Together Retro: Final Fantasy Spin-Offs

[BoneSnapDeez]

Just hitting the mines area of Mystic Quest. Putting in about an hour per day. The game has some decent pacing. I like that it's not just towns and dungeons, but there are a bunch of little shrines and sub-areas sprinkled in between.

[marurun]

Made some progress into world 6 in Saga 2. Game is getting harder. My monster is now horribly underpowered and I'm expending more and more valuable abilities every combat. Even my massively over-HPed human is still in danger of getting dropped, in part due to stuff like 6 identical enemies all casting sleep. Even if most aren't successful, I'm gonna lose a character or two for a round. I seriously need to get my monster up to speed. Regretting having one. Greatly regretting. Should have gone with a second esper/mutant.

[Sarge]

Made some progress into world 6 in Saga 2. Game is getting harder. My monster is now horribly underpowered and I'm expending more and more valuable abilities every combat. Even my massively over-HPed human is still in danger of getting dropped, in part due to stuff like 6 identical enemies all casting sleep. Even if most aren't successful, I'm gonna lose a character or two for a round. I seriously need to get my monster up to speed. Regretting having one. Greatly regretting. Should have gone with a second esper/mutant.

Yuuuup. Although eventually you should be able to get something usable. But I find that the humans and mutants greatly outpace their abilities most of the time.

Didn't play any Mystic Quest last night; too busy messing with my now nearly-dead PSX hardware. At least I've got a backup system and like a bazillion PS2s to use. I'm in Windia right now, so three crystals down. I'm hoping I can finish it off this weekend.

[marurun]

The most survivable part member I have is the robot, because his defense is insane. I have been focusing too much on single-target attacks, though. I need to hook him up with some group killers.

[Gunstar Green]

I remember when I played the game as a kid (before it was stolen) it was the robot who carried my team through the whole game. I just gave him the best stuff and his attack and defense were completely insane.

[ElkinFencer10]

I just got to the sand temple or whatever in Mystic Quest. Had a bunch of paperwork to do to get my home loan in order, but I put in about an hour or so. Knocked out that first 10 round battleground thing, too. I'm really digging it so far, but I can definitely see why some Final Fantasy fans may have an issue with it.

[TheSSNintendo]

Just hitting the mines area of Mystic Quest. Putting in about an hour per day. The game has some decent pacing. I like that it's not just towns and dungeons, but there are a bunch of little shrines and sub-areas sprinkled in between.

I'm at the same area too. Finished up a bunch of battlefields, and got the Water Crystal earlier.

[nullPointer]

I think I've inadvertently stumbled upon some mechanical aspects of FFT: War of the Lions that I find less than enjoyable. So let's talk about the grind. There are two primary aspects of grinding in this game; grinding for experience, and grinding for job points which allow you to 'purchase' abilities specific to your current job. In many ways I'd say that grinding for experience occurs organically throughout the game, it's grinding for job points that can be tedious often to the point that it becomes necessary to 'game the system' to really gain any traction. And part of this is due to the implementation of random battles. In scripted story battles all enemy EXP/HP levels are static. So in this type of battle it's possible to win through sheer OP dominance. In the random battles however (i.e. the ones you encounter during attempts at grinding), enemy EXP/HP levels are scaled to (and are usually just slightly higher than) the character with the highest EXP/HP level in the current party. And this is where the trouble starts, because you can't just go into battle with a couple of OP tanks in an attempt to help the lower level characters advance. The enemies will be so powerful they'll one-shot the lower level characters no problem. It almost necessitates that you level up your party simultaneously across the board, and God help you if a much lower level character joins your party at some point because they'll have an uphill battle all the way.

So due to these shenanigans sometimes the most effective way to level up your characters is to have them fight each other. As in, you go into battle, leave one enemy alive, and then just have your characters start beating on each other or using pointless status effects ad nauseum. And to be sure FFT: War of the Lions isn't the first time I've seen this exact grinding strategy put to use, heck it's not even the first time I've seen it in a Final Fantasy game, but it always just strikes me as so mind-numbingly stupid. If the most effective way of leveling up characters is to completely break any sort of story immersion, maybe the system needs tweaking ... just a bit.

At any rate, it's not like this has destroyed my enjoyment of the game, far from it. But when you're really enjoying a game and it repeatedly railroads you into using silly shenanigans like those described above, it becomes an increasingly frustrating flaw in an otherwise excellent game.

[Ack]

A suggestion if you don't want to buddy bash and still want job points: use the Squire's accumulate skill. Go onto a map, beat your opponents down to one person, beat them into submission so they're retreating or use knight abilities to break their speed and gear, and have your low level characters or anyone you want gaining some exp to use accumulate over and over again. Ramza's Yell ability as a squire is also useful, because you can speed up your accumulators.

Now if you want job points without overdoing levels, there is a rare trap on specific levels that will lower a character's level by 1. You do the same thing I have mentioned, but keep folks stepping on the trap to keep their levels down.

[ESauced]

I played another hour of Kingdom Hearts tonight, finally meeting up with Goofy and Donald. I have to say, tonight's session wasn't great: I was mostly wandering around aimlessly killing infinitely spawning enemies until I finally triggered the event to meet "Leon" (Squall). Oh well, hopefully I'll start figuring out what I'm supposed to be doing soon...
Also the idea that Squall from FF VIII is apparently good friends with Donald Duck and Goofy amuses me. This really IS the weird Disney/Final Fantasy crossover fan fiction story I imagined it to be years ago!

Oh yeah, the first few hours of Kingdom Hearts are terrible. First you have to do the terrible Island part, then you have to wander around traverse town for hours; I’ve played through the beginning three times now and every time it takes me an hour to get through the part where you have to just go between the districts until you bump into Donald and Goofy.

I wish I could say that they improved this issue in the second one but they did not. I hate whenever games have a lengthy boring opening sequence. Most 3d Zeldas pre Breath of the Wild were guilty of this to some degree too.

If this is your first time playing Kingdom Hearts I promise it gets a lot better from here!