The Final Fantasy Retrospective

I would like to ask how a hexagram would denote evil at its centre?

As a kid, Dragon Warrior was better than FF1. It was a simpler story & combat system, albeit a difficult game trying to follow storywise.

As a kid with FF1, it was the opposite, I was challenged with multiple characters, combat, etc., but the story was easier to follow. As an adult, playing the originals on original systems, I enjoy the more difficult aspect of DW than FF1 because I've been more accustomed to FF games that have come out than I have with the DW series which I've not followed since DQ7 or so.

Came here from your FFVI video and I’m shocked you hadn’t played any of these games before starting this series. Great stuff, especially from a 10k sub channel. I’ll definitely be watching the rest.

The G in RPG always stood for grinding to me, lol!

Do you have the name of the retranslation patch you're using in this video? I'd love to play it.

Dude, naming a character “Bort”….
I’ve been doing that In RPGs for the longest. That’s one of my favorite Simpsons jokes ever.

By the way, I just discovered your channel a few days ago and your work is incredible both in scope, quality and entertainment value kudos see you and keep up the great work, sir

I feel Final Fantasy is to fantasy, as Doctor Who is to science fiction. Every new game is a new game, but still connected to the old, just like the regenerations of the Doctor, and, standard game-wise, they are almost neck to neck with each other, in numbers.

In my opinion, the very fact that the characters are created by you and have no back story to them is, in itself, the strength that gives them depth, rather than the opposite. Future games tell you, this is who you are, this is your back story... But, in FF1, your imagination filled those things in. You gave them names, and, as you progressed, you could fill in the gaps yourself who they were, where they came from, how they got to this point. And you could do it over and over for every new party you made. I find what they did here far more enjoyable the the pre-made characters of later games.

Considering the crew of Bike's pirate ship, and the fact it can be operated by only the four Light Warriors, it is most likely a schooner.

I only did this on one playthrough, as it wasn't really much more than an Easter egg, providing nothing beyond a cosmetic change. I honestly can't remember the specifics of how I did it.

When I got the airship, I found a place to land around the Citadel of Trials, think one square around the desert surrounded by mountains, and went to see Bahamet, but I think I was too early in the story at the time, and hadn't gotten Bahamut the rat tail, yet... Not certain, but think this is what happened... Somehow, I was able to upgrade the characters to their new forms, but, since I hadn't finished the quest, all it gave me was the new looks and titles, but no upgraded stats or powers, until I finished the quest.

I feel bad that Bort won’t ever be able to have a license plate… 😂 Awesome work!!

Great work! This still is one of my favorite games to this day. I always wished a remake would be done, keeping the style and feel, while updating graphics, sound, and also fixing the parts of the game that were broken, and including new content.

The PSP remake came closest, but it irks me that they never released it on a wider available system.

Some time, about 15-20 minutes, before I found this video, I started walking down the last bridge waiting for Warmech to random encounter me. The retrospective finished, my quest did not and I WAS pissed, but I kept on going and fell asleep in the meantime for probably a couple of minutes. As I woke up roaring to torture myself some more, I found some minecraft theory video from that guy that does Deep Dives. About half way through the video, it happened, it FREKING HAPPENED!!! He found me, the fcking machines finally clicked and granted me this victory!

Then I proceeded to search for a desert baretta for like 10 minutes... Goddamn Random Encounters...

Cool video, bro! :D

My first experience was ff1, my mom would play, hand me the controller to buy potions while she made dinner or went to have a cigarette (the NES was in my room and she wouldn't smoke in my room)

Bort is always my main fighter 😆

These retrospectives reinforce my belief that the best way to play the earlier games are through emulation/ROM hacks. I firmly believe in experiencing these games with visuals that they had upon release. It's important to appreciate something because of the technical limitations of the time, not in spite of. The remasters to me look more dated and cheesy in that regard.

Discovered this right in the middle of my own big JRPG phase, in particular two days after beating FF1 on NES. Outstanding retrospective and I can't wait to watch the rest. I'm especially looking forward to seeing your look at FF6, which is easily among my favorite Super Nintendo games.

This is one of the best retrospectives of any game I've ever listened to. You killed it 👏

Terrific content

Bill and Bob? Sounds familiar:)❤😅
This game is "natural born"
Great stuff here!
It's all about them demons and what not

This would make a fantastic book series

Great content and nice pacing here!

I would recommend Dragon Quest 3 as I would say it does what the original Final Fantasy does but better, at least in my opinion. To be fair, I’ve played the remake so it makes sense that it would be a lot better updated. Like I enjoyed the original game and I love the resource management aspect of the original game, but the fact you mentioned the Dragon Quest games, I thought I would mention how awesome DQ3 does.

The fact that this video don't have atleast 300k views actually makes me mad, great job.

Great video. Wild that you played this game for the first time before making the review, this was a fountain of knowledge, equivalent to someone who has known the game since its release date.

I knew a lot about the development of this game. Even so, I still learned a bunch of things. Good stuff.

This is great, this series deserves more views! Keep at it!

This presentation uses the fan translation by Chaos Rush instead of the 1990 NES translation by Nintendo. I’m glad about that, as the Chaos Rush translation is closer to the modern official translation.

This is an excellent video series, really enjoying it, my one critique would be that your references to Star Wars, Robocop, Laputa make it sound as if robots, floating cities etc sci fi imagery in those films was mind blowingly revolutionary to the FF creators when they made the game, as opposed to tropes well established for decades in Japan from anime, television, etc popular media since the early 1960s.

Ie the sections make it sound like you’ve heard of only the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Star Wars and projected them as singularly inspirational to the creators, but not of Yamato, Gatchaman, Astroboy etc. I don’t doubt that Laputa was inspirational and was def popular, but there are at least two decades of science fi anime prior to it that pop youth culture would be widely familiar with the idea of floating space stations, or things like “a robot walker with machine guns” without that relating whatsoever to Robocop. I know you said in the video specifically this wasn’t actually related because Robocop wasn’t released til a year afterward, and since that’s the case, I don’t think it’s the best idea in general attributing specific works/movies as being the inspiration of some particular scene/enemy/element in Final Fantasy, unless the creators specifically have said in interviews that it was inspired by. Otherwise it’s very likely a coincidence or simply similar imagery and muddies the waters as to what genuinely the creators have said was going through their minds. It wasn’t Robocop, so why suggest it at all in the video? Other than being similar imagery/similar sci fi tropes they are likely wholly unrelated.

Now that being said obviously Bigs, Wedge are in the games and the combat system was based on D&D, so there are clearly indeed confirmed references to star wars and western media. I think it’s just best to stick with definite proven stated by the creators ones, as opposed to conjecture because the floating base in FF reminds you of Laputa (even though there are multiple sci fi works featuring floating bases).

Other than those conjecture in your scripts which is a bit distracting they are well done videos, thanks 👍

Can't believe that FF I's plot us literally just Homestuck

I always felt that the four fiends could've been the creators of the world and eventually lose all power. In the present day Garland is exiled due to his hatred (and also implied obsession with the Princess) which causes him to flee to the shrine and send the Fiends into the present. He is found and killed, but sent back to the past, where the time loop starts

GRAAAAAH THIS IS MY FINAL FANTASY

God damn is Amano a great and unique artist.

I really enjoy the different video game documentarians preserving/contextualizing culture in various ways. Thank you.

I love FF1-FF6, FF9 and FF12 was okay. My favorite is FF5. Never liked FF7 or FF8 very much.

Still waiting for the Stranger of Paradise Retrospective. Because I know you, like myself, are just here to kill Chaos.

Congrats on the 7k subs!

This is a great video, thank you.❤

A Team was also 4 people initially, right? So... Isn't there a better allegory for the players to "role play" into?

Absolutely loved the video. Whatever amount of time you spent to make it, Worth it brother. Genuinely one of the best retrospectives I have watched. Subbed

Chaos grows stronger with each remaster/remake!!!? THAT is awesome! As far as I’m concerned, that’s canon!

Holy shit..a whole ass 11 hour series of just ff-ff5…

I'm not sure why I was just recommended this video today, but I have to say you did a great job there. I'm going to sub and hope that you upload more content just like this. Also the fact that your mom was so proud of your video was adorable.

Final Fantasy