Together Retro: Final Fantasy Spin-Offs

[Exhuminator]

I did have the idea that I could maybe play Vagrant Story for the rest of the month.

YES

[Xeogred]

Does it count as a spinoff?

[Sarge]

Probably not, but I'm all 'bout some Vagrant Story.

[noiseredux]

I say yes as it is set in the same world as other FF games. Always found that interesting.

Keep in mind I consider Soldier to be a Blade Runner movie, so I'm just into loose series in general. Haha.

[Exhuminator]

Does it count as a spinoff?

It does if you're okay with retroactive continuity:

"Although there are many connections to be shown, there is a short list of examples showing that the Ivalice of Vagrant Story is meant to be the same place exactly as that in the Final Fantasy series:

In FFXII, the Iocus Rood Sigil/Blood Sin (cross with an X instead of a cross bar) remains related to the summoning of magic and creatures: it is in the background when the player summons, it is signed by Gabranth in his first major appearance, and a Blood Sin mark identical to the infamous tattoo appears on the skull of the shamaness during Zalera's spell "Death Wail".

Vagrant Story is set in Valendia, one of the continents in Final Fantasy XII.

Kiltia is mentioned as a sect in Vagrant Story. In Final Fantasy XII there is a religion called the Light of Kiltia.

A short passage is quoted from A.J. Durai. 'Arazlam Durai' was the narrator of Final Fantasy Tactics.

In a dialogue with Samantha, Sydney mentions how the Priesthood of Iocus worships a 'dead' god who is really a demon. Since the name of the Church associated with the Priesthood is never given, this may be an allusion to Saint Ajora Glabados.

Agrias Balm: The Zodiac Brave Story in Final Fantasy Tactics contains multiple references to a knight Agrias, balm used by him, and a place by that name.

In one of its Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift/Side Stories has Montblanc requesting Hurdy a bottle of Prudence. Prudence is one of the wines found in Vagrant Story's Leá Monde.

The Gran Grimoire plays a major role in Vagrant Story's plot. The term would later be used for other magical books in the Ivalice series, but a set of Gran Grimoires would become a recurring plot item in the Final Fantasy Tactics Advance series.

One of the clan ranks in Final Fantasy Tactics Advance is Riskbreaker. Ashley Riot is a member of the Riskbreakers."

Source: http://vagrantstory.wikia.com/wiki/Vagr ... Influences

[noiseredux]

I personally really dig retrocon. That's just my opinion of course. Either way I'd be interested to hear about the game.

[noiseredux]

so I did finish up Type-0. The final 'dungeon' took me like two hours. Maybe a little more? As I said it makes you create two teams of three (out of a pool of twelve characters) and then the two teams have to fight through their own series of challenge rooms. So one room might be that you have to kill all the enemies without using magic; another might be you have to kill them all ONLY using magic. Each room has some sort of time limit, and failing any of the rooms (presumably) sends you back to the start of the whole gauntlet. Luckily I never failed a room.

Fittingly, the final boss is pretty much just a stupid waste of time. First he kills your entire team. All twelve characters. You have to manually switch in each character JUST SO HE CAN KILL THEM ALL ONE BY ONE. Then all twelve get resurrected and are now invincible and then you have to have each of them - ALL TWELVE OF THEM - kill a piece of him. So again, now you have to manually swap in ALL TWELVE of them all over again. Like I said, they're all invincible now. So there's no way to lose this boss fight. It is just a big drawn out waste of time.

Not surprisingly the game ends with so much confusing dialogue and cut scenes. I do like that the story ends with its more darker tones - a bloodied party of twelve sitting in a destroyed classroom literally talking about how they're scared of dying, trying to console each others' tears. It borders on tritely emo, but all the blood and destruction keep it tethered to borderline-disturbing. But then it becomes clear that like the rest of the game, the end-story just doesn't know when to quit. So even this scene is overly long... drawn out by long stretches of silence and awkward dialogue that honestly feels like its being made up as it goes along. It's weird. But of course that was a big part of Type-0's charm.

[pierrot]

Floating islands are one of my favorite settings in fantasy gaming, and FFXII does it very well.

I agree, and now that you mention it, it might be one of the bigger reasons I like FF III so much.

On a somewhat unrelated note, as a tween, suddenly and unexpectedly traveling to other celestial bodies was the shtick that got me hot and bothered.

EDIT: Decision made. Goodbey Kingdom Hearts....

Did you get rid of KH: CoM and KH II also? I really can't blame you for giving up on KH 1 (spoilers if anyone cares), but the other two are potentially worth playing, if you can get past the story stuff. Maybe the HD updates make them even more worthy, although I can't say, personally.

There's been a lot of dumping on KH, but one thing it certainly has is an amazing soundtrack. More often than not, Shimomura hits it out of the park anyway, though. From a Western perspective it's almost meaningless, but historically speaking it's actually pretty novel to have Utada Hikaru lend some of her music to a game series, too.

[alienjesus]

EDIT: Decision made. Goodbey Kingdom Hearts....

Did you get rid of KH: CoM and KH II also? I really can't blame you for giving up on KH 1 (spoilers if anyone cares), but the other two are potentially worth playing, if you can get past the story stuff. Maybe the HD updates make them even more worthy, although I can't say, personally.

There's been a lot of dumping on KH, but one thing it certainly has is an amazing soundtrack. More often than not, Shimomura hits it out of the park anyway, though. From a Western perspective it's almost meaningless, but historically speaking it's actually pretty novel to have Utada Hikaru lend some of her music to a game series, too.

I did decide to get rid of those 2 as well. They might be better - in fact I know for sure Chain of Memories is, as I've played it like 90% through previously - but the fact that they're all part of the same overly convoluted series just puts me off. I think I'd rather just write this one off and use the time to play any of the other numerous games in my backloggery instead.

[Sload Soap]

I beat Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII and I'm not really sure what to say other than it's very noughties SquareEnix in that it's incredibly expensive trash. What I mean by this is while the game is at the top scale in terms of production values, the story and characters feel like they were pulled from a fansite.

The CG cutscenes alone for this probably cost more than a lot of its (better) contemporaries and they hired Gackt to write a couple of painfully teenage songs to close the action out but the core gameplay experience is one that is a couple of steps below a Metal Arms or Max Payne both of which predate it by a good few years. Dirge isn't a bad game just an average one. The gameplay is pretty fluid and the shooting mechanics are fine, while messing around upgrading your gun is cool. And it looks nice although not as good as a 2006 PS2 release probably should. There isn't enough enemy variation for my liking and it only starts to really mix in tougher enemies with the regular grunts towards the very later stages of the game so the middle section of the game feels very flat in terms of challenge. Bosses are also pretty easy and the ability to quickly bring up and RPG style menu and slurp a potion or two again negates any real challenge. Dirge of Cerberus probably edges as well into being too long for this sort of game, my playthrough clocking in at just under ten hours. With the amount and sometimes excessive length of the cutscenes this could be shortened down but the structure of the game doesn't lend itself to speed runs or anything. This isn't Vanquish or again, Max Payne.

I feel like a broken record saying this about a SquareEnix game but once again the story is the real issue. We have the usual Square nonsense stew about an inexplicable entity that wants to kill all life so it can ascend to a higher plane of existence and the Metal Gear rejects who aid it despite the obvious implications why they shouldn't. Added on top of that is Vincent working through the stuff from FFVII regarding his shady past with Hojo and Lucrecia that apparently he hasn't got over (even though he did in, you know, FFVII). Also he's got a demon in him now but don't worry about it as it'll have zero effect on the plot or gameplay until the very last chapter. The main badguy is a non-entity and the final boss is another in FF's long and sordid history of godlike beings who show up five minutes from the end to proclaim death to all only to then soundly have their arses kicked back into oblivion. There's also this weird plot conceit where they keep Hojo's face concealed until the very end when they reveal him like it's a twist even though this doesn't work if a) you're a fan of FFVII you know it's him from the off and b) if you're not a fan you won't know who he is in relation to Vincent so there is no twist anyway. So dumb.

It's a hot mess and full of bad dialogue, terrible attempts at humour (any time Yuffie is on screen) and Vincent doesn't really change at all by the end. He's still the same moody vampire-cowboy he was 20 years ago when he first emerged from his coffin. Actually it's worse than that as like the rest of the FFVII cast (who make cameos here) he's been boiled down to one characteristic and given Dragonball Z powers cos obviously that's badass and kewl. Square have this almost George Lucas like obsession with missing the point of the characters and worlds they created and I find it extremely disheartening.

Anyway though, as a spin-off it is at least interesting in a couple of ways. Firstly it's the only shooter in the Final Fantasy franchise so that's something. Secondly it's kind of a sequel to both FFVII and the official movie sequel to that game, taking place about a year after the events of Advent Children so that's also something. And it was so badly received when it initially released in Japan it had to be completely rejigged for the west, then re-released in Japan in 2008 when it would have looked even more behind the times, so that's really something.