The Final Fantasy Uber-Mega-Challenge of Doom (Series Playthrough) *Spoilers*

Well Everyone... as this challenge is coming close too it's one year milestone... I may have finally been broken. I've been playing Final Fantasy the 4 heroes of Light for almost a month now.. and I just can't keep playing it. I can't. I can't take more than ten minutes of the damn game without wanting to rip out my hair because it's so damn boring. It's certainly not the worst game in the series, in fact I've already easily completed several worse games in the challenge so far.. but something about this game just... is a huge roadblock for me, and I admit upfront that I am defeated. I give up. More than 2/3s of the way through the game and I just can't take any more

The real question is... what does this mean for the challenge? And my answer is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ^^. I'm going to continue as planned by moving on to FFX-2 (A game which at this point looks not only decent but like it may very well contain the salvation of my very soul after how much of Final Fantasy the 4 Heroes of Light I've had to slog through). I am still going to make this a complete challenge... eventually I WILL go back and complete the 4 Heroes of light but.. I just can't take it right now... So starting tomorrow I'm moving onto Final Fantasy X-2... and 4 Heroes of Light.. well.. I will get back to that one when I have too...

Well Everyone... as this challenge is coming close too it's one year milestone... I may have finally been broken. I've been playing Final Fantasy the 4 heroes of Light for almost a month now.. and I just can't keep playing it. I can't. I can't take more than ten minutes of the damn game without wanting to rip out my hair because it's so damn boring. It's certainly not the worst game in the series, in fact I've already easily completed several worse games in the challenge so far.. but something about this game just... is a huge roadblock for me, and I admit upfront that I am defeated. I give up. More than 2/3s of the way through the game and I just can't take any more

 

The real question is... what does this mean for the challenge? And my answer is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ^^. I'm going to continue as planned by moving on to FFX-2 (A game which at this point looks not only decent but like it may very well contain the salvation of my very soul after how much of Final Fantasy the 4 Heroes of Light I've had to slog through). I am still going to make this a complete challenge... eventually I WILL go back and complete the 4 Heroes of light but.. I just can't take it right now... So starting tomorrow I'm moving onto Final Fantasy X-2... and 4 Heroes of Light.. well.. I will get back to that one when I have too...

Xx_Kares_xX

I was hoping you could finish 4HoL :P. But I understand you leaving it for a while :) . Btw I know I have asked this beore.. but do you have a PSN account? if you do, i could join you when you reach FFXIII-2... its still branded new, getting dust in my table since it was lunched :?

Thanks for the support, I thought the union was completely dead again. I do have a PSN account, and I believe it's the same as my username here, I go online so infrequently that it's hard to remember ^^'. How would you be able to join me though? Isn't it a single player game? I feel rather dumb right now because I'm not sure what you mean. If you are willing too fill me in I'd be happy to have you join me ^^ lolXx_Kares_xX

My account is angelbless45 :)... well I was saying more of a "I can play with you at the same time" :P

Oh Awesome ^^ lol. You don't have to wait for me.. I still have 10 games to complete before I get to FFXIII-2... and all of them are long games... but if you still haven't gotten too it that would be very fun ^^.

On a side note, I've been making progress on FFX-2... very.. strange progress. To make the game different for myself and to try out some dresspheres I've never used before, I decided to do my playthrough with new game plus, which resets your levels but lets you keep your items and such. Well, I'm only half way through chapter one and my part members are all already level 30 thanks to lady luck and the 'enemy lure' item @.@. Needless to say this has turned into an interesting and very OP playthrough, so my review of the game will have to be based on my old memories of playing the game the first and second time as well as what's happening with this playthrough ^^'

Well everyone I've got a challenge update for you. I jsut completed FFX-2 which means you can expect another review soon! On the other hand it also means that I am stuck with 4 Heroes of Light all over again, which I am dreading. On the other hand it could mean I will want to stall playing the game and that my review will come out sooner because of it but who knows.

Anyway, so you all know what the schedule of the challenge is looking like, My goal is to finish 4 Heroes of light as I've left that game waiting long enough, but I'm not yet sure if I'm going to play Chocobo Dungeon on the Wii first or move straight onto FFXII after 4 Heroes of Light is done. Either way that's the plan. I kind of want to get through Chocobo Dungeon first as then i won't have any real spin off games left to think about for the entirety of the remaining challenge (since the tactics games are part of Ivalice I don't really count them as spin-offs) but on the other hand I don't know if I can handle that game right after 4 Heroes, so we will have to see. Thanks for your continued support and I hope you enjoy the review once I post it.

Anyway... time to slog through some more boring dungeons.

Hey everybody, I've got a challenge update for you. It seems I'm making up for lost time, I just finished 4 Heroes of light... since it's a spin-off I won't be doing a full review on it, but I suppose I should write a mini one here, especially since I've been saying such bad things about it.

First off, I have to give credit where credit is due... Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light is beautiful. I absolutely love the graphical style they chose and the music is also pretty good. Not all of the music is particularly memorable but there are a few tracks that really stick out and the rest is entertaining enough to get by. There are amazing graphical touches such as fields of grain blowing in the wind that really help to emphasize the effort put into the game, and I also love how every piece of equipment is physically shown on your character so your appearance changes with different pieces of armor. I know it's a small detail but it takes a lot of effort and it's still fairly rare in RPGs. The story on the other hand is pretty generic and not at all memorable, but it doesn't need to be, this is an Oldschool RPG at heart and the story is just kind of there to string the dungeons together. 

Now we dive into the gameplay, and I don't really know how to start this but by saying that Matrix Software was SO CLOSE to making a great game. They were so very close to creating something memorable and amazing, and with just a few balancing tweaks it would have been, but there are so many minor flaws that stack on top of one another that really make the game suffer to the point where I can only reccomend it to the most hardcore of oldschool RPG players, and it's tough for me to even reccomend it to them if I'm going to be perfectly honest. 

First off, the game has a very unique battle system that doesn't use standard magic points, instead you charge up ability points every turn and each action requires a certain amount of points to use. This creates an interesting balance between attack and defense, the problem being that the only time it ever really comes into play is boss fights, and those are complete crap shoots. Boss Battles never felt strategic, in fact, It almost always came down to pure, blatant luck as to whether or not you would survive a round of attacks because bosses have several hits per turn, and they almost always gang up on just one opponent (oh, and by the way, they are actually PROGRAMMED to have a higher chance of hitting mage characters, so say goodbye to your healer). The normal response to this would be to go level grind, but guess what? That doesn't help in 4 Heroes of Light because the enemies level with you, meaning that the enemies actually become MORE difficult as you get stronger. Despite this the game still forces you to grind as money is very hard to come by, and so are the gems that you have to have for upgrading equipment and your job classes (more on that later). So really the game works against you at every turn and all of these systems (which I admit sound AMAZING in theory and would make for a very interesting game) actually clash with each other and create a maddeningly annoying  combination. The lack of save points don't help the matter, you can only save when talking to one person, and there is usually only one save point per dungeon (right before the boss of said dungeon at least.. so there's a little mercy) but you can't even save on the world map which just seems illogical. When all it takes is for the enemy battles to get lucky once and get a preemptive strike to wipe your party, the lack of save spots is really infuriating. To add to that you spend more than half the game with parties of only 1 to 2 characters, leaving you extremely vulnerable no matter your level or equipment. At least the game gives you some mercy, when your party is wiped you are sent to the last town you visited and you keep the items you collected and the experience you've gained, but your gems (which I've already mentioned you need to use to level up your weapon/armor and job classes) get halved, meaning you get to do even MORE grinding, which makes you gain experience, which makes the enemies MORE difficult and the cycle continues.

The dungeon design in this game is also rather uninteresting (with a couple exceptions) and causes even more boredom with it's fairly high encounter rate, and LARGE emphasis on back tracking. This is one of those RPGs where the second half of the game has you traveling through ALL of the same dungeons again and I HATE it when games do this, it is the most pathetic form of useless padding an rpg can have.  Now as I said, there were a couple dungeons that I actually liked, namely the ones that put limitations on your party such as forcing you to be animals or.. in the case of the last dungeon which I loved, taking away ALL of your job classes and making you when them back through boss battles. It was another example of the game forcing you to be strategic, and in this case it actually worked, it's just depressing that the rest of the game didn't.

 This game is also full of cryptic and hidden things that you would never possibly get without a walkthrough. every town has 8 hidden items that are COMPLETELY invisible on the map, meaning the only way to find them is to push the 'A' button with every step you take and literally check every damn corner. This isn't fun... this is annoying as hell and just one example of the type of tricks the game uses on you. Yes most of this is optional but the game constantly taunts you with them by having characters say, "find all the items!

 As for the job system (or 'Crown' system in this game) There are a large number of jobs you can choose from and each one has special abilities relating to that job that you can only get by upgrading your classes with gems.  It's pretty simple really, thiefs get increasingly powerful 'steal' abilities, Black mages get magic buffs and damaging spells etc. Each time you pick a job you can pick and choose which abilities you want equipped but you can only have 6 abilities per character, which once again forces you to be strategic. I actually liked this aspect because I had to leave some spells behind that I thought could be useful to the situation. On the other hand, there is no real reason to limit yourself to certain classes because any character can equip any spell, and this bugged the hell out of me. Yes the white mage has an added benefit to white magic (it costs one less AP to use any spell, which is very useful) But the ability for anyone to use any spell takes a huge chunk of strategy out of the game. There is also a limit of only 15 items per character (and that includes your 4 pieces of equipped equipment) so the game really stressed item management which I liked as well. The problem with the jobs however is that very few of them are actually useful, and it takes a lot of gems to upgrade each class, meaning that experimentation is not encouraged, and is actually at times rather difficult. 

The game is balanced in such a way that leveling up just your crowns and your characters won't get you anywhere you HAVE to level up your equipment.. in fact, having strong equipment is even more important to the game than having powerful characters which is a rather irritating system that causes, you guessed it, even MORE grinding for gems. Not to mention the upgrade system itself is SO monotonous. You have to individually insert each and every gem into the weapons/armor/crown you are upgrading which isn't bad when you are only doing it a couple times. But you have to insert anywhere from 6 to 10 gems per piece of equipment and you have to do that over and over again every time you level something up. I spent so much time doing this that my thumbs literally became sore from inserting gems x.x It has to be one of the most annoying upgrade systems I've ever seen.

Well this has become a lot longer than I had originally planned, so I will end it here. Basically the game had a great deal of potential and VERY good ideas but when put together they were really unbalanced and conflicted in a way that made the game unenjoyable.  The pacing in the game is awful and the amount of padding from backtracking and grinding makes up for more than 1/2 of the games length, I really can't reccomend it to anybody except the most hardcore of oldschool rpg players.

Well, now that I've gotten that out of my system, onto Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Dungeon for the wii! Oh, and for the two of you that may be curious, My Final Fantasy X-2 Review is about half way done. That's all for now! Thanks for the continued support on this challenge!

Hey guys, here's another small challenge update for you. I'm about a third of the way through Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Dungeon. The real reason for this post however is to point out a small change in the game order for the Ivalice Alliance Section of the challenge.

Originally I wanted to play the games in 'chronlogical' story order, but after I thought about it more, I'm thinking that may be a bad idea. For one, I have found a lot of success in the cahllenge with staggering handheld and console titles, and more importantly than that.. I'm thinking that playing three Tactics games back to back will be VERY draining. So basically, my plan is to start playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance at the same time I'm playing Final Fantasy XII, though Final Fantasy XII WILL be my main focus. Anyway, so that's that... I may actually start up Tactics Advance a little bit before I start FFXII because I am going to be traveling a bit over the next two weeks while I get ready for my trip to Anime Expo. (Another reason for this change up) anyway, it's not a big deal, just something I wanted to point out. Thanks again everyone ^^

I have to say, 4 Heroes of Light sounds like a horrible and painful experence when everything is working against you. It says something, but I may go as far as to say that may kill I Wanna Be the Guy as an infurating game if it is as you express.

I should probably just start FFXII now, so that I have a chance of finishing the game when you do. (Im a Turtle, you are a Ferrari, Im a Turtle...) 

Nooooo lol I wanna be the guy is still more frustrating (but in another way it's a bit more fun because in I want to be the guy it all comes down to personal skill... in 4 Heroes you are left to a lot of luck.. so I guess it's just depends on your own opinion)

Lol if you'd like to start you can, you may beat it before me as I have a lot of stuff going on this month like getting ready for anime expo!! I'm super excited lol. Anyway, FFXII is a game I'm not as familiar with but I'm highly looking forward to playing through it again.

Your turtle comment made me laugh out loud

Hey guys! I jut finished up Final Fantasy Tactics Advance which means one more game in the challenge is down.  Because of my busy schedule lately, I decided that I will be playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 right away at the same time I'm playing Final Fantasy XII

Now for a mini review of FFTA. The game hasn't held up quite as well as I remember but over all it's still a solid game. It makes for a great beginning tactics game for those who are interested in the genre, but the story is rather weak and it has the same problem every tactics game does where the difficulty curve is terrible. The beginning starts challenging, the middle is about average and by the end you are one-shotting every enemy and boss you come across, which made the game increasingly more boring as I went along (though to be fair I did all 310 missions... which means I had to grind more than most people would in a normal playthrough) And of course like every game ever made with a job system mechanic some jobs are wildily and obscenely more powerful than others, so it's very easy to break the game. A lot of people like to complain about the Judge and Law system, which penalizes you or rewards you on certain days for using certain abilities, but the award if very minor (a Judge Point, which can be used to use some super powerful attacks) or on the negative end, you could be sent to jail, lose out on all the rewards for the battle, and if your main character gets sent to jail it's an automatic game over. I personally only found the laws annoying in a couple moments (as they become increasingly more restrictive as you go through the game) but I generally liked the restrictions they put on my party and forced me to fight in ways I normally would not. There are also items you can get called 'anti laws' that let you manually change the laws to your liking which creates for an interesting bout of strategy where you can actually limit your Oponent's abilities, so really as much as people like to whine about that, I think it's an overblown thing that people complain too much about.

The thing that really got annoying for me were the dispatch missions, issions where you have to send off members of your party to do automated missions that get completed when enough 'days' pass, enough battles pass or enough enemies are killed. I got to a point in the game where I'd done all of the combat missions in the game that were available and I had to keep sending my strongest party members out, and I had to go take on a team of five with just my party leader to be the most efficient I could in taking out these annoying dispatch missions. You can recruit new clan members just to send them on these missions, but their chances of completion are slim unless the characters are a high level, and Tactics games by their very nature are built with the attitude that you should have a routine and specialized party of about 6 people who you always use, or they won't be strong enough to continue on, so once again you have to handicap yourself to do these missions by getting rid of your good party members. It wasn't game breaking by any means, just sort of annoying, especially since there are so many of them.

What really botherd me about this game was the story, which I'm going to spoil here (what little there is to spoil.. this is NOT like the original FFTactics and the story isn't really the focus here. To make this as short of a summary as I can, basically four friends get ahold of a magic book in the real world, and the owner of the book wishes the world could be like their favorite Video Game, 'Final Fantasy'. And the book obliges, so all of the friends are put into a final fantasy world. You play as a boy Named Marche who joins a clan and instantly begins his adventure trying to do whatever he can to find his way home.

Now the problem with this stems from the fact that he is the ONLY one who wants to go home, and it's made even more frustrating because throughout the entire game he can NEVER come up with a good arguement for why, yet he continues forward, literally destroying the very crystals that make up the worlds existing, meaning that to go back to his own world he is going to kill hundreds of thousands of people as well as breaking the hearts of all of his friends. In this game you play the bad guy.. and it would have been rather intelligent if it was intentional but it's not. The basis of the story is that you should not let illusions control your life and you shouldn't succumb to escapism, and yet the game never once explains why or gives you any reasoning, so really you just play Captain Douche The Destroyer of the World  and there's no motivation that you can get behind. Even the main characters life sucked in the real world and he admits multiple times he prefers this new world... It just baffles me and I forgot the story was so bad.

Anyway I guess that's all for now, I'm finally going home tomorrow which means I can get back to Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales, thanks again for all the support ^^

Not sure if you know this but FFIV was recently released for the android (and probably iphone etc). It's in 3d like the other mobile ports. Not sure if there's anything extra in them but I think the characters are now voiced.

Hey guys, I've got a challenge update for you. I just completed Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Dungeon, now before I give my mini review of this game I feel like I should give you my stance on the Rogue-Like Genre as a whole.

If you don't know what a rogue-like is, it is a very specific genre of dungeon crawling that is known for randomly generated dungeons and certain limitations such as dying makes you lose all your items and a hunger mechanic. They are known for being brutally difficult and very luck based in nature. If you want a better description I suggest you use the search engine of your choice and look it up because I'm sure I didn't do a very good job of it. 

Anyway, I personally have never been a fan of Rogue-likes. The the few that I've played have driven me mad with a mix of extreme boredom and frustration that pushed me into such levels of madness that I wanted to put my head through a brick wall. You see in most rogue-likes involve VERY little skill, and whether or not you live or die comes purely down to luck because everything from where enemies will spawn, to the level lay out to the item drops are completely random, and since the games move in a turnbased fashion, it's not the type of situation where you can get by just by being a skilled gamer. 

All of that having been said... you may be very surprised to here that I enjoyed Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Dungeon from beginning to end. Not only did I enjoy it, but I couldn't put the game down, which is in stark contrast to Chocobo Dungeon 2 on the PSOne which I could not stand playing.  

The game kept too all of the usual rogue like conventions, but it appears a great deal more time was spent balancing the game properly. I would argue this game is easier than most roguelikes and some people may not like that but I thought it was highly enjoyable. The game also kept itself interesting by giving you bonus dungeons that set certan restrictions on you to make things more difficult. I must admit a couple of these are ridiculously cheap and difficult (going through an entire dungeon without getting hit ONCE while blind is one in particular that I found a bitch to get through)  but they ARE optional so it's hard to complain about. 

The presentation on the game is also good, the graphics are charming and adorable in almost a sickly way, and though the voice acting isn't always top notch I thought it was passible and fit the aesthetic of the game well. 

 The thing that REALLY stood out for me in this game though was the beautiful soundtrack. It consists almost entirely of remixed soundtracks from past final fantasy games and I LOVED listening too it so much that I actually went online and bought a copy of the soundtrack.

Anyway, that's really all when it comes to that. Sadly as far as my challenge goes, I'm going to be away from home for the next two weeks as I prepare for and then go to Anime Expo... which means that I won't be able to start FFXII quite yet. On the other hand, it means that I can work on Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2, so some progress will still be made. Anyway that's all for now, thanks again for all the support.

Well Kares, I Just beat Cid and Famfrit on top of Pharos at Ridorana, done most of the hunts (Carrot is finaly easy because I know where the Ribbon are). Looking forward to your review of it, I may give you fight over stuff that I think you missed on. FFXII means more to me than most of the games in the series, so make it good:D

(I belive we halfly started a Penelo discussion a while ago, but stopped it before we launched airstrikes at eachother. We might start that again:P 

i love leveling up. my favorite thig to do in most rpg games. On disgaea 2 I got to level 1,600. Yo can actually go past 100 on that game. love it.vegeta789

I am aware, I love the Disgaea games as well

Well Kares, I Just beat Cid and Famfrit on top of Pharos at Ridorana, done most of the hunts (Carrot is finaly easy because I know where the Ribbon are). Looking forward to your review of it, I may give you fight over stuff that I think you missed on. FFXII means more to me than most of the games in the series, so make it good:D

(I belive we halfly started a Penelo discussion a while ago, but stopped it before we launched airstrikes at eachother. We might start that again:P 

lordmew

Lol all right, I'm glad your making progress. I haven't even had time to work on FFXII yet because of my busy schedule.. and now I think I'm going to have to get through Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 before I start it... but I am looking forward to the discussion, you know I enjoy well thought out debates, and you always tend to give them. I highly enjoy our conversations because we share a respect level where we can have differing opinions and still  get along, and I find even when we differ we both have interesting things to say.

 I do believe we had a discussion about Penelo going, if I remember right you were defending her andI was saying she was pointless to the story.I have to play the game again still to see if that opinion of mine still stands.

[QUOTE="lordmew"]

Well Kares, I Just beat Cid and Famfrit on top of Pharos at Ridorana, done most of the hunts (Carrot is finaly easy because I know where the Ribbon are). Looking forward to your review of it, I may give you fight over stuff that I think you missed on. FFXII means more to me than most of the games in the series, so make it good:D

(I belive we halfly started a Penelo discussion a while ago, but stopped it before we launched airstrikes at eachother. We might start that again:P 

Xx_Kares_xX

Lol all right, I'm glad your making progress. I haven't even had time to work on FFXII yet because of my busy schedule.. and now I think I'm going to have to get through Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 before I start it... but I am looking forward to the discussion, you know I enjoy well thought out debates, and you always tend to give them. I highly enjoy our conversations because we share a respect level where we can have differing opinions and still  get along, and I find even when we differ we both have interesting things to say.

 I do believe we had a discussion about Penelo going, if I remember right you were defending her andI was saying she was pointless to the story.I have to play the game again still to see if that opinion of mine still stands.

[/QUOTE

I like that, kinda cool what you said. 

Hey guys, I've got a small update for you. I have been quite busy this past couple weeks with preparing for (and then Attending) Anime Expo this year, so the challenge didn't make much progress. I got done with about 40 missions in FFTA2, and though I'm enjoying it I just haven't had much time to play.

However the REAL purpose of this update is because at the expo I got a LOT of video games (mostly JRPGs) and within that bunch of video games I got the actual final piece to this challenge. I picked up.. and Import copy of Final Fantasy Type-0. I must admit because of the lack of an english translation this game may be very hard for me to struggle through, but I'm going to try and play through as much of it as I can to make this challenge complete. I know you guys may not care much about this addition, but I am EXTREMELY excited to be able to add this to my collection. 

In the mean time however, back to more FFTA2 along with some much needed rest. (In the past month or so I've only slept in my own house for about 5 days... I'm ready to try and recover now, luckily FFTA2 is on a handheld so i can play in bed ^^)

Hey Guys.. I have a small update for you.. well lack of an update would be more like it. I just finished mission 100 of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2... and.. I've got to say.. I'm just tired of it. I'm bored. Yes this game is more difficult than the last one (on hard mode anyway) but it's really just not doing it for me. A huge part of the problem is that I played two HUGE tactics games back to back and it's rather draining, so much so that, I'm highly considering taking a break. I don't know what I will play instead, but even as a huge RPG fan, I need something else.. I need something actiony that isn't going to take me 50 to 80 hours to complete.

Honestly, I'm debating playing some Blazblue, maybe mess around some more with my Dreamcast.. hell, even playing a Shin Megami Tensei game. Yes it's still an RPG but it's varied enough that it will cleanse my pallete of all of this Final Fantasy I've been playing. I'm a huge fan, but after this many games in a row... I just feel I need to set it aside for a while. I've done this before during this challenge, and generally it only lasts for a week or two before I come rushing back to the challenge with more vigor and excitement than before, so I'm definitely not quitting, especially this close to the end, and ESPECIALLY when I've been so looking forward to FFXII, but it's time for a breather.

Thank you all for your support!

Yeah.. there ARE ways of making the summoner useful, but you need some pretty unique items and abilities. From what I'm guessing, I'm pretty close to the end of the games main story and I still haven't found it, which means it's somewhere in the 300 bonus missions x.x And since the average player isn't going to do all of those missions, yeah the summoner is useless for most average players.. but if you REALLY want to work with it you can make them useless. x.x Anyway, I will write a mini review soon. Every change they've made in terms of gameplay was justified and I know why they made them, but they leave me with very mixed opinions, but I do think that FFTA 1 was the better game, and War of the Lions is still the best of the three.