9th March 2010, 1:56 PM
I wasn't aware of fan translations...
At any rate, I was talking about the modern remakes of them as that's all that got released in America. FF3's remake was very fun, to me anyway. The Mognet "mail system" was kinda annoying though. I ended up just trading 4 boring letters back and forth with a friend to unlock Onion Knight class, which is about all the "send letters to a friend" feature amounts to. FF2 is, well, interesting. It's the first Final Fantasy to try a darker storyline with characters going through tragic stuff, and for that it's certainly worth mentioning. The story is cliche but I have a magic power that lets me put myself in a simpler mindframe when playing older games so I still enjoyed the story, even if I'd heard it a million times. The leveling system is odd, that I'll say. Apparently they made it more balanced and easier to work with in remakes so I can't really compare it to the original. Certainly can't fault attempts to eliminate levels entirely from an RPG. More games should make that attempt, though in this case the execution really didn't do much to eliminate grind at all, it just changed the form.
FFIV's remake on the DS was really nice, but I'll say this. Yes, they have been porting FFIV around a ridiculous amount of times.
Considering the sheer size of a DS cart, I also wish they'd just taken the time to stick the original GBA game onto it. Then again that's the sort of thing I want from pretty much every remake. Few bother to get that in there. Metroid Zero Mission, for example, did exactly that, and it's appreciated. What really impresses me is the elimination of any reason to get the Metroid "Classic Series" GBA cart when it's already fully included in it's own remake. The recent remake of Monkey Island 1 also included the classic there, in a way. However, the execution left out a few touches that would have made it perfect. There's no way to switch to classic mode right from the start, for example, so the title screen sequence and music can never be played classic style. They also took out the "insert disk 213113" joke, for whatever reason. However, on the other hand, one can switch back and forth between modes DURING gameplay (after the title sequence at least) with the press of a button with a seamless transition. That's certainly unique, and can mainly be done because there are no changes to the gameplay, aside from them removing that disk joke, for whatever reason.
FF4: The After Years certainly is an intersting sequel, but it suffers from a rather disappointing pattern of recent RPGs, removing the world map completely and going with "chapters". I don't really need a "world map" per say, I just want the ability to explore a wide world, even if parts are locked off and slowly revealed as I go through a game for purposes of the story. Linear paths are the soup of the day though...
At any rate, I was talking about the modern remakes of them as that's all that got released in America. FF3's remake was very fun, to me anyway. The Mognet "mail system" was kinda annoying though. I ended up just trading 4 boring letters back and forth with a friend to unlock Onion Knight class, which is about all the "send letters to a friend" feature amounts to. FF2 is, well, interesting. It's the first Final Fantasy to try a darker storyline with characters going through tragic stuff, and for that it's certainly worth mentioning. The story is cliche but I have a magic power that lets me put myself in a simpler mindframe when playing older games so I still enjoyed the story, even if I'd heard it a million times. The leveling system is odd, that I'll say. Apparently they made it more balanced and easier to work with in remakes so I can't really compare it to the original. Certainly can't fault attempts to eliminate levels entirely from an RPG. More games should make that attempt, though in this case the execution really didn't do much to eliminate grind at all, it just changed the form.
FFIV's remake on the DS was really nice, but I'll say this. Yes, they have been porting FFIV around a ridiculous amount of times.
Considering the sheer size of a DS cart, I also wish they'd just taken the time to stick the original GBA game onto it. Then again that's the sort of thing I want from pretty much every remake. Few bother to get that in there. Metroid Zero Mission, for example, did exactly that, and it's appreciated. What really impresses me is the elimination of any reason to get the Metroid "Classic Series" GBA cart when it's already fully included in it's own remake. The recent remake of Monkey Island 1 also included the classic there, in a way. However, the execution left out a few touches that would have made it perfect. There's no way to switch to classic mode right from the start, for example, so the title screen sequence and music can never be played classic style. They also took out the "insert disk 213113" joke, for whatever reason. However, on the other hand, one can switch back and forth between modes DURING gameplay (after the title sequence at least) with the press of a button with a seamless transition. That's certainly unique, and can mainly be done because there are no changes to the gameplay, aside from them removing that disk joke, for whatever reason.
FF4: The After Years certainly is an intersting sequel, but it suffers from a rather disappointing pattern of recent RPGs, removing the world map completely and going with "chapters". I don't really need a "world map" per say, I just want the ability to explore a wide world, even if parts are locked off and slowly revealed as I go through a game for purposes of the story. Linear paths are the soup of the day though...
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)