This site DOES NOT contain any game ROMs, I won't share any with you so please don't even ask!
Jan.27,2023I promised some retro content so here it is! Last night I streamed the first little bit of Final Fantasy 4 (FF2 in SNES America) on Twitch. I plan on doing a series of episodes on this to get from the beginning to the end but it may take a while to go all the way through it. Enjoy!
Tags : ff2, snes, twitch, videogames, youtube
Hello visitors! As usual, it’s been a while since I have posted. However, I have an important reason this time! As of the first day of January, I have begun streaming on Twitch.tv! I have all the equipment once might need because my remote-only job uses a lot of video conferencing. I also have a pretty bomb laptop that I bought as a solid gaming machine and only barely started to use. All the stars have aligned and I launched: http://www.twitch.tv/the_retrogamerboy.
On this new stream, I will mostly be playing newer video games thanks to XBox GamePass, but I will stream some retro games too. In fact, I actually streamed “Knights of the Round” with my kids the other day. I do not intend to make money off this (though some extra cash would be cool). Instead, I just want to have the joy of playing video games and chatting with other folks who like them. I would welcome you to subscribe to my channel, and I will likely be updating more things on this website to match the branding of my Twitch account.
Hello friends! I decided that since I am gaming but not doing much retro, it wouldn’t hurt to have a fun non-retro game post. I actually posted this information on the Sims 4 Reddit but decided to go ahead and post it here because it was a fun to write and many of you may not even have Reddit. So here we go, I hope you enjoy!
I wanted to share an interesting story I attempted to complete on The Sims 4. I wanted a story where my vampire character caused so many deaths that he became friends with Grim and eventually started a relationship. However, I wanted my Grim to be a female because I thought having a female Grim Reaper would be interesting. I had to use some cheats to do parts of it but not much.
Basically, I called an annoying neighbor over to my house in Strangeville. I locked the doors and used MCCC to “Kill Sim” (I let them die by laughter so it wasn’t brutal). As soon as Grim showed up, I used cheats to “Add to Family”. When that was done, I used cas.fulleditmode and had Grim go to the mirror and used “Change my Sim”.
Grim appeared as he always does with the cloak and such. I clicked the “Female” gender on him. The moment I did so, his/her “Grim” hair was removed and she looked much like a female version of the ‘unmasked Grim’ that people have posted all over the net. Darker skin, black hair that was braided in a bun over her head.
When I returned to the game with this female Grim as a part of my house, she still had the reaper trait, smoke feet, etc. I changed her appearance to give her a hat that looks like the Egyptian Anubis head for her “hood” but the image is not the same. What can I say? I was trying to do this without any custom content.
I dug around in the wonderful Sims 4 mod world and found two custom content options. One by maimouth that makes the hood look more like a real hood with a slightly open face. I also found a hood by snaitf who made a package that makes the real “hair/hood” an actual hairstyle you can select. So, when I gave her this hair and she basically looks and acts like I would expect her to look and act.
However, I still wanted one outfit where I could have her “remove her hood” as it were. After all, why be in a relationship with someone if you can’t ever actually see their face. I chose to modify her sleepwear and changed the hair to be the original hair she had when she was gender-changed. She switched into the t-shirt, sweatpants, and bare feet that I had selected, and approached the bed to sleep.
But as soon as she laid down in her bed, her hood magically reappeared and I could not change it. Why on earth would she want to sleep with her face covered? I mean… she doesn’t actually sleep because she’s the grim reaper.
I saved the game so I could do some tweaking and it was a good thing! As soon as I re-opened it, the save won’t load. I even disabled all the other mods and had no success. So I had a brief bit of time to experiment with the female Grim Reaper before it corrupted my file… c’est la vie.
I know that it is silly to experiment with things that aren’t supposed to work in The Sims 4 but I can’t believe that no one else has tried to do a ‘female Grim’ and didn’t post about whether or not it broke their game. I think it would be fascinating if a player could build up rapport with Grim and have him (or her) be able to remove the hood as a piece of their outfit without ruining the game. Another interesting idea would be if the Grim’s gender and even their face without the hood was completely random.
I decided that I wanted to try whatever steps I could to make the file work properly. So, I removed both custom content pieces and then loaded the save again. It took a while to load but finally worked. I took the grim “hair” off all but one outfit and it seems to work. The issue seems to happen when the “Grim Hair” is added to an outfit besides the reaper robe. Not sure if that matters but it worked for me.
I hope you enjoyed it!
Wanted to let you all know that I am still alive and kicking. It’s been a very busy year for me with my transition to a new city, new job, new people, everything. I have been working two jobs to keep things going, trying to find relaxation in chaos, and moving through life.
I am still going to blog, in fact, I have started a playthrough of Shinobi 3 on the Genesis after listening to the fun book “Console Wars” which talks a lot about Sega as the underdog and what they did. However, I generally unwind playing more modern games such as The Sims 4, SWTOR, WOW, or Starcraft II. That means that it will just take longer to post updates than usual.
Keep on keepin’ on and I will post a new review when I get done with the next game!
I can’t believe it, but it’s been 4 years since my last review of a video game. I guess I am just not that great at finishing what I start sometimes. Yet I have a review for a classic remake of a classic game – Super Ghouls and Ghosts. This is easily one of the most difficult SNES games I have ever played and one of the reasons that it took so long to do a review is because I had to really work up the courage and the discipline to get through it. Unfortunately, I was not very well rewarded with this game, but I’ll get to that later. So… here we go!
Table of Contents:
In case you are not quite sure what this game is, it is actually a remake of a remake of remake! Yes… that’s right, third generation remake but a classic side-scrolling platformer nonetheless. To understand where this game comes from, one must understand it’s past. The game began as “Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins”, an arcade console running on the Motorola 6809 chipset in 1985. It was also released on the NES, Commodore 16, and many other game systems. Three years later, a new version of the game was created called “Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts which was released on the Capcom System 1 (CS-1) for the arcade and on various computer consoles such as Amiga and Commodore 64. Finally, in 1991, Capcom decided to release a remastered version of the original game directly for the SNES. Hence, the game was born as a remake of a remake or a remake but it is still legendary in its style and platform skill. I should mention that the series continued and spawned many other titles including Demon’s Crest, Gargoyle’s Quest, Ultimate Ghouls ‘N’ Ghosts, etc. So despite being old enough to drink, rent a car, get married, and even start losing some hair, the series is still alive and kicking today.
(( WARNING – Some Spoilers Ahead… you were warned))
Hey dude! Bring Back 2P Chains!
The story is very simple and only moderately different than the storyline from the previous games. Essentially it works like this: You are Arthur King of the Br…ahem… the Great Knight. You are in love with Princess Prin Prin (yes… that’s her freaking name… come on!) and hope to make many young Arthurs (even though the entire Arthurian legend involving Guinevere and her husband are ignored – that’s mostly a European thing so you can’t blame Japan for not knowing the full story). In the middle of the night you are just hanging out with the Princess and trying to figure out if she wants to be called “Prinny”, “Princess P”, 2P (not really but oh well). While you talk, you get this weird sensation of something coming closer and closer (the game actually uses a unique approach of the Mode 7 engine) to your castle. Suddenly.. CRASH! A Red Demon steals your girl for no apparent reason.
Get Your Princess in This Castle
So now, Arthur is pissed and leaves Cam…er… the castle, to seek revenge on the demon lord Sardius because he magically knows that’s who took her. Also, this same bastard has been stealing girls for a while so Arthur knows that she is being held captive in this castle at the end of the world. You get to hop through the window and go into the…erm… graveyard that Prin Prin keeps outside the castle. Maybe you have a red flag here?
Arthur will brave all the horrors of Sardius’s minions and the weird worlds they inhabit. All the while he must collect magical weapons, deal with landscape that changes all the time, and often gets forced to run around in his underwear… seriously, I’m not making this up. You travel through the graveyard, into the umm… ocean at the edge of the graveyard, down into the magma core of the earth, through a weird living tooth monster land, up a rainy monster tree, through a frozen wasteland, into two parts of a castle and finally to the throne room to face Sardius himself.
Unfortunately, there are some things you were not told, as it turns out, Sardius really only took 2P Chains (I don’t care, that’s what I am going to call her from now on) because he thought she had this thing called the “Goddess Bracelet” because… you know… evil Satan-like demons love to hold things owned by gods and goddesses, it won’t burn them up or anything #maybenottrue. Plus, this bracelet is so powerful that if Arthur touches it without the magical God…er…Gold armor, he can’t live either. However, because 2P Chains is a bit of a blue-haired airhead, she accidentally dropped this priceless artifact somewhere along the way. No… of course she doesn’t remember where, she just dropped it while the red demon was taking her to the castle.
I did not sign up for this!
So after you have trudged through 6 planes of death, often in just your underwear, you finally beat Sardius’ minion, Astaroth (and his jealous brother Nebirtoh – the dude is actually green) and you hope to save hottie 2P Chains and get some double P action, only to find out that you have to do it all over again because the actual bad guy can’t be beaten by anything but the VERY THING she dropped. You get sent back to the beginning. Only now that bad guys KNOW you are coming and so everything got massively harder and they called in all the reinforcements for each kind of monster. Plus, all the boss monsters have now taken steroids and have entire playbooks about how you beat them last time. That means that the monsters are harder, the maps are more complex, the bosses cannot be beaten the same way, and if you don’t somehow find this mythical “Goddess Bracelet” before you get back to the castle of Sardius, you will not be able to beat him. Dude! 2P Chains really blew it this time! Maybe you ought to talk to that hottie Guinevere over (*smacked with the ‘canon’ stick*) .. ahem… sorry, where was I? Oh yeah! You have to beat the “Fiend” Sardius using the Goddess Bracelet that 2P Chains dropped on the way after you have combed the entire map again to look for the long lost amulet.
Why do my pants have a face?
Ultimately, you get to face off against the Fiend Sardius who stands a full two stories above you. You can shoot him with the lightning bolt power of the “Goddess Bracelet” (though it is actually pretty unwieldy). But for some strange reason, his ‘crotch mouth’ (a staple of the final baddies in this series it seems), spits out ice-like platforms to allow you to jump up and blast his blue, white-bearded, face, repeatedly until he finally blows up. Hooray! You have defeated Sardius and saved Princess Prin Prin! You can now ride off in the sunset with your blue haired girl. However, the game couldn’t possibly let you go of their massive franchise so you are actually greeted with a “The End…?” screen because… well… Sata..erm… Sardius is an eternal bad guy and he likely will want to steal your princess again sometime because that’s what eternal bad guys do so don’t get too comfortable. Roll Credits!
Easily the most difficult thing about mastering this game is understanding the unique mechanics of the game’s controls. Arthur is able to execute double jumps, use variety of weapons, upgrade his armor and ultimately use a type of ‘charge up’ to complete the most powerful use of each weapon. Some of the weapons in the game are fantastic and work very well in a wide variety of situations while others are completely useless, even for basic combat. Oh yes, and don’t forget the various treasure chests in the game. You will find yourself battling all manner of horrors throughout the map stages. There are zombies, ghosts, wolves, flying demons, faeries (I’m not talking Tinkerbell here), monster fish, giant bears with clothing, and countless others. You must jump, scream, claw, and strive through over 7 different levels with all varying kinds of environments from a graveyard, to the ocean, to this horrifying tooth cave of death, etc. Each stage has a boss at the end that seems to fit the genre of the stage you are playing and these monsters range from the normal (giant birds of death) to the really weird (mushroom coral monster anyone?)
First of all, the character has some basic moves. Arthur can move left and right in the standard fashion of side-scrolling games. He can also climb ladders if you position him over them and press the “Up” button. If you press the jump button one time, Arthur will do a basic jump that generally gets him across normal gaps or up small platforms. However, if you press jump once and within a 2-3 seconds, press it again, he will double jump which will generally get him across everything else and can even be used to jump up to different levels instead of climbing the ladders (especially useful for speedrunners). You can also change the direction of the second jump by pushing right or left with the arrow key while also pressing the second jump button. Sometimes, the only way to get over a particular obstacle is to do a ‘zig zag jump’ wherein the player pushes a direction such as left while pressing jump for the first time, then pressing the opposite direction (right in this example) and jump again. In this situation, Arthur will jump at a 45 degree angle one way, then jump another 45 degree angle the opposite way.
I CURSE you!
Why don’t I have a sword?
So you can jump around the map and double jump, but how does he attack? Well, that is pretty simple. You start the game with a lance (weird since this is Arthur… famous for using a SWORD… *canon stick waves menacingly above me* but that’s not important, heh…) that you throw, much like a javelin or spear. It is great for basic damage and flies in a straight line when shot. What makes this even funnier is that the box of the game and the cartridge shows him carrying a sword but there really is no such weapon in the game. You may also find a variety of other weapons including the crossbow which is VERY useful as it shoots a projectile in front of you and at a 45 degree angle above you which will take out most flying creatures after a few hits and there are plenty of those! You may also find the torch as a weapon of interest but it is best saved when facing slow enemies, large enemies, or those that can’t move much as it flies up, then falls down at an angle and creates a fire geyser. You also have a throwing ax which is very slow but does some decent damage if used on the right enemies – it will fly up at a 45 degree angle and then go straight down on whatever is below it.
Beyond these, most of the other weapons are useless. There is a pitiful throwing knife that, although it is fast, does very little damage and goes straight out like a lance (so why not use that since it’s more damage anyway). You will also find a scythe which is basically like a boomerang but does very little damage unless it happens to strike an enemy flying at you as it returns. Then there is a weird, rotating knife thing called the ‘tri-blade’ but it doesn’t try to hit anything… seriously, it lazily glides out from your character’s head, goes down then straight and continues this strange up and down meandering pattern. However, much like Castlevania games, you have no choice about changing weapons – if you touch the weapon when it comes out of a chest, you will lose the weapon you had and be forced to use whatever weapon you just got.
Sometimes, the appearance of the items on the map are so unfortunate (like, if you need the crossbow because you know that there are four flying demons in the next section of the map but you randomly get a useless tri-blade from the chest) that it’s actually better to kill your character (the game gives you an infinite number of continues so… eh?) than to pick up the weapon. Now the great king of the Britons is reduced to committing seppuku… what is the world coming to? Lastly, there is the Goddess Bracelet which you can ONLY get if you have the Gold Armor and we’re going to get to that part now.
I’m too sexy for my pants
Ah yes, one of the unique quirks of the game is the way your character takes “hits”. Many platform games both past and present will give the character a ‘life bar’ or ‘hit points’ or something like that to gauge how much damage you can take. However, this is not the way that Super Ghouls and Ghosts works. Nope… you basically have two hit points. If you have not been hit, you wear ‘steel armor’ which is gray and similar to what you’d expect from a knight. However, if you get hit while wearing the steel armor, Arthur decides to run around in his underwear… literally… yup, the hero of Arthurian legend running around in white boxers with red polka dots on them. If you get hit again while Arthur is in his undies, you die – geez… I hope they were clean.
This is not Bronze…
But don’t fear, you actually can get additional suits of armor to help you with your quest – as long as you aren’t always in your undies… don’t be a weirdo anyway. The first upgrade you get is called the “Bronze Armor” which is awfully strange because it’s… umm… blue green? If you are hit while wearing the Gree-Ronze armor, Arthur simply returns to his steel armor meaning that you can take 3 hits in this armor before you die. Not to mention, when you have the ahem… Jade… Armor, each weapon looks different and is more powerful. The lances make a neat laser noise, glow blue/green and do more damage. The crossbow becomes a laser pointed set of tri-arrows that blast in three directions. The axes look more like you are tossing flying guillotines and the scythe looks more like a throwing star to name a few changes. However, if you are hit once and return to the steel armor, your weapons are only the boring standard weapons again. If you want to keep the awesome power-ups and take more damage, then you need the Gold armor…
Fear Me!
If you somehow manage to not get hit by all the horrible monsters in this game while wearing the Jade armor, you will eventually open a treasure chest that gives you the Gold armor which is obviously the best of the breed and it makes Arthur look pretty bad ass. Seriously… he is like a gold ball of awesome with a neat feather. It also gives him access to a wide array of shields that may appear in the chests but most sources agree that the shields are pretty much useless unless you are really good with them. In addition to the awesome look of the armor, that means Arthur can take 4 full hits before he dies and that’s like… invincible in this game. He gets to keep the awesome power-ups of his weapons from the Bron-reen armor and even learns how to do magic! Well… one spell anyway. But it is also ONLY with the Gold Armor that you can hope to wield the Goddess Bracelet. In fact, without the Gold Armor, the Goddess Bracelet will NEVER appear in a chest. So until you get REALLY good at not getting hit by the hordes of monsters, you will never be able to beat the ultimate bad guy and win the game.
The secret to this game is basically to learn what weapons you are best at, learn how to use the double jump with high effectiveness, and well… not get killed. The fact that you cannot even beat the game unless you can keep the Gold Armor and find the Goddess Bracelets is proof positive that the developers of this game were sadists. They only want to watch you suffer! But if you get good at leaping, weapons swapping, and using the map to your advantage, you can eke your way through and beat this game… twice.
Ah! Now we come to the part you’ve all been waiting for, my review! Yes, even though I have been gaming for over three decades and consider platform games one of my talents, it took your boy RGB here a VERY long time to beat this beast. I only played this game a few times when I was younger and would usually avoid it if I remembered what’s good for me. But now I managed to make it through this game by dedicating about 4 hours per night over the course of a week or so until I beat it. Now, I’m not going to lie, I made liberal use of the “Save State” feature on my emulator several times until I memorized the maps and the enemies. However, I actually made it all the way through the game with no save states until I arrived at Sardius’ throne room so I felt your pain all the way through. This game has some very nice graphics for the era, a really cool mix of weapons and plenty of goodies to keep you moving. However, it is frightfully difficult and occasionally darn near impossible. Without further ado, here are “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” of Super Ghouls and Ghosts.
I feel so dirty!
First of all, this was released very early in the SNES library – within six months of the console’s launch – yet it seemed graphically stunning compared to the other games of the time. The developers used a unique mixture of nicely painted but static background layers, full motion front layers to illustrate rain and snow, and a mind numbing use of the Mode 7, pseudo 3D capability of the SNES. In fact, it the fourth stage, Arthur is traveling through a ‘living cavern’ with a floor that changes from a pulsating tan skin (ew!) to a writhing mass of gesticulating teeth (WTF?) all while Arthur must float around on membranous mucus platforms while avoiding steam vents and ax-wielding brutes. The game designers used Mode 7 to make this horrifying stage rotate around Arthur while he avoids geysers of death and ground with teeth. Likewise, when you are on the ocean/ghost ship stage, the developers used gentle shifts of the Mode 7 technology to make the boat ‘sway’ in the water and to make the waves rise and fall on Arthur as he pilots a raft on the water of death. While it’s true that Super Mario World (the launch title of the SNES) used many of these features as well, they were not as potent because of the more cartoon-like design of those characters. Super GnG was not afraid to scare the crap out of you with dark landscapes you might find in a vampire movie , truly scary looking monsters (well… the ghosts were pretty lame but I digress).
Next, Super GnG took the standard approach of a platform game such as side-scrolls, creative jumping, map distractions, etc. and took them to the next level by adding weapons, power ups, landscape that transforms as you interact with it (such as a rock suddenly shifting when you step on it or waves crashing over a map and wiping out almost all of the places to stand), and an endless array of monsters to beat. I would almost go as far as to say that the game established many of the standards found in later platform games. You really have to learn what weapons work best against a certain enemy, figure out how to not die while attacking that enemy, and use jumping in a way that really pushes you to the limit of your own ability. As someone who considers themselves skilled at platformers, not even the best muscle training in the world can prepare you for some of the crazy things this platform makes you do. It takes a short time to learn but a long time to master.
Lastly, the game keeps its creepy air with a clever mix of humor but never overdoes either piece. No matter what you do, you always feel like this game wants to kill you (and it does) and even the slightest wrong move can make you die horribly. That, mixed with the altogether terrifying look of the monsters (final bosses aside), keep you feeling creeped out and quite uncomfortable. But these ingredients are exactly what makes this game awesome! You feel the macabre sense of the world but still get a laugh at a dude running about in his underwear or bears in clothing. The game has an atmosphere to it that is both creepy and fulfilling at the same time. If only you can NOT DIE long enough to enjoy those things.
Despite the fun and challenging aspects of the game, it is not without its flaws. As with many games that were pushing the limits of a new system, Super GnG has some aspects that did not quite flesh out when it was released. For instance, when you go through the world the second time through, the amount of monsters is literally doubled in almost every stage. Not only does this challenge the player, but it also challenges the hardware. When you face a map full of baddies, especially ghosts, each one has its own individual sprite layer that forms independently around the others and this stresses the game’s rendering engine to a high degree. So much so, that many sprites at once can cause screen to flash violently enough to trigger seizures and cause the player to die while the game is trying to answer all the sprite requests plus the inputs from your controller that its trying to process.
Next of all, the more you think about Super GnG and Super Mario Brothers, it’s easy to see how one could consider them copies of one another. After all, when you start out on Super Mario World, your character is “small Mario” who will die if he’s hit. However, if you happen to have a mushroom to make “big Mario” or a cape to make “Flying Mario” and you hit an enemy, you will lose that power up and go back to “small Mario”. Plus, the ultimate bad guy in the game steals the Princess for no apparent reason (especially Bowser, he just stole Peach to be a dick). Mix that with a creative use of Mode 7 graphics to change the rotation of things on the map and it starts to feel like Super GnG was a weird attempt by Capcom to steal Nintendo’s secret sauce for platform games. They didn’t win though, but it is notable.
Fear our crotch mouth!
Finally, the ultimate bad guys look pretty freaking dumb compared to some of the other monsters you have to face. For instance, Sardius’s minion, Astaroth and his more powerful form Nebiroth look pretty dumb. Not to mention, Sardius himself looks pretty underwhelming when you consider the alternatives. I mean, seriously… these guys look like Santa Claus got pissed off, grew a crotch mouth and tried to take over the world. From a game that has ax murdering monsters that appear out of thin air, zombies that look pretty terrible, and enemies that move all over the map, I expected SO MUCH MORE from the ultimate bad guys. They basically stomp around (they don’t even jump really), spit lasers at you, and shoot fire from their crotch mouths. It’s such a let down! You want to HATE the ultimate bad guy of this game, especially after you have to go through the game TWICE just to beat him. Yet… all you get are these weird dudes who you honestly feel sorry for more than you fear. I mean, the crotch mouth is pretty scary but only if it was like… a real head. I simply didn’t feel like it was worth it to go through all the trouble just to beat these idiots.
For everything this game had in awesome graphics, spooky sounds and worlds, and challenging platforms it is pretty great. I can accept the similarities between it and Super Mario, look past the idiotic styling of the demon overlords and the graphic glitches. But there are a few things out of this that I simply cannot accept and are part of the reasons that I will not be in any hurry to replay it.
First of all, doing this game twice is damned idiotic! I understand that in the arcade format of this game, it makes sense to double the game time so that the arcade (and Capcom) can squeeze more quarters out of you. But when it was ported to the SNES, that should have been less important. Now, it’d be a different story if…say… you had to go back through a world that had been radically changed after your first encounter with the bad guy (think World of Balance versus World of Ruin in Final Fantasy III/VII or the time-based changes when you changed the past of something in Chrono Trigger to impact the future) but Super GnG doesn’t do this. Nope! They just make you replay the whole game because Sardius is a jerk and he hates you!
Lame endings are for losers
Second of all… this story is freaking dumb! I mean, seriously, at least be a bit creative as to why you care about fighting the bad guy and saving 2P Chains. She just randomly gets kidnapped by Satan, you have to go through a maze of death just to learn she was an airhead and dropped something that Sardius wanted and you have to go save her. Yes, I get it, this is a hack and slash ghost game so I should not have my expectations so high but to make a story that is so devoid of any value, you’d at least hope that the ending would be good and it’s not. Nope… you are just stuck wondering if the Eternal Evil™ will return and you don’t even get to carry a real sword. You just basically ride off into the sunset with your blue haired bimbo of a girlfriend who probably almost got you killed because she’s a forgetful klutz. It’s very unfulfilling after all the hell you went through…twice… to get to the end. Of course, it’s at least slightly better than the end sequence of the NES version of Ghosts ‘N’ Goblins because it is at least in…well… English… that ending was so bad that it ranked on WhatCulture Gaming’s Most Insulting Game Endings.
Finally, the world repeatedly tries to kill you. That’s right, every. single. stage. tries to murder you mercilessly and the developers just laughed about it. Normally the first stage of a game ‘eases’ you into the crazy but not Super GnG…oh no… halfway through the stage the waves crash over the map and if you aren’t standing on a rock, you will die. Then, the second stage has indestructible guillotines plus hordes of ghosts and a raft ride of death that tries to kill you. Then, in the third stage you are surrounded by lava that tries to kill you and fire-breathing bears in sweaters that try to kill you. The fourth stage is the god awful stage of skin and teeth where even the world tries to kill you. The fifth stage is full of rain washes and disappearing platforms that try to kill you. The sixth stage has FUCKING avalanches that try to kill you… oh and ice-breathing bears in sweaters that try to kill you. I could go on and on but I won’t. I fully respect that there are some games that really make you work hard to get through them but they usually entice you with a good story or some areas of the game that let you breathe easy. Nope… not Super GnG… the world hates you, the developers hate you, your princess is a bimbo who got herself in trouble, and you have to march through hell twice.
So now I come to the end of a game that I really wanted to love, especially since it took me so long to actually get around to beating it. There is no doubt about it, this game will challenge even the most seasoned of platform runners. You will find yourself immersed in a macabre world that is almost likened to a horror genre game but with just enough quirky weirdness to make you smile and laugh a little. It is a stunning example of even the beginnings of what Mode 7 graphics could do (and eventually did) and how it could be used in varying degrees. The uniqueness of this game will make it stand out in anyone’s mind and you will have a fine time tuning your skills high enough to beat this monster.
However, this game left much to the imagination as it was somewhat too powerful for the hardware it was written on. It also had a really stupid requirement to complete twice. Now, I should note that i have actually played two other games from this franchise: Gargoyle’s Quest (think being the bad guy in a Super GnG world) and the beautiful Demon’s Crest which did the replay the world mechanic quite well and made you want to do it. I know that Capcom can make repeating a whole game interesting, they just did not do it with this game. You will also find that the game’s final bad guys are downright dumb so don’t expect too much and you might not be let down. If you can ignore the double play action, the somewhat stupid ending, and the levels with murder in their eyes, you will be able to find a lot of great things about this game to love.
It’s very easy to become accustomed to a certain way a game operates as many of those playing platform games in this era did. Capcom succeeded in taking that type of gamer and pushing them to their utter limits in order to live in their world. There is something of an artistic poetry to being able to master each weapon in this game and the right time to use them. It’s a great achievement when you learn how to navigate the levels, memorize the hot spots for treasure chests (especially knowing they will always appear), reach the fully Gold Armor clad Arthur, and beat a game that is so darn difficult that it lands on many of the “Hardest SNES Games” lists that are out there on the internet. Yet the amazing success you have in beating something that you know took the effort makes the other things in this platform game not as hard to accept.
Ultimately, this game was a defining point in the SNES game history, a turning point in the formula for platform games, and a humorously twisted approach to Arthurian legend. If you fancy yourself a master platform gamer, I urge you to give this a shot but don’t expect you’ll be able to just breeze right through it, even with cheat codes. I often will try Game Genie/PAR codes on games at various occasions just to see how the world will respond to them and I can assure you that even the best cheat codes don’t make this game much easier to play. To be true to yourself as a gamer, only use cheat codes after you have made it through cleanly. If you’ve been putting off Super GnG for a while, now is the time to give it a go!
Good luck… seriously… you’re going to need it!
Hello fans!
I’m taking a break from my heavy playing of SWTOR because I am in the last stages of the original game which requires me to complete several flashpoints, aka long dungeon-like special stages where you face ‘end game’ content from the original series. A single flashpoint can take at least two hours and is chock full of really tough bad guys. As a result, you all benefit because I dusted off my old list of retro games. I started a playthrough of Mega Man X but decided I was not in the mood to replay it right now. I then looked through my list of ‘games I have not yet beaten’ and decided to pursue one that stands out as one of the toughest SNES games I know – Super Ghouls an Ghosts.
For anyone who is unfamiliar with this game, it is a somewhat cheesy but fun game that was originally found on the NES as “Ghosts and Goblins” but was one of the early games ported to SNES and given the title “Super…etc.” Most people remember it as the game where your hero starts in armor but then gets hit and commences to walking around in his red and white boxers until he’s killed or gets new armor. It also features many humorous sounds such as the slightly morbid version of the “womp whomp whomp” sound that it makes when you die, etc.
I have started playing it and I remember EXACTLY why I hadn’t finished it. It is FREAKING HARD. Not to mention, the quick speed at which one dies for seemingly no reason. However, with a lot of focus and a bit of cursing, I have managed to get to the 4th level (out of 6). I hope to finish it soon and have a review. If so, be on the look out!
Tags : inprogress, snes
Hello Retro Fans!
It’s a wonderful beginning to spring in my part of the world. If there’s one thing that Spring makes me want to do, it’s SPEND MORE TIME INSIDE! Just Kidding (maybe not) but it is hotter during the day and with the high temperature in Spring reaching near all time highs, I shudder to think what the summer might be like. In any case, after spending a few months bouncing around from trying to play SWTOR with my critically low-speed (3 mbps on a good day) internet while my wife streams her Netflix and after spending another few months playing some highly modified Skyrim, I decided to take a break from all of that and return to… you guessed it… RETRO GAMES!
So what did I decide upon? Well, I normally do a yearly play through of Final Fantasy 2 (FF4 Japan) but honestly I have not done that in a few years. I almost did that but ultimately, I realized that I had only done one full play through of Final Fantasy 3 (FF6 in Japan) in recent memory so I decided to do it again. Ah… to walk through the 16-bit fields of snow toward Narshe in my MagiTek armor… what fun! Plus, in reviewing my site, I have never actually made an RGB style review of this game so I will do so when I am done.
At this point, I am only about 4 hours in to the game, I am about to finish all the ‘scenario’ quests after your crew flees Figaro Castle. I already did Locke’s scenario and Sabin’s scenario so now I just need to do the Edgar, Terra and Bannon scenario. I also am trying to develop some more of the characters that I usually don’t do much with (such as Gau and Gogo) to add a new spin. Of course, if any of you have played this epic game, you know it is VERY large and one of the most complex games of its time. Even the brief time I have spent in this world has reminded me of the greatness of this game and the series as a whole. I also am surprised to realize that I actually don’t remember as much of the story as I thought. Of course, I remember the key components: Empire, Returners, Terra, Espers, etc., but some of the finer points are still blurry. That’s a good thing, like having semi-fresh eyes.
On another note, I did something else to feed my retro soul. If you were a kid who grew up in the 90’s like me, you probably watched Mighy Morphin’ Power Rangers. I don’t know if you made it into Zeo, Dino Squad, Space Force, etc., but you probably at least remember: “Mastadon! Pterodactyl! Saber-Toothed Tiger! Triceratops! Tyrannosaurus! and Dragon Power!” You probably are also aware that Haim Saban is at it again and is planning on releasing a ‘darker and more adult-themed’ version of the Power Rangers for the movie coming out in a few days. I want to see this movie, have wanted to ever since I heard it was coming out and only moreso as I have watched trailers and researched it. I first decided to remind myself of the awesomeness of the original series (cheesy dialogue aside) by watching it over. I am almost done with Season 1.
However, I also remembered that a majority of the footage from the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers was initially drawn from “Kyuryu Sentai Zyuranger” (Kyuriyu SIN-tie JYU-rain-jer) which came out in Japan about a year prior to the show we saw. To my excitement, Shout Factory picked up the original series some years ago because of its impacts on pop culture. It was not available to watch on any standard streaming service I found, BUT my Amazon Prime account allowed me to pay $2.99 per month extra to access the “Shout Factory” Channel with… YOU GUESSED IT… Zyuranger! So I decided to watch it (subtitles and all).
Wow… the character that Rita Repulsa (the main bad guy in MMPR) is based off of, “Evil Witch Bandora” is FREAKING evil. WAY worse than Rita ever was. In that story, she’s the “most powerful force of darkness this world has ever known” and she makes you believe that. Not to mention, her assistants (that are loosely used in MMPR) are much more capable (though still annoying) than their MMPR counterparts. In almost every episode, Rit…err… Bandora, always has some children (like young kids.. like 10 and even younger) in danger. Not just kidnapping them… no… more like shrinking them into a miniature space shuttle that is locked in place with a time-triggered IRON MACE BALL ready to drop and crush them if the Pow…I mean… Zyurangers don’t save them in time. Oh and that other kid who SHE TURNS TO STONE BECAUSE SHE IS EVIL is also a good example. I can imagine being a Japanese child in that era and literally being scared to death of Bandora.
Also, the rangers themselves are much less one-dimensional than their American counterparts (though only slightly). They represent 5 different tribes of prehistoric dino-worshiping people each with their respective creature of power… you guessed it: a Mammoth, a Pterodactyl, a Saber-Tooth Tiger, a Triceratops and a Tyrannosaurus (I have not yet gotten to the Green Ranger story). Each ranger was frozen for “170 million years” so they could defend the Earth when Bandora rose again. They appear to have no stupid high school drama to deal with (dude… they missed like… a ton of reunions) but also seem very much content to just sort of hang out with “Mysterious Sage Barza” (their version of Zordon but without the stupid “Ay yi yi yi” of Alpha 5) in his magical palace until they need to go fight Bandora’s baddies. I have only seen them do a few ‘non-fighting’ scenes so far but they appear to have at least some inkling of depth.
In any case, I am actually excited to learn how their story diverges from the story I know. I did figure out why Trini always looked ‘flat’ in her ranger suit. That’s because the Yellow Ranger in Zyuranger is actually a boy. He’s so much of a boy that his name is ACTUALLY ‘Boi’. Although the pink ranger is still a girl but her name is Mei and her favorite thing to do appears to be helping other people and saying “okay!” in perfect English when her ranger colleagues tell her to do something in Japanese. Barza is…well… strange. The verdict is still out on him.
See you guys later! I have watching and gaming to do!
Filed Under : Super Nintendo by RGB Jan.27,2015Hey there fans! It’s time for the second installment of “RGB Questions”. I was asked before what my favorite RPG of all time was and why. I answered with a glowing description of my favorite, Final Fantasy 4. I was recently asked by a good friend what the scariest retro gaming boss I have ever faced was and why. It did not take me long to figure out the answer…
1. Introduction
2. A Little Backstory
3. Why so Scary?
4. Conclusion
In my opinion, the scariest boss I have ever faced in a retro game is none other than Giygas from Earthbound.
Giygas – Earthbound (SNES)
Now, let me explain something about the way I read this question. Sometimes when someone asks this kind of question, they might be actually asking what boss is the TOUGHEST. If that were the case, it would be a tie between NeoExDeath from FF5 or Raglan from Skyblazer. However, they are NOWHERE near as scary as Giygas. Don’t worry, I will explain to you why… (Top)
So who or what is Giygas? Well, therein is a little story. You see, the creator of the the Mother series (Earthbound is technically Mother 2) is a man with amazing talents named Shigesato Itoi. Although Itoi has done a number of things in Japan, the only thing we would know of him in America is Earthbound. When Itoi was a little boy about 5 or 6, he went to a movie theater in Japan with his family to watch a family friendly movie. At some point during the movie, he got up and went to the bathroom and got lost on the way back to his theater. He accidentally walked in on ‘Kenpei to Barabara Shibijin’ (The Military Policeman and the Dismembered Beauty) in a scene where a character is being killed and thrown into the river. However, the young Itoi thought the scene was a rape scene and the sounds and words he heard from the character who was being killed (or raped in his mind) gave him horrible nightmares.
The entire game is extremely eerie in tone despite its rather cartoon like characters and happy-go-lucky music. But the last boss fight requires the characters to enter the “Nightmare” of the main character Ness to destroy the evil that is lurking there. Guess what nightmare that is? The nightmare of Itoi and the woman being killed. You work your way through several odd and scary nightmare scenes until you walk forward and meet the source of all evil… a psychic monstrosity known as Giygas. (Top)
He is scary for many reasons…
Well probably the scariest thing about him is that you CAN’T SEE HIM. He’s not invisible… oh no.. you just can’t see something psychic in nature. If you look at the image above, you will see a wavy background with crazy colors. THAT is what Giygas looks like in the game. The more damage you do to him, the more wild and crazy the image in the background becomes. It starts out as this eerie bluish red color with some weird figures waving in and out like they were a mirage from the ground. In the final stages of this battle the colors are dark red, black and orange and the images look more like a twisted demon face. Let’s take a close look. On the left, you will see a picture of a normal background in a battle (This one is the boss “Titan Ant”). Then, look to your left and see a closeup of the face in the background that is ‘Giygas’. Horrified yet?
 |
 |
Secondarily… the music is INSANE! The entire game has a great track list with some awesome music that runs from rock and roll to deep techno music. The music in each section of the game is very organic and it fits the tone of the area you are in. Caves have a deep and hissing music track, some towns have happy music while others have sad music. The area LEADING UP to Giygas has NO music… just this creepy water dripping sound. When you finally face off against him, as you do more damage, the music gets crazier and crazier. It loops this creepy music that sounds like crying mixed with murder if you can imagine it. Sometimes the music will do a spinback (like old DJ’s did when they scratched a record and play a part over). By the time you beat Giygas, the music is dizzying, horrifying and makes you feel alone and sad.
Thirdly… is HOW you beat him. Now, different final bosses have some unique ways you have to fight them. Raglan from Skyblazer requires you to be a ‘firebird’ form or your character will do NO damage. You can actually get to Raglan without this power but he will kill you because you can’t hurt him. Or perhaps you remember Zemus (the first form of Zeromus from FF2), he won’t transform into Zeromus unless you use the “Power of the Crystals” on him. You can hit him all you like but it will do nothing. So what about Giygas? Well, you can have the greatest attack power in the whole game, complete every side quest, get every Psi power that you have and it WON’T TOUCH HIM. The only way that you can beat Giygas is to use the girl character, Paula’s “Pray” ability. That’s right… you can’t kill him, you have to pray until he goes away. Sure, you can strike him with your weapons and the game will act like it did damage but he doesn’t die. I have proven this fact. I actually setup an emulator on one of my computers, loaded the save state fighting Giygas, and set Ness (the main character) to attack on auto. I also used a cheat code to make him invincible. I left it running for THREE DAYS and he was still alive. That’s 72 hours of whacking Giygas and he STILL won’t die. It takes about 5 or 7 prayers for him to finally go away but if Paula ever dies and you can’t bring her back. Too bad… you will lose.
Lastly, Giygas uses more mental things to screw with the player than any other attack. And no, I am not talking about your characters in the game… he messes with YOU! First of all, as you can see from the image above, my HP meter is all whacked out looking. That’s not because of a bug. When you first fight Giygas he uses a weird technique to screw up your HP meter so you have NO IDEA how much damage he is dealing you. Also, he says horrible things to you like “It hurts, Ness.. why does it hurt?” or “why do I dream of my own death?” and the scariest one “Ness… don’t take me.” BLARGGH! You notice how two of the characters on that screen have this little eyeball with a line on it? That’s because these ‘attacks’ by Giygas saying creepy words MAKE YOUR CHARACTERS CRY. Add all of this stuff to the ever changing background and screwed up music and you feel like you need to cry in a corner for hours after you fight this dude. (Top)
So let’s recap… Giygas is EVERYTHING and NOTHING at the same time. He is only able to be killed by praying A LOT. He says horrifying things to you as you fight him and he is based off of the nightmares of a 5 year old boy who walked in on a murder scene in a movie. All of these things together are what make Giygas horrifying. I say MANY times when I face him “Ack! Stop it!” or “No more crazy music!” and I almost always say after I beat him.. “Wow… he is so horrifying.” So that’s why I feel that Giygas is the scariest retro enemy of all time. Not the hardest to beat (if you can deal with being mentally wounded while you fight him)but easily one of the scariest things I have ever faced. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go wash my skin with scalding water to get the evil off of me. RGB Out!(Top)
Tags : earthbound, finalboss, rgbquestion, snes
RGB is back in action with yet another review! This time I chose to review the often mysterious Final Fantasy V for the SNES. I hope you enjoy reading this review as much as I enjoyed making it!
As I eluded to in my post regarding Final Fantasy II/IV, there were actually 3 Final Fantasy games created for the SNES but due to some continuity issues, Final Fantasy IV was released as FF2 in America, the real FF5 was skipped and then FF3 was released even though it was technically FF6. So, FF5 is the only SNES Final Fantasy that never made it to America until emulation made it happen.
Let’s get visual here to understand where this fits:
So what we have here is basically a great game that Square didn’t publish in the USA. Why is that? Well, it is very simple. The original game was designed to be a direct sequel of FF4 (FF2 USA) – and you can tell – but it also featured the job system introduced in FF3 (the actual one, not FF6). For whatever reason, Square felt that the game would be too jarring for the US gamer and the inclusion of the job system would be too confusing for people who were expecting a game that played very similar to what they knew as FF2. In the end, the game was never released to America on the SNES.
However, as the emulation world began to explode in the USA in the early 2000’s, a team of fans created the first ever fan-subbed version of a video game. Later on, the game was re-released in many different formats – Playstation saw it released with the Final Fantasy Anthology, GBA saw it released as ‘Final Fantasy V Advance’, it was even released for iOS. But for my intents and purposes, I played the ‘De-Jap’ translation of the game on my SNES emulator. I am, however, going to use the names and styles of both English translations rather than strictly the De-Jap (for instance, I refuse to call the main character Butz as he was improperly called in the translation but I don’t want to call Cara Krile as that just sounds weird).
Now! Without further ado! I bring you the RGB review of the classic RPG: Final Fantasy V!
(( WARNING! Some Spoilers Ahead!))
The game opens rather abruptly with a young girl, Princess Lenna of Tycoon, pleading with her father not to leave without her. King Tycoon mounts a dragon (called Hiryuu) and tells his daughter that the wind is getting very weak and he is worried about the wind crystal. After some discussion, King T flies off into the distance and Lenna cries before going back inside. Next, the king arrives at the wind palace where the crystal is stored and tries to calm the people stationed at the palace. The King goes in to the Crystal Room and watches with horror as the crystal shatters into shards. Next the story returns to Castle Tycoon and Lenna realizes that the wind has fully stopped now and she is very worried when Hiryuu returns to Castle Tycoon without her father on its back. She resolves that she will take the Hiryuu to the palace and check on her father even though the Chancellor requests her to wait. However, the Hiryuu appears to have been badly injured and Lenna sets out on foot.
Now we are taken to a boy and his Chocobo – the main character Bartz is a wandering adventurer who tends to explore the world on the back of Boko, his yellow chocobo. As he is resting in the woods near Tycoon, a huge meteor strikes the ground nearby and he goes to investigate. Upon arriving, Bartz finds Lenna unconscious at the meteor impact site and wakes her. Just as she is coming around, a guy with partial amnesia named Galuf stumbles out of the meteor. Galuf remembers that he was supposed to go to the Wind Shrine as well and decides to go along with Lenna. Bartz, however, decides that he doesn’t want to get mixed up in that mess and bids them farewell. However, Bartz begins to feel guilty leaving a young girl and amnesiac man to fend for themselves but just as he begins debating whether or not to go back for them, an earthquake strikes him and traps him in a valley. Soon, he meets back up with Lenna and Galuf and decides to help them. The team ends up finding their way into a pirate’s headquarters and convinces the pirate captain, Faris, to sail them to the wind shrine using his pet hydra as an engine. Unfortunately, the boat is shipwrecked after battling a monster in a valley. The group of 4 makes their way through the ship graveyard and arrives at the Wind Shrine.
Upon arriving at the crystal room, the party realizes that the Wind Crystal is gone but the shards begin to shine and declares the four party members to be the “Warriors of Dawn”. King Tycoon appears as a vapor and warns them that the other three crystals are in danger and the party must save them or the world will be destroyed (sounds familiar eh?). The team attempts to save the Water crystal by climbing its tower. Upon reaching the top, they face an enemy and this crystal shatters, giving its powers to the Warriors of Dawn. The team rushes to Karn to attempt to save the Fire crystal and find that the brilliant engineer Cid (sounds familiar, too, eh?) created a machine that uses the power of the crystal to make a ship that runs without wind and powers many machines. The team rushes to stop the machine with Cid’s help only to find that the machine has been cranked up to its highest power level and it has overloaded the crystal. As soon as the team arrives to the crystal, it is destroyed and the same reaction occurs. With Cid’s help, the team attempts to save the Earth Crystal but find that its temple is actually a machine in of itself that is designed to activate a flying weapon system when it sensed it was in danger – yup – now it is in danger. So the team must battle a flying fortress after Cid makes the airship capable of flying high enough to reach it. Just as you might have guessed, the team battles through the fortress only to witness – a shattering crystal that reacts to the heroes – oh and then the whole thing falls out of the sky.
Finally, Galuf meets up with Cara, his granddaughter, when she arrives in a meteor after the fortress falls and she restores his memory. Turns out that Galuf is actually from another world. He and 3 other warriors sealed a monster named Exdeath and sent the crystals to THIS planet when he was unable to be destroyed. However, the 4 crystals sealed his power. Now that they are broken, he has been reborn on Galuf’s world and Cara is freaking out! Galuf confirms that he must now go back home and save the planet. He and Cara hop back on a meteor and return back to Galuf’s homeworld while the other teammates are left behind.
Bartz and crew are now stuck with a moral quandary – their world is about to fall into nothingness since all of the crystals have been destroyed. But Galuf told them that he had to fight alone and he took the last working meteor back to his homeland. But that won’t stop Cid! He and his grandson, Mid, work together to create a power source that can allow the team to warp and save the world. The team warps to Galuf’s world and land on an abandoned island. When they attempt to sleep, a monster captures them and takes them prisoner to Exdeath’s fortress. Meanwhile, Galuf and his team have staged an attack on Exdeath’s fortress via the ‘Big Bridge’. Exdeath shows Galuf that he has captured his friends and warns him to cease his attack or he will kill them. Galuf storms the castle himself and saves the other three teammates. But just as he does so, Exdeath activates a barrier around his whole area and the force blows the team to a distant island.
The team finds out that this world is actually a twin world to their own and that when Exdeath was sealed, the warriors split the crystals into two pieces, creating two worlds. But if the crystals in this world are destroyed, then the two worlds will be reunited into one so Exdeath must be beaten before that can happen. The crew begins making their way to each crystal in this world only to find that Exdeath is already one step ahead of them. They find out Exdeath is actually a spirit that is stored in a tree in an Ancient Forest and the key to maintaining that seal is embedded in the eldest tree. The team attempts to reach the tree to destroy the key only to have Exdeath torch the forest and make it impossible to speak to the Guardian tree. The team faces Exdeath at the tree and are promptly beaten while Cara attempts to save them. At one point, all of the characters are blown back by Exdeath, Galuf stands up and takes Exdeath himself. He manages to weaken Exdeath enough to send him back to his castle at the cost of his own life. Cara wakes up and finds her grandfather is dead but his spirit returns and grants Cara all his powers.
Once the rest of the team awakes and get word of Galuf’s demise and final gift. Newly impassioned, Bartz, Lenna, Faris and Cara try to take Exdeath’s castle. They get help from Zeza, the last remaining of the original warriors. Zeza and his team destroy the power on one of Exdeath’s barrier towers, costing Zeza his life but allowing the team to attack the castle. The team climbs Exdeath’s tower and he appears to fade away but the crystals are already shattered and the two worlds have merged. The team seeks out a sage who says he has important news about Exdeath. Upon reaching the sage, Exdeath appears as a splinter that had lodged itself in Faris’ hand. He beats the sage and now is restored to full power. He also shows them the power of the Void which was unlocked when the final crystal broke. This power allows him to banish entire cities to the “Cleft of Dimensions’ which is basically a hole in the fabric of time and space. He banishes Tycoon castle, the Ancient Library, Bartz’ hometown of Rikks, and a few other places.
With the help of Mid, Cid’s grandson, the heroes find that there are 4 tablets in this world that seal the power of the weapons used to banish Exdeath and some of the strongest powers in the world. Only by collecting these weapons and magic can they hope to beat him. Of course, the team collects the weapons as well as the ultimate spells (Meteo, Flare, and Holy), summons (Bahamut, Leviathan and Odin) and powers. They storm the Cleft of Dimension and take him on once and for all. Upon beating Exdeath, he loses control of the Void and it engulfs him. The new, Void controlled, Neo-Exdeath faces the Four Warriors of Dawn and is defeated. The crystals are restored. The land returns to normal (as a merged land) and the credits roll… end of story.
This game plays almost identical to its predecessor, FF4. In fact, the world map and the character ‘status’ screen look very similar to that of FF4 except that the characters’ faces are replaced by their sprite. This is likely because of the Job system (which I will discuss next) in that when you assign a character a new job, their appearance (clothes, headgear, etc) changes. This game features the good ol’ Active Time Battle System (ATB) that I cheered about in other posts. However, this one is truly the next evolutionary step. See, in FF4, the game had an ATB but you really had no way of knowing when the character would be ready to act until their sprite became highlighted on the battle screen. In this game, the developers wisely installed an ‘Action Bar’ which builds on the right side of each character’s HP on the battle screen. When it fills completely, it is that character’s attack! This same bar appears in FF6, 7 and most others in the FF series for many generations (I don’t know if it is in modern FF games because I have not played them). This is the first of many evolutions you will see happening in this game.
The next element of interest in the gameplay is the use of the “Job” system. You remember all those times I mentioned in the story (see above) where the crystals shattered and reacted to the team? Each time you get a crystal shard, it gives your characters more “Jobs” they can take. This includes some common things like Black Mage, White Mage, Summoner (Caller), Monk, Knight, etc. There are also some other, stranger classes, such as the Berserker (he literally just goes berserk), the Trainer (think Pokemon), and even the scientist (he makes potions). This is also the first game to show Blue Mages (think Gau the wild boy from FF6), Time Mages (spells such as Demi, Slow, Haste, Stop, etc.), Magic Knights (enchant swords) etc. Basically, when you assign a character a Job, their appearance changes to match their job as well as their equipment must be modified to match. With each battle, you gain a certain amount of Ability Points (ABP) that help you earn levels in your job. So, if you keep someone as a Black Mage until they have reached Master (Job Level 7 in that case), they now have full access to the Black spells in the game even if you make them a monk! This is because each character has a primary and secondary skill. The primary is assigned by default from the Job (say BlkMagic for Black Mage) and then you can select a second skill even if the character has not reached full Master in that Job. For example, I made Cara my mage most of the time and I started her as a White Mage (or rather started Galuf as a white mage and she got his powers) and she eventually maxed out the White Mage. So then, I made her Job Black Mage but assigned a secondary skill of WhtMgc. The end result? A mage who can use the most powerful BLACK and WHITE spells! Likewise, I made Lenna my Summoner early in the game and then later needed a Time Mage so I changed her job to Time Mage. Eventually she became a Master of the Time Mage job so I made her a Summoner and then assigned a second skill of TMagic – the result? A bad-ass Summoner who could also stop you, haste the team or drop Meteo on you (Meteo is the strongest Time Mage spell). It was this job system that made the game ‘unusual’ for the American Market but I have no idea why. In fact, the Job system was the ULTIMATE core for the Final Fantasy Tactics Series which later on became huge in America.
Now, I will admit that when I first started using the job system, I was confused. I couldn’t figure out what jobs I wanted the people to do and what benefits/drawbacks each job provided. However, after a few hours of game time, you start to see areas where certain jobs would be very helpful and certain jobs would be useless. For instance, in one particular area there were several monsters which took no damage from Magic but if I turned two of my teammates into Monks, the most powerful physical class, I could destroy the enemies easily. Admittedly, I didn’t get REALLY good at bouncing people from class to class until about halfway through the game but by then I had extensive time giving people different classes and I was able to figure out the best mixture for them all. It is certainly something that isn’t natural to a player of SNES RPG’s at the time but it takes very little time to get really good at using the Job System.
Outside of the standard RPG gameplay elements, FF5 offered only one more notable difference – climbing. Now, don’t misunderstand me, it is pretty common to have your characters climb stairs or ladders in almost any SNES RPG of the era but what about climbing walls or climbing vines? There were many times that you could not advance in a particular area of the game if you didn’t happen to figure out that you could climb vines or walls. Granted, you may look silly at times having your characters walk mindlessly against the wall and pressing the action button but if I didn’t do that alot, I would never have known that Odin’s temple (where you get the summon Odin) was reached by climbing a wall in this rather uninteresting cave. This is also the first RPG (especially in the Final Fantasy series) that featured the ability to ‘fall’. Yes, I know games like Zelda and later games like Chrono Trigger allowed you to ‘fall’ through holes in the floor to get to other places but I don’t think your standard RPG’s of the time did that. In fact, I can’t think of one time that you could fall into a hole in FF4. But in FF5, holes are EVERYWHERE! In fact, there is even a job class (Geomancer I believe) that helped you detect holes in the floor so you don’t fall in. Weird but interesting nonetheless.
Beyond that, the game offers you many methods of travel that you are quite used to with the old FF games. You start the game riding the Chocobo Boko (and yes the music is almost the same as it is in FF4). There is a point in time where you get to take off and ride a Black Chocobo (flying) and it has a similar crazy music to that of FF4. One unique ride that you get to take from time to time is the Hiryuu. Granted, IT flies you more often than you actually get to fly it but there are various times in the game where you can just hop on the Hiryuu and go somewhere as the story requires. You get a few opportunities to drive Faris’ pirate boat with her Hydra pulling you. After Cid’s creation ‘the steam ship’ destroys the Fire Crystal, he modifies it to use standard steam and you can drive it around the waterways. Later, the ship is modified to become an airship (which of course is my preferred transportation) that can be transformed into a boat for the sea or uses special equipment to climb to higher altitude (only used to fight the Earth Crystal’s palace when it becomes a fortress). However, there is one new transportation item that is highly unusual for games of the time – a submarine! At one point in the game, Cid and Mid transform your boat/airship into a submarine as well so you can go underwater, ride on the sea as a boat and later fly an airship. It seems trivial but the inclusion of submarine capability makes certain areas completely accessible only when using that format, it opens a whole layer of the world that was previously not available. I can’t think of any RPG at the time that included a submarine and even in the rest of the RPG stock for SNES, I can’t recall seeing a true submarine (though Earthbound uses ones briefly). Another thing that makes the transportation unique in FF5 is the fact that ALL of the ships you get are actually the same one. in FF4, you got to a point where the crew had a hovercraft, an airship for the overworld, an airship for the underworld, an airship with a drill and the Big Whale airship for space. That sure is an awful lot of vehicles just laying around, it almost seems wasteful. In FF6, you get all kinds of different airships, etc. But not in FF5, you just keep the same one and they modify it as needed which is a nice nuance.
What about the other elements of gameplay? Well, the music in the game is FANTASTIC and I think that the music really fits the environments you are in. The game still features the classic “Song of the Crystals” (aka the rising and falling harp music) in various crystal rooms. It features the Main Theme of Final Fantasy which is found in FF4 as well, you would remember this music playing in FF4 when Cecil and Kain depart Baron for the first time and you see the prophecy scroll on the screen, it is the same song that is played when the FF4 crew battles Zeromus and all of the people on Earth send their “Wishes” from the Tower of Wishes in Mysidia (*cough* house of prayer *cough*). Also, the music for scenes involving Exdeath is horrifying for SNES games, it is this heavy dramatic music with, suspenseful harps, electric guitars and this chilling music that sounds like a twisted monster laughing as part of the melody line… you just have to hear it. By and large, you will find many of the music pieces you heard in FF4 appear in FF5 even if they are slightly different.
One final gameplay element that deserves some recognition is the enhanced amount of sprite movement. In the other RPGs of the time, the sprites did very little aside from walking and occasionally jumping or bowing their head. Not so in FF5! Granted these are still 16-bit sprites so the amount of functionality they have is limited but this game features a few interesting sprite motions that I didn’t see before now. You will see the first obvious use of the ‘hand wave’ that the sprites in FF6 did enough to make you nauseous, it features many instances where the sprites literally knock each other over, in one comical storyline, the hero, Bartz, is kicked by a sheep into a pasture, etc. There are scenes where Exdeath blasts your party with magic beams that look like Darth Vader blasting people with the Force. When I think of the way sprites moved in FF4 and the way they moved in FF6, I can clearly see how FF5 was the evolutionary stage of this feature.
I could go on and on about this but I am sure that you would like the actual review, yes? Well, now that I have gone over the main focus of the game, it is time for the review! Enjoy!
All in all, I was very pleased with FF5. The game features a solid storyline, it reminds me fondly of my favorite RPG, FF4, and shows itself to be a true classic in the Retro RPG space. The game easily bridges the gap between FF4 and FF6 and it’s a shame that it never made it to the US during the SNES era. I suppose that if all things are created equal, I could see why the job system proved to be unusual to the American RPG playing population but I am glad that it made its mark in the future. Those expecting a standard issue SNES RPG of the era will be dissatisfied but if you want something new and interesting that still reminds you of your old friends, then this is the game for you. In my standard fashion, I will review the Good, the Bad and the Ugly for Final Fantasy 5!
First and foremost, the storyline for Final Fantasy 5 is an enjoyable and fresh one that kept me wondering well into the final stages. I have read a few other reviews that say that the story was lame and predictable but I am not exactly sure what these folks are comparing it too. The story features many of the common core elements of any good RPG storyline – world in peril, hero rises, team of heroes forms, heroes fight, evil looses, world returns to peace. But all of these things are the stuff of almost any good legend and they are not carried out in stereotypical ways most of the time. As explained earlier, the game is a direct sequel to Final Fantasy 4 and you can certainly see many of the same things – the four elemental crystals, the four crystals in another world, the ultimate danger being released when the crystals are damaged/taken, etc. But that is where the similarities end. The elements will actually stop functioning when the crystals are destroyed (as far as I know the story of FF4 didn’t point to any dire problems if they are taken other than the evil seal), the world has been literally cleaved in half and neither world truly knows about the other. Overall, I was quite confused about what was happening when the game began and even after the story was revealed, I didn’t know what to expect. Once they actually released the bad guy, the game makes you FEAR HIM (more on that later). The story did have some stale points such as leaning on the prophecy of old for hope and such but the game didn’t live and die by these items. When the game finally reaches its conclusion, you really cared about the world and you really were drawn into the personal lives of all the people that the game parades in front of you. I felt a great sense of accomplishment and success when I completed the game and restored the world and I think that is very important! Also, unlike the mute Crono from Chrono Trigger, the hero of FF5, Bartz, speaks a lot and you can see how his internal moral compass forced him to make the decisions he needed to make and drove him to be the hero.
Another thing that I really like about FF5 was the thing that made it what it is – the job system. Yes, it is a major switch from what was expected at the time the game was released but it was orchestrated well. In an RPG, it is common to see characters fall into ‘archetypes’. There is the brash main hero with his sword and special power, there is the support girl who likely becomes the love interest later on, there is the mysterious ninja/fighter, there is even the mystery girl who is her own person and quite brash. Your support characters likely end up being white magic users (Think Rosa in FF4, Merle in Chrono Trigger, Nina in Breath of Fire, etc.) then your mysterious ninja/fighter usually has a love interest for the mystery girl (Think Edge and Rydia in FF2, Locke and Terra in FF6, etc.) In this game, you can literally make the characters do exactly what you want them to do and then mix and match the functions that you like. For instance, Bartz worked as a Knight, a Monk, a Samurai and even a Dragoon. When the last battle came, he was able to use the Gill Toss skill (Samurai) that allows you to throw your money and do 9999 damage each time, he also had the ability to do the Jump technique like a Dragoon (allowing him to be safely off screen during many of the mega spells ExDeath uses), and his time as a knight made him able to hold the Excalibur sword in Both hands to double the damage (Knight) so he could also do 9999 damage with each sword slash. I also talked about how I turned Cara into a Black and White Mage capable of using either of the most powerful spells in those fields. Now, I didn’t make Faris do much besides thief job and time mage because I really liked the ability for thieves to move fast (allow me to run in the dungeons/buildings) and see hidden doors and hallways but the fact remains that I could have had her do whatever skill I wanted. Basically if you wanted to make your characters as specialized as possible, the game allowed for that and you saw many benefits in doing so. Few other games of the time allowed as much specialization as this and it meant that every person who played the game could pretty much build the party in whatever way they see fit. I am sure many people could even add some levels of difficulty by changing the party to all blue mages or something of the sort and attempting to beat the game. Whatever way you like to play your game, FF5 allowed you to do so.
The last thing I want to point out about the great things offered in FF5 is the amazing evilness of the final boss – Exdeath. You might recall from my discussion of Chrono Trigger that I really disliked it’s final boss. I felt that the game hyped him up so much only to let us down in the final battle (remember the dumb dancing robot of doom). In the case of FF4, the main baddy for most of the game was Golbez and you certainly feel the chill when the echoing minor chords that signified his theme began playing but he later becomes a good guy (of sorts) and you have only a short time to really develop the anger and passion to really battle the true boss – Zeromus. Neither of these was the case with FF5! You don’t even really meet the ultimate bad guy, Exdeath, until halfway through the game but when you do… oh my goodness… what a monster! Everything that Exdeath does reeks of pure evil! From the first moment that you meet him, he strikes fear into your heart and he continues to incite fear and anger with each interaction. You start to feel somewhat like a tiny fish in a fishbowl at the liberty of this monstrous thing that can strike with little or no warning. While it could be said that the recycling of the old ‘ultimate and historic evil’ adage to explain Exdeath, that entire mentality is pushed to the curb when you learn that he is essentially an ancient tree that collected the souls of all the evil and badness in the world (although it is kind of a weird story). With everything that Exdeath does, you see no sign of humanity within him, he truly is a monster that you cannot help but be scared of (the music doesn’t help). I am further reminded of the evilness he is capable of when he hijacks himself as a SPLINTER into a whole new world to destroy. Then, when he starts using the Void to literally erase entire areas of the map, you not only fear him but you hate him in a personal and indignant sort of way. When you finally face him and he becomes ‘one with the Void’ (aka Neo-Exdeath), not only is all trace of humanity gone but now he even says that all he wants is to turn the whole world into the Void for no other reason except so that everything will cease to exist. Holy shit Batman! After beating him and knowing that this monster of Hades can no longer do any harm, there is definitely a sense of catharsis that you don’t get with vanquishing many other RPG ‘ultimate evils’. The only time I have been moved as much by killing a monster is when I took out Kefka in FF6 (Yes, Sephiroth was worse but I was so damn tired of fighting him the 50th regeneration that I didn’t care anymore). As I expressed in my discussion on CT, I really want to feel like I want to be the hero of the RPG and beat the bad guy. I got both of these when I played FF5 and you will too.
I want to go on and on about the many good things this game offers including some of the great moments (such as finding out the Faris is a girl), watching Bartz attempt to communicate with a Moogle (yes they are in here) and ending up feeling like a medieval knight trying to talk to the minions from Despicable Me. Or about the totally crazy dungeons the game puts you through including the deadly library of doom, the underwater tower of Walz where you actually can’t breathe and so on. However, you can play the game to get those things. So we’ll move on to the bad parts of the game.
Despite all the good things this game offers, there are a few things in it that I didn’t care for. Granted, some of the things that I dislike are due to the fact that I played the game on the fan-translated SNES port as opposed to the GBA version or various others but we’ll get to that. The game has a few things that are just annoying.
First, as I mentioned before, I chose to download the De-Jap fan translation of the SNES console which means regular people just like me were in charge of translation As a result there are some things that were translated very badly. First, the main character in the standard translation is actually named ‘Butz” (think Bah-tzu in romanji) instead of Bartz. I am sorry, but I refuse to refer to the good guy as someone’s bum! There were some sections of the story where I actually had to go “excuse me?” such as the time that I was told that the only way to save the Hiryuu is to fly the Hiryuu to the Valley of Hiryuu and kill the Dragon Hiryuu dragon killer (that actually is the Dragon-Killer plant). Or the mystical pot (freaky enemy that you can’t beat) who is referred to as ‘PotHead’ among others. At times, the translators literally just quit trying to translate things – for instance – in the 3rd (or 4th) tablet dungeon where you have to go to the sea trench, the enemies are weird and fugly but you never knew what you were fighting because ALL of the enemies’ names on the battle screen were simply ‘Unknown’ even though I know they had names. Sure, I picked up a few “There” instead of “their” grammatical things but I can overlook those since there aren’t instances like those in Tales of Phantasia’s Fan translation where you would see this extremely important plot point simply replaced with ‘(complete later)’ REALLY? So yes, I can download one of the many actual translations of this game but it might not technically be ‘retro’ by then.
The second thing I noticed that I disliked about the game is that it is TOO SIMILAR to FF4. Yes, I know… FF4 is my favorite game and it seems only sensible that I would be excited to live there again. There was some of that in the game but when it comes down to it, I am trying to review the game on its own merits but if you count the number of times I typed “FF4” when describing the game (Go ahead… I’ll wait while you use CTRL+F) it becomes painfully apparent that the developers on FF5 REALLY wanted to make FF4-2 (hey they made FFX-2 later, right). For instance, the sprite for Bartz when he’s a Dragoon… dude – it’s freaking Kain from FF4, don’t believe me? Download the game, you’ll see! Or what about the crystals? They seem to get in more trouble than Princess Toadstool in the Mario world. When I was trying to find the crystals in FF5, I uttered the phrase ‘I am sorry Bartz but your crystal is in another castle!’ at least 4 times. Oh yeah… later on you meet some dwarves in the depths of the earth… there are 5 of them and they look IDENTICAL to the sprites for the dwarves in FF4 – they even say “Lalli-Ho” and jump up. You can easily see that these guys might have been intended to show that the Dwarves lived on after FF4 but began to die out. They don’t do anything in the game, they are just there – digging a hole for no apparent reason. Guess who the ultimate summons in the game is? Bahamut! Guess what happens when you try to get Odin as a summons in FF5? You have 1 minute to do as much damage as possible before he does his death slice and bifurcates the entire team JUST LIKE FF4. The list goes on. I think that if the game had been released in the USA just behind FF2, it would have had enough similarities that it would have done well but c’est la vie.
Lastly, although I enjoyed the fact that the game had many ways to travel, I found that travel was much more difficult than I had expected. Sure, when you are in the early stages of the game, it makes sense that you can only travel to certain areas until you are ready to go to others but when you are in the endgame, it really should not be that difficult to get around but it WAS! For instance, you can only get to one area if you fly the airship to this place, get your yellow Chocobo and then walk him through this tiny area of the map, make your way to the desert, and run like a madman with your head on fire…etc. And as much of a novel invention as the game’s use of the submarine was, that sucker was hard to use correctly. When you travel underwater, you really can’t tell where you are without looking at the map repeatedly and even then you may only see points of interest on the sub map even if they don’t necessarily line up with ‘upper world’ map points. It is also quite difficult to use landmarks to figure out where you are. Since you essentially travel around in 3 different worlds (the first world, Galuf’s world, the merged world) which have many similarities to each other, it is really hard to figure out where you are and the world doesn’t look very different from place to place. I can’t count the number of times that I flew to Castle Surrogate when I was trying to fly to Castle Kuzar for instance (Trust me, if you have played this game, you are nodding your head like a bobblehead on a washboard road right now). Plus, there are certain places that you can’t get to without the submarine even though it would be much easier to fly there. Furthermore, when Exdeath starts opening Void holes all over the place, it is REALLY easy to accidentally fly into them which causes a seemingly useless cutscene where you lose control of the airship because you are in the Void and then suddenly the game goes back to normal. The only Void entrance you actually want to use is the one over Tycoon Castle as that takes you to the ‘Cleft of Dimensions’ where you do the final stages of the game but I don’t even think you can go through the Void until you actually complete all four of the Tablet dungeons…. of course it would sure suck to be transported to the Void when you were not completely ready because you can’t really leave.
Okay, these items mentioned are just the bad stuff… there are still some things that really make me cringe. For the final portion of the review, I want to discuss the UGLY things in FF5. You have to just suck these up if you want to enjoy the game.
So there are lots of awesome things about Final Fantasy 5 and there are lots of annoying things about them. Among those annoying things, there are a few that are downright horrible. I can give you many reasons to enjoy this game but you will have to accept a few things that may be hard to swallow.
First of all zOMG Random Encounters! The random encounters in FF5 S U C K ! Now I am aware that the random encounter has long been the staple for RPGs. I mean… come on! Who didn’t do the famous RPG technique where they walked circles around a city fighting as many baddies as they could fight to gain levels? That’s all good and well, as those encounters occurred every… eh… 10 seconds or so? In FF5, they occur almost every 5 seconds. In some areas it is WORSE! For instance, in the Deep Sea Trench Dungeon where you get the third tablet (or fourth depending on what order you choose) there is a random encounter every 2 map squares.I AM NOT KIDDING. It has been many years since I have felt the urge to hurl my game controller into a wall but I almost did that with this game. Several times, I was walking through a dungeon and I would actually shout “really?” and occasionally a curse word. In the submerged Walz Tower (where you get the final crystal shard for the Mime job) you have 7 minutes to climb to the top, beat the guardian boss (Gogo… remember him?), and then run back out or you will all die (that’s what sucks about underwater places with no air). No big deal, right? SURE! It would not be a big deal IF FF5 didn’t have random encounters cranked up to HOLYCRAPYOUWILLDIE but they do! By the time I went through that dungeon, and got out, I had 30 seconds remaining. If I didn’t have a thief with the run ability and characters already leveled to 99, I probably would not have made it through on my first try. But it gets worse! When you finally reach the inner sanctum of the Cleft of Dimensions, the dungeon where you finally face Exdeath for the final fight – not only are there random encounters every 3-4 squares – they are HARD! Many of those monsters can deal 4500 a pop to you characters. But the way that I really determined that the developers of FF5 are truly sadistic sociopaths is in the final floor before you get to Exdeath. Do you recall those monsters dealing 4500 damage I mentioned? So you have been through 4 floors of this madness without a save point. You have to beat a REALLY hard monster to make the last save point appear. By this point, your characters are probably down to under 1000 HP and almost no MP, one of them might even be dead. You survive this monster guarding the save point and you are screaming in agony. Well… you finally use one of the TWO cabins you have left (a tent won’t restore all HP/MP at this stage in the game) and you are excited because you might actually have the energy to face Exdeath. Now you have a problem…. you have to RUN through the last…oh…250 squares to get to the door that takes you to Exdeath. This little area is CRAWLING with monsters that do lots of damage. Ok.. no big deal! You can run away from most battles to save your MP/HP, right? WRONG! At least 65% of the monsters in that little stretch between you and the final boss WILL NOT LET YOU RUN AWAY! One of them has an attack that deals about 6,000 damage. So what happens if you are beaten up bad? Sure… you can run back to the save point, sleep in a cabin and restore back but that will be your LAST cabin EVER and you STILL have to run BACK THROUGH HELL to reach the last boss and you MAY NOT GET AWAY from battles. Even with the use of those handy ‘save state’ options in my emulator, I still didn’t make it to Exdeath without being dropped to around half my max HP. Developers for FF5? You guys are twisted and evil people! Yes, I know the games are harder in Japan but just… ugh.
The first ugly item I mentioned is a great transition to the second one. The game has a very limited supply of good items to keep your characters alive. Sure, there is the standard fair of potions and hi-potions, ether (for MP), elixirs (later on) and the various things you need to recover from status ailments. But once you reach the higher levels, there are not a lot of items to help you out. For instance, there are NO stronger HP restoring potions than Hi-Potions and those only restore about 200 HP. Are you kidding me? Bartz alone would have to quaff…like… 40 of those to reach full HP. Sure, you can use Elixirs but you can’t BUY them anywhere and in the entire play-through, I collected about 40 Elixirs total. There are also no other MP restoring items beyond the standard Ether… do you KNOW how many Ethers it takes to restore 999 MP? Like… 30… and when you have to restore 999 MP for 4 characters… 120. Wow! now, this wouldn’t be a big deal if the game offered you the ability to buy Cabins. In FF4, I remember that if I went to the Namingway Village on the Moon I could buy Cabins. Sure, the cabins cost around 10000 GP a piece but at least you had the option. NOT in FF5! Just like the Elixirs, I never found a place that I could buy the cabins and throughout the whole game I think I found about 25 cabins and that was IT. The game is clearly designed to make things much harder as you reach the higher levels and I get that. However, there needs to be a certain amount of checks and balances to keep the game reasonable and FF5 pretty much throws that out the window when you reach about level 60. Furthermore, there are some messed up items in this game that you are likely to encounter. The first one is the Bone Mail that I discovered in a pile of Dragon Bones in the Hiryuu Valley in Galuf’s world. They offered some of the best defense for armor-capable character jobs until you get some of the special armor in the merged world. Yeah… but if you use ANY healing things (spells or items) on someone wearing this armor, it HURTS them. Okay, I thought the game was playing with my head so I decided to try casting Fire on my character wearing the Bone Armor (thinking that since undead are usually hurt by fire and curative items, it might backfire) unfortunately it makes the damage 4X higher… that is great to know AFTER I killed Bartz during a hard battle. Don’t get me started on the Cursed Ring… it also offers you high defense but slowly drains your HP as you go and if someone casts a death spell on you it WILL work… EVERY TIME. Developers? Did you not get held enough when you were children? You have some warped minds! So let’s recap… the game has lots of baddies that hurt you pretty badly and the random encounters are set to psycho so you are likely to take more damage overall. Then, you have the lack of good items and the presence of many evil items and you have a bad mixture. Sure, I know that if you train the scientist class high enough they can make Elixirs but they can’t make cabins…
This brings us to my final ugly thought about Final Fantasy 5. The job system makes it easy to cheat. Now, considering that the game is harder than most RPGs of the era, the fact that you can cheat doesn’t necessarily count as a bad thing since you almost HAVE to cheat if you are going to survive. But I found that the way that the job system is built is good in theory – make several things available that would not otherwise be available and let the character pick and choose. Well, here’s this thing with that. Even after you reach Level 99 for all of your characters (which I did right before I started the side quests but prior to entering the Cleft of Dimensions) you still get Ability Points (ABP) after every battle. The harder the enemies you beat, generally the higher the amount of ABP you will receive after battle (one monster of death in the final stage of the Cleft of Dimensions gives 199 ABP each time) . When you consider that most of the job levels only require between 20 and 100 ABP per level (obviously the higher the level of a job, the more ABP it takes) you can see how taking a person with zero levels in a particular job to a harder area in the game (maybe the Deep Sea Trench with its ridiculous random encounter rate) and beat a few battles, you can max out almost EVERY job class. Furthermore, classes such as the Monk class are kind of unbalanced because they can do ridiculous amounts of physical damage and they usually hit twice per combat round. If you get a Lvl. 99 monk character, he can do almost 9999 damage (Split across two hits) to a single enemy and if you do the Kick technique (think of Yang from FF4), you can easily do about 4500 damage per enemy which is enough to kill almost anything. All this is to say that if I took a character through Deep Sea Trench twice, they could build up to almost master level for say a black mage and a monk – this means that they could use the Monk’s kick attack as well as cast the most horrific Black Magic spells in the game which makes them a killing machine. If you repeated this process for all characters in your party but maybe had two people max out black mage and two max out white mage, you could have an unstoppable killing party – well, until you run out of MP (see item two above). Especially in the magic using jobs, it is pitifully easy to have someone master an entire field of magic and then shortly thereafter max out another field and then you have situations like the one I mentioned with Cara in my game, I made her able to cast the strongest black magic and white magic in the game so as long as she could keep her MP up, she could decimate almost anything. So this is the rub… the game makes things very hard but it also makes it easy to cheat if you know how to use the class system and don’t mind some elbow grease (or grinding as the MMORPG’ers like to say).. is that a bad thing or not? I leave you to decide. Personally I think that anything that can so sharply polarize a game is not a good thing.
So now we come to the end of my review for Final Fantasy 5 and my what a wild ride it has been. This game is most definitely a game that serves as a good connector between FF4 and FF6. If you liked FF4, odds are you will also like this game but if you hated FF4, I doubt you will like this game. But since I loved FF4, this game is a very good game in my mind. The game features all of the ingredients to make it a great RPG. It has a good story that draws you in quickly but also keeps you guessing until the end. It features a great use of the ATB but includes the first ever use of the ATB bar. FF5 is one of the first in the FF franchise to establish several elements that became staples of the future games including Espers, Moogles, Blue Magic, and various other elements. Yet is also the only entry in the franchise (that I am aware of) which features a world tree like the Secret of Mana series and the only RPG of the time that features a submarine. The ability to change between jobs makes the game more interesting but also can make it too easy in some respects. As always, the music of the game is terrific and shows the great variety of sounds that 32bit consoles were capable of at the time. The final boss is one of the best final bosses I have fought in the SNES RPG world and I was greatly satisfied when I finally beat him.
Unfortunately, the greatness of the game is a little overshadowed by a few items. If you want a good translation of this game, do yourself a favor and get either the GBA version of the game or the Playstation version (not sure about the iOS version) because you will likely enjoy the story more. Also, be forewarned that the game will look graphically very similar to FF4 and you will see a great deal of things that remind you of the it when you play FF5. Don’t kid yourself, learning to get around in this game is not going to be easy. You will have 3 totally different worlds to travel through and many locations are extremely difficult to find if you are not paying attention to the entire layout of the world map. Prepare yourself to spend a lot of game time just traveling from point A to point B.
This game is H A R D! It is obvious from the get-go that Japanese games are naturally harder than their American cousins. The random encounters make this game exceedingly challenging, especially as you climb to the higher levels. Be prepared for murderous dungeons with encounters frequently and an overall lack of curative items that will make the game insanely difficult. In fact, there are two bosses in the final dungeon, Omega and Shinryuu that are designed to be impossible to beat. Those that have actually beaten them have expressed that it took everything they had to survive the incident and most FAQ writers specifically avoid encountering these monsters. You will find that although the Job system is a unique element to the game, it is possible to use it to achieve results that seem like cheating even though it serves to balance out the gameplay. If you are not ready for a very hard game, you will not like this game one bit.
In the end, the game is a great RPG with many elements that make it terrific. Those that love FF4 or Final Fantasy Tactics will enjoy this game very much and it is an obvious evolutionary milestone between FF4 and FF6. If you are ready for a challenging RPG that was often forgotten by the Final Fantasy world, you need to check this one out. The game may be very challenging but I think that the story and the end sequence actually make it worth the try, not to mention the joy you get out of beating a REALLY evil final boss. Give this one a try but don’t say you weren’t warned! That’s it for now!
Tags : ff5, review, snes, videogames
Hooray! I beat Final Fantasy 5. I didn’t realize it until I started playing through the later stages… I never actually finished this game the first time. I started to but then I got caught up in Tales of Phantasia so I stopped playing FF5, what a shame. It was worth it! I will give a full on review of this game shortly but for now… you can enjoy the picture of the game’s evil baddy – ExDeath. Enjoy!
Tags : ff5, snes, videogames
