Final Fantasy 15 Review

As I mentioned in my Final Fantasy 1 review, I've been slowly working my way through Square Enix's Final Fantasy franchise over the past 15 years. Now that I'm mostly caught up, I was pretty excited to see what Final Fantasy 15 would do with cutting edge technology and all the lessons learned over the past 14+ entires. I had initially planned on picking the game up as soon as it became available on PC. However, the more I heard about its convoluted release schedule, which included multiple expansions that were still in development at the time, I found myself repeatedly kicking the can down the road. Eventually, the complete Windows version ended up being released via Xbox Game Pass.

Overview
Final Fantasy 15 represents a considerable departure from the previous entries in the series, both in terms of gameplay and aesthetics. With real-time action combat and a setting that more closely resembles the real world than the fantasy and sci-fi locations of its predecessors, FF15 goes to considerable lengths to redefine what a Final Fantasy game can be. The story focuses on Prince Noctis and his three bodyguards who are on a road trip to retrieve a set of ancient sealed weapons that they need to liberate their kingdom from an invading empire. This review is based on the PC version of the game that was released via Xbox Game Pass. 

Pros

• As you would expect from a game that spent 10 years in development and had a seemingly limitless budget, FF15 is a beautiful looking game. The downside of this is that it's pretty demanding on your hardware. My PC handles most games without issue on the higher graphics pre-sets, but for this one, I had to tweak the individual settings to get an ideal balance of visual quality and performance.
• FF15's action combat is really cool. I found it was both fun to execute and looked stunning. I especially liked using Noctis's warp strike move, which reminded me of Night Crawler from X-Men. Sometimes the input response time and hit detection felt a little off, this is certainly no Devil May Cry, but I generally had a smooth experience pulling off fancy acrobatic moves.
• Dungeons in FF15 have a nice sense of atmosphere to them; they legitimately feel like dangerous monster-infested environments rather than just mazes to get in between the player and some treasure.
• I initially didn't like Square Enix's decision to go with an all-male party for FF15. However, the themes of brotherhood, the nature of male friendship, and family were covered on a level that proved to be far more engaging than I expected. There are also a few interesting supporting female characters as well, but I wish that they had gotten more screentime (more on this later).
• The game's dialog features strong vocal performances in both English and Japanese.
• Being a game about a road trip, upgrading and customizing your car is something your characters can work on between larger story beats. I'm not a car guy but still had fun playing around with different paint jobs and upholstery colors.
• While the overall plot can be uneven, I found the lore and world-building that was woven into it to be pretty interesting.
• When I heard that Yoko Shimomura was composing FF15, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. She is one of the all-time great composers for her work in games like Street Fighter 2, but how would she approach composing an RPG? I'll say right now that any of the doubts I had were completely unfounded. She knocked it out of the park with FF15's score which is full of varying styles and sounds that were always effective at setting the mood of each scene and locale.
• FF15 makes a pretty bold design decision that was bound to split the fan base. The game begins with an emphasis on open-world exploration but a little more than halfway through, the structure becomes almost completely linear as the story ramps up toward the climax. For me, this design decision worked out very well. Once I had gotten my fill of exploring and sidequests, I was ready to see how the story would end and was thankful that the game provided me with a direct route to do so without inserting any unnecessary filler just to pad the game's running time (something that many RPGs seem to love to do). Considering this structure is pretty much the exact opposite of Final Fantasy 13's, I'm thinking FF15's design was the product of lessons learned from that game. 
• The game's story, world, and music come together to create something that has a sad, yet hopeful tone. I found this very compelling.

Cons

• It may be a road trip game, but driving the car is not very enjoyable. Instead of driving it myself, I just made one of Notis's AI-controlled companions, Ignis, do it. While Ignis drove my characters to the next waypoint on the map, I would usually divide my attention between admiring the scenery in the game and checking my email on my phone in the real world.
• Being a mostly open-world RPG, there is no shortage of side quests to complete. However, these tasks don't feel meaningful; they're mostly just busywork. I would have preferred to see side quests categorized as major and minor, with the major ones having their own stories (similar to how side quests are handled in The Witcher or Xenoblade).
• Final Fantasy 15 features product placement with several real-world brands (e.g Coleman, American Express, and Cup Noodle). In some cases this was supposedly done to make the game world feel "more realistic" and in other cases, it's used for humor. To me, it mostly just felt tacky. I'm hoping it's not a trend that continues into Final Fantasy 16.
• While most of the game's female characters are unfortunately sidelined, I found the most prominently featured female character to be kind of troubling. The road trip boys' on-call mechanic, Cindy, has a design that is so blatantly pandering to teenage boys that it comes across as silly. Her mechanic's uniform looks more like something from a sexy Halloween costume catalog than anything even remotely resembling something someone would wear while fixing a car. In a game that generally strove for more grounded character designs than previous Final Fantasy entries (Notis and pals all wear simple black shirts and pants), Cindy looks completely out of place.
• The biggest issue with FF15 is the one that made put off playing it to begin with, its disjointed delivery. In order to make a sensible story out of Final Fantasy 15, I had to watch a feature film, a series of anime shorts, and play through several DLC packs on top of the 40+ hour main game. Exacerbating this issue is the fact that events of the DLC take place during the main campaign but are not at all integrated into the game; DLC can only be accessed from a separate menu on the title screen. To get a complete experience, I had to research when in the story each DLC chapter took place so that I knew when I should pause my main campaign progress and switch over to the DLC menu. All of this content really should have been in the game from the start. The fact that it takes so much effort on the player's part to assemble all these components makes it seem like the whole FF15 project was mismanaged.

As an avid Final Fantasy fan, I was able to get a very enjoyable experience out of FF15 but it took a considerable amount of work on my part, synthesizing its disparate content and overlooking a few unfavorable parts. There is an interesting story to unravel, expansive world to explore, and fun gameplay to be had here, but you, as the player, have to be committed and receptive to it in a way that few other modern games require. For me, jumping into Final Fantasy 15 with both feet ultimately proved to be worth my time and satisfying but I couldn't help but feel like it could have been so much better with a more focused vision.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 42 hours for the main campaign + 7 hours of DLC

Note: This post is part of the Chic-Pixel community's #JRPGJuly event. For more info and their full list of events, check out this page: Community Game-Along Master List 2020

You take a lot of scenic car rides in this game.

It's like every city in Italy all mashed together.

Final Fantasy 15, presented by Cup Noodle

Before you get uncomfortable, he's talking about his first time with Cup Noodle.

This is what it looks like when you get wrecked by a boss.

Camping provides quality bro bonding time. (Brought to you by Coleman)

Since they all wear black outfits, I thought they should at least have colorful chocobos.

Ironically, I think the sexy Halloween costume is more practical clothing for auto repair than Cindy's outfit.

Final Fantasy 1 Review

Back in the late 90s, my lifelong love of Square Enix's iconic Final Fantasy series began when I got hooked on Final Fantasy 7. It quickly became a long term goal of mine to play every mainline entry in the franchise and I've been working my way outward through the series ever since. Having nearly completed that goal now, I find myself at the extreme ends of the franchise: FF1 and FF15. This week I'll be reviewing Final Fantasy's origin point; my next post will cover its most recent entry.

Overview:

Final Fantasy is a turn-based fantasy RPG that was originally released on the NES. It tells the story of four warriors on a quest to restore balance to their world by reactivating four magic elemental crystals. Final Fantasy has been ported and remade on a variety of platforms over the past several decades.  This review is specifically based on the Android version of the game, which I received for free by using Google Play promotional credits.

Pros:

• All the core elements of Final Fantasy gameplay and themes are here. It was an interesting experience to see the genesis of concepts that Square Enix has iterated upon over 15 times now.
• Considering this was originally an 8-bit game, it features surprisingly rich music with nice arrangements on mobile.
• The remastered graphics look pretty good and display nicely on a cellphone or tablet screen. The style is a little different from the original 8-bit game, but the designs are still all easily recognizable. 
• With the exception of landing the airship on small pieces of land, I found that I had no difficulties with FF1's touchscreen controls.
• Some of the NPCs say bizarre or amusing things. This injected some humor into an otherwise pretty dry fantasy story.
• Without spoiling anything, I'll just say that the conclusion of the story was far more interesting than I expected it to be. 

Cons:

• While there is some interesting lore at the very beginning and ending of the game, FF1's story is pretty sparse.
• The dungeons in this game are quite long and feature very high encounter rates; at times your character can only walk about 5 steps between battles. This can make completing dungeons a test of patience.
• FF1 could have benefitted from an auto-attack feature like the mobile version of FF4 had. A feature like this makes playing a mobile turn-based game more comfortable and convenient.
• There is little depth to the strategy of FF1 combat; I mostly breezed through it mindlessly with the exception of the final boss difficulty spike.
• On Android, FF1 requires a DRM check (anti-piracy measure) every single time you launch the game. This makes this version poorly suited to playing while traveling since you can't get past the DRM check if you don't have a signal (such as when on a plane). Measures like this make a worse experience for paying customers just to potentially prevent a few people from stealing an $8 game.
• At the time I began my playthrough of this game earlier this year, the FF1 app wasn't capable of multi-tasking, meaning there was no ability to open a guide or anything else on your phone without resetting the game (and thus initiating the DRM check again). Apparently, this was fixed in a patch very recently, but the fact that this issue went unaddressed for many years doesn't reflect well on Square Enix's mobile support. In fact, even now the listing for the game in the Google Play Store includes a warning that there may be compatibility issues with the more recent versions of Android.

FF1 on Android suffers from some limitations that can make playing the game inconvenient. However, once you're actually in the game, the gameplay has been adapted well to the mobile format. As to FF1's content more generally, I think this game is worth playing for people interested in Final Fantasy or JRPG history but the gameplay and story are so basic that I would primarily only recommend it to players who are already invested in the FF series or are avid retro gamers.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐

Completion Time: 16 hours and 30 minutes

Note: This post is part of the Chic-Pixel community's #JRPGJuly event. For more info and their full list of events, check out this page: Community Game-Along Master List 2020

In context, this dialog eventually makes sense.

The battle artwork looks pretty cool and the menus work well with a touch screen.

Based on how often you're greeted by this screen, you would think the financial stability of the entire Square Enix corporation rests on the sales of this one cheap app.

Four Job Fiesta 2019 Wrap-up

This past weekend marked the close of my third Four Job Fiesta campaign! Once again, I managed to finish the game in even less time and lower levels than in previous years. Here are some highlights:

• This year's Name My Butz charity auction was our most successful yet! The top bidder donated $20 (US) to Child's Play and selected the name "Waffle" for our party leader! As a special thanks to our generous donor, I let her pick which class Waffle would be assigned next whenever she was watching the stream.
• At the Wind Crystal, I rolled a Thief. Considering this class can only use knives, it had decent physical damage output but without the ability to equip heavy armor, their toughness left a lot to be desired and made for some very tough early boss battles. The Steal and Mug abilities proved to be very useful, however.
• My Water Crystal job was a returning one from my 2017 campaign, Red Mage. As is typical of Red Mages, they were valuable in the earliest parts of the campaign, primarily for healing but became obsolete about halfway through. After that, I got a little more utility out of them for their rod-breaking ability (i.e. sacrificing an elemental weapon to cast a higher level offensive black magic spell) during a few key boss battles.
• The Fire Crystal delivered a blessing in disguise: Bard. I initially thought this class would be a dud but it proved to be extremely useful. Particularly, Bard's ability to put regular enemies in a sleep/stop state made random encounters so much easier. The Bard also has some very useful full-party buffs for boss battles. I'm really glad that this year's Fiesta gave me an opportunity to learn this previously overlooked class!
• At the Earth Crystal, we had another repeat: Chemist. Even more so than last year, the weight of the last few dungeons almost completely rested on the Chemist's slender nerdy shoulders. Since I lacked any strong physical attackers this year, the Chemist ended up being my primary damage-dealer, using various Mix! formulae to attack bosses ("Holy Water + Dragon Fang = Holy Breath" was easily the one I used the most). Thankfully, the Thief in my party was able to steal plenty of reagents for my Chemist to use.
• The battle against Exdeath was quite difficult this year since I was almost entirely reliant on buffs and chemistry to keep me alive and deal damage. After several failed attempts at level 35, I backtracked a bit to grind up to level 40 and gather more chemical reagents. While on paper, Waffle was my Chemist, everyone else in the party was still making use of the Mix! ability nearly every turn. After using buffing mixtures like Dragon Power (temporary +20 to level), Goliath Tonic (temporary double HP), and Turtle Guard (Shell + Protect) in the first phase of the final battle, it was just a matter of mixing up as many Holy Breaths (Holy elemental damage) as possible while keeping everyone's HP up. I ended up taking down Neo Exdeath with all four party members still alive!
• Between donations from the auction, Twitch viewers, and my own contributions, $60 went to Child's Play this year. While I didn't beat my previous record, I'm still happy with this result and very thankful to the generosity of the donors! Next time I do this, I'll try to come up with more interactive ways to encourage people to donate (like the auction) since that seemed to get the biggest response. 

While I had fun with this year's campaign, I found it a little harder to keep motivated this time around. This was due to a combination of having two returning classes, which made the campaign less varied than before, and my work schedule being a lot more hectic, making it tougher to schedule streams than years past. I was glad that I played the mobile version of Final Fantasy 5 this year, so I could still make progress even when I wasn't able to stream. Thus, I may take a break for next year's Fiesta depending on my schedule. I will also be a little quicker to reroll if I get repeat classes going forward.

All that being said, I wanted to extend a heartfelt thanks to everyone who donated or tuned into my streams!

Final Fantasy 13 Review

In my quest to play every Final Fantasy game, I was particularly excited to try Final Fantasy 13 because it's one of the most divisive entries in the series. Now that I've finished the game, I can see why that is: even my own feelings on 13 are very conflicted.

Structure:

Final Fantasy 13 presents a distillation of modern Final Fantasy: the game is broken into 13 chapters, each of which consists of battles, cut scenes, and short walks in between. The level design is almost completely linear with little opportunity for exploration. There are no NPCs, towns, and very limited side quests. 

The bright side of this linearity is that that for the first 10 chapters of the campaign, the game always knows exactly which items, characters, and abilities you have at any given moment. This makes for well-balanced boss battles that are challenging and strategic yet require no grinding or item farming to come out on top. This linear design also makes the pacing of the game feel fairly quick since you're always making forward progress in the campaign. The negative side of the linear structure is that once you've fought every possible permutation of a given area's enemies, the gameplay is essentially a rinse and repeat cycle until you reach the chapter boss. As a result, I found myself excited to start a new chapter to see a new area and encounter a new mix of enemies (as well as advance the plot), only to start getting bored around the chapter midpoint as the game became repetitive again.

In Chapter 11, the game attempts to change things up by introducing a few non-linear areas to explore. This initially feels very freeing and dovetails nicely with the game's themes of free will and fate (more on that later). Unfortunately, this freedom comes at a heavy cost to the game's pacing and balance. The non-linear areas introduce the opportunity to take on sidequests in the form of hunts (i.e. taking down a specific type of enemy). The problem with this is, after spending 35 hours to get to this point (much of which was spent in battle), the prospect of taking on entirely combat-based sidequests was not particularly appealing to me. Since the non-linear areas and sidequests increase opportunities for grinding, the game makes enemies, especially bosses, extra spongey going forward to compensate. This dragged battles out and slowed the game's pacing to a crawl. By the time I neared the end Chapter 11, I was so burnt out that I ended up dropping the game difficulty to Easy and activating a few cheats to shorten or skip battles so that I could speed through the rest of the game and get to the ending.

Systems:
Regarding the battle system itself, FF13 uses an interesting sped up variant of the Active Time Battle (ATB) system from previous games in the series in conjunction with a unique take on class-based strategy. The AI controls all but one character in the party, so much of the control the player has comes in the form of mid-battle character class changes (think a fusion of FF10-2 and FF12). By changing between different sets of classes called Paradigms, your party can switch between offensive and defensive tactics nearly instantaneously. Observing the enemy to time your tactical transitions and selecting the right combinations of classes for your Paradigms is the core of the battle strategy. The game initially restricts the characters and abilities you can use, which makes battles feel kind of dull, but once the combat system opens up (in about the 3rd chapter), I found this system to be one of the most engaging in the series, at least for the first 35 hours or so. 

Spending so much time with this battle system got me thinking: With a timing and speed-based ATB system, is rapidly navigating combat menus really all that different from an action-based system? I wonder if a similar line of thinking is what lead the FF series to true action combat in later entries such as 15 and 7R. The other thing that struck me is that the way this game focuses heavily on combat and gives you a star rating after each encounter, I couldn't help but be reminded of Mobius Final Fantasy, which debuted smartphones a few years after the release of this game.

Final Fantasy 13's other system is its character upgrade system. Instead of earning XP and money from battle, spoils come in the form of crystal points (CP) and crafting materials. CP is a pretty straight forward system that unlocks stat increases and abilities along a skill tree for each characters' classes (similar to Final Fantasy 10). Crafting, however, is a needlessly fiddly system that involves dumping monster claws and minerals and such into your weapons to level them up. Often this involves using hundreds of craft items or combining them via trial and error to see what yields the most upgrade points. Using crafting materials in a suboptimal manner could mean having to grind for more crafting material later on to fully upgrade a handful of your preferred weapons in preparation for the endgame. I found this to be so tedious that I largely avoided it for most of the game. When I broke down and used cheats in Chapter 11, I gave myself unlimited crafting supplies so that I could knock out all the upgrading in one shot and not have to deal with it again.

Artistic Qualities:
Final Fantasy 13 drops you straight into the story with very little in-game explanation of what's going on. The game also throws lots of jargon at you from the get-go. The game's way of bringing the player up to speed is that after every cutscene, a "datalog" in unlocked within the menu screen. These text documents explain the backstory of each character, define terminology, and provide context for the story. I can't really decide how I feel about this "watch the lecture and then do the homework" format. Would I have preferred lengthy scenes of characters standing around explaining things to each other, or an omniscient narrator offering context before each story beat? Not really, but I still have to image a more elegant solution exists.

The crux of the story is that our heroes have been tasked by a god-like being to destroy the world; if they fail to comply they will be turned into mindless zombies. From there the characters spend the rest of the adventure struggling with their fate while on the run from the authorities that are aware of their divinely-assigned task. Each of the game's six characters also has their own personal struggles that cover topics such as family discord, prejudice, and revenge. The characters are fairly one-note and the execution of both the larger and smaller stories can be pretty clumsy at times, but I still found myself generally invested in each cutscene and interested to see what would happen next.

In terms of aesthetics, Final Fantasy 13 is visually and aurally stunning. Even though this game is nearly a decade old, it offers some incredible vistas in-engine and pre-rendered cutscenes that I could only describe as resplendent. I never would have guessed I'd be mashing the F12 (screenshot) key nearly so frequently in a game of this age. The music may be less varied than some earlier Final Fantasies, but the main pieces that play throughout the game sound great and this game's battle theme stands as one of my favorites in the series.

Conclusion:
Final Fantasy 13 presents itself as a streamlined Final Fantasy experience but still takes over 50 hours to complete. The combat, graphics, and music are all high quality and could have easily sustained a 20-30 hour game, but are just not substantial enough to keep a game of 13's length engaging the whole way through (as evidenced by the shortcuts I felt compelled to take). As a Final Fantasy fan, I felt like playing this game was still a worthwhile experience and would recommend that other fans give it a shot with an open mind. However, to general RPG fans, I'm not sure Final Fantasy 13 offers what they would be looking for.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐
Completion Time: 54 hours

Note: With this game completed, I now only have Final Fantasies 1, 2, 14, and 15 left. I will likely play 1 next since I like to alternate between retro and modern entries. At this point, I'm not sure if/when I'll play the direct sequels to FF13. I would be curious to hear what readers who have played the FF13 sequels think of them.

Four Job Fiesta 2019

It's almost time for one of my favorite annual gaming events, the Four Job Fiesta! I am very excited to announce that I will be participating once again this year! For the uninitiated, the Four Job Fiesta is a charity event in which participants play through Final Fantasy 5 and raise money for Child’s Play. The Fiesta uses a bot to randomly assign character classes to each player’s party which ups the difficulty and makes for some fascinating improvised strategies. For this year's campaign I'll be playing the mobile version of FF5. This will allow me take care of the grinding during my lunch break at work and then stream the bigger game moments once or twice per week on my Twitch channel using my brand new capture card! I will also be writing periodic blog posts on my Fiesta campaign progress, especially whenever I get assigned a new character class.

Leading up to my first stream of the Fiesta on June 18th, I will be holding the 3rd Annual "Name My Butz" charity auction! The highest bidder at the end of the auction will get the privilege of picking a new name for my player character for this year's campaign! (I'm sure you can come up with a better name than his default name, Butz.) By the time this post is up, the auction will be open. To submit a bid, send me a DM on Twitter with the amount you'd like to donate. The winner of the auction and new name for my character will be announced at the start of my Twitch stream on June 18th. This stream will feature the beginning gameplay of FF5 and we'll also find out which class the bot assigns to me first! For my charitable contribution this year, I will donate a dollar for each hour it takes to complete the campaign.

Last year my campaign raised $75 for Child's Play. This year, let's shoot for $100!

E3 2019 Highlights: Ubisoft & Square Enix

While there were a total of seven E3 presentations today, I decided to focus on the two that tend to deliver consistently good shows, and even more importantly, consistently good games: Ubisoft and Square Enix.

Here's what stood out to me from the Monday conferences:

Ubisoft
Having set the bar so high in previous years, this show felt like a little bit of a letdown. Most of it focused on games in the Tom Clancy franchise, which is not really my thing, but I'm sure this was very exciting to fans of those games. Thus only a few parts of Ubi's presentation really spoke to me:

•  Watchdogs Legion - The new Watchdogs is set in a cyberpunk future London. While the basic gameplay looks like GTA with hacking, this game boasts an interesting system in which you can recruit and switch between a wide variety of characters. The assassin granny, was of course, the most amusing. Ubi stated that this game has permadeath (i.e. you can't revive a character once they've been killed) which seems like a shame since I think I would want to keep my favorite characters in my queue the whole time. (preview)
• Brawlhalla Adventure Time DLC - Finn and Jake are coming to the Smash Bros-like fighter, Brawlhalla. I briefly played some of this game at Momocon, and I could definitely see the Adventure Time characters fitting right in. (trailer)
• Just Dance 2020 - While I haven't played any of the Just Dance games, I like that Ubi always announces the new ones with a live dance performance. Also, this game is coming to all the typical platforms... and also Wii! Can you believe it, a brand new game for the Nintendo Wii in 2019?! (dance performance)
• Uplay+ - Similar to Microsoft's Game Pass, Ubi is offering a new subscription that gives you access to 100+ games and each of their new games as they're released on PC. The games can either be downloaded or played via the Google Stadia streaming service. At $15/month, it seems a little pricey.
• Roller Champions - A colorful futuristic sports game that reminded me a lot of the sport played in Battle Angel Alita. I'm not big on sports games, but I liked the stylized look and friendly tone of what they showed. (trailer) 
• Gods & Monsters - It's a shame this game got such a brief tease. It's an absolutely gorgeous action adventure game that appears to be based on Greek mythology from the studio that makes Assassin's Creed. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this one in the future. (trailer)

Square Enix
As one of my all-time favorite game publishers, I always look forward to Square's conference. They crammed a lot into this presentation! I found myself wishing that they had given each game a little more time to breathe, but there was definitely a lot of good stuff on display.

• Final Fantasy 7 Remake - They came right out with the big guns! The main focus of this part of the presentation was to not only showcase the graphics, but also explain how the combat system works. During battle, regular attacks are executed in real time like an action game in order to build up an ability meter. Special moves consume this meter and can be executed in either turn-based menu-driven style (like in the original FF7) or in real time using button commands. A boss battle showed during the demonstration also showed the the player can use the environment as cover to avoid enemy attacks. Square also said that FF7R will be a series of games rather than a single release; the first game will take place entirely in Midgar. I wasn't especially hyped for this remake before, but now I'm definitely on board! (trailer)
• Dragon Quest 11 S - The Switch version of DQ11 really does seem to be the most complete version of the game. Both the 2D and 3D art style options looked really good. My backlog is rapidly growing out of control, but this may be the game that pulls me back into Dragon Quest after being away for many years. (trailer)
• Romancing Saga 3 and Saga Scarlet Grace Ambitions - These two previously Japan-only RPGs are coming to the West! While these are both older titles, it's always nice to get newly localized JRPGs. The only part of the Saga series I've played is Saga Frontier on the PS1. I'm curious to hear about how these are in comparison. (trailer)
• Final Fantasy 14 Shadow Bringer - This expansion to the MMO Final Fantasy sounded intriguing with its concept of finding balance between the forces of light and darkness (typically all the other games in the series only focus on the Warriors of Light). Even though I'm not into MMOs, I will play at least a little of FF14 in my quest to play every numbered Final Fantasy game. (trailer)
• War of the Visions - This mobile game may be inspired by Final Fantasy Brave Exvius but the gameplay looks more like Final Fantasy Tactics or Fire Emblem. It also seems like it has some interesting lore. Perhaps this will the Square mobile RPG that'll finally get its hooks into me. (trailer)
• Outriders - A change-up from Square's typical far, this co-op shooter that appears to also involve magic could be interesting.  (trailer)
• Avengers - I may be kind of burnt out on Marvel's superheroes from all the recent movies, but this is a game from the developers of my beloved Tomb Raider, so it has my attention. There was little shown of the gameplay, but the cinematics were interesting because this an original depiction of the Marvel characters rather than being based on the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Also of note, they appear to be excluding Hawkeye from the Avengers team. While I know some people are big fans of that character, from a gameplay standpoint, he'd likely be the least exciting to play. (trailer)

PC Gaming
I didn't watch this conference, but a few interesting games were pointed out to me by folks on Twitter that I figured I might as well highlight. If you're interested in a full recap of what was shown at this conference, I recommend this article from Venture Beat.

• Cris Tales - A turn-based RPG about time travel that reminds me in some ways of Chrono Trigger. I really like the art style they used for the characters. There's a demo out on Steam that I'm looking forward to trying. (trailer)
• Vampire the Mascarade Bloodlines 2 - My streamer pal, Bogus Meat Factory, brought this game to my attention. A first-person RPG with a gothic vampire setting could be an interesting break from the typical fantasy settings we usually see in the genre. (trailer)
• Shenmue 3 - As a fan of this series, this game has, of course, been on my radar for quite some time (I backed the Kickstarter years ago). Seeing more gameplay was nice and we got confirmation that the game would be releasing this year. It was also announced that the PC version would be exclusive to the Epic Game Store rather than Steam, contrary to what had previously been stated. While I don't have a strong preference for one game launcher versus another, I can still understand why some fans are upset about this sudden change. (trailer)

Watchdogs Legion

Brawlhalla Adventure Time DLC

Just Dance 2020

Roller Champions

Gods & Monsters

Final Fantasy 7 Remake

Final Fantasy 7 Remake

Final Fantasy 14 Shadow Bringers

Romancing Saga 3

Outriders

Avengers

Four Job Fiesta 2018 Wrap-up

Last night, my second Four Job Fiesta campaign came to a close and it was a wild ride! Partly because of my increased familiarity with the game, and partly due to the classes I rolled, this Fiesta went much more smoothly than the last. Here are the highlights:

• My first job was Blue Mage. Compared to last year's White Mage, the early going was much easier. Once my Blue Mage learned some basic attack magic and the Vampire skill (i.e. draining enemy HP), I had my bases covered both offensively and defensively from the get-go. It also helped that Blue Mages can use light swords and shields, so they made for serviceable physical characters as well. The only downside was that having to hunt for the correct monsters in order to learn new skills was a bit of a chore. I generally don't like classes that require doing "homework".
• Berserker was what I rolled next. I was initially concerned about giving up control of one of my party members, but this worked out really well. Having one character devoted purely to raw offense at all times allowed me to focus on using my other characters strategically. Later on, thanks to having Reeses (formerly known as Bartz/Butz) mast the Ninja job, I was able to equip a Berserker with two weapons, making him a physical damage-dealing machine.
• The one job I had in common from last year was Ninja. This is an awesome class! With a weapon in both hands and the ability to throw swords and shurikens, a Ninja is a great offensive character. When physical damage doesn't cut it, equipping them with the Blue Magic ability also yields good results since they have better magic stats than most other physical attack classes.
• My final class was the most interesting: Chemist. I was uncertain at first about how to best make use of my Chemist, but once I figured it out, she became the cornerstone of my late-game strategy. Her ability to buff my characters and serve as an item-based healer proved to be invaluable in the last few dungeons, and especially against the final boss. I had some concerns about gathering enough crafting supplies to use her to abilities to their full potential, but by the end of the game, I had more than enough Dragon Fangs and Dark Matters without having to worry about farming for materials.
• The final showdown against Exdeath went far more smoothly than I ever could have imagined! I had Cara set up as a Chemist and Lenna as a Blue Mage with the Chemist's "Mix" ability. In the first phase of the battle, I had these two ladies of science and magic whipping up all manner of buffing concoctions so that my whole party had Shell, Protect, and Reflect status as well as double their usual HP capacity! Meanwhile, Reeses was a Berserker and Faris was a Ninja; each was in the "berserk" state and equipped with a weapon in each hand. These two just whaled on the boss nonstop. Since all the chemical buffs I used carried into the second phase of the boss battle, everyone was more than capable of withstanding whatever Exdeath could throw at us. It was only a matter of time before my two berserk characters beat him into submission!

  Overall, this was a really fun campaign that encouraged me to use skills and classes that I had previously never even considered! I also finished the campaign faster and at a lower level than last year: 35 hours and at level 42. Regarding the charity side, between my contributions and those from Twitch viewers, $85 (US) went to Child's Play! I want to give a big thanks to everyone who watched or donated this year, and I'm already looking forward to next year's campaign!

E3 & Four Job Fiesta 2018 Coverage

With E3 now than less than a week away, June is a huge month for gaming! On top of the spectacle of the industry’s biggest conference, this month also marks the kickoff of several smaller gaming events including one of my personal favorites, the Four Job Fiesta. I covered both events in this blog last year and that tradition will be continuing this year. Here are some details regarding my coverage for each:

E3

In 2017, I rounded up all my personal highlights for the whole event in a single post. This year I’ll be changing up the format, with a smaller roundup for each day of E3 (June 10 - 12) and then a closing thoughts post at the end of the whole event if time permits. I managed to get both Monday and Tuesday off from work, so I will also be giving some running commentary on my Twitter page as I watch each conference live. If the mood strikes, I may also do something E3-related on Twitch or Discord.

Note: Since EA is doing their conference a day earlier than everyone else, on June 9th, I will probably not be watching it live. If there is anything noteworthy to cover from it, I will roll it into my post for June 10th along with Bethesda and Microsoft.

Four Job Fiesta

One of the highlights of 2017 for me as a gamer was taking part in the Four Job Fiesta. I am very excited to announce that I will be participating once again this year! For the uninitiated, the Four Job Fiesta is a charity event in which participants play through Final Fantasy 5 and raise money for Child’s Play. The Fiesta uses a bot to randomly assign character classes to each player’s party which ups the difficulty and makes for some fascinating improvised strategies. While last year, I streamed all 40 hours of my playthrough on my Twitch channel, this year I will be playing the more mundane parts of the campaign (especially the grinding) offline and saving the bigger game moments for a stream or two per week. I will also be writing periodic blog posts on my Fiesta campaign progress, especially whenever I get assigned a new character class.

The Fiesta officially begins on June 19th, but prior to that, I will be conducting a charity auction similar to last year. The person who donates the most to the Four Job Fiesta will get the privilege of picking a new name for my main character! By the time this post is live, the auction will be open, so please contact me on Twitter if you are interested in placing a bid. The winner of the auction and new name for my character will be announced on a Twitch stream tentatively scheduled for June 14th. This stream will also feature gameplay up until earning the first job in FF5. My first character class will be revealed on my next stream on the first official day of the Fiesta. For my charitable contribution this year, I will donate $2 for each hour it takes to complete the campaign.

If you would like to participate in the Fiesta, donate money, or just find more information, check out the Four Job Fiesta’s homepage: fourjobfiesta.com

Final Fantasy 4 Review

In my quest to play every Final Fantasy game, I found my myself with a weird gap; I’ve played Final Fantasy 3 and Final Fantasies 5 - 12. To remedy this, I picked up the Android version of Final Fantasy 4 which is based on the DS remake of the SNES game. While Square Enix has a questionable history with mobile ports, I was pleasantly surprised to find that this one worked out quite
well for me.

My observations as I completed yet another quest to gather some magic crystals and
defeat another dark lord:

• When going into a DS remake of a Super Nintendo game, fully-voiced cutscenes are not something I was expecting to encounter. Yet, this game makes fairly frequent use of them for major story moments and character introductions. Keeping the technical limitations of the original hardware in mind, I was impressed with how well-directed these scenes were. The voice acting was not quite as impressive, but still decent.
• Regarding the plot itself, I liked the love triangle and the hero’s quest for redemption. While all the traditional high-fantasy elements are also there (dragons, magical artifacts, etc), FF4’s inclusion of this extra layer of character development was probably pretty revolutionary storytelling for its time. The game handles themes of loss, jealousy, and forgiveness surprisingly well for a game of its age.
• Final Fantasy 4’s combat is a very simple turn-based system with minimal ability to customize your characters or party. This version of the game features an “Augment” system that allows the player to assign one extra skill to each character, but to me, this felt very much like an after-thought.
• The boss battles are where this game’s combat gets to shine. Many of the bosses have some sort of puzzle-like trick to exposing their weaknesses. I really appreciated that brute force alone was often not enough to get the job done. Sometimes the boss battles would feature dialog or brief cutscenes that would advance the story amidst the action. I’m thinking was probably a novel concept back in 1992.
• The game's plot causes your party composition to change abruptly throughout the adventure. Every time I got a well-balanced team together, something would happen that would cause me to lose my strong characters in exchange for weak ones. There is a particular focus on magic-users for much of the game that doesn't mesh well with the strategies I typically use in Final Fantasy games. On one hand, this kept me on my toes, on the other, it slowed down my ability to progress through the campaign.
• I know some old-school Final Fantasy fans turn their noses up at it, but I liked this remake’s use of polygonal graphics. The character models do a good job of merging the designs in Yoshitaka Amano’s original concept drawings with the 3D chibi style of DS RPGs. A side effect of this is that sometimes there would be childish-looking characters (especially NPCs) in skimpy outfits. I could have done without this, but if you're into scantily clad low polygon models, this is the game for you.
• Something I especially appreciated about the graphics in this version of FF4, was the battle animations for the bosses. Even when it's the player's turn, the enemies continue moving around and observing these animations can often provide hints about enemy weaknesses. Some of the boss character models are pretty goofy looking, however.
• While the boss battles, character designs, and cut scenes all received an overhaul in this remake, the dungeons are decidedly still old school. Most of the dungeons are quite long and have high random encounter rates. This tried my patience at times.
• The mobile port features some helpful quality of life (QoL) upgrades. One of these upgrades is that the menu screen shows your characters' inner thoughts; these thought bubbles provide useful hints and flavor text (this feature may have also existed in the DS version). The other upgrade is an auto-checkpoint system that kept me from losing progress when a random enemy would get a lucky critical hit. Unfortunately, the quality of life upgrades are not universally applied as there are no checkpoints between consecutive bosses and pre-boss cutscenes have to be rewatched before each attempt.
• As far as Square Enix games go, this one has a fairly generic-sounding soundtrack. However, there are a few major themes that stand out. The vocal track at the end of the game was a nice addition as well.
•  Overall, this was a surprisingly good mobile port and the QoL additions (auto-checkpoint, cloud saves, etc) were welcome upgrades. Some of the concessions that had to be made to adapt the DS's interface to a mobile screen were a bit clunky (e.g. transparent overlays to display the DS's second screen info) but got the job done. The Android version ran very smoothly on my device though it would occasionally freeze when minimizing the game to switch to another app. However, the auto-checkpoint system kept me from suffering setbacks when this would happen.

I came away from Final Fantasy 4 with an appreciation for the fact that this is where the franchise found its footing. The characters, themes, systems, and melodrama that define Final Fantasy all coalesced together with this entry. As a player in 2018 who has already played most of the other installments in the series, this game's beats felt largely familiar and some of the remnants of the old school design where a bit of a drag, but the game still regularly put on a smile on my face regardless. I would recommend this version of Final Fantasy 4 to newcomers of there series and long-time fans alike.

Score: ⭐⭐⭐⭐
Completion Time: 32 hours, 18 minutes (main campaign and most side quests)

If you'd like to pick up a copy of this game and while supporting this blog, the Android and DS versions of this game are available via the following Amazon affiliate links:
Final Fantasy 4 - Nintendo DS
Final Fantasy 4 - Android

Four Job Fiesta Wrap-up

 My Four Job Fiesta campaign came to a close last week and I can say that the experience has cemented Final Fantasy 5’s position as one of my favorite games of all time. The game is already tough, but playing with the Fiesta rules has pushed me to become not only a better Final Fantasy player but a better RPG strategist as a whole. Here are some developments from the last segment of the game:

• Initially, having a white mage based party meant having a team full of cream puffs. That all changed once I acquired the Holy spell. This turned my once docile healers into savage damage dealers, especially Lenna, who had also learned Dual Cast from having been a Red Mage for most of the game. During late game boss fights (including the final boss battle), she became my primarily offensive character, dealing over 8000 damage per turn.
• As I had mentioned in a previous post, the importance of using defensive buffs to improve character survivability cannot be understated. As a fairly grinding-averse player, properly leveraging Protect, Shell, and Reflect was often the key to victory. It’s hard to imagine what I’ll do next Fiesta if I don’t end up with access to White Magic.
• While I spent most of the game using the Elven Mantle accessory to help my characters avoid physical attacks, switching these out for Hermes Sandals in the late game was the right move. Having everyone in a perpetual state of Hast” allowed me to do more damage while taking fewer enemy hits. It also made it much easier to recover if a boss used a devastating attack that hit the full party.
• Partly for nostalgia’s sake, I frequently consulted with my “Final Fantasy Anthology” guide book that I used for my original play-through of Final Fantasy 5 back in 1999. While the dungeon maps were still somewhat useful, the Fiesta rules coupled with the higher-level strategies used by modern players have largely made this book obsolete. In some cases, using it slowed me down because having full dungeon maps made me feel compelled to get every single treasure chest even though most of the items in these chests would end up being gear for classes other than those I was assigned. Thus, I think I will allow this guide book to enjoy a much-deserved retirement on my bookshelf next year.
• It took me a while to warm up to it, but I ended up really liking the PC version of Final Fantasy 5. The higher resolution graphics make spotting small objects easier, and the auto-checkpoint system it uses prevented unexpected party wipes from resulting in a significant loss of progress.

I had a great time revisiting Final Fantasy 5 and participating in the Four Job Fiesta. I already find myself thinking about next year’s Fiesta and what challenges a completely different set of classes might bring. I’m also considering trying out a mobile/handheld version of FF5 next time so that I can fit multiple shorter play sessions into my schedule rather than relying on longer sessions on nights and weekends to progress through my campaign. As a result, I’ll probably be reducing the number of Twitch streams I do for future campaigns (I streamed nearly all 42 hours of this year’s campaign) and will instead focus on streaming a handful of major events/battles in the game. Quality over quantity.

Regarding the charitable side of the Fiesta, my campaign raised $50 between myself and Twitch viewers, while the Fiesta overall raised over $18,000 for Child’s Play Charity! Thanks so much to everyone who participated, donated, or tuned into the streams!

See below for the stats of my end-game party:

 

Enjoy your retirement, trusty old guide book!

Four Job Fiesta Update: Week 4

Now that I'm firmly into World 3, preparing my crew for the final push is the name of the game. Most of my characters have all mastered their original jobs and have moved on to new ones. After some experimentation, here's what I've come up with for my team:

• 1st Faris (formerly known as Bartz): After mastering Ninja, I've switched him over to Dragoon and equipped the Ninja's Dual Wield skill. Armed with a lance in each hand, 1st Faris comes down for some serious damage after using the Jump command.
• Lenna: She's the only one that hasn't changed and is thus still working toward earning the Red Mage Double-Magic skill. She probably won't have the necessary amount of ability points until right before the final battle. In the meantime, she'll be breaking some rods.
• Krile: Once she mastered White Mage, the only logical choice was to switch her to Ninja. With a twin lance (which is inexplicably a ninja knife and not actually a lance) she's a capable physical attacker that serves as a backup healer with access to level 6 White Magic. The boost to her magic stat she gets from her white magic skills also means she deals extra damage when using ninja scrolls and magic shurikens.
• 2nd Faris (aka actually Faris): As White Mage with Dragoon mastery, 2nd Faris is the most unusual mixture. While I could give them the Dragoon's Equip Lance ability, I think I would get a best, a mediocre backup physical attacker. For now, I have Faris with the Lance ability which allows them to drain HP and MP from enemies, which is useful since high-level white magic eats up MP really quickly.

In my next play session, I'll be acquiring the first few legendary weapons. While Holy Lance and Assassin's Dagger are pretty clear choices for my first two draws, for the third it's a tough call between Ninja Blade or one of the rods/staves for my mages.

Four Job Fiesta Update: Week 3

Now that I have all four of my character classes and my party structure is fully established, Week 3 was all about traversing World 2 and taking on several challenging bosses. In general, World 2 seems to represent a bit of a difficulty spike that required more strategizing, but occasionally some grinding as well. A big part of this is finding a roll for each of my classes to fill. So far I've observed the following:

• My Ninja continues to be my highest damage-dealer, however, his weapons alone are often not enough since some boss battles require the ability to quickly do a lot of damage in only a turn or two. My solution: throw absolutely everything! Previously I had only been using the Throw ability for shurikens and elemental scrolls, however, the Ninja can also throw any spare weapons in the inventory to do an impressive amount of damage. Since I can only use a fraction of the weapons I find due to being limited to four classes, I have a supply of powerful ammo that I originally was just selling for cash.
• In addition to healing, I've gained an increased appreciation for my White Mage's ability to buff my characters using Shell and Protect. Since the overall damage output of my party is lower than would be the case in a typical FF5 play-through, boss battles tend to last longer, so increasing my characters' ability to take hits is key to keeping everyone alive during prolonged engagements.
• My Red Mage is the character I'm having the hardest time finding a role for as the game progresses. Her limited black magic and healing abilities have mostly become obsolete at this point, leaving me with a mediocre physical attacker that can also cast Raise. Also, rod breaking has become useful as fewer bosses have straight-forward elemental weaknesses. Thus my Red Mage is by no means worthless, but I still feel like I can find a better use for her by combining her skills with another class's. However, I haven't gotten quite that far yet. For the time being, I'm considering having her work toward the Double-Magic skill to see if that makes her more valuable, though it'll take a long time to gain the required amount of ability points.
• The Lancer (aka Dragoon) has been the most consistent of my classes, but also the least interesting so far. Her role continues to be to just to use Jump every turn to stay out of harm's way and then come down to deal a moderate amount of damage. Of all my characters, I think she has the most untapped potential. It'll be interesting to combine her skills will other classes once she masters her last Lancer ability.

Before this week is over, I'll be working my way through World 3 and taking on some even tougher enemies. From a character building perspective, this is where things will get really interesting as each character will have mastered at least one class, so there will be a lot of potential for mixing and matching different abilities. I'm definitely looking forward to experimenting with unusual combinations that I never would of thought of outside of the Four Job Fiesta setting!

As an additional note, at the time of writing, the Fiesta has raised over $17,000 for Child's Play Charity; we're less than $1000 away from this year's goal! Thanks so much to everyone that has donated, and if you haven't donated yet, there's still plenty of time to make a contribution!

Four Job Fiesta Update: Week 2

In the second week of the Four Job Fiesta, I managed to make it through the Earth crystal and unlock my fourth job: Dragoon! While this is one of the more generic classes that I could've unlocked, it may end up making my life my easier as I finally have access to a character that can equip heavy armor and shields. Also, the "Jump" command is useful for keeping a character out of harm's way when a boss uses an attack that targets the whole party.

Now that I know what my final party composition will be, it's just a matter of shuffling the classes around to give each character a complementary set of skills. For the time being, I'm having the two Farises (i.e. Bartz and Faris) focus on physical attacks as Ninja and Dragoon, and having Lenna and Galuf stick to magic with White Mage and Red Mage. There are some interesting possibilities going forward such as having a Dragoon who can hold a lance in each hand by using the Ninja's dual-wielding ability.

Other than unlocking my last job, the rest of Week 2 was just about tackling the succession of bosses standing in the way before entering World 2.  I made it through but found that often times my whole party was getting wiped out except for the Dragoon (thanks to having a shield and jumping). Thus I did some grinding once I entered World 2 and am now ready to press on through the tougher dungeons ahead.

Four Job Fiesta Update: Week 1

I’m one week into my Four Job Fiesta campaign and am having a total blast. So far I’ve unlocked three of my four classes and have hosted four Twitch streams. I’m also proud to announce that to date, the Four Job Fiesta has already raised over $14,600 for Child’s Play!

Here’s a recap of my campaign so far:

For starters, I want to give a special thanks to Data_Error for placing the winning bid in my character-naming auction. He elected to change Bartz’s name to Faris… and thus I now have two characters named Faris in my party. Thankfully, in the PC version of Final Fantasy 5, character portraits are displayed during dialog, so it’s usually not too confusing to figure out which Faris is speaking. However, in some cases, there are text-only character status messages that take some context clues to figure out.

At the Wind Crystal, the job I unlocked was White Mage. This made for some slow going initially as my characters had very limited offensive capabilities, causing some boss battles to take up 30 minutes to slowly chip away at the boss’s HP. On the bright side, one of the dungeons I went through was filled with undead enemies and I was able to steamroll them with healing spells.

At the Water Crystal, I was really hoping for some sort of class with heavy-hitting physical attacks… so of course what I ended up getting was Red Mage. While not ideal, at least this allowed me the ability to equip swords and do a small but respectable amount of physical damage. The real boon here, however, was being able to use a technique called “rod breaking”. Rod breaking (which I just learned about recently) allows my Red Mages to sacrifice one of their rod weapons in order to cast level 3 black magic (e.g. break a fire rod to cast level 3 fire). This early in the game, a level 3 spell is devastatingly powerful and there have been a few bosses I’ve been able to annihilate in only a few turns using this technique.

I closed out my first week of the Fiesta by reaching the Fire Crystal, which is where I finally unlocked a class that can do some real physical damage: Ninja. This is a class I don’t have much experience with, but I was happy to find that they can hold a weapon in each hand. This means that Bartz (aka “first Faris”) is now doing over 300 damage per turn as opposed to 150 as a Red Mage or 60 as a White Mage. I’m definitely looking forward to experimenting more with weapon combinations using this class as my run continues.

While the classes I’ve unlocked haven’t always been the easiest to use or the most ideal, I’ve really been appreciating how they’ve caused me to come up with completely different strategies from those I used when I originally played Final Fantasy 5. For my fourth class, I’m hoping to get something really outlandish so that I get to learn how to play a completely unfamiliar class.