Final Fantasy Thread

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

you know something petty i dont like about the pixel remaster of the nes/snes ff's , that squeneix took out the optional content added in later rereleases. like i want to play soul of rebirth in ff2; be able to have yang cid, the twins, and edward in my party again in ff4; and have the stupidly broken pirate class at the end of ff5 again; and go thru the extra dungeons in ff1, ff2, ff4, ff5, and ff6. but they are just not there


am i alone in this? am i being entitled and toxic. please be honest with me

The reason is always time and money. Making a definitive version of each Final Fantasy game would require mashing together various versions of games across platforms and doing some serious work. Square Enix is in the business of being lazy and exploiting your nostalgia for the series by putting the least amount of effort into these projects. They probably took the NES/SNES versions of the games as base and spruced up the graphics and called it a day. If they had any respect for their legacy and the fans that brought them success, these remasters would be the definitive versions of their games.

Edit: Or maybe they could include different versions of each game for the player to choose. But again that would require them investing serious effort into this project. Square Enix isn't about that.

 

[Lena CE]

It's kind of understandable for games like FF1 and FF2 that have various bonus dungeons spread across several versions that drastically change the balance. Trying to backport them to make them work in the original game's mechanics would be a bit of a pain in the ass and for stuff exclusive to the 3D versions of 3 and 4 it requires time not just on making them work mechanically but also artistically. The issue is inevitable when Square spent decades porting these classic games and making such big changes everytime they did so.

As far as I know games like FF5 and FF6 haven't changed much from their original entries aside from script and bonus content so I'm sure backporting the GBA goodies for them would have been far simpler. It'll never happen but I guess the only real way to please everyone without just going through all of the effort to port the optional content into the PRs in the first place would be to just have these ports be available on modern hardware so people can experience whatever version they deem best.

The Pixel Remasters are definitely not as lazy as people lambast them for, but man the cut corners are extremely apparent. Remember that ugly ass font you had to use when they launched? Yeesh... Regardless of anything, I really feel like if they wanted to go as far as taking the original releases, painting over them faithfully whilst still allowing for new details to shine through whilst also adjusting each game's balance in small yet thoughtful ways to feel authentic yet more refined, you may as well go all the way and include the content from other versions too! I get that for most people who don't engage with RPG endgames it is a total nonissue, but man I just wanna have a definitive version of these games to tell people to buy without some asterisk next to it.

Take my favorite game of all time, Final Fantasy X (no one saw that coming!). It got a mostly stellar HD port, but with things like facial animations getting lost and weird skin tone changes on characters like Tidus along with a divisive new OST, it remains a non-definitive version of the game despite all of the positives it brings to the table. The ports that came after the initial PS3/Vita releases at least let you choose between the OG or the remastered music, which is nice.

Zodiac Age is the hands down best way to play FFXII so at least they've gotten it undeniably correct on one occasion... lol

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Its quite disappointing to have the same game release ten million times and no significant changes added , proper lore for FF1 and 2 , and voice acting for all these games do it like diablo 2 where you can turn off voice acting and just read text for mr purists or something.

It be nice if they can remake all first 6 games with 3d graphics.....but if what I heard is true that FF7 remake being in the works since 2008 then I guess its going to be difficult to remake all these games why remake? Because why accept the bare minimum when its possible to turn these games into more? Now some will jump and as you know gamers optimistic attitude "but square enix will ruin it" just shut up for once huuuh gamers do nothing but say "X sucks" like bro the game isn't even out yet same story with GTA 6.....who knows? Maybe they mess it up or not and be better if not although idk if rebirth is a massive success then maybe one day I will see FF2 being good

 

[MasterEn]

proper lore for FF1 and 2

ff1 does have some lore in dissidia/012. it was very interesting, and made me sympathetic to garland; which i didn't think was something that could be done.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

ff1 does have some lore in dissidia/012. it was very interesting, and made me sympathetic to garland; which i didn't think was something that could be done.

No bro simply no....the game itself needs to have lore if it didn't hook you up on its story then why would you seek explanation somewhere else in an entirely different style of games? The game itself should tell me garland is x y z not get some lore more than 20 years after the game launched

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

FF1 and FF2 have plenty of lore. A lot of it was in manuals and supplemental material, as was common at the time of cartridges with limited space. Some of it was in the sparse dialogue in the game, though.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

I heard they started doing proper manual lore in ff4.....with backgrounds and all any documents of these old manuals you talking about?

 

[Lena CE]

I don't mind it tbh. The game was designed and written in such a barebones way that it would feel kinda forced to tack a bunch of depth or lore onto them. When I go back to FF1 I'm going back for a quick, simple, charming RPG that I can beat in a pretty short period of time. If they bogged it down with a bunch of post-hoc worldbuilding and such I just wouldn't be interested, I have a billion other games to give me more expansive stories. The handful of nuggets we do get that lead to some decent speculation on how or why certain aspects of this world are the way they are can be fun to talk about with others though.

FF2 I could see getting some more story tidbits tacked on since its clear that a lot of the story and characterization was compromised for various reasons. A longer prologue and some extra bits here and there to help certain things within the story flow would be nice, but I'm also not in any rush considering how much work they'd have to put in to take this 20ish hour game and make it a 30+ hour long game with a story that actually feels super coherent. What little bits we get are fine at driving the plot forward and much like @MasterEn I actually like that games like Dissidia helped flesh out characters like WoL, Garland and Firion. I get wanting that in the main game, but I really don't think the effort it would take to bring those tidbits into those original games would really be worth it, and the games are mostly fine without it.

One way I could phrase it is if the stories are at a 1-3 out of 10 in terms of simplicity, the amount of effort needed to take that to a 6 or 7 - let alone anything higher - to satisfy people who want a meaningful story and better worldbuilding would just be absurd. If they tried half-assing it when adding to it, neither the people who appreciate the simplicity nor the people who want something in-depth would be happy.

Hell when it comes to FF1 you can more or less get a more fleshed out version of that game's plot with FF3, a game I also appreciate for being pretty barebones.

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

I heard they started doing proper manual lore in ff4.....with backgrounds and all any documents of these old manuals you talking about?

I mean, its mostly in the game. The kingdom or Corneria, you rescue their princess from Garland, Matoya the witch, etc... there are characters and lore.

FF2 has even more lore. The wild rose rebellion, princess Hilda. The four main characters have backstories, there are side characters.

Its not much, but its something.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Quite a fair assessment I don't have much of an issue with FF1 I be fine with more interactions with NPCs and that's fine.

I talked before how FF2 could use some fleshing out won't repeat much of what I said but I don't think putting more dialogue and using already existing textures, data etc would be extremely costly heck they could take some parts of the novel you know I be happy if they translate the novel to english or arabic

 

[MasterEn]

No bro simply no....the game itself needs to have lore if it didn't hook you up on its story then why would you seek explanation somewhere else in an entirely different style of games? The game itself should tell me garland is x y z not get some lore more than 20 years after the game launched

FF1 and FF2 have plenty of lore. A lot of it was in manuals and supplemental material, as was common at the time of cartridges with limited space. Some of it was in the sparse dialogue in the game, though.

i believe it was in this thread that it was brought up that nes games were very limited in storage space. and you can cram in more text in japanese than in english. all characters were limited to 1 text box in the nes version.
game manuals were design to get around that limitation, but that stuff is nearly non-existent nowadays, and could be considered irrelevant due to the large storage space games can have today. i agree that the info should be in the game, but games had limits back then
very extreme limits.
and from what it looked like, no game in the series was ever supposed to relate to one another, let alone have sequels or prequels.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

I mean, its mostly in the game. The kingdom or Corneria, you rescue their princess from Garland, Matoya the witch, etc... there are characters and lore.

FF2 has even more lore. The wild rose rebellion, princess Hilda. The four main characters have backstories, there are side characters.

Its not much, but its something.

FF1 feels more inline with classic fantasy I think you got dwarves , elves undead etc a witch and sentient brooms im much less concerned or care about 1 since its just....1 warrior being OP early is all that matters.

But that's the problem with 2 it keeps building up to something epic but ends up dropping the ball at the last moment and dungeon design feels like trolling from the devs....it bothers me a bit that they can make FF2 story on par with 4 and even 6 but choose not to.

 

[MasterEn]

FF1 feels more inline with classic fantasy I think you got dwarves , elves undead etc a witch and sentient brooms im much less concerned or care about 1 since its just....1 warrior being OP early is all that matters.

dungeons and dragons "My boy!"
a couple of nerds from japan found out about the game and lost their shit over it. they almost got hit with a copywrite lawsuit for straight up using the beholder enemy for a boss fight in the ice cave near the launch of ff1.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

i believe it was in this thread that it was brought up that nes games were very limited in storage space. and you can cram in more text in japanese than in english. all characters were limited to 1 text box in the nes version.
game manuals were design to get around that limitation, but that stuff is nearly non-existent nowadays, and could be considered irrelevant due to the large storage space games can have today. i agree that the info should be in the game, but games had limits back then
very extreme limits.
and from what it looked like, no game in the series was ever supposed to relate to one another, let alone have sequels or prequels.

Of course comrade they were limited its 1988 doom wasn't even a thing yet.....but they got better tech in origins release and more....now that's my gripe there im not mad at the original ff2 it tried to do its best with the available tech.

 

[MasterEn]

Of course comrade they were limited its 1988 doom wasn't even a thing yet.....but they got better tech in origins release and more....now that's my gripe there im not mad at the original ff2 it tried to do its best with the available tech.

considering how much early game design is compared to the wild west, we should be glad that most of the games boot up when the power button clicks in. the fact that the game saves your progress, is playable and coherent are practically miracles by those standards back then.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Ever since cyperpunk2077 release it seems we went back to that state since modern games for some reason are buggy mess....we went back to square 1

 

[Strategist's icon Strategist Strategist]

i believe it was in this thread that it was brought up that nes games were very limited in storage space. and you can cram in more text in japanese than in english. all characters were limited to 1 text box in the nes version.
game manuals were design to get around that limitation, but that stuff is nearly non-existent nowadays, and could be considered irrelevant due to the large storage space games can have today. i agree that the info should be in the game, but games had limits back then
very extreme limits.
and from what it looked like, no game in the series was ever supposed to relate to one another, let alone have sequels or prequels.

It was really common to have most of the lore in the manuals back in the NES era. Like the NES Zelda games had almost no text in them, but the manuals had all of the backstory explaining the kingdom of hyrule, Ganon, Impa the retainer to Princess Zelda, and Zelda.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Anyway can we just appreciate that after 2 they added save points in dungeons.

 

[MasterEn]

Anyway can we just appreciate that after 2 they added save points in dungeons.

yeah, that's a very welcomed addition in any game.
no complaints here.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

Absolutely man , if you didn't have warp on you in FF2 you kinda in trouble , in 1 warp is difficult to get so the trouble is doubled.

Btw is it true if you choose to learn a spell in ff2 in battle its instantly level 8 spell?

 

[MasterEn]

Absolutely man , if you didn't have warp on you in FF2 you kinda in trouble , in 1 warp is difficult to get so the trouble is doubled.

Btw is it true if you choose to learn a spell in ff2 in battle its instantly level 8 spell?

no. there was a weird exploit in the nes version where you could grind stats like crazy in one round of battle. the stats and spells are supposed to get exp from the rank of the enemies that you fight. i think the level 8 thing is the furthest that you can get early game with the weak enemies around the starting area. you can get shields up to max before getting minwu though. i did that after getting him, but i was playing the psp version, meaning i had access to soul of rebirth.

 

[Pandaprewmaster325]

no. there was a weird exploit in the nes version where you could grind stats like crazy in one round of battle. the stats and spells are supposed to get exp from the rank of the enemies that you fight. i think the level 8 thing is the furthest that you can get early game with the weak enemies around the starting area. you can get shields up to max before getting minwu though. i did that after getting him, but i was playing the psp version, meaning i had access to soul of rebirth.

That sort of exploits is crazy and quite funny.

 

[MasterEn]

That sort of exploits is crazy and quite funny.

you just select an action and then let the game select an enemy; but instead of confirming, you cancel and repeat as much as you want. weirdly simple, but effective.

 

[Tonberry]

Does anyone know if there’s a hack of FF1 on PSP that gives it the classic magic system? I know there’s one for the GBA version, but PSP version with Vancian magic would probably be the ultimate version for me.

 

[MasterEn]

Does anyone know if there’s a hack of FF1 on PSP that gives it the classic magic system? I know there’s one for the GBA version, but PSP version with Vancian magic would probably be the ultimate version for me.

i checked a bit on google, it doesn't look like it. your best bet is to find a modding tool or editor and go in and make those changes if possible.

Post automatically merged: Feb 13, 2025

i checked a bit on google, it doesn't look like it. your best bet is to find a modding tool or editor and go in and make those changes if possible.

that's another thing that the pixel remaster could have done, a difficulty swap. play with modern rules and mechanics or play the game in old school style.