#by two ffii

[laqueus]

For my own amusement, FFII as textposts :)

One - Two - Three - Four

[cryptidsofwakemoor]

Chapter 8 - CHANGE

Matchstick goes to confront the Silver Fang, and...

everything changes.

~*~

Mystic

It’s a good thing the inclement weather had made drone appearances less likely, or his frustrated tromping through the snow might have gotten him caught right then and there. The sudden stress had caused his footsteps to dissolve the snow around his ankles even faster, leaving a trail of melted prints in their wake.

He reaches the second burrow, and yep, the beast is still in there. Curled up like a big pinecone, it lifts its head at the sound of his approach, blinking blearily in the sharp winter light. They look dozy and quizzical at his return.

Spooky

He doesn't slow in his approach until he's standing right at the entrance. He wasn't sure it would be good to go further in, and they could see each other well enough from here.

Looking upset, he holds the tattered shirt up so the silver beast can see it. In fact he seems so distraught that he tries to force words out of his mouth for the second time in months.

"Kh... D did... You...?" It sounded awful, especially since he was trying to raise his voice. It came out as more of a growl than a rasp, but still barely any actual voice, and it was audibly strained.

Mystic

The beast, seeing the shirt, goes still. It looks at the shirt, then at him. Their expression was the closest approximation to ‘biting their lip’ that a muzzle could make.

At his stuttered question- or, half-question- the silver beast slowly looks away, staring at the wall as though trying to do some sort of mental calculation. It side-eyes him. The claws on its front limbs fidget, creating a low clacking sound. Despite the behavior of someone caught misbehaving, there’s still confusion through the nervousness.

Then, very slowly, it lifts the joints of its shoulders up and down, frowning.

What was that supposed to mean? It wasn’t sure? How could you not be sure if you killed someone?? Or- it didn’t know what he meant, because he didn’t specify what they did?

Spooky

He looked at the silver beast and stood there with steam puffing out his mouth for a few more seconds. His voice did not want to keep going, but he swallowed and tried to continue.

"Eh... Eat?" He managed, sounding somewhere between a vaguely human voice and two rocks scraping together. His expression was more like a grimace now from the attempt to force words out, one of his eyes squinched almost shut and the corner of his mouth drawn back to the point where there was actually a rare glimpse of fang.

Mystic

…

The creature stares at him. Gears click into place. Realization dawns.

As if a silent bubble had popped in the atmosphere, their cheeks puff out with barely contained air, which burst out into rhythmic, high-pitched wheezing sounds.

W-

Were they laughing at him?

The silver thing leans forward over its own tail, struggling to breathe as the edges of their mouth curve up in a full-toothed smile of glee and utter relief. They lift a paw to wipe tears from the edge of their golden eye. Gasping breaths, still trying not to laugh, they look up at him and shake their pointed head back and forth.

No? They didn’t?

Spooky

He dropped his hands to his sides at that reaction, tilting his head in bafflement. If the silver beast didn't eat that person then what happened? Why wasn't the fish person there, but their truck was still there?

Still, being laughed at when he was upset didn't make him feel any better, and he frowned in response.

"Ffii-" he started, trying to ask if they got into a fight or something, but his voice gave out and devolved into smokey coughs.

Mystic

The scratchy cough, followed by smoke, allows the beast to finally get its breath back. They inhale and exhale deeply, calming down from their mirth. Dirt shuffles underneath them as they uncoil from the cinnamon bun position. The beast starts climbing its way out of the hole, returning to the entrance where he was standing.

Brow ridges furrowed, they inspect him. They appear to be concerned by the puff of smoke.

Kneeling down, they lift their paws and scoop some snow off the ground. Rolling a small ball out of the powder, they nudge it toward him with their snout.

Spooky

He managed to stop coughing enough to pick up the snowball, taking a bite. It hissed loudly in his mouth as it rapidly melted, and he popped the rest of the snow in after it. The drink seemed to help a little bit, he'd been feeling especially dried out for some reason since it got colder out.

Still- there it was, the silver beast being nice again. His glowing eyes glanced from the beast's face to the shirt, then back, his own brow furrowed in a rather conflicted expression. As silly as the conclusion he'd jumped to was, he was still worried...

Mystic

The beast exhales a huff, nodding once. They appear satisfied that he drank something, though they don't quite understand the steam, watching it drift upwards curiously.

Their attention returns to him, golden eyes inspecting him. Reading him.

They turn their head left and right, as though looking for something. Checking to make sure it was clear. Of what, he didn't know. People? Maybe.

The beast hauls its weight back up into standing position, turning around to sweep its tail over the ground. The whoosh of snow clears out all their footprints- save for the ones he melted- and makes a blank canvas of white. Shaking the tail off, they spin to sit back down, and start scratching in the snow with a claw or two. They struggle for a moment. Their digits aren't as dexterous as they'd prefer, and he can see them attempting to flex their padded claws in ways they simply didn't want to.

A series of lines are scratched into the ground, forming a coherent message.

KEEP SECRET?

Spooky

He craned his neck, trying to see what the silver beast was doing with their claws. Digging? Wait, no- drawing something? Then when they stopped, his eyes widened when he saw them. Words!

He was still a little rusty with them, though he had improved somewhat since leaving the lab- going near the town at least allowed him more things that he could read, usually colorful words on buildings or up on sticks near the paths that the trucks took. Sometimes there were words on the trucks too, though usually it was a jumble that he had no chance of comprehending... While he didn't make a noise, he quietly mouthed out the sounds the letters made as he pieced the words together. 'KEEP... SE- ... SEE-CRET'.

That little mark at the end, too, told him it was a question. The beast wanted to know if he would keep a secret?

He looked back up at them and nodded. It wasn't like he even really had anyone else to tell it to, even if he wanted to.

Mystic

The beast puffs a breath out its snout, and leans forward to wipe the snow clean again with a paw. It starts scratching a second time.

ME

They pull back and gesture to themselves with the other paw.

More scratching. This time, a shape. It looked like a stick person of some kind, albeit a rough rendition due to the difficulty the beast was having.

A second shape, next to it. This one was spiky, and hunched over with a tail.

They drew an arrow between the two, going from the stick person to the spiky thing.

The beast then taps at the word again with the same paw.

Spooky

It was... confusing. Not necessarily the message the beast was trying to get across- the visual aid definitely helped him figure out what they were saying well enough, but he wasn't entirely sure he'd... understood it right?

Looking even more confused than before, he held up the shirt like he was trying to figure out how the silver beast would be able to fit into it.

How could they be the same person?? He knew Aria had been able to turn people into monsters, at least from the limited amount of things he saw about other experiments... And, well... he wasn't entirely sure if he was always like this, himself...

But to be able to change back? ...And forth? Regularly?

Mystic

The beast gazes upon the shirt with a forlorn rumble, their frilled ears pinning back to their skull. They rotate their body slightly, so the kid can get a better view of their spine-covered back. The plates move slightly to stand on end, rather than rest flat against their back. Wrapped around one of the plates, now that he can see it up close, is a tattered fragment of the same blue fabric. It was torn and stretched, barely hanging on.

The beast stretches up to scratch at it, grunting in mild annoyance when they can’t reach. They give up, and go back to scratching a new message.

CANT CONTROL SLEEP GO BACK

…

USUALLY

Spooky

Oh, shit...

He kneels down to try and write something too, but his body heat and the slow carefulness of his scrawl just kind of melts the snow before he can really form words in it. He huffs out a breath and starts trying to look around him for a stick or something he could use instead, though in the meantime, he looks back up at her and manages a very raspy "Why?"

Mystic

At that, the beast sits back, pondering. This was a lot more complicated to explain than scratched half-sentences would convey. They reach forward and sweep it clean again, before continuing this communication through art.

MISTAKE

They draw another stick person, and next to it, some sort of spiny creature much like the one they used to depict themselves. And yet, there was something different about that shape.

They draw the odd spiny one lunging, with cartoonishly large triangles for teeth, latching onto the person's arm.

BITTEN

The stick person, lying on the ground.

Spikes jutting from the back of the stick person.

CHANGE

Spooky

He ponders this quietly, not really having any prior knowledge of lycanthropy to go on... The concept of changing due to a bite was a new one to him. So were there more silver beasts out there somewhere that were biting people?

Still... He couldn't imagine how painful it would be to have metal plates erupt from your skin. It sucked enough to have metal things poked into it, but those were a LOT of spikes. He winced at the thought.

Finally locating a stick, he carefully scrawled out

HOW OFTIN?

Mystic

The beast taps at their muzzle with one claw, thinking.

RANDOM

Oh. Well that explained why the beast hadn't shown up for a while- she simply hadn't changed in that time.

IF STRESSED CHANGE

They drew what could best be approximated as a scared face, followed by pointing at the previous drawing of presumably them changing shape.

HAPPENS WHENEVER DAY WEEK MONTHS CANT STOP IT

The beast shrugs again.

Spooky

Oh...

While on one hand it seemed like it would be nice to be able to change into a person and go into town and do people things, the fact that it happened at random was a scary one. What if they changed back in the town? It would be harder for something that big to hide, too...

He started to write S... O... R...

...Did it have one r or two? Shit. Wait... Uh... Two! It had two, right?

SORRE

....huh. Still didn't seem right...

Mystic

Another quiet snort of amusement to his right. The beast is smiling again, with their muzzled face that's clearly not built to smile, and is doing its best.

They bump his nearest shoulder with the top of their head, nudging him.

Guess that was their acknowledgment- or rejection- of his apology. He didn't have a hand in their situation, and they both knew it.

...the beast watches him for a moment, before wiping the snow smooth again and writing once more.

YOU COLD HUNGRY ALONE?

Spooky

He flushed, a strange orange hue glowing on his cheeks. He wasn't expecting them to get right to the meat of his situation, but it did remind him that if this was the fish lady, they had been the one leaving food out for him for, uh... well, a LOT of days. More than he could count. AND gave him these soft things to help him stay warm.

He pulled the cloth rectangle up a little more and huddled in it, not really sure how much he could, or even should, say.

But, they had proven pretty trustworthy. At least, the most out of anyone else he'd run into.

He shrugged a little, and wrote out

RUNING HIDING

then, after a small pause

THANKS FOR HELP

Mystic

It's not a lot of information, but it's enough for the beast. They nod in response, looking down at his message.

THANKS FOR NOT SCREAM OR GET COPS

They stretch their back, causing the metallic plates to realign with a clatter. Shaking snow off their head, the beast writes one last message.

SLEEP NOW TRY CHANGE TOO COLD

With a creaky heave of their metal-plated body, the beast shakes themselves off again. More white powder snow showers off of their body. Flakes had begun to flit down from the sky, which meant the snow was going to get even thicker. She squints up at the thick clouds, puffs a sigh from her nose, and turns in defeat to slink into the burrow. It wasn't much better than being out in the open, but it was at least an overhang.

Shudders run through her body as she coils up at the back of the den for the second time that day, attempting to get warm and comfortable in a hole in the ground on a winter day.

Spooky

'Cops'? What were those?

He didn't get a chance to ask though, because it seemed like the cold was getting to them. He stood and watched as the silver beast turned around and sleepily trundled back into their den.

Tossing the stick aside, he started to head back to his own den... but hesitated, glancing back at the beast.

They seemed pretty cold still, like a big shivering pinecone. He hesitated, not sure if he was welcome to do so, but he knew he was pretty warm... so he climbed down into the den with them. He took his cloth rectangle, and while he wasn't able to really drape it over their back, he did his best to try and cover what he could of the claws and snoot with the warm cloth.

Mystic

The beast had quietly ignored the sound of him sliding down into the burrow after them, but the moment they draped the blanket up and over their head, their ears perked up. It looked like a pair of antenna comically poking up from underneath, and the blanket rippled as the creature shifted about underneath in confusion. They managed to slide one paw out from underneath the fabric, and pat it around the den floor.

Once it makes contact with his side, the clawed digits proceed to wrap around his torso, engulfing him in the grip. The beast pulls him closer in a tug that was far stronger than it looked, and yet was careful and didn't cause any pain. He is tugged right up to the side of the beast's front, where he had placed the blanket, which is then nosed off of their face to fall back over him.

He can feel as the long plated tail shifts around the body of the beast, this time cupping around the both of them. The thick physical barrier prevents cold wind from reaching them.

The beast is giving him a gentle look, rumbling quietly. Without the writing on the ground, it's no longer possible to directly translate, but it could be interpreted as some form of thanks, and perhaps a reassurance. They'd be safe from the dangers of the outside for today- at the very least, for now.

Spooky

While he was startled at being pulled in closer, it soon became clear why, once he was situated next to them and the tail curled in. He had to wriggle a little to where he was seated more comfortably- and to get the blanket off of his face after they flopped it back onto him- but he soon settled, finding this arrangement surprisingly comfy. The beast did have a lot of fur under those plates, which was soft enough that it felt like more blanket.

And while he wasn't feeling particularly sleepy, he didn't mind just staying here like this. Heck, he was warmer than the blanket was, and this felt nicer than laying on the ground by himself.

It was strange, but for once, as he felt the slow, gentle rise and fall of the breathing wall of fur he was resting up against... it was nice not to feel well and truly alone anymore.

Mystic

Satisfied, the beast closes its eyes again, and nestles back down to rest.

Wind passes by the opening of the burrow, creating a low whistle combined with the rustle of the last autumn leaves. Cozy atmosphere inside prevented the weather's chill from reaching too far into the den. It also helped that the lost teen was pretty much a living space heater.

...

After some time of slow breathing, he can feel the beast next to him start to shift.

The tail, which had served as a large blockade around the both of them, began to slide across the dirt like a snake. It was ever so gradually getting smaller. The pinecone pelt of silver plates also starts to retract, each individual hunk of metal falling down into a neat orderly pattern of scales that bloom with teal color as they shrank. The claws and thick digging paws lose their weight.

Just like she claimed, she was changing back in her sleep.

Spooky

He sat up, not wanting to fall back on her as she reverted back to fish-person form. It was kind of fascinating to watch, though realizing she might be cold and didn't seem to have any clothes left save for the scraps that had been caught in her plates, he took the blanket and draped it over her shrinking form once she was small enough for it to cover.

Not wanting to wake her, though, in case it would make her change back again or something, he moved to sit back against the dirt wall instead, blinking out towards the bright light filtering in from the entrance now that the tail was no longer blocking it out.

Mystic

The blanket proved to be necessary, as the shivering started back up once the coat of fur diminished. All the fluff was replaced by more, tinier scales of varying teal shades, that did absolutely nothing to block out the winter cold.

Perhaps the most drastic change was the profile of the head, which remained visible outside of the blanket. Pointed snout and animal muzzle draw back into a humanoid jaw line and facial features, with several of the silver plates on the head turning back into plant-mimicry 'hair'. The ears, though, remain mostly the same, shrinking just a little to lose some of the pointiness.

By the time the changes stopped, she was-

-well damn she was smaller than him, actually. Now that he wasn't running in terror or getting ambushed from a pond, she was tiny in profile. The blanket covered most of her, but curled up underneath it, she took up less real estate than he remembered doing. He couldn't tell her actual height on the ground like this, but still. Small.

...what now?

Spooky

A part of him wondered if he should stick around, but... It kinda didn't feel right to just leave. He hadn't expected her to be this small and... He knew nothing about whatever her species was, but he knew humans didn't handle cold as well as he did, so if she's anything like that and he left, he would have to leave his blanket behind.

She'd probably handled going back on her own just fine before, but... Fuck. Maybe he should just stay and make sure she at least makes it home safe. He decided to wait until she woke up, so he sat there... and got up and walked around a few times. And tucked the blanket around her a little better so she'd be more comfy and bundled up, trying his best to be gentle. And paced around a bit more. And peeked out of the entrance briefly to make sure the coast was clear. He looked at the sky, to make sure that was clear too. Then finally, returned to the back wall of the burrow when the cold bothered him too much.

Mystic

…he ends up waiting a while longer before a response is finally forthcoming.

The fish lady grunts, sitting up. She rubs at her face, letting out a shaky sigh. Her bones crack as she stretches, settling back into their proper places. They had to change to accommodate the different body build, and it felt awful and satisfying at the same time to fix them.

She turns her head to look around, and spots the kid fidgeting next to her on the ground.

”Oh- you stayed,” she mumbles. ”Kinda figured you’d leave, I guess. That’s sweet of you.”

Sliding her legs into a sitting position, she glances down at the blanket.

”…Might need to wash this, it’s got dirt all over. Your pillow, too, if you have it.”

With a huff, she gets up, wrapping the blanket like a shawl around herself as she stands next to him, expectant.

“Come on, let’s go get warm. You’re hungry, right? And I’m done being cold in a hole in the ground. I bet you are, too.”

Spooky

He blinked. Wash? Wasn't quite sure what that meant, but he was, with utmost certainty, hungry.

He did have his pillow with him too, though currently it was behind him, flopped against the dirt wall while he had been moving around and trying to keep watch. Getting to his feet, he went over to pick it up, hugging it against his chest and resting his chin on it as he looked down at her. Yeah, by the looks of it that pillow had definitely seen better days.

He gave her a small nod, ready to follow her back.

Mystic

Nodding, she turns on her heel and starts walking up the slope of the burrow. Her feet sink into the earth, leaving webbed footprints like a duck. They exit back out into the snow, their breath visible in the cold air. It’s not as obvious or impressive as the steam that puffs out of his mouth, but that just goes to show it was far too cold for either of them to stay outside.

“Changing in the winter is the worst,” she grumbles, thinking out loud to fill the silence. “Especially outside. I can’t fit through my own front door without damaging it, so I have to stall for time in a den until it goes away. Sucks. But at least I’m not wild and rabid- I was worried I’d lose myself eventually. Haven’t had anything like that yet, so I’m hopeful. I probably would have been caught a long time ago, if I did.”

They reach the edge of the road, and she crosses without hesitation, reaching the snow-covered lawn and examining the moved box and empty plate. She gives a woeful smirk.

“Guess I wasn’t as good at hiding it as I thought,” she shrugs. “I was in a hurry, I thought I heard a mail truck or something coming down the road.”

Kneeling down, the fish lady starts picking up the tatters of cloth that had been left behind, tucking them into her arms. Standing back up, she begins climbing the porch, fumbling around under a plant pot for something.

“Come on- I’ll turn the heater on, so it won’t be freezing.”

Spooky

He listened to her talk as they headed back. It sounded pretty scary to change, and he wasn't sure what 'rabid' was, but he nodded. He could definitely understand the fear of getting caught.

He was more hesitant to cross the road than she was, but after a brief pause he hurried after her to catch up. Once they were in the yard, he went over to the steps where the empty disc was and sat there as the fish lady gathered the remaining cloth scraps off the ground, glancing at her in confusion as he overheard her talking.

Male truck?

Before he could attempt to further ponder the genders of vehicles, however, she moved past him on the porch and retrieved... Something from under the plant pot, that she used to open the door.

He had been prepared to sit out there and wait for food, but when it became clear she was inviting him in, he looked back at her with wide eyes.

While before he probably would've been more reluctant, the cold was definitely getting to him by this point... He stood shivering on the path by the stairs, clutching his pillow close to himself and looking at the house with its darkened windows as he took a few moments to consider. He didn’t have a good track record with being inside buildings, after all… But finally, he made his way up the steps to the door, peeking inside before giving her another glance, as if to ask if she was really sure she wanted him to come in.

She didn't seem to have any objections, though, so… Cautiously, he stepped over the threshold and went inside.

~*~

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New reader? You can start here!

[lyssala]

The Sun & The Moon: On the FFXVI Ending

Throwing my thoughts on the ending into the void.

Aka I keep seeing posts about the ending so I need to type out my thoughts to validate myself.

For reference, we played on release and did two full play throughs.

First of all, I am a happy ending person. I want desperately to find the happiness because there was so much suffering so much loss. Saving the world or not, the thought of Clive having come so close to his own happy ending, of having the family and the love he never got to have, so damn close and then still ending up dying alone on a beach leaving the people waiting for him wondering if he would ever come back to them seems so cruel.

But, Lyssa, you played XV too, and Noctis legitimately sacrificed himself in the end to save the world. You’re right, he did, and that ending still makes me ugly cry because I also didn’t think it was fair that he had to do that. The thing were XV and XVI differ is, we see Noctis in the after with Luna, in their wedding attire, finally together. It’s immensely bittersweet, but we see them at peace. We do not get that in XVI SO point by point let’s GO.

(Warning for spoilers, including character death, in other Final Fantasy games as well)

Why I Don’t Think We Can Assume Any of the Three are Dead

1. The Ancient Rule of Storytelling: No body, you say? THEY AIN’T DEAD.

Usually used when a villain “is defeated” but then they can never find a body - guess what, Luffy is going to have to beat their ass YET again. Final Fantasy has never shied away from character death. From Minwu (FFII) to Tellah (FFIV) to Aerith (FFVII) to Zack (FFVII:CC) to Haurchefant (FFXIV) to Noctis (FFXV), heck even other character death in XVI.

Dion to me is the iffiest one, and I say it with a heavy heart because I loved Dion. He fell early and he had death flags on him BUT we didn’t even see him hit the ground so I still standby that if Clive could survive falling from Origin, Dion could too.

Joshua we actually did see die, and it was terrible - both when it happened and when Clive went back to mourn his brother (again for that matter and thanks I’m crying again). The thing is, we also explicitly watch Clive use Phoenix’s power to heal Joshua. Yeah we don’t see him wake up, but literally what was the point of that action if Joshua was just gonna…you know still be dead. They could have just left him as he was. The whole purpose of showing that action, imo, was to finally give Clive the chance to save his brother, which was all he wanted for so much of his life. I don’t believe that was done as just “well you tried but he really dead, bro.” To me it was to show, no, Joshua has a chance to live the life he always wanted too.

Clive, despite all his dang death flags, is still the most secure to me because the last time we see him, he’s still alive. We know he survived the fall, we know he was conscious on the beach, we only saw the curse spread to his hand. If they really wanted to hint he would die there, we easily could have seen the curse spreading to his face. We didn’t though. He was tired, and weak but he was alive. They made an effort to show him alive. If they truly wanted an ambiguous ending they didn’t even need to show him on the beach, just showing Origin fall would be enough. They didn’t though. They showed the man alive, calling out to Jill, not as apology for breaking his promise but a “I can see the moon same as you, I’m still here.”

2. The Ding Dang Themes of the Game

We spend the whole game determined to fight fate, and while yes, fate was defeated when Ultima was defeated, because the human will won…then didn’t because the man who was determined to fight and escape those binds still ended up lost those everyone who loves him…which was part of the fate he was trying to escape? Final Fantasy games have had dark elements before, and they’ve been heartbreakingly sad. They’ve shown loss of all sorts some self sacrifice, and some because the world can be just so cruel. However, once thing Final Fantasy isn’t is loss without hope.

Noctis got to say goodbye to his best friends (yes I am crying again don’t you dare mention Stand by Me in my presence) because he knew what was coming and they knew what was coming. It gutted me, but they all knew and had come to terms with it. It was Noctis’ choice to walk in there knowing he was not coming back. Clive was not the same. He didn’t say goodbye, he said, I’m coming back. While everyone knew there was a risk which is why it was so emotional to say goodbye, he had a life he wanted to return to, one he spoke of returning to. It was never, “You’re coming back right?” And then they skirt around giving a firm answer because they just don’t know. Clive was firm about it, he was coming back, it was his will to come back and guess what won against Ultimia? You guessed it, human will.

Having Clive die alone on a beach after all of that? After all he went through and after all he still wanted? That to me is just cruel, and Final Fantasy has never been cruel. Ren also made the good point that if Clive was to die, Joshua would have fallen with him, so it ended in a reversal of beginning with Joshua watching Clive die instead of the other way around. That didn’t happen either though. He was on the beach, again, still alive (see point 1 as a reminder), additionally, if he thought he was dying, I’d imagine he’d be apologizing to Jill for breaking his promise. In fact that’s what I SWORE he was going to do, but he didn’t. His will to survive was still intact when we left him which to me fits far more with the theme of this game then dying alone on a beach.

3. The Sun and the Moon (It’s Clive and Jill, It’s Just Literally Them)

So yeah I know that the sun and moon imagery is usually used to describe star crossed lovers, never meant to be as the sun and moon rotate. The game already proved that was untrue, they were always meant to be. By all odds they survived and somehow found one another again.

Jill, the moon of course, always said it was because of her prayer to Metia, that every time she prayed for him to return to her, Metia granted her prayer. I say this as someone who grew up religious but now am not, Jill believed it I’m sure but I think it was Jill. Love has also been a huge theme in Final Fantasy, and Jill’s heart filled prayers to keep Clive safe, always had. Not necessarily because a god deemed it so (again, defying gods a huge Final Fantasy theme lol) but her complete and sincere love for Clive, that always kept him safe to come home to her. She prayed for him as he was leaving for origin, just as heart felt as she always had. Why would that fail now the time she probably desired it more than any other time? That also seems so cruel. For him to be torn from her when they were so close to finally being able to have the life they dreamed of together. What purpose does that serve? It wouldn’t except for Jill to have yet another thing in her life to break her heart and leave her to pick up the pieces. I think she would, for Clive’s memory, but again, it feels like loss for no reason but loss. Jill deserves her happy ending too.

You find out later on even more so why Jill cherished the moon, because it brought the sunrise (or you know Clive in the metaphor here) and with the sun the promise the Clive would always come for her. One he never broke. They literally went out of their way to say “the sunrise meant you’d always come for me, I know this.” It was a direct setup for the ending. It was her seeing the star she always prayed on for Clive flicker out, and in that moment I think she did lose all hope because that was the one thing she could always count on to bring him home (to which again, not a god, but her love that brought him home). She is distraught (and so was I so we have that in common LOL) but then, the sun rises, and she smiles. It’s hope. It’s her hope because Clive has never broken a promise to her, and the sunrise has always brought him to her. I have no reason to believe the sunrise didn’t bring him home to her like it always has. Not a single point in this game has given me reason to believe it so why would I?

4. They Did the Thing! The Name of the Game!

A smaller point but one none the less. I sure hope you all played every single side-quest. One particular one, leaves you with a quill to add to Clive’s wall of treasures; one with the sole purpose of when (not if) Clive puts his sword down, that he writes his story. What do we see in the after credits? Literally, a book that is telling his story. Idk how more clear they gotta be that Clive is gonna be okay (tbf I WISH they would have just told me he was gonna be okay too LOL)

Granted, Joshua Rosfield is the author to which, it really could have been him writing Clive’s story in his absence or it could have been Clive and using the name to memorialize his brother’s name. Or it could have been the both of them and they used Joshua’s name because Clive is content living his life behind the scenes. He’s never wanted attention or praise. I don’t think he ever would have used his own name.

Additionally, the ending lines that equates to as my journey ends another one begins to me never meant journey = life. His journey was over, he did what he set out to do. The new journey? Traveling the realms with his wife in a world without the burdens of magic and doing what they do best, help the people who need it.

5. Doggy Knows Best

And finally, my last point is, Torgal knows what’s up. Technically, this is Ren’s point so I give him the credit here but animals, especially Torgal who is more than just a dog (literally an Eikon himself bonded to Jill and Clive, something acknowledged in the game), know when their master is hurt or worse. We’ve seen Torgal when one of them are hurt or in danger or not coming home. Yet at the end of the game, when Jill is absolutely breaking Torgal simply howls.

You know where else he did that? When he was trying to find Clive after Phoenix Gate and he would sit and howl. They were already bonded, he knew Clive (and Jill) were alive but he didn’t know where so he howled for his people until he could find them. It’s the same thing he does at the end of the game. He knows Clive is alive out there, and they are just separated but they’ll find another again because just like Jill, Torgal has no reason to believe otherwise.

And honestly I’m going to believe the dog.

Final Thoughts…For Now Cause I Always Have Thoughts its the ADHD

If you read all this, I hope it brought you some peace <3 I don’t believe a cop out everyone died ending is indicative to the wonderful storytelling this team has brought us in FFXIV. If anything, it reminds me of the ending of A Realm Reborn when you are convinced all the Scions are dead and then ope nope they’re fine just scattered and we’ll find them yeah SOUND FAMILIAR LOL I think they left it open to let people come to their own conclusions but in my heart of hearts I believe they had no intention to let Clive die on that beach because nothing in the story leads me to that conclusion.

If they try to tell me otherwise, well then I’ll go full denial LOL but unless Yoshi-P calls me up and says girl stop you’re wrong, I’ll continue to push my Clive finally gets his happy ending and travels the realms with Jill like he promised her <3 (ONE MORE THING: why the heck would they have Jill just be like mmmm think I wanna leave this realm when its over, lets see the world if they had no future content planned YOU CAN’T FOOL ME she could have easily said anything but she said something that would directly give us more content okay I’m done lol)

[mostfuckableffvillain]

Round 1

Leon: Cecil Harvey WISHES he was this guy. No he doesn't. Yes he does.

Shuyin: Lovely midnight piano sonata right before he splits the planet in two. Invented romance.

[mamthew]

SPOILERS: thoughts on FFXIV: Dawntrail

I had no idea what to expect from Final Fantasy XIV's new Dawntrail expansion. 2021's Endwalker ended up being probably the most resonant piece of art I have experienced in my life, but I had no illusions that they'd manage to do something like that a second time, nor did I need them to. Endwalker was the ending of a story arc that covered the initial story and three expansions, that then released during a global pandemic, a year after the death of my father. There was a lot of confluence there that would be impossible to recreate.

Dawntrail, on the other hand, promised to be the beginning of a new story - a jumping-on point that would still incorporate previously introduced characters, but in a way that would be more newbie-friendly. I don't have much regard for people who story-skip, but I did at least appreciate the logic of a new story for our old characters now that they've saved the universe from despair and mostly done away with the villainous hangers-on from the old Eden from which the world of Etheirys and its thirteen alternate forms were born. There's still a ton of lore potential to the universe of ffxiv that's fairly removed from the old conflicts, so it was exciting to think that they'd be mining some of that.

Each of the expansions for XIV has been loosely based on each of the old Final Fantasies, in order. Heavensward reuses elements of FFI, Stormblood FFII, Shadowbringers FFIII, and Endwalker FFIV, so I naturally assumed that Dawntrail would lean into FFV elements. I was surprised, then, when they instead said it would be based on FFIX - my favorite in the series besides XIV. That said, it would also be set in the "new world" - a pair of continents across the ocean to the west of the protagonist's home countries, roughly analogous in location and culture to the pre-colonial Americas. As FFIX is based on western Europe, to the point that members of the development staff traveled to Europe to research design aspects of the game, it seemed an odd fit. Still, I wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, and I happily shelled out for my Zidane and Garnet minions.

The first two-thirds or so of the game do not in any way resemble IX. They're probably closest to XV. Wuk Lamat, adopted daughter of the leader of Tural, has to compete against three other possible successors to determine who's most fit to ascend his throne. She has hired the strongest warrior in the lands outside of Tural to help her compete, and that warrior is you. Thus, like XV, the opening chunk of the game follows a royal and her retinue touring major settlements throughout her nation in preparation for her ascension to the throne. Like XV, Dawntrail does often feel like a road trip. The rest of Wuk Lamat's retinue is made up of several of the protagonist's friends from throughout the previous expansions; the stakes are shockingly low by our crew's standards (the number of world leaders the Warrior of Light has installed has got to rival the CIA by this point, so one more isn't especially noteworthy); and the locations are beautiful, filled with friendly people from diverse and interesting cultures. This expansion released with a pretty sizeable graphics upgrade, too, which further enhances the feeling of taking in the beautiful sights in a foreign country.

Wuk Lamat is essentially the protagonist of Dawntrail, a la Lyse in Stormblood. It's a good call, since the Warrior of Light is too strong and experienced to leave much uncertainty as to whether she can defeat any given opponent or resolve any given conflict. Wuk Lamat, on the other hand, is young and kinda an unknown quantity. Whether she'd even be the right call for the throne is up in the air at the beginning of the story, so through challenging the trials in the competition to lead the country, she's proving herself to the player as well as to the country. Several major established friends of the Warrior of Light actually back one of Wuk Lamat's rivals as well, for more considered reasons than the protagonist's own retinue has, which contributes to a sense of uncertainty as to whether she will - or even should - take the throne. I really enjoyed having the Warrior of Light take this mentor role for a good chunk of the expansion; providing support and guidance to someone who will need to learn quickly if she's going to lead a whole nation.

Wuk Lamat carries this sizeable story importance well, too; she's impulsive and compassionate, ready to fight to help people without necessarily weighing the consequences of her actions. She believes herself to be very knowledgeable about the many cultures and peoples living in Tural, but soon realizes she has much to learn. Quickly, her willingness to learn - to ask questions and chase what she doesn't know so she can better understand the people around her - develops into her biggest strength. She is, definitionally, radical, in that she digs down to the historical or material roots of a conflict or atrocity to determine what needs to be changed to rectify the issue, which is nice to see in a story, even if it's handled clumsily at times. She's dynamic and likeable, strong but flawed. If Dawntrail was a mainline title and not an expansion, she'd easily be near the top of my list of best FF protagonists. As it is, she's absolutely a worthy addition to the huge roster of great characters in ffxiv.

I have some mixed feelings, however, on Tural itself. Tural as a nation, in its current iteration, has only existed for a few decades. Eighty years ago, Dawnservant Gulool Ja Ja - Wuk Lamat's adopted father - traveled throughout both continents with a growing roster of allies and used his peerless strength and wisdom to pretty much solve every major conflict between cultures in the entire land. His city of Tulliyolal, then, is super new and still led by its initial founder. Many of the historic cultural practices the party learns about only date back to when Gulool Ja Ja helped create them. I like this idea, to a point. "Dawnservant," as a title, is clearly meant to be analogous to the Warrior of Light, so Gulool Ja Ja was for his continents what your protagonist was for Eorzea, Ilsabard, Othard, Thavnair, the First and Thirteenth reflections, and Ultima Thule - a Really Really Big Strong Guy who cut through the shit and fixed stuff by being big and strong, collecting a diverse group of loyal friends in the process. That's cool, but it comes at the cost of much of a greater historical context for the nation.

While Tural has some ancient history, the chronal scale of much of it pales in comparison to, say Sharlayan, who left a boat on top of a mountain in Gyr Abania fifteen centuries ago. This is pretty different from the...real-world cultures Tural is based on. While conquistadors may have called Tenochtitlan part of "the New World," that city had been around for around two centuries by the time they got there. I don't love the framing of this country as being literally "new." There's an easy fix to this problem, too: just make it so Gulool Ja Ja did this stuff two hundred years ago instead of eighty. Players aren't going to question whether two-headed mamool-ja, viera, or giants can live that long. If you can say eighty years, then you can say two-hundred, and that gives Tural a little more time to have a history. Tural also has many of the features the United States claims to have, but with no irony or darker side. It's a melting pot, but because all these different people with different cultures and beliefs already lived there and a Big Guy came through eighty years ago and solved their disagreements.

My issues with the setting got even dicier when the characters traveled to the northern continent. Xak Tural is designed after the North American Western frontier, with two wild west-style towns built only in the last twenty years, an older town of pueblo-style houses, and an encampment of tipis. The people and places there all have Native American names, while the people living in the pueblos and tipis are explained away as being "more traditional" and against the oil drilling operation and railroad the new frontier-style towns have brought. At one point, a railroad operator meets with one of these "traditional" leaders, hears he has concerns about the railroad, and says "we'll talk about it," which pretty much ends the conflict. It's an oddly bloodless depiction of the deep divides between old and new in colonial and imperialist North America, especially in a game that's usually pretty good about refusing an easy answer to historical traumas broadly and imperialism and colonialism specifically. The characters in Xak Tural all have USian accents too, in stark contrast to the accents everywhere else in ffxiv, which is an accent I associate with having reached a late stage of imperialism. It's not an accent I consider - at least in the language of fantasy storytelling - to represent indigenous characters living unmolested in their historic homelands.

But this discomfort recontextualizes some of the rest of ffxiv, too. If I don't feel great about the fact that real-life conflicts between colonizers and the colonized that fueled countless real-life genocides are being mined here to give Gulool Ja Ja another notch on his belt, why shouldn't I feel the same way about the Warrior of Light having brought the feuding Dwarf tribes back together? Or ending the conquest of Bozja and Zadnor? Again, the stakes for this story are pretty low because the Warrior of Light has installed so many world leaders already, but that's...kinda messed up, when you think about it. I'd already had some hang-ups about Stormblood - an expansion with a story about getting Mongolian tribes to team up with Korean peasants to form an army to free Japan from the Soviet Union to create a distraction that will ease the pressure on the Mujahideen, to whom you are covertly providing military aid so a Soviet military base won't be able to focus on your own country. But those hang-ups were noticeable because Stormblood is so bad in comparison to all the other expansions. Dawntrail, on the other hand, is good! And still uncomfortable! So there's nowhere else to channel my discomfort.

The back half of the game introduces a twist that's also where most of the FFIX references come in. The fabled "golden city" turns out to be a portal to another reflection (or alternate dimension), which attacks Tulliyolal with a robot army and traps a section of the northern continent under an impenetrable energy dome. When Wuk Lamat and the Warrior of Light's party invade the dome, they find that the land there has fused with a city from this other reflection, like in FFV, and thirty years have passed within the dome. Much of the rest of the game is focused on Wuk Lamat applying the strategies she learned over the course of the Dawnservant competition on this new, strange and hostile kingdom. It's a good idea and in hindsight I really like the story resonance there, especially since her strategies help her make headway but ultimately fall short and don't prevent a conflict between the nations, forcing her to develop some new strategies. But in the moment, it's harder to tell that this is what's happening, and the sharp change from exploring a mostly pre-industrial South and Central America to exploring a sci-fi culture borne out of Western Europe gave me whiplash. I stepped back some and did a few side things at this point, which is pretty odd for me when going through a new story.

This kingdom, Alexandria, was once nearly identical to the kingdom of Alexandria in the original FFIX, gorgeously rendered in FFXIV's new graphics. After a devastating calamity that killed countless citizens, the kingdom put up a protective barrier and over time developed a culture around technology used to avert the trauma of losing so many and the pain of living a difficult life under a deadly eternal lightning storm. Their solutions were to implement storage systems for memories and souls, allowing people to reload their memories on harvested souls when they die of unnatural causes, continuing their lives until they die of old age. When someone dies, all memory of them is deleted from the minds of everyone who ever met them (a FF Type-0 reference), so that no one has to deal with the pain of loss. Then, the memories of the deceased are sent to a highly curated virtual afterlife that runs on the energy of harvested souls, so they can live a blissful existence for the rest of eternity. This is why Alexandria plans to invade Tulliyolal: they're running dangerously low on soul energy, and their whole society breaks down without it, so they plan to violently harvest those souls from other reflections.

This conflict is a pretty short hop away from the central conflict in FFIX, which also involved nations committing genocides to harvest souls for powering an army or resurrecting the long-dead people of another planet. And it uses this conflict to explore some similar themes of the fear of death, the dangers of nostalgia, and the genocidal tendencies of expansionism. That said, it explores those themes in ways that moved me less than FFIX does. I couldn't tell you if that's because Endwalker already set such a high benchmark for feeling emotions about FFXIV, or if FFIX actually is legitimately better at tugging at the heartstrings than Dawntrail is, or some combination of the two. I teared up once or twice, but there was never a scene that impacted me as much as the Black Mage cemetery scene in IX, or the Palaka's Stand scene in Endwalker. It made some solid thematic points, but the complexity of the society that got us there maybe made those points feel a little less applicable to something real.

God, though, as a FFIX fan, I still ate up their absolutely beautiful shots of Alexandria, reorchestrations of music from IX, references to characters and locations from IX, and thematic similarities. Wuk Lamat, as an adopted daughter of a king, and Krile, as an unwitting refugee from a far-off land, both serve as neat parallels to FFIX character Garnet. The final zone is a sort of sci-fi take on Memoria, the final dungeon from FFIX. I'll say, too, that while this section contrasted pretty heavily with what came before it in the expansion, they did still bring it all together pretty well. The second round of the war between the two powers had me literally on my feet cheering, and I appreciated that Wuk Lamat was doing here what she'd done in each previous area before it. The final boss fight, too, was a blast.

There's another neat convergence between this futuristic dystopia and the pre-industrial South American setting of the first half of the game that I wish the writers had made a little more explicit. The "golden city" that turns out to be the portal to Alexandria is an obvious reference to El Dorado, an alleged city of gold that Spanish conquistadors sought in their conquest of the Americas. I think it's kinda neat that here the golden city is instead indigenous folklore about what turns out to be an imperial power, turning that original context on its head. But another legend the conquistadors chased was the "fountain of youth," a spring they believed would grant eternal life to anyone who drank from it. The fountain of youth is never mentioned in Dawntrail, but Alexandria invades Tural because its people's souls serve as a literal fountain of youth for its people. It seems obvious to me that this was an inspiration for much of the plans for Dawntrail, but unless I missed something, it never came up throughout the game. I think a more explicit reference would have been nice, so I could have connected those dots earlier than like...two days after I finished the expansion.

All in all, Dawntrail is a strange expansion. I really enjoyed it and think it serves as proof that FFXIV is in good hands moving forward from Endwalker, but I still had major issues with it that caused some real friction with the game and should have been easily avoidable. It's much better than Stormblood, but flawed in similar ways that are maybe more obvious to me as an American than some of Stormblood's flaws may have been. I think it's probably better than Heavensward when I consider them outside of their release contexts - Heavensward was more emotional but had some weird pacing issues and questionable detours because it was still trying to figure out a formula that has since been perfected well before Dawntrail's release. But it's no Endwalker, and certainly no Shadowbringers. All in all, though, I think ffxiv players are eating pretty good, and with two new continents, a host of new characters, and a fantastic graphics update, it seems like we'll continue to eat pretty good for a long time to come.

[thegreatklaid]

Shadows of Provoking My Ire

If you get that reference hoooo boy, that's a doozy lemme tell you.

Well so now we begin with my biggest obstacle whether I wanted to commit to this stupid idea in the first place. Good ol' Final Fantasy II.

If you know, you know. If you don't, good news I'm gonna tell you. FFII adds a ton to what made the series. Chocobos and Cid finally appear here. Yeah, there isn't actually a Cid in I. That's revisionist bullshit in later versions. This is the first game with Cid. I forget if this one has rows. I don't think that's until III though.

No, what this game does is it gets rid of XP in favor of, well people now know it as the SaGa system. The more you attack you get more strength. Get hit more, you get more HP. That kinda thing. This game is the infamous Kawazu's debut. This is where that system comes from, albeit taken from TTRPGs, sooooort of.

So, as it might seem, my memories of this game is pretty poor. I don't like this game. And it's not solely on the levelling system. This game has some brutal bosses and dungeons. Especially the trap rooms. Which, the first two games only ever had treasures in sectioned off rooms. FFI had plenty of empty rooms that you had to walk a few steps in to see if they had treasure on the back walls. FFII has those except the door warps you to the back of the room and you have to walk out and every step is an encounter. Because I just kind of hate Kawazu. As you'll learn in 10 more games.

So that's what I remember. What do I hope to accomplish this run? Nothing. I'm gonna beat this stupid game. Get it out of the way. In fact I'm excited that I get to play this game knowing how to use the Blood Sword. Because the first time I played this I kept the stupid thing in my off hand, because it said it had a really low attack stat. So I just kept it for the drain. Turns out, it uses a whole different formula and it just gibs bosses. However, I promise a lot of my runs from here on are going to be way less cheese than I normally play these with. But this game we are cranking up the cheese. No apologies.

As it is now very obvious, I don't expect to really like this game anymore than the others in the series, but I am curious if I'll like it more in the grand scheme of things. Almost 20 years later, I have played way more games than I did when I was 12. ugh. So maybe FFII will become a blemish on the series instead of that weird time Square almost pissed away the best thing they ever had.

See you guys in a few days when I get through this thing! Or maybe I'll come by every now and then to give you guys some updates. We'll see. It took me about 5 days of playing FFI to beat that one. I might rush this one...

[4typercent]

Another get to know me!

Tagged by the ever amazing @seiya-starsniper I love these! Thank you!

Who was your first fictional crush?

Edge from FFIV (originally FFII for SNES). Remember when games came with a booklet and a character description? Edge's was mysterious. A ninja? Cool! He's a bratty prince? Even better! *When my father played through this game, he renamed Edge with my name, it was meant to be.*

What is the first colour you think of when I tell you to think of a colour?

Emerald green

Which fanfiction emotionally scarred you and still makes you shudder to this day?

I can't think of any, to be honest. I'm sure I've read a few, but nothing with the "Dead Dove" tag. I'm down to read most of any kind of fic, but I'm not a big fan of MC x Reader, or a heavy reliance of your OC being the focus.

I'm coming to your house for dinner, non-negotiable, what are you making me?

This could go places: chicken tenders (regular or vegetarian, im flexible like that) and fries, or something warm and hearty like a huge pasta dish. Do you like grilled cheese sandwiches? We could do that also. What I feed you depends on your preference and the weather (the weather here is a damn yoyo).

Do you prefer lions or kangaroos?

Kangaroos! They beat the heat by licking their arms, so when I get too warm, I keep my arms cool and wet, too. Ever see a lion do that? I don't think so (idk if they do or not). 🦘

Which fictional villain do you brush past the glaringly obvious issue for because you really like them?

Most of them, but some noteworthy ones are Zant from LOZ TP, Silco from Arcane, Ardyn from FFXV, Sephiroth from FFVII, and too many more to list. Some of them are hot, okay? Okay.

What would accompany your picture in the Burn Book in Mean Girls?

Ugly crier.

How many days would you last in the universe of your favourite fandom?

LOZ & FFVII, XV, & XVI: I see myself as an NPC, so honestly, a glass canon. NPCs can have tragic ends, or rise above all the odds. I think I'll be okay.

Sandman: if ol Morpheus is around with Delirium looking for Destruction, I'm going to run away as fast as I can.

I might be okay, but then again, maybe not.

Have you heard of Mischief Theatre?

Nope 💁🏼‍♀️

Do you feel sorry for Medusa?

Yes, and no.

Yes, cuz as cool as it would be to turn any living thing into stone, it would be a lonely existence.

No, cuz I honestly don't know too much about her besides she is, in my mind, a beautiful creature.

What if a blind person gets the hard stare from her? Would they still turn to stone? Serious answers only 😂

Which song makes you think of your OTP?

Eculid or Rain by Sleep Token. When I do my cross stitch (of Dream of the Endless), I imagine Hob making that as a token for Dream, and that song is playing softly in the background. Vessel's voice is haunting and beautiful, perfect for the two idiots in love.

Which song makes you disassociate and daydream the fastest?

MacDougall's Pride by Ashley MacIssacc. Every time I hear it, I weep. It's so special to me.

Tagging: @sans--seraph @z-is-very-tired @zzoomacroom @missmacfire @persbaderse @jceekay @aquilathefighter and anyone else that would love to join in!

[lives-in-a-harpsichord]

Ok done! I enjoyed FFII a lot! Had to put the progress on pause for almost a month because work stuff took a lot of energy and I just wanted to give this game my undivided attention

Because I kept forgetting where I was going

But I enjoyed the heck out of this game and stayed up until two in the morning last night playing, which was a little bit adolescent of me. But I did love picking up randoes to fight with me and watching them all leave in turn. The size of the cast was a bit of a shock. I love them all

One small gripe

I thought he was supposed to say ungaaahh

[alexis-dot-com]

i’m slowly working my way through the final fantasy pixel remasters and just finished ffii. i had a surprisingly good time with it, despite it being labelled the black sheep of the classic series. the remastered soundtrack is phenomenal and the characters while pretty flat had great designs. the game overall was actually extremely, uh, okay.

idid grind a little at the start which snowballed into me becoming ridiculously overlevelled by end-game, to the point i beat the emperor in two turns with the also overpowered blood sword. definitely a unique ff game and well worth a play through if only to see how far the series has come.

[pocketbelt]

Final Fantasy III Pixel Remaster (PC/Steam Deck)

In contrast to FFII, it's pretty easy to declare this the definitive version of Final Fantasy III, in part because there aren't as many versions of III as the others. FFIII was left out of the PS1 and GBA port jobs Square undertook for the series, and never had any form of English release until the 3D remake on Nintendo DS in the mid-2000s. But even so, the Pixel Remaster reigns supreme for pretty easy reasons: there's no stupid fuckery here.

In both the Famicom original and the DS remake (and, I believe, in the PSP and PC ports of that remake, and the original bad mobile version), swapping jobs required Capacity Points to make the jump, and then for some arbitrary number of battles after the swap your character would be not-insignificantly debuffed. This system is nonsense and contributes nothing to anything, and so the Pixel Remaster dispenses with it entirely. You can swap jobs at any time and be functional immediately.

Also, the DS remake rather infamously was made significantly harder, especially in certain places (like the Garuda fight), which combined poorly with a lot of enemy and area design in FF3 in places (such as the Garuda fight, where you're locked into a city with the only available resources being very expensive Dragoon-only gear for a fight that expects a full or near-full Dragoon party). The killer is in FF3 original and DS, bosses get to attack more than once per turn. Beefing up boss stat numbers, accordingly, makes them way harder, especially the further into the game you go. The Pixel Remaster makes it so bosses can only attack once per turn - and a good thing too, because Cloud of Darkness can and will use Particle Beam 10 times in a row and 2-3 will kill a highly equipped Lv47-50 team without healing.

So with sane difficulty, fully working mechanics and no assaulting you for using them, the PR pretty much gets to walk this one. It even makes further changes and tweaks to a bunch of the jobs, though not all of them are sane - Scholar gets something worth a shit in new ability Alchemy (doubles item potency) but Dark Knights lose their three tiers of White Magic for no good reason - but really, the difficulty and the job system tweaks are enough to take it. Combine it with some truly fucking excellent music remixes here, and the lovely sprite and animation work, and it really is no contest.

I have more waffle under the cut, as before; if you want to play FFIII for academic reasons (it is extremely core and relevant to a whole lot of FFXIV's content, for example), this is the version to get, but on its own terms it's a fine if simplistic RPG, worth a punt on its own merit.

An interesting aspect of the DS remake of III is it made an attempt to make actual characters of your party, giving them distinct appearances and names and one or two character traits. FFIII doesn't have the room for much writing or characterisation (being a Famicom game at the end of the day), but it was a noble effort. The beginning has most of the notable changes; you start with two party members and need to get the others at the early towns before the first proper dungeon, for instance, instead of having all four to start.

There's a bunch of other little details that stand out, like giving the Crystals colours to match their elements rather than all of the Crystals of Light being uniform blue (which the PR opts for, as the original did); this makes the fake Earth Crystal in Goldor's manor seem like a genuine loss of the real Earth Crystal because it actually looks golden, whereas in the original and the PR you know it's fake because it's gold, unlike the normal blue ones. The 3D remake also makes the flooded world look distinctly darker, and the water more like actual manifest Darkness than water, which is a good touch.

I don't think these necessarily make it worth playing (without some sort of balancing mod that tones the game down), but they did genuinely try with the 3D remake, in and around making deranged decisions like beefing up individual enemies to account for being able to display fewer of them per fight because of hardware constraints. The PC version on Steam is apparently still fucky, which is a shame; it's based on the PSP version, which as I understand it is mostly a direct lift of the DS one but with some curious tweaks (namely, changing the colours of things like Luneth's hair a bit and other small visual tweaks, mostly). DS and PSP emulators are pretty good these days, especially PSP ones, so if you're dying to see it, that would probably be the best way.

From a series history perspective, a lot more of the iconic elements and imagery of the series become fully locked into place here:

Moogles make their debut, as little furry beings living in the sage Doga's manor. Fat Chocobo also makes his debut, as an item storage mechanic that no longer has real use in the Pixel Remaster, but hey, it's there.

The concepts of Light, Darkness and Balance are instituted fully, building on FF1's rough ideas for Light vs Dark and the use of the Crystals. The idea that Darkness is not intrinsically bad, and Light is capable of ending the world as well, is established at this super early stage, alongside the Warriors of Darkness as heroic figures.

Many of the series' mainstay classes and their associated aesthetics are introduced here. Scholars, Summoners, Sages, Dark Knights, Bards and more take form here; Summoners in particular have their distinctive horn that marks their appearance. The airship Invincible also becomes a thing here.

Dragoons gain their association with spears and their signature Jump ability (think Fly/Dig from Pokémon, basically; it's functionally where Pokémon got it from). Where FFII had Dragoons working alongside dragons as special dragon riders/knights, FFIII has Dragoons as anti-dragon and anti-aerial fighters.

Summons in general are a major part of the series, core to the plots of a whole ton of later entries, and they find their start here. Summoning magic is introduced, and with it debut Ifrit, Shiva, Ramuh, Titan and Odin as summons along with their signature moves, general aesthetics and concepts. Odin has Zantetsuken and is associated with causing instant death even at this stage! Also, Bahamut from FFI and Leviathan from FFII are placed atop the hierarchy (Odin beneath Leviathan, and Leviathan beneath Bahamut in the power rankings), also gaining their general aesthetic and concept and signature moves (Tsunami and good old Megaflare). Odin, Leviathan and Bahamut needing to be specially sought out and fought or obtained in a special way is a recurring concept that starts here, too.

More spells and spell names are put in place by this point, and broadly the general White and Black Magic spell lists take fuller form. Meteor now sits atop the Black Magic spell list alongside Flare, and Tornado makes its debut in White Magic. Arise also makes its top-end White Magic debut, and thank fuck for that, reviving with full HP is a god-send in a game where you can't control aggro/enemy targetting.

FFIII puts all the "last" pieces in place, more or less, setting the stage for FFIV, which is to my mind when Final Fantasy "becomes Final Fantasy", at least as we know it now. The job system serves as a good merge of FFI's adjustable party and FFII's fully customisable character build concepts, giving you on-the-fly freedom (well, in the PR version at least) to shift party make-up as needed. Jobs also determine stat growths, with level-up stat gains favouring the stats your class benefits from without boosting the others as much, which is a much saner approach than FFII actively diminishing stats considered in opposition to the ones being utilised at the moment.

What's interesting is the decision to design parts of the game to push the player toward using specific configurations to solve problems and navigate dungeons. For example, early on, you need to use the Mini and Toad spells to enter dungeons or bypass specific obstacles, which mandates having a White Mage (or a Red Mage) with those spells. This encourages you to always have a healer for the convenience, which you'd likely be doing anyway. The mechanics of Mini make you take a lot more physical damage if you're in the front row, and do minimal physical damage with attacks; magic is unaffected, and there are multiple areas where you have to stay Mini for a while, pushing you to use an all-magic party.

It's a layer of design consideration and mechanic utilisation the first two games never quite reached, and it's really rad seeing the ambitions and ideas gradually grow as the staff become used to making RPGs, making these games and grow into their styles. Again, the roots of FFIV and the series' identity taking form shine through.

It's not always great; the Pixel Remaster's changes make getting a four-Dragoon party to wipe Garuda much easier and cheaper than other versions, at least, making that section a simple affair, but despite the devs' best efforts to improve the class, Scholar is still a really bad class. Its abilities are useless outside of the one boss fight you're forced to use it for (the boss uses an ability to change its weaknesses and resistances, you use Scholar's ability to identify the current ones). I mean, fuck, that boss has a harder recolour in the endgame optional dungeon Eureka, and if you have Libra (Lv4 White Magic) on someone you don't need a Scholar as it does the same job. I'm pretty sure you can get Libra before the boss that mandates a Scholar if you explore optional towns first, and if you have a person start as a White Mage and never change (easy to do, as you'll need Mini and Toad well before then), you'll have enough job-levels (separate from character level) to have enough Lv4 MP to do the fight without a Scholar.

An obvious solution is to let Scholar use White or Black Magic, or give it the same (or a similar) spread as Red Mage so it has something to contribute when it's not scanning that one boss' weaknesses. Make it a halfway point upgrade for spellcasters, as outside of swapping a Black Mage out for an Evoker (proto-Summoner before you get the real thing) there's basically no upgrade or replacing White and Black Mages until the final crystal spits out Devout and Magus...at the start of the final dungeon run.

They really should've given crystal #4 sooner than the first section of the final dungeon run.

On that note, I'm something of a sicko so my only real problem with FFIII's legendary insane final dungeon run is the lack of a mid-point save and restore point. The restoration aspect is catered for by most of the chests in the PR version dispensing Elixirs (I assume the original FC version does the same, don't remember if the remake did), but it does need a proper save point. The Pixel Remaster lets you save on the overworld between the first portion and the rest, and if there's another save point I missed it.

But like, the Ancient Labyrinth -> Eureka -> Crystal Tower -> World of Darkness run is genuinely kind of rad, killing lots of high-end bosses, pillaging the best weapons, Lv8 spells and even two extra super-jobs from Eureka (it's an optional sub-dungeon, but so worth it) and then ripping through more bosses, it's the kind of meaty RPG murder run I really quite enjoy. There is a point where this sort of thing can be done wrong by going too far, and it's somewhere between this and the fucking maniacal gigantic boss-rush final dungeon in FFIV: The After Years.

FFIII is in an interesting place in the series; it's apparently super popular in Japan, regularly placing high in fan favourite polls, but it never got the ports the others did and never left Japan for decades. In spite of that, it's an extremely influential game; FFV continues its Job system notably, but FFXIV cribs from it extensively, to mad degrees. It's the game XIV cribs from the most after FFXII and the other Ivalice games, the ARR Alliance Raid series is just the Labyrinth->Eureka->Crystal Tower->World of Darkness run directly with all the same ideas, FFXIV Shadowbringers explores the concept of "Dark is not Evil" and the Warrior of Darkness idea very directly in III's vein (III music remixes are rife in Shadowbringers, they aren't hiding it), and more.

Also, from the DS remake of III we eventually follow the path to 4 Warriors of Light, an original DS game emulating the constraints of RPGs from III's time to make a new experience. Its delightful art style prompted some mimics in things like Legend of Legacy (which is getting a remaster of its HD port soon, I never did play that one), but more critically led directly to Bravely Default.

It's just interesting to think about this one specifically being so influential, but then, it's not hard to see why. The reveal that the initial world map is just a small floating continent in the corner of the world, now floating above a world buried beneath a dark ocean, a world of people held in stasis by the encroach of Darkness, that's some wild shit to be pulling in a Famicom RPG. But then, Final Fantasy always was one for bombast: the first game reveals it's a time loop plot and the second game has its villain literally overthrow Satan and commandeer Hell after being killed the first time.

Like, the early Dragon Quests are good games and all in their own right, they earned their fame and fortune, but they really don't step, do they?

[heredis-sanguinis]

𝘒𝘕𝘖𝘞𝘐𝘕𝘎 𝘠𝘖𝘜𝘙 𝘗𝘈𝘙𝘛𝘕𝘌𝘙 𝘞𝘌𝘓𝘓 𝘊𝘈𝘕 𝘗𝘖𝘛𝘌𝘕𝘛𝘐𝘈𝘓𝘓𝘠 𝘔𝘈𝘒𝘌 𝘞𝘙𝘐𝘛𝘐𝘕𝘎 𝘛𝘖𝘎𝘌𝘛𝘏𝘌𝘙 𝘈 𝘓𝘖𝘛 𝘌𝘈𝘚𝘐𝘌𝘙.

Name: Cella

Pronouns: She/Her

Preference of communication: I prefer Discord. Tumblr's IM system is spotty as hell and most of the times does not update for me. Especially on mobile, which is where I'm at most of my days, because of my work schedule being all over the place. I'm willing to exchange Discord handles if people ask for it.

Name of muse(s): Active: Vladimir, Vayne (In process of re-making blog theme and sorting out archives) Inactive: Kalista, Karthus, Thresh, Illaoi, Swain, Veigar, Scarlet (LoL OC), Emperor Mateus (FFII), WoL (FFXIV OC), Erza Scarlet (Fairy Tail)

Experience / How long (Months/Years?): Oh man, I lost track of that stuff. I've been in the League rpc since before the lore reboot, back when we still had summoners and the Institute of War and the single circular-like continent. And before that I've been in other fandoms. I'd say, including ttrpg rping I've been at this game for over 20 years now (yes I am OLD) I've used Tumblr, Skype, Discord, MSN Messenger, PlayByWeb among others as mediums.

Best experience: I can go over the various specific threads and interactions that are close to my heart. But I really think that the lasting friendships I've build with past and present partners to be my best experiences. To meet so many different flavours of people, with their own lives and interests and stories, and become a part of their life (and vice versa) is what matters more to me than whatever rp-ing does.

RP pet peeves / dealbreakers: I'd like to think that I'm fairly easy-going as a writing partner. But, like anyone, I do have some lines I do not cross. Aged-up canon muses are a big no-no for me. I've had horrible and unpleasant experiences both personally and in fandoms with those. i.e. Annie is a child and someone rp-ing a young adult version of her just creeps me out, because obvious reasons are obvious. I adhere very strictly to the canon ages of canon characters, especially since Riot gave us an actual timeline to work with, or at least moderately accurately deduct dates with.

As far as pet peeves there is actually only one I can think of right now, my muses not being taken seriously and being ridiculed and made silly or memed at. This has happened to Vlad a few times and I just hard-pull the plug on interactions if it happens. He's a 1500+ year old homicidal tactical-thinking bloodmage, who is bored out of his mind most of the time. The fact he may crack a joke or two, or act aloof at times, does not mean he will not turn your muse inside out when insulted. This does not mean, in any way, he is unavailable for more casual interactions, but there is a very fine line between casual talk dare I say banter and downright memeing on him, and pushing him around. Luckily this has not happened in a long while, but it is something I can be sensitive on.

Muse preferences fluff, angst or smut: Angst > fluff > smut; though it can change depending on vibe and muses. Smut is something I rarely post publicly or write with someone else. I become extremely self-aware of my writing and over-analyse each and every word to the point it can take literal weeks until I come up with a reply that I do not want to gouge my eyes out at. Angst works wonders for my singular brain cell that thrives on it. Fluff is something that does not often happen, especially with my selection of muses. But it can be nice every once in a while.

Plots of memes: I can work with both. I don't mind plotting at all, but I prefer to not plot every little step out of an interaction between two muses. I like to be surprised by a partner's muse's reaction or response. And it feels a lot more natural, because there is always a certain level of compromises when it comes to plotting. Memes are a perfect ice-breaker as opposed to a first-meeting interaction (because let's face it, those can be pretty boring if it falls down to 'hi my name is x, who are you?') It makes us writers think out of the box slightly to have our dumbass children play together.

Long or short replies: It depends on the setting for the interaction. But I try to at least go for several paragraphs to give my partner something to work with and also offer development for both muses and give insight into mine's thoughts and actions. I'll never expect to be matched in length and will never fault someone for this either.

Best time to write: Since I work in three different shifts, which alternates per week, my activity hours shift a lot. So my 'best time' to write also changes. It mainly depends on a mood to write, especially with a manchild like Vlad as a muse.

Are you like your muse(s)?: Somewhat? I share some interests and personality qualities with my muses, for sure. But I wouldn't say I am a lot like them per se.

Tagged by: @blackrosesmatron Tagging: Anyone that hasn't done this yet and wants to do it. Consider yourself tagged!

[pyreflydust]

Demotivated in my ffii playthrough because I got too excited to get the wyvern that I missed a keyword and got locked out of two entire achievements until the next playthrough because no matter how many times I've thought "I should make a backup save in case I mess something up" I did not actually

[oracleofsecrets]

Final Fantasy III - Notes and Review

Part of the Quest to Play All 16 FF Games

Hours logged: 17

Firsts:

Onion Knight class

Flexible job classing (change at any time)

Moogles!

Summons

Power of light / hope

Secretly a Much Larger World for the later Acts

Barrier Shift 

Worsts:

A little annoying not being able to tell which jobs could use Which kind of magic

Not enough quantities/types of armors for all jobs, so I didn’t want to even bother with several of the jobs

Trying to be lenient again for the time, but the character complexity was a step down from FFII 

General Impressions

Back to basics with a little flair for high fantasy storytelling: Warriors of Light (with Warriors of Dark as well), reborn heroes of legend, gotta get those crystals

The Floating Continent concept was cool, opening up to a much bigger world/overworld. With that, we got some cool airships (thx Cid!) for navigating different scenarios/terrains

Absolutely delighted by the drum track in the battle theme

Loved Hein’s design hehe

A rough final dungeon, but a disappointing final boss fight. All it did was use particle beam, so I had no incentive to do anything different either. 

Mechanics

Using mini/toad spell for world navigation was really cool, like to go into a small pipes or into a gnome village

Expanded job options were interesting. It was cool being able to change them any time without much in the way of stat penalties. Sage (uses summons) fucking RULES

Unequipping spells without having to relearn them was a godsend. Leveled MP pools still handy. Nice being able to recover HP/MP in other ways that Aren’t the Inns

Hidden wall cracks and items was fun. I love finding little treasures. Like a mouse in a maze seeking treats

Remembering to use weapons as items was a huge help

Hein was an interesting boss concept too with the barrier shift (changes elemental weakness/absorb to something random). Unfortunately I never remembered to include a scholar (the one class that lets you scan/identify elemental weaknesses, and the primary use case for the scholar) until the fight had already started

Rating: 4/16

More playable than the first two, but I still wouldn’t necessarily recommend buying it or playing it

[sevdrag]

OH MY GOD TWO OF MY FAVES?????? Trust me. My brother got a book of Sandman postcards from his dad and gave them to me. Do you know the NOISE i made when I opened them up and found Amano art. I didn’t even know. I did NOT know YALL worked Together. This random pack of postcards from my not-dad is now my SHRINE. i have been an Amano fan since Final Fantasy IV (released as FFII in the US) and I am FROTHING at the possibility of more work with Gaiman. I fucking. I canNOT.

Hello mr. Gaiman!

I saw on instagram that you met with Yoshitaka Amano in NY today and being a fan of both, I was wondering how high were the chances of a future collaboration between the two of you.

(English is not my first language so forgive my grammar)

We both want to work together again.

[save-the-rose-blog]

@artemisxbow liked for a small starter 🌹

"I keep overhearing others mention of how a wild rose saved them. Am I wrong to assume this a person?"

[adalheidis]

Leila (FF2)

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