I haven’t. probably should
I have not but I will give it a shot after I beat FF II (sorry mdgn_blend, I know I promised I would play FF III next).
I have been on an old RPG kick. I just finished King’s Field, put another 10 hours into Vandal Hearts II before I tapped out, and now FF II.
which kings field? how was it?
King’s Field which was released as King’s Field 2 in Japan. I really enjoyed the game. It is a very interesting experience and I suggest you try it without the use of a walkthrough at first.
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On the FF Legends tip (since I think this can function as a shadow early-Kawazu thread), I was trying to remember the difference between mutants and monsters as party members last night, and I ended up try to figure out exactly how their growth systems worked.
My experience as a kid was that I would fill up my FFL1 team with monsters, because–duh–monsters are cool. But also I loved the idea of eating the flesh of my fallen enemies, transforming, and gaining new abilities. It was just so much more exciting than a standard level up. And the monster got 4 unique moves. In retrospect, I have to wonder if pokemon was inspired by FFL’s monsters. But I could never stomach the game for long, because my all monsters party was just too damn random. Like pretty much everyone who played the game, I had no idea what the risk/reward of eating monster meat was, and sometimes I’d have a really cool move, and then–through no real choice other than taking a chance–I’d lose it forever. It was honestly just bewildering and disheartening.
Well, first mutants.
First, while apparently for years people assumed that mutant growth was something like FF2, in which you gained stats based on what you did or what weapons you used, it turns out stat growth was just pseudo-random, as was move changes, albeit with a “you will not ever get weaker moves” clause. Still: you don’t feel like much of a tactician when your party members are morphing every other battle, completely out of your control: http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/563273-the-final-fantasy-legend/42444042
I guess the perception that mutant growth in FFL had an underlying logic is based on the fact that it did in the FFL2: http://www.shenafu.com/ffl2/mutant.php
Monsters, on the other hand, apparently always had an underlying logic, and it seems to be similar between FFL and FFL2: Each monster species belongs to a genus (slimes and big eyes are both in the “soft” genus), and if a monster from X genus eats meat from Y genus, they become Z genus, with the exact species selected based on the monster’s level. http://www.shenafu.com/ffl2/evolve.php
Basically, you’re assured overall progress, since you’ll gain level and fight more powerful monsters as you progress. But–again–unless you know a fellow eight year old who has mastered spreadsheets and dedicated themselves to eating every randomly dropped piece of monster meat, you’re not going to be able to make informed decisions, which essentially makes monster rearing seem totally random.
Edit: Calling @Aderack to this, just because it seems like his bag.
So there you go: two pretty neat Kawazu ideas that were sort of inherently flawed and further hampered in their initial incarnation by sloppy QA (there are mutant moves in the data that you can’t actually learn in practice, and monsters that you can’t actually become). Of course, the sloppy QA is par for the course for Square at the time (there are some things that simply don’t work in FF1), and as far as flawed concepts… I don’t know. It’s almost like Kawazu came at JRPG design from a different perspective.
I’m someone whose favorite thing is game abilities that don’t quite match their world–contrasts which cause the player to struggle as if the environment were not designed for them. In theory, I love the idea of an underlying system so inscrutable that it almost symbolizes real life genetics, in that it has to be carefully observed and studied to be predictable.
On the other hand, I didn’t enjoy it then, and I probably wouldn’t now. I’ve written before about how I used to keep spreadsheets of my scythers’ growth in Pokemon G/S, and I even noticed the data anomally that turned out to be the pre-EV/IV stat variation system. But the monsters if FFL just weren’t cool enough to bring out that level of obsession in me, and–y’know–while I noticed the scyther anomally, I never really figured it out. I was 10. I sure as hell wasn’t going to experimentally chart monster meat trends. The pattern was so noisy that it seemed random, and the game really gave me no reason to think otherwise.
But I can’t help but wonder what Kawazu was going for. It’s not better than FF3’s job system, for example, but I have to admit it’s interesting.
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Apparently Way Forward’s Adventure Time DS game from a few years ago is a straight rip from Zelda II that attempted to sand the rough edges. I would love it if they made the same attempt for FF2.
But they better not try to “fix” Metroid 2. We’ve seen how SB feels about that.
saga frontier has the same monster system from the gameboy games and it’s at least slightly more intelligible
I was 10 when FFL was first released in the US. I remember being really disappointed in the game because it was so different than the first FF. Looking back, there were a lot of really interesting concepts in the game like mutants and monsters but I don’t think they worked out well. And after reading your post, the ideas seemed like they weren’t executed properly. i wouldn’t mind going back and replaying the game again. It is a shame that Square has remade the older FF games multiple times but they haven’t fixed and rereleased FFL.
there’s a wonderswan remake from ~2002 if that counts
I didn’t realize it was remade for the Wonderswan. Nice to see that you could see what your monster would change into before eating a piece of meat.
And apparently it fixes the bugs and made the FFL systems more like FFL2.
Honestly, I feel like Pokemon kind of streamlined the monster system into something palatable for the average gamer. You get the coolness of “monsters” and an excitement similar to loot when the pokemon learns a new move or evolves.
It just doesn’t have the conceit of a single being transforming and the narrative concept that coms with that.
I think to make the monster system work, the player would have to be able to accept or reject new moves, like in pokemon. And you’d have to be given some notion of a) what the merits of each type of monster are, and b) what meats cause those transformations–either as information in the game or in the instruction manual. This could be clues, but it might just have to be an outright chart. I think JRPG’s players want to make decisions about the growth of their characters or at least guide it. Kawazu seems to be more into “natural” systems that you observe and try to interpret. Even FF2 has an element of that.
At the same time I can respect and relate to the idea of trying to make game systems follow some logic. Like, “Why should monsters drop money? Shouldn’t the characters have to skin them and sell the meat or something?” “But that doesn’t really fit into this style of game?” “But it makes so much more sense. Let’s just do it and see what happens.”
That’s how I’ve always assumed Kawazu’s process went.
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Okay, that’s a definite improvement. But do you also have some sense of what the difference is between monsters?
I guess you’re actually becoming monsters in the game world that you might have fought, so the iddea is that you remember fighting a Big Eye, so you’re like, “Yeah, I’d like to play as one of those.”
Any major differences from what we’r describing here?
I could never get into Saga Frontier back in the day. I was intrigued by the multiple storylines gimmick, but I remember finding them all kind of boring and not even being able to get started with it. I think with two of the plot lines I ended up not knowing what to do fairly early on, which is pretty likely, considering the source.
Um, nah. it’s a shallow and boring imitation (w/ cute Adventure Time dialogue). And Zelda 2 is already terrific. i dont think it needs fixing on the level of FF2, which kinda already got “fixed” over the course of the SaGa series anyway.
the FFL2/SaGa 2 DS remake is really fuckin good btw
I’m in the camp that finds it too hard and too clunky to be “great.” As wtih the FFL games, I want to say it’s a hidden gem for what it attempts to do. But really I just feel like it fell prey to the typical failures of the day without rising above them and ultimately lacked the polish that made other games of the era classics. I side with the plebs on Zelda II. You have to tap a next to a table to find an invisible mirror with no prior indication in the game that you’re playing a “Press A against everything” game.
Wait wut.
Didn’t even know about that!
Oh, i kinda glide over the misguided adventure gamey FAQ mandatory stuff b/c i uh, play most games w/ an FAQ nowadays (esp old ones). fair enough. i think the main action itself is hella tight tho. the simple stand/duck to block swordplay is really satisfying for me. also felt the ballyhooed difficulty was a lil overstated. i suppose it could do w/ some light sanding but i also genuinely think it holds up.
the AT game is, like i said, very cute and the way it wears its inspiration on its sleeves is part of the cuteness, but in practice it’s really shoddy and unexciting, which is kinda how i feel about wayforward games in general!
Seconding that “it’s really good” part. I’m not a big fan of some of the additions, a lot of which of which make you backtrack a lot for items of dubious value, but it looks great and takes away some, but not all, of the randomness of the original. The game keeps track of monster transformations, so it’ll eventually begin telling you what monster you’ll transform to once you eat meat. It also made the final boss even more difficult to defeat, making it a beast no matter how much you micromanage your stat growth. Here’s a thread I did about it on the old SB.
Ooooh, I hadn’t realized someone translated the wonderswan version of saga 1: http://www.romhacking.net/translations/1614/
I’m all over that. To be honest I didn’t much care for the DS version of saga 2; the battles felt like they were slowed down a little too much and the areas seemed too vacant. I think I mostly just want to play these games in very limited resolutions and tile sets with ample fast forward. as mentioned I preferred the first game even back in 1996 though.
As for frontier, there’s definitely a few of the chapters that aren’t worth playing at all. fwiw I’d probably recommend Red first (fairly linear and has a lot of unique content; actually hangs together on its own) then Blue (open-ended but doable after Red, and really easy to become overpowered) then T260G (linear like Red but with mostly Mecs), then Riki if you want the pro metagame experience (relies on knowledge of the monster and combo systems), then stop.
I like it because the world design and music are extremely weird – it’s kawazu on the playstation pretty much going all out – and because the chapter system means that each character’s playthrough is only like 3-5 hours, which is a great length for revisiting an old jRPG; the battle system is comprised almost entirely of difficulty spikes and weird exploits such that there’s virtually no grind, your mages will learn the best spell in any given branch after 90 minutes, etc.
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update: I played wonderswan saga 1 for 10 minutes and that’s enough. frontier really does hold up a lot better than the rest of these.
Yeah, you know I only just played Legends for the first time a few months ago. And then I played Pokemon Blue for the first time right after it. It’s really obvious how much the one influenced the other. Some really neat ideas here that haven’t reaaaaly been adopted elsewhere, wholesale, and that maybe under today’s logic would be considered broken. But they make the game so interesting! I’ll, uh, go over this more shortly. Sort of rushing around, right now.