Weekly /r/FinalFantasy Question Thread – Week of January 10, 2022

X is a good start. It's probably the second most popular game and is very accessible in regards to gameplay and story. Some of the games before X tend to have a poor translation, rushed development, or both, so they can be a bit confusing. All of IV-X are great games though, so you can't go wrong with any of them. IX is my favorite, but X is generally considered the best starting point.

You can buy all the games on Steam, but emulation is still an option for all of the games besides XV. The Steam ports have built in cheats (no encounters, max health/damage, unlimited items, etc) and a speedup option, but other than that, they don't really offer much more than an emulator does.

The games also have a ton of re releases and generally the newest releases have the most content, like bonus dungeons, extra classes, and more bosses. You can play the games in any order, but I would save I-III and XIII-XV for last as they're generally considered bare bones (I-III) or not very good/representative of the series (XIII-XV). You can always just watch some gameplay of the various games and pick what seems interesting

Log into your account on the mogstation and make sure you can get your PS4 license to show up saying you own at least "A Realm Reborn", which is the base game. Guide here:

Endwalker includes all of the previous expansions so if you own ARR and purchase Endwalker you will have all content unlocked.

A normal free trial account would not be able to play with just buying Endwalker, so make sure it actually does show you own ARR.

Do you have enough cards to play a game? I think you need 5 and can get them from a guy on Garden's 2nd floor, he'll give you a set of bad cards. You probably want to get a few better cards before playing.

Alternatively, are you pressing the right button to challenge them to a card game? It's the square button on any of the PS versions, I'm not sure what it would be on PC.

For your second question - eh. If you've earned enough AP to have Enc-None you've probably earned the most useful abilities for your other GFs, and should have enough to carry yourself until you get a good AP grinding spot available (after you get free roam on disc 2). You should be able to get enough good magic by refining cards once you get that figured out.

EDIT: That being said, you really don't need to worry about avoiding random encounters, that's an overblown thing. As long as you're not actively grinding for experience you should be fine.

1) So, to play cards on the Playstation versions, you use Square to talk to people - not X or Circle. Not sure what console you're playing on, but I imagine it's a different button on those, too. There are a bunch of people who play in the opening garden, even early game.

2) Eh, at least to me, concerns about the leveling system are overblown. You shouldn't ever just sit in an area and grind, but you don't need to equip ENC-NONE and run from everything the whole game, unless you're obsessed with making your characters as powerful as possible, or doing a low levels run. I prefer to fight some enemies here and there, because of the items you can steal and earn from them, as well as drawing magic.

All games with the same mainline number followed by anything else are connected.

The issue isn't that they shouldn't be connected, the issue is that they shouldn't have been misleading about it.

what system are you having trouble with?

Also be careful with recipes. I don't know if they changed it in the Zodiac version, but if you buy something from the bazaar all the items used are reset. So if you had one thing that needs 1 pebble and 1 water stone, and another recipe that needs 1 pebble and 2 water stones, if you sold only one water stone and bought the first thing, you'd need to get 2 water stones, again, instead of just 1.

Was really annoying on the PS2 because you had to wait to buy things or figure out what recipes needed what so you could be safe.

Most are one-time things, but there are a few that are repeatable, mostly when you're crafting either usable items (e.g. the serum pack is repeatable) or rare crafting items (e.g. the items required for the Tournesol). I don't think any equipment is repeatable.

The Ivalice stuff isn't until one of the later expansions so you'll be waiting a while, that said the game is very good so it's worth playing regardless

The free portion is easily 100+ hours of play, so go for it.

FF6 is not grindy at all, in any version. It is probably the easiest game on the series. For a casual playthrough, just be diligent in distributing Espers and learning magic and you will be ok.

Not grindy at all if you try to run around and complete most of the optional stuff. There is a point in the game though where you can pretty much skip right to an endgame dungeon but it's really apparent there is more you are supposed to be doing first.

Just one extra tip too, try to keep most of your characters at an even level with each other. A few of them can be left behind but if you only have 4 properly leveled/equipped characters you are going to have it really rough in the last dungeon.

You should be fine. Any numbered game is its own universe in this series, so playing FFVII (the original one) by itself first is okay.

A caveat is if you're playing the VII remake, then you might have to think of playing the original VII first or immediately afterward.

Definitely agree that you’re fine jumping in blind. When it comes to missing details, I feel the need to mention that the original English translation leaves some details on the events and lore a little nebulous. So if you’re ever feeling lost or confused about what’s going on I recommend hopping on here to ask questions and discuss!

Yes to both.

Cait Sith's backstory is part of the main story and you can't miss it. Yuffie's is part of a technically optional quest but if you recruited her you'll for sure have it come up.

Dragon Quest is older than Final Fantasy and has more connections and callbacks than Final Fantasy generally does.

And Mario/Donkey Kong metaverse is older than both. Wouldn't be surprised if there were others.