? I gotta get through this damn game. And everyone's like, oh, just turn the cheats on. Just turn them on. Makes your life easier. And I am hunting through this menu, Red. I'm hunting this menu. I'm like, I am not, I'm an intelligent human being for the most part. I am literate in video games. Why can't I find these cursed cheats? And then sure enough, I'd look up and the steam version, Did not have them. They just added those a couple of months ago via update. It's like wow. I would have been helpful a year and change ago when I was like grinding my way through Final Fantasy three. Yeah, I just random. Yeah, the thing is, as a conjuring up all memories of playing that game, that's where that's where maybe like mods and things would help. I guess. Yeah, I don't know. But yeah, what a what a pain in the neck that game, you know? Again, I stuck with it because I was streaming it, but I really do think it's the worst of the numericals And I say numericals specifically folks some people get on me for that. It's a huge series I mean the franchise has the franchise has like over a hundred games easily, but you just don't include the main 16 I kind of have to put three in a similar spot because mechanically a lot of those systems, it's just what five did but not as good. No, I totally get it. Yeah, five is, I love the way five treats its job system. I think it's a really successful one. So yeah, that was two and three. They were trying new things. I don't think it did a good job because there was no precedent for anything they did, but it allowed them to figure out how to do it and they... did it better in the years to come. After listening through these clips and constructing this episode, I thought Mike summed it up perfectly. Final Fantasy 2 and 3 were natural evolutions of a franchise searching for an identity. Kind of like Castlevania 2 or Mario 2, there was no formulaic expectations for either game when they came out in Japan. But that doesn't mean we can't evaluate them as individual games, even if we agree to grade them on a curve. And while I acknowledge both the positives and negatives of these forgotten 8 -bit adventures, one thing is for absolute certainty. Final Fantasy I, II, and III all Voltron'd together to create a stone -cold classic in 1991 on the Super Nintendo. Come back in two weeks to hear all about it. Thank you so much for listening to this edition of A Gamer Looks At 40. If you haven't done so already, go to www.agamerlooksat40 .com for links to all the episodes, full playlists of all of our series, and links to all the social media. My main social media right now is Twitter slash X, but I'm also pretty active on TikTok and Instagram and other places. I try to put the feelers out there everywhere so please follow me on all of those platforms like you do everybody else and who knows maybe a message or a post or a video will come across your timeline and brighten your day. I don't know. That is the hope. That is the goal. Thanks again for checking out the show. Many thanks to Pete Harney and Kev from the Discord for editing these interviews. These shows would not happen without you. Thank you so much for listening and until next time. Just please, please, please be kind to yourselves and each other.