Final Fantasy Levelling Is Stupid

With Final Fantasy 15 sort of round the corner I wanted to take a moment about my frustration with the level systems of basically every Final Fantasy from 10 onwards.

This post was first inspired by a news article that my friend link me a long time ago that I have long since lost, if I find it again I'll update the post.  The post outlined some things about how characters would level up and it compared the system to Dark Souls.  There's nothing inherently wrong with this and it's hard to make judgement without knowing all the other systems that the game will have but it still made me think how dumb levels have gotten in Final Fantasy.

All the way up to Final Fantasy 9 each character was kind of locked into a class.  The exception to this rule was Final Fantasy 3 and 5 which had a job system but if you picked a Fighter you better damn well play that character like a Fighter.  Final Fantasy 7 and 8 had ambiguous classes but it was clear who was better at things like sword fighting and who was better at casting spells.

Then Final Fantasy X came along with what seemed like an interesting level up system.  It introduced the Sphere Grid, a giant collection of circles where each one represented a certain statistical boost or ability.  A lot of people disliked the sphere grid but I thought it was OK.  I still have a lot of questions regarding how it works in the context of the game world but I didn't mind it so much.

My problem with the sphere grid is that the idea of a characters class went completely out of the window in the end game.  Every character could just do everything by the end of the game and you didn't even have to work that hard to get to that point.  You could argue the same thing about Final Fantasy 7 but the work you have to put in to achieve that is STUPID high while in FFX in requires very little effort.

FFX-2 was a bit more job based but jobs could be changed on the fly in combat which kind of ruined the whole point of the job system.  FF12 had that stupid license board bullshit and 13 just knocked the turd right out of the bowl with the fucking Crystarium. 

I'm hoping that the class and level system in FF15 will be back on point.  Where a fighter is a fighter, a mage is a mage and a thief is a thief.  The ability to make your characters more versatile is welcome but don't just abandon their entire role in combat so that everyone can do everything.

Final Fantasy 3

Right, last night I took down Final Fantasy 3 on the stream so now it's time to do a post about it.

Final Fantasy 3 was the last of the NES part of the series and the first to use the famous Job System that a few titles in the series have become quite well known for.  The story follows 4 youths on their grand adventure through the lands to restore 4 crystals and save the world.

Now I like Final Fantasy 3, but fucking hell is it a really annoying game.  The game itself is fine, it's basically the same as Final Fantasy 1 and 2 but it plays a lot smoother and looks a bit nicer compared to it's other 8 bit counterparts.  The problems with Final Fantasy 3 really only come in when the game starts forcing jobs on you.

You can tell that Square were really proud of this system that they had implemented it and they sure as hell were going to make sure you used it.  Sure, you can use a normal job setup of fighter, utility, black mage, white mage, but there are certain parts of the game where that shit just won't fly.

The one part of that game that I will never forget is the two dungeons with the monsters that multiply on hit unless you one shot them or use magic.  They are found in a long dungeon and and if you let the multiplication get out of hand then you are just fucked.  What you were supposed to do was change everyones job to Dark Knight and just physical attack your way through all the enemies.  So not only did the dungeon take me ages because I was being hard headed about my party, but the solution to my problem was fucking boring.

The same goes for other areas of the game that will just shove a handicap on you for absolutely no reason such as any section that involves turning your party into frogs or mini people.  Still, despite all my complaining about the game being a bit annoying Final Fantasy 3 is great.

The DS version is a hell of a lot easier than the NES version so really you only want to give this one a go if you're looking for a bit of a challenge.  The things that I have complained about above I don't remember being an issue at all in that one.

Well, onto Final Fantasy 4, view it here
www.twitch.tv/taurinensis