FF5: In Conclusion!

So, Matty. What did you think of FF5?

I was surprised. I loved it a lot more than I thought I would. It's just fun to play.

What? You loved it? No. It's not like all your post titles were "I love FF5" or anything.

I know. Spoilers ahoy, eh? What did you think?

FF5 is a very solid game. I always enjoy it when I play it, but it's not very memorable. I think that's the best way to describe it.

True - I could never really tell you the logical progression of plot in the game, but it's damn enjoyable.

Your translation probably gave the plot a little bit more color than in the rather direct fan translation.

I'm actually rather fond of the Advance translation. It's silly, at times, but it's nicer than the fan trans.

I just don't think I can bring myself to give that high of a score to a game where your nemesis is an evil tree. Although, I remember liking FF10...

If they'd explained why he's a tree, maybe. But you have to admit, the job system makes up for a lot of failings. There's no longer 'one winning strategy'.

That is true. This particular playthrough really forced me to make good use of unusual classes, like the chemist. There are so many ways to fight these different battles, and that is a huge change from even the most flexible of the earlier games.

It's a good precedent that holds through in future games, too.

Well, I mean, the extreme malleability of your characters' abilities is just one end of the spectrum. FF games are always swinging back and forth between that end and the set character classes end, which we see in FF4. I mean, FF4 was a game that was extremely inflexible in that regard. Even FF1 has more customization options for your characters

That's true - but a lot of the future games promise infinite customization. Materia in 7. Junctions in 8. Sphere Grid in 10. That weird chessboard thing in 12. Nine, and to some small part, six, are the only two that really tie you down to archetypes. And you don't notice it in six, because you have sixty thousand characters to pick from.

The Sphere Grid was a little more limiting in that it steered certain characters towards certain class-like sets of abilities. And 6 is extremely flexibile when you take into account espers and their level-up bonuses.

This is true, though I never really cared about what the stat-ups were on my espers.

But back to FF5.

Right. I'm not sure what I'd change in the game if I had creative control. Certainly something more sensible than the giant tree last boss, of course.

It would have been nice to have had, I don't know, a plot that wasn't retarded. Or characters that weren't so incredibly dull. I mean, it's hard to make cross-dressing pirate babes boring, but this game achieves that, somehow.

I don't know - a great evil, sealed by the crystals, trying to harness the power of destruction.... that's a pretty standard FF Plot.

But FF4 outgrew that, and FF5 is a step backwards.

I mean, four was all about an emo paladin-wannabe angsting over all the blood he's shed, all the while some evil force, somewhere, is trying to harness the power of the crystals. Really, the only difference between four and five was character development, in my opinion.

But that's a pretty big difference. To me, FF5 feels like an NES game in terms of the advancement of the plot. There are no twists or turns or whatever. Everything turns out exactly as you expect it to.

I agree, the plot's a step backward. But the way the game handles? I think it's a huge step up. I was a bit bored of how battles went in FF4 by the end.

That's true. FF5 is a longer game than FF4, too, so it has to keep your interest for longer.

Four became a bit like three for me at the end -- the battle system just started to grate on my nerves, and I got tired of wanting to play it. That reminds me -- I was watching the Final Fantasy Retrospective on GameTrailers, and the whole reason that the series started was that the team liked to think "They could tell a good story." Which is somewhat laughable to me, looking back at FF1 and 2. But, then again, Sakaguchi has been a pretty big success, so what do I know.

I think the whole reason that the series started was that Squaresoft wanted to fill a swimming pool full of sweet, sweet yen.

Well, FF1 came out when the company was about to go under. They picked RPGs for the story telling factor, and I'll be honest, I didn't care about the stories until FF6.

I will always hold a high opinion of FF4, and even FF2 to some extent, regarding the story factor.

Those were good stories, but bad gameplay. It's almost not worth playing through the game to get to that bit of goodness at times, though.

Honestly, and this is the gosh-darn truth, I really don't care about gameplay in RPGs. (gasp!) I mean, unless the gameplay is SO bad as to be obtrusive (as it is in the original FF2, and not the Dawn of Souls remake that we covered in the blog), I really don't care.

See, I'm actually a bit of the opposite. If it's got enjoyable gameplay, I'll forgive some plot problems.

Oh, the good gameplay in FF5 certainly makes me forgive the lameness of its plot to an extent. But not to the degree that, say, a great story in FF6 makes me forget the incredibly low difficulty in that game.

The difficulty was fixed a little bit in 6 Advance.

Good gameplay will redeem a lousy RPG and make it okay, but it won't make it a great game. And FF5 is certainly not a great game.

Good gameplay will redeem a lousy RPG plot. A great plot will NOT forgive a horrible interface.

Shut up! yes it will!

We've just got to agree to disagree.

Nyah nyah. I guess it's just that, to me, gameplay in RPGs is not designed to be fun. I mean, you don't actually get to swing a sword at someone. You go to a menu and select "swing sword,"and then your guy swings his sword, and an algorithm determines whether or not he hits, or whatever.

Right, but if you get a fair amount of planning behind how you're swinging....

I mean, I'm not walking down a forest path going, "Oh my god, I can't WAIT until I get a random encounter! Those are the BEST!"

Right, but you'll never go "Wow! I'm so engrossed in this story! I don't care that the game is so ridiculously difficult and uncustomizable! Even if it takes me six hours of battling, I will hit the new plot point!" You'd go 'fuck this!', and turn on Desperate Housewives.

Well, I might. But then again, I actually played Quest 64 in its ENTIRETY.

Which makes your judgement questionable as is.

Look who's talking, Mr. "Tecmo: Secret of the Stars".

Yeah, well, that was just an exercise in self-mutilation.

I had my reasons for playing Quest 64, too. It's a long and horrible story.

Well, I think we can safely say that we've found a dead horse, and we can stop beating it. Are you ready to render your verdict in number form?

Yes. FF5 is a very solid game, and an improvement in every respect on the job system of FF3. I give it a 7/10.

I liked it a bit more than you -- and I liked it better than FF4. I can't forgive all the plot problems, but it was a great game. I'm going to say 8.5/10.

Ohmigod, Matty, guess what game is next! It begins with "F" and rhymes with "Minal Mantasy Mix!"

The one that'll probably get two 10s?

Shh, don't give it away! we want people to keep reading!

Oh. Right. I hate that damn game. Zero!

Yeah! FF6: totally NOT the most awesome game ever. You heard it here!

And if Kammy says it, you know it's true.

That gives FF5 an FFNerds score of 7.75/10. Stick around as the FFnerds finish up the SNES era with Final Fantasy 6! If any of you loyal readers have any requests on which versions we should play, or which challenges we should do (low-level, single-character, etc.,) speak up!

Why I Love FFV: One Last Marathon Post

So, admittedly, I finished FF5 several days ago. So, let's start out and discuss another Final Fantasy tradition. Nude, busty women. She's especially evil, as she's got the necessary crotch-related deformity. She's got two serpents snaking out of her vuh-jay-jay. The final third of the game involves a lot of boss fights, all with creatures that look bizarre like Melusine.

I wish I could say that this picture was related to snake-lady. However, it's clear. When you're on a quest to save the world from an evil force the likes of which have not been seen for thousands of years, booty is ALWAYS just one random encounter away.





Anyway, after you sleep your way around the world, you finally make it to the end of the game. It turns out, in typical Final Fantasy fashion, that the final boss of the game is NOT the equally matched human you thought he was. He's a giant freaking tree.

This always threw me for a loop. I never understood the narrative justification. Is this a subtle jab at hippies and the liberal media, always out hugging their trees in order to save the world? Is this a bitter retort to the overpriced gardening industry, where a small shrub will run you $37.95? We may never know.

Final Fantasy... EXTREME!!!

What else do we have to say about FF5?

I dunno. Maybe the tree monsters?

It IS kind of retarded that the main villain is a tree. Like, how did that happen? And is it X-death, like, EXTREME death, or is it Ex-death, like, formerly death?

Hmm. I think it's like X-fight. Xtra death!

Like the gum?

Exactly.

You mean X-actly!

How Xciting.

I mean, it's like, they are all, "This villain isn't evil enough." And then Square Executive #2 goes, "Why don't we have the word 'Death' in his name? That sounds pretty evil." And then Square Executive #3 goes, "No, it still needs a little something extra..."

Then Square Executive #2 goes, "X-tra, you say?" And they all laugh while the credits run.

I mean, it's one of those things where I think to myself, "Maybe it doesn't sound so lame in Japanese." And then I stop and say, "Wait a minute, of COURSE it sounds that lame in Japanese. What was I thinking?"

Haha. Deathhu-ex.

I mean, there are lots of examples in the Final Fantasy oeuvre of Japanese scriptwriters just not understanding how Western-sounding names are supposed to look.

Krile?

I'm thinking more like Cloud Strife, Squall Leonhart, Celes Chere, Ashelia B'nargin... Don't even get me started on Edgar Roni and Sabin Rene Figaro.

Relm! Aroni!

Yes, and there's Relm Arrowny, the San Fransisco Treat. Tactics is a prime example of this, actually. Ramza Beaoulve? Is that how you spell his name?

Something like that. Strago Magus?

Those Japanese and their x-centricities.

It's x-asperating.

Plot, schmot

You know, this challenge that we're doing makes FF5 really fun to play, even though I am currently on track to be fighting Exdeath with Faris as a berserker. It's the whole Progress Quest-ish thrill of seeing your guys learn new jobs and watching their stats go up, but I suppose that's where most of the fun in RPG gameplay lies. That means that the plot in this game is just something to turbo through on my ZSNES so I can get back to gaining AP as soon as possible. Fortunately for me, the plot of this game is minimal, with none of the twists that characterized its predecessor. This is an old-fashioned game plot in the grand tradition of the 8-bit era, with quests involving "Collecting things", "Gaining more power," and "Defeating the bad guy." That said, this game does do a couple of things, plotwise, that we haven't seen before in the series.

1. Flashbacks. This is the first FF game where we actually see glimpses of individual characters' pasts. We learn about the backgrounds of the FF4 crew second-hand, but Cecil never actually flashbacks to the moon or whatever. Of course, the characters of this game are pretty much incidental to the plot for the most part, so their backgrounds wouldn't be detailed in story-related dialogue, so flashbacks are the way to go.

The most important detail we learn from all this was that Butz's father and Galuf were part of a Light Warriors-y cabal back in the day that sealed away the evil mage tree Exdeath somehow-- because sealing away an ancient evil instead of killing it outright ALWAYS works out for the best, right?



2. Major player character death. Characters have died in FF games before. FF2 basically had a rotating party slot where people would join your party and then die heroically saving your party from a crushing boulder, exploding fortress, or whatever. The same basically held true for FF4, except it turned out that most of the people you thought were dead turned out to be magically cured, or rescued by fairies.







Galuf falls prey, once again, to the rule that old men in RPGs never survive, but he is one of five playable characters in the whole game, and so it is a much bigger deal when he dies than when, say, Tellah Meteos himself to death. It's actually kind of touching, given how little I care about the characters in this game. He totally sacrifices his life and keeps fighting while mortally wounded to keep Exdeath from killing his granddaughter. Awww. Note how your party at least TRIES a phoenix down before giving up. Do you hear that, Cloud?

Why I love FFV: Hot Intraspecies Sex

So, there's all kinds of interesting little tidbits in FFV that are either points created just to push the plot along, or plot points themselves too minor to mention.

There's a lot of Moogle-related backstory here. I'm sort of thrown here. Moogles, appearantly, are like the Borg. They live in a great moogle colllective in the woods, and I can assume their only goal is world domination. (Watch for FFXIV - Rise of the Moogles. You heard it here first.).




What's interesting, though, is that apparently Krile can ALSO communicate through telepathy. Now, I'm not one to point fingers about some sort of vast conspiracy, but I think it's entirely possible that someone in Krile's family was a little TOO familiar with the moogles, if you know what I mean.






I mean, it's not like the party ever got too familiar with the creatures of the forest....

Oh. Well, I mean, it's not like the forest is pink and flesh-toned....

Oh.

Right. Well, clearly my work is done here.

Why I love FFV: Weird translations

So, one thing that stands out is the really weird translation that they've given the GBA rerelease of FF5. I mean, half of the time it seems like they're talking about some weird STD. "Such a pity! That bedamned clapperclaw has taken the queen in her sexual prime!".

There's also some interesting phrases used instead of... well, let's just pick "Holy Crap!". I mean, I suppose it's plausible that they have Christmas. And, instead of reindeer, I suppose Santa drags his airship with eight frisky black chocobos.

I know, I should probably hate these weird bits of dialogue. And I do -- I think that the Jumping Christmas! thing is absurd. I like the thought of an archaic speaking (fake) King Tycoon, though. As though a father is going to pick a random dungeon to talk to his daughter about the dangers of the clap.

And, look! You get a town of secret homosexuals. Look! They're macking on Butz! And, if you dance for them, they throw gil at you! You're a cheap 100 gil harlot!

That's why _I_ love FFV.

Sheep: To molest, or not to molest?

Apparently Butz finds that his needs can't be satisfied by a PETA card-carrying princess and a transgendered pirate wench. Where else is a man to turn but to the adorable, fluffy sheep dotting the meadows of this rustic village?


But molesting sheep is never the right answer. Now you know! and knowing is half the battle.

Why I love FFV - Ridiculously weird storylines

So, for all of my being on a high horse about how plot and... uh, stuff are important, FFV is pretty ridiculous. I mean, it's probably one of the more ridiculous of the series. I don't think the early games had enough plot, and I think the later ones actually had more serious attentions placed upon things like script writing.

All that said, FFV is great. You get sucked up by a friendly sea beastie, because swimming is just too damn hard, you get to do an obligatory 'the castle will explode in 10 minutes' run, where you curse loudly at every single fire-based beast that the game could throw at you... really, this game, much like FF4, sets the groundwork for what makes Final Fantasy... well, Final Fantasy. And, for some reason, it does it in a way that doesn't bug me as much as FF4 did.



Not only do you get all that, you ALSO get friendly NPCs that concisely summarize the entire plot of the game for you in one easy to manage sentence, thereby rendering our blog unnecessary. [Don't worry -- we'll keep soldiering on.] Of course, some of you are more interested in what our individual randomized play style is like, but I've got a screenshot for that too.


I think that a lot of thought went into this retranslation. It's not perfect, but it's pretty well executed, and it's nice to have a slightly different flavor to something that I know so well.

I Love FFV.

Okay, I admit, I'm a little biased. I love Final Fantasy V. I think the job system is brilliant -- you can have a drastically different game each and every time you play by just varying the classes you use. And the game practically encourages it.

I also discovered today that my GBA screenshot folder overwrites itself when I close the program, so Kamarile will have to talk about the beginning of the game.

As you may no doubt notice, most of my party is blind. That's the beauty of having a Blue Mage, because you have to let the enemy wail on you with their deadliest attacks, on the slightest off-chance that you might be able to go, "Hmm. They appear to be photoluminescent. And, so am I! Yay! Blindy!".








Then again, it is a world full of potato meteors [again, no screenshot. Stupid computer.], so anything is possible. Despite my earlier reservations about my party, using a blue mage is pretty righteous, as you can turn all kinds of monsters into frogs.

But, enough about the gameplay. I'm normally not a fan of the 'modernization' of the scripts, but there are occasionally some good lines thrown in.

So far, I'm absolutely loving this game. I've played the common fantrans quite a few times, and I think I've only played this version once -- but it's good. It's damn good.

Let the Games Begin!

So, how's FF5 treating you so far, Matty?

Surprisingly well, considering I rolled three different mages and a thief to start with.

Ouch! I was lucky and I rolled a classic Black Mage, White Mage, Monk, Knight party.

Which is the typical party you'd start with, no?

I mean, pretty much. It's the standard FF1 starting party for most people.

My two different characters from yours aren't too terrible either. Thieves are pretty useful with the sneaky fleeing, and Blue Mages can wield SWORDS and are surprisingly powerful. I'd be curious to see an all Blue-Mage game, actually.

What I worry about is that I'm using these classes so early in the game. Just watch me be fighting Xdeath at the end with an animal trainer, a dancer, and a chemist.

I wonder how much AP we'll burn through without having to grind. And, by the way, chemists are love.

I haven't even been levelling for money, so far. I'm not very far, though.

I've just made it past the ship graveyard, and everyone's got about 30 AP.

The mages should stay mages for a while, because everyone has that retarded Use Rod skill that you get for mastering those.

Blue Mages are actually surprisingly quick. 350 points to master, I think.

And then you can use blue magic whenever you want! That is actually a good class to get early.

When we get Red Mages, though, that's when the wheels fall off the wagon.

Yum, X-magic!

True, but at around 1200 AP to master? Yech. That's twice as long as a normal class. Knowing my luck, my Blue Mage will hit it. I'm going to try and avoid mastering Blue Mage with Lenna until I hit the 2nd crystal. Then again, that could mean Berserker.

Oh man, that will be tough, if we get berserkers.

This adds a whole new level of strategy to the game, you know.

It sure does. Can you believe we're actually having a discussion about gameplay and tactics, rather than naughty screenshots?

I thought I took care of that with my 'Beast in the Canal of women' joke. And just wait - I've got a screenshot of one of the pirates going gay for boy-Faris.

And while we're at it, why not laugh about how the hero's name is "Butz"? Which sounds remarkably like "Butts!" hah!
Mine was actually Bartz. I changed it out of principle. The Japanese intended for him to be hard core and Butz-like.

Hahahaha. Hardcore Butz.

And, just like that, we're back to normal.

How to be an FFNerd, lesson one:

Don't be afraid to shoot for the easy marks. Might I suggest, I bet it did, or "Yeah, and I targeted your mom last night!".

FFV: Special Rules!

So, FF5 is one of those games Kamarile and I have played to death. In the interest of keeping things... interesting, I've proposed the following rule, and she's agreed.

• When you get your first jobs, everyone is assigned a random one. They cannot change class until after they've mastered the job.
• When you master a job, you roll another new class and continue on. The only additional catch is you cannot roll a class someone else is/has mastered.

Tricky? You bet. Fun? Oh yeah.

FF4: In Conclusion

So, Kammy, what did you think of FFIV?

I've always really enjoyed FFIV, but I loved it even more seeing it coming out of FFIII. This game represents what I consider the greatest leap in quality in the series.

There's definitely a tremendous leap in quality coming from IIIj. What's interesting, though, is I think there's a similar leap coming up.

From V to VI, you mean?

Even from IV to V. I was mildly disappointed by my memory of FFIV versus the reality.

FFIV more than any other game in the series is one that I feel was limited by the programmer's skill with the new hardware.

And the script writers' skill with the language.

I mean, people complain about the blocky early-psx graphics of VII, but those didn't really affect the game.

That's true. In terms of graphics for SNES RPGs, FFIV is pretty top-notch.

Well, of course you had to go for the lousy translation. I quite like the FF Chronicles translation, and I am fond of the old J2E, despite my having dedicated a whole post to whining about it.

That's true. But even your translation was iffy. We're going to fly a giant whale to the moon?

Dude, my translation called it the "Magical Ship," which is totally lame. I think the newer official translations go with "Lunar Whale," but I'd have to check. (Readers who comment on things, you go do some detective work and tell me if that's true!)

Lunar Whale probably tops the lot.

What I meant by the constraints of the programming, though, is the extremely brief and fast-paced nature of the game. The world is small, the songs are short, ATB battle is quick and brutal. Remember the evil wall? and Odin?

The Odin battle felt right, in terms of future games keeping with the precedent, anyway. The world is ridiculously tiny, though, and that really hurts when you're trying to dicker around with the airship.

I always thought of that as a drawback to this game, but I just came out of FF3, which had the opposite problem.

If some of the gameplay issues were tweaked in FF3, I think it could have easily been better than FF4.

I think the compressed world lends FF4 a unique feel that sets it apart from a lot of the more bloated games in the series.

It's surprising just how much bigger the world was in 3 compared to this one.

But those late-generation NES RPGs had huge worlds. Remember DQ4?

True, though DQ4 is easily the best NES RPG out there. FF5 fixes a lot of the problems with FF4. I think the storyline is better put together, the speed issue is resolved...

But somehow FF5 is not as engaging a game for me. Maybe it's that FF4 is so much a character-driven game, and that was something completely new for the series. FF2 had dabbled in this a little bit, but you spend that game carrying out the goals of Hilda and the resistance, and in FF4 it's all about Cecil personally.

True. FF4, emo-fest though it is, is definitely character-driven.

FF5's story might be better thought out, but its characters aren't. Butz, Faris, Lenna, Galuf, and Cara aren't very interesting people. (You should still read when we do FF5, though! Honest! It'll be great!) I'm willing to forgive plot holes in RPGs if I genuinely care about what happens to the people in my party.

I think that they finally get the plot quirks worked out by FF6, though that starts to waver as we go 3d.

FF4 isn't a perfect game, but it is a great name. I've called it the first great 16-bit RPG, and I will stand by that nominer. I can't think of a single RPG as influential as FF4. Seriously.

I'll agree with that. It's not the greatest, by far, but it's great considering where it's roots were.

They invented ATB! Think of how many games, past and present, have used some variant of the ATB.

Well, Square certainly stuck by it. Other groups stuck by what they'd always used, more strictly turn-based combat. FFIV is the mold, at least, by which games are built for almost a decade after, though.

But it's neat, for me, seeing the vestiges of FF3 in this game. The fat chocobos, the graphic design...

What I like about these early games, is that they all feel like they're from the same world. Though once you hit FF6, you lose that common thread of super-magical Crystals.

You also begin to lose some of the traditional class distinctions that define the earlier games (even FF2, where you had pure white mages like Minwu, or dragoons like that one guy whose name I forget.) In this game in particular, characters are defined by their classes. Rosa's all white-magey about nurturing other people, particularly her boyfriend. Gilbert/Edward is such a pussy that his skill is to hide. There's also a neat bit in this translation about how Cain became a dragoon in order to follow in his father's footsteps. And Cecil can't redeem his soul until he switches classes from Dark Knight to Paladin.

Though, when he does redeem his soul, he goes from level xx to level 1, and all his stats are strangely higher. All dragoons are following in their father's footsteps.

The funny thing is, after FF2, all white mages in the FF universe are mysteriously female.

You can't heal people with a penis. That's just silly.

I guess not. Anyway, it seems as if we can't discuss FF4 without bringing up the entire history of the series.

It's because part of what makes FF4 great is that it sets a lot of good precedent. If you don't consider that, the game falls a bit flat.

Well, the game might have fallen flat for you, but I was playing the version with porn in it. So I have to go ahead and give this game an 8.5.

Though it fell flat, I can't give an exceptionally low score. I still think it's one of the better games in the series, though there are many I enjoy a lot more. I'll give FF4 a score of 7.5.

Aw gee, Matty, lower than FF2? How could you!

I feel guilty. Really.

If we were talking in person I'd smack you in the face with a frying pan.

Which is why I'm glad we'll never, ever meet. I'll point out that you only scored it half a point higher than FF2. Which shows that the two are fairly comparable.

Just as FF5 is an improved FF3, FF4 is an improved FF2. The difference is that the makers of FF4 are still trying to adjust to the platform switch.

I think a lot of the problems weren't related to new hardware. Keep in mind, the SNES came out late 1990. FF4 popped out Mid-1991. It was probably more an issue of "Crap, there's a new console! We need a cash cow! Hurry!".

What? Cash cows? In the Final Fantasy franchise? that would NEVER happen.

It's scandalous, I know.

But it's a cash cow with heart, Matty!

You mean it's a cash cow with Light! From the Moon!

And it has a good message for the kids!

Terrorism is okay if you're doing it for a paladin?

That, and if you say your prayers, a giant spaceship will rise out of the ocean and will be yours to command.

So many good lessons.

Anyway, stay tuned as the FF Nerds whip out the next installment of our playthrough: Final Fantasy V!

Which version of FFV will you be playing, Kammy?

I will be playing some sort of fan-translated SNES rom that I found on some sketchy Geocities website somewhere.

Fantastic. I'll be playing the official version.... from the GBA!

Ergh, Reina? Lenna? Kara? Cara? How will we keep them straight?

It's like we're playing two different games!

Anyway, stick around. We'll be sure to make lots of Butz jokes.

Heh heh. Butz.


That gives FF4 an FFNerds score of 8.0. Seriously, you guys, stick around. FF5 will be fabulous.

Happy ending?

Hooray! I defeated Zeromus!







Of course I had enough power, bitch. I'm a fricking SPACE PALADIN.








Now for the ending of the game. Everyone lives happily ever after, except for Palom, who is constantly being cockblocked by his sister. The king of Fabul decides that Yang is just so great ("Fabul"ous, even?) that he has to resign and install Yang as king in his place. Edge becomes a king. Cecil marries Rosa and becomes a king... do you see where this is going?





Cain decides that this ending doesn't have enough emo, so he brings some of his own.





But the best ending of all has to go to Gilbert/Edward, the spoony bard himself. In the beginning of the game, he was a weakling who could never be in charge of anything. But now...





...he's taking initiative and leading an efficient and cost-effective child labor cabal!



You go, girl.

Attack of the fan translations!

The J2E fan translation, for its time, was a pretty sweet fan translation. Remember, guys, this was before all the official Square re-releases where they fixed all the glaring mistakes of their earlier games. This was the first FF4 hardtype that English-speakers could play. I played the original FF2e first, and this translation made me think of FF4 as one of the series' great games.

That said, it is a prime example of what I earlier described as the otaku over-eagerness to put in naughty words. It's like they were all sitting around in their mom's basement, being all, "Those evil executive bastards, giving us the pansy little kid's version of this game! FF4 is super DARK and EDGY. It is a MASTERPIECE of EPIC PROPORTIONS. Never mind the dancing pigs in Mithril Town, this is a game for ADULTS! Squaresoft is so not kawaii. Let's put in what the original Japanese scriptwriters really MEANT to say."

With that in mind, I am giving you the following montage of J2E profanity.


What?! Isn't Cain sort of, like, completely in love with Rosa, which causes him to be jealous of Cecil? Or isn't it like a Gypsy's Girl kind of thing, at least? Her being some sort of lady of the night kind of comes out of nowhere.


"Screw you" isn't a terribly naughty thing to say, but it's completely inappropriate for a mad scientist like Lugeie (the proto-Hojo) to say it. "Screw you" is what you say if you are a high school girl and your best friend totally just asked out the guy that you were crushing on since like last semester when you had bio class together. Why not a good old-fashioned "Damn you!" or "Curses!" or "And I would have gotten away with it too, if it weren't for you meddling kids!"?


Looks like that something isn't syntax.


Edge is a veritable wellspring of profanity. He is actually the character that suffers the most for it. The thing about Edge is that for a character who is egotistical and sexist, you have to find some way of making him likable and princely. If all he ever says is "Shit! Rydia, go into the kitchen and make me a fucking Chocobo pie, biatch!", then you kind of want to punt him instead of level him up.

Cid is foulmouthed too:



But what does that even MEAN?

Fly me to the moon....

When we last left off, we had, with the help of Edge, sexist Ninja, finally embarked on our mission to the moon. Well, we were, except, surprise, surprise, Kain betrayed us again. So, now that we can't take the easy way to the moon, we've got to exhaust all of our alternatives.

And, having exhausted ALL of our alternatives, we decide to fly to the moon in the legendary Big Whale. There's no mention that it's an airship until you actually acquire it -- I envisioned my party riding an orca and jumping out of the ocean with such force that we'd leave the gravitational pull of our planet, ala Free Willy on steroids.




The moon is a lot like the "Blue Planet" we came from, except the inhabitants are mildly tactless. You see, we recently learned that Cecil was a half-breed. Half moonman, half blue planetian.

Even I, crass though I can be, know that a polite conversation does not go:

Hi! I'm Cecil!

Oh! You're a half-bre... er, Hi! I'm generic moon person #281.


So, after getting horribly offended by the moon people, it's time to go back to our own planet to stop it from destruction by a giant robotic-type creature (again, watch this, robopeople are very prominent in future games). Being successful brings to light what we in the business call a 'plot twist'.

You see, Golbez is, (wait for it), Cecil's brother. Scandalous! And, there's some more moon-people racial pride. Seriously, I'm starting to wonder if the whole plan to just destroy all the humans was just race (species?) based. "Oh, we're the Lunars. We're super awesome! Let's send a giant robot to destroy all the non-Lunars!".








Of course, this drives everyone to end-game. We go to the obligatory crystal walled dungeon, have the obligatory fake ending, kill a ridiculous looking boss, and then go home for tea and cookies.











This brings us to the end of FF4.