RND(tech)

If you don't keep up with the blog, I've been re-living the Final Fantasy saga again. I've been playing them in order, and depending on how I feel after Final Fantasy VIII, I may stop or go on to Final Fantasy IX.

In any event, it took me nearly a year of on-again-off-again playing (totaling just under 43 hours of game time):



This story was one of my favorites too. Final Fantasy IV (orginally released as Final Fantasy II on SNES in America) was the first to have all of the original elements of the Final Fantasy we know and love. It's the five-member party, the near-active battle system, classic music, summons, fat chocobo, etc. Yes, and this is the one where you go to the moon. Contrary to popular belief, you don't have to have a level 70 party to complete it. I was fine with my mid-60 level party. Of course, higher would have helped more, but you can defeat Zeromus just fine. As you can see, in addition to Cecil, I brought along Palom, Porom, Cid, and Yang. Yang just uses his "power" for double attacks. Cecil just attacks since his white mage curaga is useless for healing even one person on a turn. Which means, you'll rely on Porom's more powerful curaja or full-life (instead of wasting a turn on a phoenix down, then curing). Next to Yang's attack, Cid's standard attack was important. Cecil is still fairly weak comparatively in the attack department. He's your standard RPG main character (who's always a knight or a fighter) so you have no choice but to bring him along in this case. The majority of your attack will be dealt by Palom. You could have brough Rydia and her summonses, but whatever. Palom has meteor which is probably just as powerful, although not as pretty to watch. Palom will hit for 9999 hit points, but your party will be countered with similar magic from Zeromus. Watch out for that Big Bang attack of his!

Now on to Final Fantasy V!

So I had completely forgot about my quest to relive the Final Fantasy sagas, again, finally. Over a year ago I had finished Final Fantasy I and II, gave up on III due to a technicality, and started Final Fantasy IV. Actually, it was just over a year ago to the day that I started, but somehow got lost in life work and other things. Anyway, I'm picking it back up again and apparently, I'm on the moon and close to the end. Blah.

Along the lines of my last post, I rediscovered some of my old stand-up comedy favorites on YouTube. That site is such a ridiculous waste of bandwidth sometimes, but there are some gems. This has little to nothing to do with technology, but it's one of my favorite Gallaghers. It's somewhat hard to find, but a classic of his take on school and the English language.

I've been busy with work and life, so the Final Fantasy saga was sidetracked. Woops. I've been playing through Phantom Hourglass, as well as some other random DS games like Contra 4. I'm just about done with Phantom Hourglass, so I guess I'll post a completed screenshot of that when it happens.

I've finally found the need to do flash video, elsewhere on the site. I've always known FFMPEG was able to do it, but I can't figure out how to make it index (for seeking in a Flash Video player) on the command line. Just to get the immediate project done, I've found flvtool2 is able to do it. It's open source and came out of the Riva VX project. I've never used the Riva encoder, but flvtool2 indexed and inserted proper metadata to enable sync, even after the FLV was already encoded:

flvtool2.exe -U video.flv

It'll work on the Linux command line with wine as well. Just append it to the beginning of the line.

After a short break from Final Fantasy (I was working through getting "expert" on all levels of Diner Dash), I'm starting up again with Final Fantasy IV. I know, lame update, but I'm writing anyway.

I've just about given up on Final Fantasy III. I've accidentally found a game glitch described on GameSpot and this YouTube video as the "Dive into Saronia" glitch. Only, I never actually dove. I was just exploring the western side of the continent, close to the mountain range. Suddenly, I found myself flying over the mountains in the airship before obtaining "invincible". Being the good RPG player, I saved just outside the town. Unfortunately, I didn't know this was a game glitch and now I'm trapped forever a dark night outside of Falgabard. Lame.

The game wasn't all that great to begin with. It was a beautiful remake, but lacked depth in the dungeons. The job system was nice, but a gimmicky novelty. There were too many jobs, which meant there were too many weapons, made scarce across the item shops. The story line was only slightly better than FF-I and FF-II, but that was to be expected. I actually found the former two games better than FF-III. While the former two were riddled with dungeons that were TOO big at times and TOO many random encounters, they had a much better RPG flow and story.

After just over 24 hours of game play, I can't find my way back over the mountains, even though the video makes it look possible. I had a great party too, and I doubt I'll be able to recreate that job level 89 monk. He attacked with for over 200 with his two bare hands :( Now it's on to FF-IV!

I just finished Soul of Rebirth (the Final Fantasy II extended story). There isn't much world-wise to explore, but it was fairly long due to the fact you have minimal resources and you have to level everyone up. Ulitma and Flare are your friend...

I finished FF-II the other day and FF-I back in November-ish sometime. Here are the screen captures of both game-clear saves.



Apparently, this version (the Dawn of Souls version for GBA) has a Music Player option that is unlocked when you finish both games. Also, a new dungeon called Soul of Rebirth is unlocked. This is a continuation on the FF-II story. I'm working through that now and it's supposedly not too long...