Weekly /r/FinalFantasy Question Thread – Week of July 12, 2021

This might be a better Q for the legal advice sub, or if you're trying to monetize your YouTube, a copyright attorney. Essentially though, if you're in the U.S., whether or not something is "fair use" hinges on how much you're transforming the work and how valid your criticism is. (To really simplify the matter here - Like, I took an entire college course on Media Law, so it's obviously a complex subject...)

NAL, but if your videos are mostly about the music and commenting on it, then I think that would constitute fair use. However, if you're really talking about other aspects of the game, then you have less of a defense.

There other components to this, one of which you picked up on - Namely, how litigious is Square Enix? To gauge that, I think you could just search and see if others have done what you're trying to do. I don't think SE has the reputation that, say, Nintendo does though, for protecting copyright and filing cease and desists.

FWIW, I'm pretty sure I've seen either the FF10 or FF15 - or both - sound tracks get pulled from YT at various points. However, there are plenty of gameplay footage videos - like you can watch the plot points of pretty much all of FF7 - that have been up for years.

I would suggest reaching out to 8-Bit Music Theory. He's done a lot of videos about Final Fantasy music, especially Uematsu's. His two most recent videos were a short series on FFIX. That said, I think the likely answer from him will be that he's directly commenting on the music itself, which gives him fair use protections. Maybe Final Fantasy Union is more likely to know exactly what you need, but they may also see you as a competitor. I don't know any of these people, so I can't comment on whether they would help you.

iOS is more or less the same as the DS version, I believe. But this version of the game is a 3D remake and is fairly different from the GBA and other 2D versions. If you want something similar to what you played, you'd be better off trying to find a copy of the GBA or PSP versions (though they'll probably be just as expensive as a DS copy would, which is to say very expensive). Another option would be to wait until the pixel remaster version releases, likely sometime in mid-late August.

I'd like to provide a contrasting viewpoint re: Samurai and Geomancer, because I happen to think these are two of the best jobs to develop.

Geomancy is a decent skillset but it's not amazing. What makes the Geomancer great is its combination of equipment options and core stats. Geomancer gets good weapons and is the only (generic) job that gets to combine shields with hats/clothing. It also has great movement and good PA and MA multipliers. Altogether it's one of the best carry jobs in the game--and that makes it an excellent fit for Agrias. Unless you're giving her a powerful knight sword, Geomancer is probably the best option for Agrias.

Samurai is the other way around. The job's stats and equipment options are mediocre, but the Iaido skillset is excellent. I rate it as the 2nd best skillset in the game, trailing only the ridiculously busted Arithmeticks from Arithmetician. It has healing, buffing, and ally-friendly, massive AoE attacks that happen instantly, and those attacks are wicked strong with boosted MA/Arcane Strength. It's well worth the occasional katana breaking. Long term you'll want to add Kiyomori, Muramasa, and Kiku-ichimonji for certain, but there's no point in doing so before you can buy them so just keep an eye on the trade city shops. I almost always get Ama-no-Murakumo also but that one is less critical. Masamune and Chirijiraden are amazing but you can't buy either katana in the shop so they're a lot less reliable.

re: your second point, I have a guess. I'm willing to bet that you were using more +MA equipment and/or elemental boosting gear than you are currently using, and this has caused your damage to be less spectacular than you were used to. New equipment is not necessarily better, and more HP is usually worse than stat boosting (this is why shields + clothing/hats is so valuable). Put some Wizard Robes back on, don a Celebrant's Mitre, pick up an elemental rod, equip Arcane Strength as your support skill, and I think you'll be very happy with your damage output. Especially with the boosted element. Maybe even throw on a Magepower Glove (although that's an extravagant purchase at this point). Mages and Summoners do tend to fall off somewhat in the late game, but this is mostly because higher speeds make it harder to land charged abilities, especially the higher level ones that take longer to charge.

Oh, and since you mentioned Time Mage I'd just like to mention that Teleport is arguably the best movement skill in the game. Just be sure to stick to your normal movement radius unless you're willing to risk failure (teleporting within your move range has 100% success; trying to teleport farther has a 10% per extra space chance of failure).

So... If you're playing the game for fun, just get the skills you want, haha.

If you're asking for strategy advice, well, Samurai, Geomancer and most of the magic classes are not especially powerful by middle to end game. For example, if you want to prioritize killing power, make Ramza a Ninja, have Agrias in her base class with Chemist skills in case someone needs an item, and turn the rest of the generics into gun users until you can replace them with other unique characters with sword skills.

FFT is kind of boring in that most of the base classes - Archers, then Chemists when guns are available; Monk - can carry you through 90 percent of the game, and most of the magic classes are too finicky. It's still fun to delve into them, but things like Move +1, +2 and +3, along with ranged attacks and boots that increase movement can be more practical and useful than most of the new classes and skills you'll unlock.

Mine has an instruction manual. This is the European version.

Just checked my American copy. It does have an instruction manual.

War of the Lions was the PSP version of the game that changed/added a bunch of stuff including the zodiac calendar. The PS1 version never had any of that stuff. There was one revision to the Japanese PS1 version for the Greatest Hits release, but the changes were only bugfixes that made it the same as the US version.

I think he has to be banished by Exdeath in battle during your assault on Castle Exdeath.

I recommend XII or IX. XII is pretty different from most FF games, but it's got an interesting story with solid combat and fun sidequests. If you've ever played Dragon Age Origins, the combat is kinda similar to it in that you can program your characters to do your bidding.

Meanwhile, IX was the last PS1 game and largely designed to be familiar to series fans, so it's a good gateway drug into the older games. The story is great and has a lot of memorable moments. The combat is kinda slow even on the fastest setting and it's nothing to write home about, but the boss fights can be pretty tough and it'll keep you entertained between story moments.

Out of those two, XII is my personal favorite, but they're both great so feel free to pick the one that interests you most

Sounds like we have similar taste, friend. I second the recommendation of IX. The gradual reveal of the world’s intricate lore as the story progresses alongside some really endearing character arcs that hit moving themes culminates with a tremendous payoff near the end of the game. Combat is indeed slow but I think it’s still decently fun. If you play it on PS4 you can use the speed up if you start to get frustrated with it.

The Moon is where things ramp up substantially in difficulty, yeah. A couple tips...

- Make sure Cecil has the Excalibur. To get it, you bring the Rat Tail from the Land of Summoned Monsters to the guy in the cave near Silveria / Mythril. He'll give you an ore, which you bring to the blacksmith in the underworld. You can "trigger" the sword's development by flying back and forth from the Moon.

- In the game's last half, enemies hit and counterattack HARD. As a result, sometimes it's better to have characters like Edge and Rosa defend, instead of doing minimal damage with an attack. The best way to damage enemies is via Cecil attacking, Rydia using non-elemental magic (Mist dragon, Virus), and Edge using elemental magic when appropriate. Use Rosa to buff and to heal constantly. (Cast Berserk on Cecil, queue her up for healing even if no one is hurt, etc.)

- The caves on the surface aren't really that long; just one room. And you can save and use a tent once you're out of them. There is also a HP + MP recharge once you get through the few caves there.

- Exception to above advice: There is one side quest on the Moon, to get the Bahamut summon. To get it, you need to defeat him, which isn't easy, and there are also three unskippable fights with Behemoths. Some people suggest doing this on your first visit to the Moon, but I strongly suggest you wait until the next significant story segment, when you revisit the Moon and you'll be at a higher level.

It's strong enough. Use Devout instead of Sage, it's safer if you have a dedicated healer and Summoner will provide the magic attacks through the summons.

Bard is very helpful and fun if it's high level. It can be a great help to your healer.

I'm pretty sure it's for the missions.

The codes in the Royal Edition are for everything that's not included in the base game. So it's the episodes, Comrades and the extra content added for the Royal Edition (aka the Royal Pack).

So without the codes, the Royal Edition is just the base game, same as the day one edition.

It's not. It's actually one of the only ones that isn't, which makes me kinda sad because 1000 Words is my jam

This is secondhand knowledge, so take it with a grain of salt, but somebody here was saying the other day that they were hoping the X-2 soundtrack would be added. So unfortunately it seems like it isn't on Spotify.

Aside from its ludicrous size? No. Much like Cloud with his Buster Sword, Sephiroth is simply a master at wielding his weapon.

The current versions of V and VI on Steam/mobile aren't even the currently recommended versions of those games. The vast majority will recommend the GBA versions, or even the original SNES versions before recommending the current versions. So unless you actually like the way the sprites look in those versions, there's not really any reason to buy them.

Also, the pixel remasters may not have all of the additional content that other versions have, but there's not really any reason to think they'll be worse than anything currently available.

If the graphics of FF5 and FF6 doesn’t disturb you, go for it.

About the bonus content, there is speculation that they will remove it and make it as ‘OG’ as possible. For example, during the preview trailer for FF1, the Earthgift Shrine cave was missing.

Probably wouldn't be, but I'm not a lawyer. In addition, can't really copyright a name especially if you're not planning on putting in a first + last name combo.

In X-2 you gain AP every time you a) perform an action unique to that job (i.e. as a warrior, you can't just use attack, you need to actually use a swordplay ability) b) kill an enemy while wearing that dressphere or c) use an item. Performing any of those actions will get you 1 AP and I believe you're capped at 99 AP per battle.

As for Yunas sandals with the festivalist dressphere, the spell they use actually changes depending on how the sandal lands. So using fire sandal has a chance to cast fire, fira, firaga, or a powered up firaga. The lower level spells are more common.

There are 8 levels of magic spells, and you can have up to 9 charges per level. Using a magic spell consumes 1 charge from the level that the spell belongs to. Charges can be restored with a few curative items or resting. But you can also run out of magic charges a lot easier than MP, just because you can have hundreds of MP and use it to cast any spell without restriction. To make things a bit easier, there's also a number of different weapons and armor that will cast spells if you use them as an item during battle instead of equipping them.

You can play it pretty much like a single player game if you want. So even if you don't have much time to play each week you can still play through the story over a long period of time.

There are points where you need to set aside a couple of hours or so though, which can make it difficult.