Final fucking fantasy 22 3/4

[Thad]

TBF 100% of my Game Overs so far have been due to Banon dying, which was a "feature" of the original game. It's still early, but at least judging by the first couple hours as played by somebody who knows the original game pretty well, combat is hard enough to keep me on my toes and make me pay attention to how to deal with different monster types rather than just spam Autocrossbow, but not hard enough that it becomes a slog. For the most part, the difficulty tweaks seem sensibly-tuned to make the game more interesting. I'd say it's actually pretty impressive.

Except on the Lethe River, which, again, wasn't down to any single decision to make combat more difficult, but a lack of attention to how those decisions interacted with the existing game design.

Honestly if they'd just changed it so that you can just use a goddamn Phoenix Down on Banon like anybody else, I would have made it through without issue on my first try.

[Thad]

Adding: FF6 Advance added a postgame dungeon that was pretty well-crafted but where you need (IIRC) three parties and none of the monsters grant AP. So you need to bring in your third-stringers, and they can't learn any new magic spells while you're in there. Which seems kind of unnecessarily cruel.

"Dungeon with no AP" seems like it's a mirror-image to the Fanatics' Tower, a dungeon with no XP. But the Fanatics' Tower is the very picture of "unnecessarily cruel". No XP, no save points, and a boss who will absolutely party-wipe you at the end if you haven't cast Reraise on anybody, and if you survive *that* you still have to get back down again. There have definitely been playthroughs where I just said "fuck this", threw on a Moogle Charm, and just blazed through it with no random encounters.

[Newbie]

It strikes me now that my approach to playing FFVI as the "Moogle Charm maximization simulator" may not have been as universal as I always assumed. I didn't realize that the Fanatic's Tower enemies don't grant XP because I've literally never allowed an encounter with them to occur.

[Thad]

oh my god how was i not aware of this

[Thad]

Man, I've gone down a rabbit hole.

I'd read Legends of Localization here and there before -- the early Mario and Zelda stuff -- but I'd never looked at the deep dives into the FF4 and 6 translations until I started looking into the T-Edition translation (which is by Mato, AKA Clyde Mandelin, the same guy who runs LoL, and who also did the Mother 3 fan translation, among various other fan and pro translations).

I finished reading the lengthy series of posts comparing the FF6 translations (haven't watched much of the corresponding videos, because I may have time to replay FF6 but I don't have time to also watch somebody else replay it while minutely analyzing four different versions of its script) and now I'm looking over the FF4 series, and...man, it sounds like the DS version is the only version of FF4 with a good localization. Every other version of the game since 2001 has been based on the PS1 translation; I remembered FF4 Advance being solid but I haven't played it in 15 years and forgot about weird changes like Yang's wife's inexplicable southern accent (which apparently persists on through to the Pixel Remaster). I guess it seemed polished compared to FF2US and the J2e translation with the Shatner and Pulp Fiction references.

By popular consensus, the next-best FF4 localization after the DS version appears to be FF4 Namingway Edition, a hack by Rodimus Primal (who's also responsible for the popular FF6 Woolsey Uncensored Edition), which appears to be based on the original FF2 translation but heavily cleaned up, using Mato's script analysis as a guide.

Not that I'm in a hurry to replay FF4 -- 6 is enough for now, thanks -- but it's kind of weird, after all these years, to see that its localization is still all over the place, in both the official releases and the fan translations.

[Thad]

T-Edition, continued (on having suplexed a train):

I usually equip Shadow with a Genji Glove. No need to in this version; he has innate dual-wield, as the Ninja class in FF games often does.

Cyan's Bushido charges much faster than in vanilla. This is going to make the higher-level skills a lot more useful, I think. (Well, #7, anyway; I can't say as I ever use any besides 1, 4, and 7. Occasionally 5 if he's low on MP.)

Bushido #1 can miss in this version. I don't think it can in vanilla? Cyan was blinded so that probably had something to do with it.

The Ghost temporary party member on the train no longer has a "Possess" ability, just Fight and Item.

Something's causing Sabin to auto-Protect on low HP; I think it's the True Knight accessory.

I'm leveling faster than in vanilla. Sabin and Cyan both learned their fourth skills on the Phantom Train; usually they learn them around the Decisive Battle in Narshe.

And the graphics have changed on Phoenix Dance; now it's a flock of flaming birds instead of flaming Sabins.

Gilgamesh replaces Ziegfried on the Phantom Train. Not only does his theme music play during the battle, the FF5 version of the victory fanfare plays when you beat him.

Anyway, on to the Veldt. AIUI Gau can Leap anywhere in this version, which should make his ability more useful, much as Mog's and Cyan's are in this version.

[nosimpleway]

If Fang/Dispatch can miss I'd wonder if blitzes, throwings, or tools could also miss. Normally Bushido would ignore Blind.

[Thad]

Haven't had any tools miss yet. Or any blitzes except Suplex.

Haven't tried any throws yet. The merchant at the beginning of Sabin's scenario doesn't sell shurikens or skeans like in vanilla.

[nosimpleway]

That's a headscratcher of a change, then, forcing an accuracy check with Bushido that isn't there for anyone else's always-hit skills.
(Suplex is supposed to miss against flying and particularly big monsters. The Phantom Train is famously missing its "too big" bit.)

And not giving a couple shuriken when Shadow joins the party is... man, that's a lot of weird design decisions.

[Thad]

That's a headscratcher of a change, then, forcing an accuracy check with Bushido that isn't there for anyone else's always-hit skills.

Autocrossbow's damage is nerfed compared to vanilla. I haven't used Pummel much but I think its damage might have been nerfed too. I think the idea is he nerfed the base skills to encourage you to use the other ones more. With mixed success; I definitely found myself using BioBlaster and NoiseBlaster more, but Aura Cannon is as OP as ever so I pretty much stick with that at this point in the game as per usual.

I think adding an evade check to Fang but making the Bushido meter charge significantly faster is consistent with that. I only just got Quadra Slam but it feels like it might actually be stronger than in vanilla. Though maybe it just feels that way because I hit lv15 so much earlier.

I'm sure there are places on the Internet where people have gone into all the changes in minute detail and looked at the math, but I'm not doing that here; I'm just playing the game and observing stuff as I go. Stuff like whether or not an attack can miss is obvious, but stuff like damage totals is more a case where things feel different than me actually going back to the base game and checking.

My assessment of the difficulty hasn't changed -- it's harder but (with the exception of the Lethe River) not off-puttingly so. I have to pay more attention in battles, and I'm using a lot more potions than usual, but for the most part it's felt like a fun challenge. Which is a tough thing to get right; a lot of fan mods veer too hard into punishing difficulty. (I hear good things about the Brave New World hack, but I also hear it's needlessly difficult.) This game has some post-game bosses that are supposed to be bastard-hard, but they're optional I probably won't bother with them.

It's also possible the game will get trickier later on -- maybe once I get Espers and can choose my party I'll have to pay more attention to things like who I use and how I build them out. So far the game's been pretty well-balanced, though that gets trickier to maintain once the character roster opens up.

(Suplex is supposed to miss against flying and particularly big monsters. The Phantom Train is famously missing its "too big" bit.)

It seems to have an evade check in this version; it misses sometimes on enemies I know aren't immune to it. (I tried to suplex the train twice; first one succeeded, second one didn't.)

And not giving a couple shuriken when Shadow joins the party is... man, that's a lot of weird design decisions.

I think the idea might be to call attention to his innate dual-wield. Or maybe to nudge you to throw low-level weapons you're not using anymore. But yeah, still feels like a weird change.

[Thad]

Some notes on the translation:

Mato translated the stuff that's original to the T-Edition, but for the main game he mostly went with the Slattery/GBA translation. He's tweaked at least some things, and reverted back to the Woolsey line in at least one case ("Son of a submariner"). To my annoyance, he's gone with the now-FF-standard "Mythril" spelling instead of going back to the Tolkien-accurate "Mithril".

Dialogue is smooth, but combat and menus have some pretty severe truncation, as he hasn't modified the font or the column widths. So we've got the stock fixed-width FF3US font, and FF6J column widths -- ie, three spells on a line, not two. On the plus side, I expect this will mean a lot less frantic scrolling through the spell menu in combat; on the minus side, four-character spell names like "Psna" are pretty goddamn noticeable. Equipment is largely named in FF2US style -- ie "[Sword icon] Great" rather than "[Sword icon] Great Sword". Though you do see full-length item names when you acquire them (in treasure chests or, I think, in battle).

It's not ideal, but I get it; Mato's goal was to get the T-Edition script completely translated, and he did that. Additional niceties like adjustments to window widths and character limits are beyond the scope of the project. Mato's handed the patch over to the community at New Game Plus for any further revisions, so maybe they'll add some of those QoL improvements at some point. In the meantime, the script is fully localized and that's what really matters.

[Thad]

Oh wow, they fixed Gau.

Leap is gone. All he has to do to learn a rage is to be in your party when you defeat the monster. You don't even have to be on the Veldt. (Though the Veldt is still home to various past monster groups you've fought, so it's still a useful place to go in case Gau wasn't in your party when you fought them. There are encounters that didn't appear on the Veldt in vanilla, too, including some that were nonrandom -- the enemy at the camp that dropped the Black Belt is there, and will drop a Black Belt every time. I have three of them now; they should come in handy in the Decisive Battle.) Gau can also equip a weapon and use a Fight command, though (unlike Dance) Rage is still a berserk and once you select it he'll be locked into it.

I learned Stray Cat, as per usual, but I don't think it's the best WoB rage anymore; the hack adds a Cockatrice enemy and, so far at least, I've found that to be the most useful rage; not many enemies up to this point are immune to Stone.

There are new weapon types, too. Sabin can equip poles (in addition to claws) and Gau can equip axes (and also claws). Though his weapon still changes if he uses Rage.

[nosimpleway]

If Gau can equip weapons, does that mean he can more easily use the Genji Glove to hit twice with specials like Cat Scratch? Used to be you could double up on attacks with the Glove, but Gau had to be holding a weapon, and the only weapon he could equip was the Impartisan. (Merit Award got nixed in the rereleases to keep him from doing Cat Scratch powered Wind Slash with one of Cyan's katanas.)

Break was available as a spell via Rage in original releases, too. Good ol' Dark WInd, the birds from outside Narshe and something everyone sees almost the instant they leave town at the beginning of the game, has Break. I'm sure they're not the only ones.

[Thad]

If Gau can equip weapons, does that mean he can more easily use the Genji Glove to hit twice with specials like Cat Scratch?

Haven't checked. Wouldn't surprise me.

Does he have to have two weapons actually equipped, or will a Genji Glove with one weapon do? I don't know if I have a second weapon he can equip at the moment. (I guess I could take Sabin's claws off and put them on Gau; it's not like Sabin's really using them.)

[nosimpleway]

It's not an exploit I used a lot, I'm hazy on the details

[nosimpleway]

Though now that I think about it, I suppose on the SNES you could Merit Award-Genji Glove to dual-wield Kazekiri, rage Stray Cat, and hit with two quadruple-power Wind Slash in a turn...

[Thad]

Decisive Battle:

Much as I love "Save Them!" I enjoyed the change to a chiptune rendition of FFT's "Antipyretic".

The grunts weren't too difficult. The greatest challenge was my old nemesis, Incorrect Blitz Input. I found that left-left-down-down-right worked most of the time for Phoenix Dance but it still failed sometimes too. By the end I was tempted to dig out my old macro controller. (I'm kinda curious what was responsible for the failure rate. Is it that blitzes were always finicky? Is it that problem with diagonals I've heard about on 8bitdo controllers? Flaky Bluetooth? At any rate it seemed like it failed a lot more than usual.)

Kefka, on the other hand, was a bastard. I ran out of Potions and decided to restore from an earlier save and go buy more. I managed to beat him on the second playthrough but it was close. He took out my Sabin/Locke party and my Gau/Terra party, even with a Genji Glove, Black Belt, and Stray Cat rage (and yes, the Genji Glove works).

If Cyan's in your party when you fight him, there's a cutscene where Cyan confronts him for poisoning Doma, and it plays "The Unforgiven" as the boss music instead of "The Decisive Battle". And the first time Cyan attacks, Kefka counters with Bio. That's new, right? Seems like if that were in vanilla I'd have known about it.

Kind of a nice touch that I took him out with Cyan. Felt appropriate.

For the next section they let you choose your entire party. I thought Celes and Locke were forced into your party from Narshe through the Magitek Research Facility; I'm not sure if I'm misremembering and that doesn't happen until Zozo, or if this is a change. At any rate I picked Sabin/Gau/Edgar, so I guess I'll be picking up Shadow for the next leg after all.

[nosimpleway]

The Cyan bit is new, Kefka doesn't even have Bio on his spell list. Normally Blizzara is the worst he can do.

You can choose a party until you get to the end of Zozo. It's the post-Ramuh "we need to get into the Empire now" conversation where Celes goes "I'm from there, I'd better go", and Locke forces himself along for Locke Reasons.

In other versions this is where you could empty your party to softlock the game, but if Gau doesn't Leap anymore that inadvertently fixes that.

[Thad]

The Cyan bit is new, Kefka doesn't even have Bio on his spell list. Normally Blizzara is the worst he can do.

He casts Blizzara, too, near the end of the fight, but the part that'll really wear you down is every couple of moves he'll do a double-cast where he hits you with Poison and then Thunder. If you've got Runic active it'll stop the first spell but not the second.

He only casts Bio once, and only if Cyan's in your party. Before Cyan attacks there's dialogue where he confronts Kefka about poisoning Doma; he attacks and then Kefka has some dialogue to the effect of "Oh, you survived the poison? Let me fix that" and hits him with Bio. Where I've got Cyan leveled to, Bio is enough to kill him in one hit; it took him out the first couple times I tried the fight. The third time I had Celes do Runic right before I had Cyan attack, and that saved him. After that I discovered Kefka only casts it once; he won't counter Cyan again after that first time.

Also: it turns out that yes, Autocrossbow can miss. It doesn't happen often; I think I've only seen it happen once. But there must be some check in there somewhere.

You can choose a party until you get to the end of Zozo. It's the post-Ramuh "we need to get into the Empire now" conversation where Celes goes "I'm from there, I'd better go", and Locke forces himself along for Locke Reasons.

To look for Phoenix. One of the points Mato raised in his localization comparison was that Woolsey cuts all the foreshadowing about how Locke's looking for a legendary treasure that's supposed to be in Vector, and all he says is "There's bound to be treasure there," but the GBA/Slattery localization adds that stuff back in.

...hm. Do I need Locke along for the cutscene in Kohlingen? I guess I can always double back there after Zozo and before the opera.

[Newbie]

My recollection is that the "search for Terra" leg of the journey has a lot of opportunities for special scenes: Edgar and Sabin both react to stuff in the Figaro castle, Locke and Celes both react to Kohlingen, and if you pick him up, I feel like this is the first likely opportunity to get one of Shadow's nightmares at an inn. Feels like the intent is to have you get something a little extra regardless of the party you choose.