Final Fantasy, Four White Mages

I'm getting ready to start another challenge quest on an old RPG. It's possible the first challenge quest I ever really heard of for any RPG, and one I've been interested in trying for many years.

I first read this challenge on a collectible card that was distributed by Nintendo Power Magazine long ago. I don't remember the cards very well; I think they might have been called Power Challenge Cards (or not). But they had cards for a large variety of early NES games, and probably Game Boy and SNES games too. And the cards contained ideas for giving yourself an extra challenge on the games.

At the time, Final Fantasy was one of my favorite games of all time. The challenge given on the card was to beat the game with four white mages. I thought that would be quite the challenge indeed, and kind of wanted to try it. But it's something I never got to. It's partly because you can only have one game file per cartridge and I had two brothers to share with (and don't much like erasing old files anyway). And partly because my copy of the game got stolen after a bit. And at some point, my gaming queue just got so long that I kind of forgot about it.

But I've been trying to decide on a good starting point for getting back into the Final Fantasy games, and I think it's as good as any.

I spend the last couple of weeks revisiting my last NES game file, from around 2003. I brought my characters on that file from about level 39 to max level, 50. That way I can feel a sense of closure on the file and erase it easier. I had other options to choose from (Famicom and Wii Virtual Console) but it felt right to do it on the NES.

I learned a lot about the game the last time I played it on the Famicom. I looked at a lot of online resources at that time, too, just for the heck of it. I was surprised by a lot of what I read.

First off, a great many quirks of the localization process obscured a lot of things from this game that were passed on to later games, but localized differently in those games. For example, staple Final Fantasy spells like Protect, Flare, and Holy, as well as were there from the beginning but named differently for a variety of reasons.

Secondly, a great amount of information I had taken for granted from the old Nintendo Power Strategy Guide is actually incorrect, and much of the game is bugged to not work as intended. For example, none of the weapon elemental or creature type bonuses actually work in the game. Some spells like LOCK and TMPR don't work at all, and apparently LOK2 actually helps the enemy rather than hurting it.

A lot of that was fixed in the Final Fantasy Origins port for Playstation, which I once started but never finished. I think I'll try playing that version alongside my NES one.

It's hard to add RPG's into my queue, but where this is an old one that I've played several times, and a relatively shorter one, I think I can manage it without disrupting the rest of my queue too much. I'll probably start one of the other more recent FF games as well before too long, but that will probably wait (at least) until I can finish Dragon Quest V. 

Thoughts on Metroidvania, Part II

Incidentally, while building up to SotN I decided it was a good idea to revisit the Metroid Series. I replayed Metroid and Metroid: Zero Mission. I couldn't find my copy of Metroid II, even though I had it specifically set out not many months ago, but I finally played through Samus Returns, which I had got a couple of years ago for the 3DS. I also replayed Super Metroid and Metroid Fusion. I got all the endings on the two GBA games for the first time, and did bare minimum percent runs for both of those games, which I ended up enjoying.

Besides revisiting a favorite series and finally playing the latest entry, I wanted to replay them as a preliminary step to learning more about Metroidvania in general, and to see how Symphony of the Night compared and contrasted to its counterpart series in the genre moniker. I've also read quite a few articles on a variety of popular indie games that have adopted the Metroidvania term to describe themselves, and downloaded a demo for Ori and the Blind forest (which I've since learned a few relatives have played and liked). I've been looking for a fresh gaming experience, and these games seem to fit the bill.

I've started playing one of the early indie games called Cave Story. The freeware version comes in Japanese only, and although there are unofficial translation patches, I decided to try my hand at translating the language myself. Because of that, it's artificially slow going, and I haven't really made it past the first town, but the game looks promising.

Aside from the Castlevania games, I have a host of other Metroidvanias now that I've had recommended to me which I'm eager to play through as quickly as I have capacity to. I am finding it to be a great complimentary style of game to play alongside the more intensive RPG's I've been playing, to keep me from getting burned out on any one game. I probably can (and I guess really already have) finish two or three of these in the time it takes me to get through one big console RPG, and they seem to be very engaging in their own way.

Thoughts on Metroidvania, Part I

 I have to start this article off by saying I'm not a particular fan of arbitrary portmanteaus, and the name "Metroidvania" fits the bill. However, it seems to have become the standard gaming term for a subgenre of games I've long been interested in learning more about, and have finally started getting into more.

The type of game is an offshoot of 2-D side-scrolling adventure games, which I was rather fond of back in the day. By "adventure" I mean games that were more focused on exploration than on a stage or level based design. In particular, it's usually meant to refer to games similar to the iconic games Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphonia of the Night, which games form the basis for the portmanteau.

I was a fan of certain 2-D side-scrolling games like Faxanadu, Rygar, and Castlevania II: Simon's Quest back on the NES, and I've always been a fan of the Metroid game series. Simon's Quest seems to be considered a progenitor of the Metroidvania style, but not an actual Metroidvania. It has some clear influences on Symphony of the Night, but it's still very different in a lot of ways.

I've long wanted to try SotN, but I like to play game series mostly in release date order, so it seemed far out of reach. I had never played beyond the NES games, with a brief trial of Super Castlevania IV. But when Simon and Richter Belmont were announced for Super Smash Bros, and the Netflix anime based on Castlevania III were released, I decided I was interested in revisiting the series. When I was part way through replaying the NES games, they announced the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, which I got for my birthday the following year. Even so it took a while to start working the games into my queue.

I really enjoyed revisiting the classic Castlevanias, and playing many for the first time. I also purchased Castlevania Chronicles digitally, as well as Castlevania: Requiem which contains Rondo of Blood. I had a great time with all of these games, which evoked a certain degree of nostalgia for game types I haven't played a lot of since the NES days.

I was excited to finally work my way to Symphony of the Night. I purchased this digitally as well (it's included with Rondo of Blood, but I wanted to play the original Playstation version, and it wasn't very expensive). I've always heard a lot of praise for the game, and always thought it would be up my alley. It turns out, not only was it up my alley, it's one of my new favorite games.

The game well deserves its reputation. It has a compelling mix of Metroid-like level design and RPG game mechanics that I just loved. It has excellent music and some compelling, unexpected, and memorable plot turns. It's not really a plot heavy game, but one particular turn was so cleverly implemented that it still blew my mind, in such a way that I was surprised I had never had it spoiled.

I have also since completed Legends, which is the last classic Castlevania, and Circle of the Moon, this game's first real follow-up. Circle of the Moon is nice, but not really on the same level. It's a solid game, and a great game for Game Boy Advance. In some ways it feels a little more like Super Metroid than SotN did, as far as level design, and the game is probably on a similar level to GBA Metroid games. But it's not as impressive as its progenitor.

I'm holding off on moving further because I'm still fleshing out my game files on both of those games, but I think I'll be ready to move to the next game soon. I've momentarily skipped the first 3-D Castlevanias for the Nintendo 64. But I'll get to them as soon as I decide I'm ready to pay for both of them. The GBA ones are available digitally, but neither of the N64 games are. And at least one of those is fairly pricy for a used copy.

Thoughts on Final Fantasy

 I've really been wanting to get back into the Final Fantasy series for a long time now. I claimed it as my favorite game series growing up, and still think of it as one of my three favorite. But I don't have a lot to add to conversations about the modern series, and I'm not sure I really stack up well as a true Final Fantasy fan. I realized recently that I've only played 4 of the 15 mainline games more than once (the ones that existed when I was growing up). And I haven't played hardly any of the spinoffs or side games that have come out in the last decade and a half. Even though I got a copy of Final Fantasy XV many months ago, I've yet to play it past the tutorial.

Five years ago, I made a five-year goal for myself to catch myself up on my three favorite game series: The Legend of Zelda, Dragon Quest, and Final Fantasy (in no particular order). I wanted to not only have played the main games, but to have really fleshed out my game files and make sure I'd done the bulk of what each game had to offer.

I had started with the Zelda series, knowing they were less time intensive and I could get through it better. I finished my goal more or less with that one. (I still have a lot unfinished on Breath of the Wild, but that's fine with me since the game is still a current generation game and I have plenty of time to revisit it before whatever next Zelda game comes out.)

The Dragon Quest series is still in progress. It's taken my longer than I thought because I got sidetracked some with doing a variety of challenge quests on the early games that weren't part of my original goal; some of which were fairly time-intensive. I've had a few burnout periods, too, where I had to take a break from large scale RPGs.

Since I was doing Dragon Quest before Final Fantasy, this means I've left my Final Fantasy goal largely unaddressed. But every few months I go through a stronger desire to come revisit it.

I booted up my NES game file, which is about 19 years old now. I want to replay the original, but I don't want to erase my current game file yet. I've decided to bring my characters up to max level on that file before restarting it, to give me stronger closure on my old file. I've gone from about level 39 to level 43 after a few nights at it this week.

I don't think I'm going to go strictly sequentially on this series, as it will take far to long to get to newer entries I still want to try. But I haven't decided just how I'll go about it. It's hard to think about starting a big name RPG I haven't played until I finish my Dragon Quest V playthrough, but I can redo some of the earlier games I've played during that time.

I'm also wanting to reboot my Theatrythym and try to ace the last handful of songs and series that I don't have SSS rank on. I think its just about half a dozen battle scores and their respective series modes I need to finish off.

Blog Reboot?

 It's been a long several months. I was debating myself on whether to stop keeping this blog altogether given how infrequently I post on it. But maybe I just need a format change.

I don't have time to record all my thoughts on every game I play. So I think I need to abbreviate my format here in general. I would find it easier to post more often if I posted less, anyway.

Some games I've played since last September: every game on the Castlevania collection (except Kid Dracula; I'll play it some day probably, but I see it as more of a side game and less an actual Castlvania game). Also the Castlevania games Rondo of Blood (now my favorite "Classicvania"), Symphony of the Night (at long last), Legends, and Circle of the Moon.

I did challenge runs on Metroid Zero Mission and Metroid Fusion, and replayed Super Metroid.

I played through indie games Fairune and Fairune 2. I also replayed Braid on my XBox 360.

I'm nearing the end of Pokemon Picross.

I'm also finally playing Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, I'm near the end of Dragon Quest V, and I've started the game Cave Story.

It's probably not an exhaustive list, but I'll start from there.

Best game on all this list that I hadn't played before is Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, which was every bit as good as I always heard it was, and better in some ways.

Although most of my gaming (and my blog name) is somewhat old school, I've been feeling a lot lately like I want to try some newer games. Both new-to-me games and newer games in general, so I can follow conversations with my friends a bit better. But I haven't decided yet what games those will be. More on that to come, I suppose.

Castlevania Adventures

I'm no longer working from home, and I've resumed my lengthy public transportation commute. So I've been engaging in my handheld gaming options a lot more.

For the past week or so, I've been playing my Castlevania Anniversary Collection on the Switch. I got it a little over a year ago while I was replaying the NES Castlevanias, but I didn't play it much before other games took my attention. But I've been wanting something that isn't an RPG to play when I'm not playing Dragon Quest V, and this fit my current mood pretty well.

I played a little of the original game, sampling the Easy mode on the Japanese version, which does in fact make the game comparatively pretty easy. Most notably, it stops you from getting knocked back when you take a hit, which keeps you from falling off the stage quite so much. (I didn't try the Normal Japanese mode, so I'm assuming that's a feature of the Easy mode rather than the Japanese version.)

Desiring a newer experience, I tried out Castlevania: The Adventure, originally for the Game Boy. This is a game I had never played before, as Game Boy games were never available for rent at my local video store when I was young. Playing it now turned out to be a fresh and interesting experience. I full well expected something of a shorter, simpler Castlevania style game, which essentially is accurate. What I did not expect was a difficulty level that ramped up near the end to a game somewhat more difficult than the original NES game.

The game is simple enough that there's not too much to elaborate on here. The gameplay is simple NES-era Castlevania style, minus the subweapons most of the games have. Instead you get a projectile when your whip is upgraded. The big caveat here is that you actually lose your whip upgrade each time you get hit, and upgrades only appear in select candlesticks, much fewer and further between than other Castlevania games. This notably adds to the challenge factor on this game.

The first two levels are fairly simple and straightforward. The third level is a little different. There are only a handful of enemies; most of the level is an auto-scrolling level where spikes from the bottom or side are slowly moving to impale you. It's fairly challenging and took me a good amount of practice to learn the level well enough to complete it.

The fourth level is quite a formidable challenge. It took me nearly a week, at least an hour a day trying to get this one down. No single part of the level is more difficult than the sections in level 3, but level 3 is much shorter and takes less time to figure out what you need.

It took several days before I could even get to the end of the stage to fight Dracula. It took me just as much time or more after that to actually beat Dracula and the game. I could have done it quicker, but I did not feel right about using the game's native save state feature, which wasn't available on the original game. So each time I took a Game Over, I started back from the beginning of the castle.

After a while I began to feel like using the unlimited continues itself gave an unfair advantage. If I had played the game on the original Game Boy, my battery life would have died in the time I'd spent on it. So each new day, I tried starting over from the beginning. It's not too big a deal, because it really doesn't take that long to get through the first three levels. By the time I started doing this, I'd gotten the last level down well enough that at least once I got to Dracula from the very beginning without using any continues.

Dracula has two forms. The first one is actually not very hard and I'd figured it out well enough after only a few attempts. But even though his attack pattern on the second form is still fairly simple, I found it unpredictable to the point that I couldn't avoid his attacks enough to finish him before he finished me.

I never did find a reliable strategy for it; in the end I only beat him by getting to him with a fully powered whip and hoping I didn't get hit in his first couple of passes. He doesn't take very many hits with the strongest whip, but it's so easy to get hit and lose it before you can do enough damage to matter.

I found the overall experience of the game simultaneously frustrating and refreshing. Every now and then, I suppose, it's refreshing to play a game that has a frustrating difficulty, something that pushes you to play a little harder and smarter than a typical game. This is a game that requires a great deal of patience, but it's also a game where patience does pay off. There's not much here that can't be overcome without practice and patience. It was very rewarding to finally finish it.

The day after I finished it, I played the sequel, Belmont's Revenge. I beat it in one day of playing. Objectively, I can see that the game improves in a great many ways on the original, while retaining many of the same elements. But it was a little disappointing still to finish that quickly after the time I spent on the one before.

It restores the subweapons, but just the axe and holy water. It also retains the whip projectile, though you get to keep your whip after getting hit (though certain enemy attacks will still downgrade you). There's still a certain challenge factor from the fact that this game doesn't seem to supply any way to restore your health. But even so I finished most levels after just two or three attempts. 

This game's final Dracula battle was pretty interesting, though. It follows a very specific pattern, but it's very difficult to learn where the safe places to stand are. Fortunately, you respawn just before him even after continuing, like in the original NES Castlevania, so you can try him until you learn how to beat him.

This game also has a slightly more involved storytelling element than most of the early Castlevania games, which was interesting to see. In game, it's mostly just before the end, but it's cool.

Lastly, or at least most lately, I started again on Castlevania III. I didn't actually finish that when I started it last year. I'm sure I've beaten it once before, but I'd like to play around with it a little longer while I prepare to play the 16-bit games on this collection.

Solo Dragon Quest IV finished

 Yesterday I finished my solo playthrough of this game. I made a big push this last week and weekend. As of today I am no longer working from home, and I wanted to finish as much as possible before resuming my commute.

This was not as intensive as Dragon Warrior III, or even II. I went to max level in both of those games; this one I finished at level 47. Doing it at a lower level added to the challenge to keep it interesting, but at much higher levels I think this could get pretty easy. The most interesting part of this was learning about boss regeneration values, which are not as well documented as they are on Dragon Warrior III despite this game having more bosses with background regeneration. It was fun to try this game's different item and spell sets to find the right combinations for beating regeneration on the bosses.

I mentioned before that, for reasons I can't really justify, I stepped on each square in the game. I no longer clearly remember what ever possessed me to do this in Dragon Warrior I. In some ways made more sense with I and II, which have a steeper EXP grind anyway than the future games. But, as one might expect, it was kind of ridiculous in III and IV, which have much larger worlds but a tamer EXP growth curve, as well as endgame metal enemies with much higher EXP yield. Whatever compulsion made me keep going with this, since I'd done it previous games, I'm confident I won't ever feel the need or desire to do this in any other game.

I also went back and finished off my 100% game file. I am pleased to say I found everything in this game without using a guide (other than to confirm I actually had everything). I also updated equipment and monster lists I've been compiling to track recurring items and monsters in the series.

I've decided that what I've got done is enough for me to move on to Dragon Quest V as my main game, which I started last night. I will still do my challenge quests/comparison playthrough of Dragon Quest IV, as I have energy, but my main focus will be V. I've been wanting to replay it for a long time, and have tried restarting it twice before. I think the time is finally right where I can give it the attention it deserves.