Pokun wrote: ↑Fri Nov 27, 2020 12:48 pm
I just meant that FF1 introduces some heavy themes that you wouldn't expect from a traditional save-the-princess type of game. Such as space travel and time loops. Complex themes is a common pattern in later Square games as well.
Yeah, o.k., themes. But themes alone don't make a complex plot. "Time Tiver Eon Man" also has a "complex" time travel "plot", but it only consists of regular platformer levels that happen to take place in different time settings.
Likewise, in "Final Fantasy", the time loop plot consists of nothing but the fact that you are transported back to the first dungeon, but in the past, for the finale, and some explanation in the ending text. You don't have the time loop thing actually influencing anything in your on-going adventure.
For example, you don't revisit the first dungeon in the present in the middle of the game and find dead bodies of your own party which sidetracks your adventure to find out what's up with this which then leads to the discovery that Garland can travel to the past and therefore, the battle between you and Chaos happened multiple times now.
All of the stuff in "Final Fantasy", "Ninja Gaiden", "Crystalis" or "Faxanadu" is in no way comparable to what "Final Fantasy Adventure" was doing. Despite people saying "I can't remember the plot anymore": If you actually pay attention when playing this game, then you see that the plot is told on a level that no other games of the time seems to have done.
To be fair, I don't know many of the games myself. "Final Fantasy II" had a pre-defined party, so maybe their plot is good as well. Or maybe it's still basic. I can't tell. Maybe somebody who has played "II" and "Adventure" can compare the two.
Also, I have a feeling that "Radia Senki" might be on a similar level as "Final Fantasy Adventure".
Might.
Anyway, unlike the games mentioned, "Final Fantasy Adventure" is actually told like a real movie.
It already starts with the fact that all those other adventure games have you find eight plot devices or defeat four huge demons or whatever before you get to the final dungeon. And in the end, that's exactly what you end up doing.
There are no twists. You don't collect four Triforce of Wisdom pieces and in the fifth dungeon, you realize that Ganon has already gotten three of the other pieces, so you sneak into Death Mountain while he's away and rescue Zelda ahead of time who then becomes your companon in your quest to find the wise mage that can power up your four of eight Triforce pieces, so you can use it, even though it's not complete.
In "Final Fantasy Adventure", instead of eight plot devices, there are only two objects that are important: A pendant that will open the way to the Mana Tree. And a girl who can say the spell to activate that way to the Mana Tree.
The girl has the pendant with her. So, you don't even have to find both separately. And you encounter the girl at the beginning of the game purely by chance.
Then it's a back and forth: You have the girl with you and the bad guy spies you out. He even has to help you at one point because an unrelated bad guy has the girl in his clutches. Later the main bad guy captures the girl. Then when you reach her, she gives you the pendant before you two are separated again. Then some totally different person steals the pendant from you to give it to someone else.
The plot takes unexpected turns. You never know what happens next. For a long time, your ultimate objective is not to head to the bad guy's castle. Instead, you're
coming from that castle and your objective is to warn other people of impending doom.
Then, due to some convoluted events, you end up in the bad guy's castle, your original starting point, anyway. But this is only at the halftime point. You defeat the evil overlord. But his henchman (the bad guy who was following you) reaches the Mana Tree and shoots you down the mountains.
Then, the second half of the game is again an interconnected chain of events (although admittedly, the story to gameplay ratio gets a bit wider now) where, in the end, you find the magical sword that can defeat the new bad guy. And you unearth a tower from the desert sand to get back to the mountains where you finally reach the Mana Tree for the final confrontation.
This is not just a "theme" or "story through NPC dialogs".
"Final Fantasy" looks like it is frozen in time: Those pirates in the second town, how long have they been there? It looks like they have been there forever, just waiting for the hero to appear. Same with other fetch quests.
In "Final Fantasy Adventure", events in the game happen because of actual actions by people. Most of the time because of actions that the hero himself is doing:
You don't save a random girl who has been captured by a vampire. Instead, your very own companion gets captured when you spend the night in the vampire's hotel.
You don't have to transform a human back because the local town's ruler has turned him into a bird due to unrelated quarrels, but because you yourself ended up in his sister's house when you fell from the bad guy's airship, and you had the pendant with you that the local ruler wants to get, so he turned the brother into a bird to blackmail the sister.
Pokun wrote: ↑Fri Nov 27, 2020 12:48 pm
I don't see your point. Do you mean the developers
didn't try to make gameplay and story sequences connected?
Yes, they did. And in general, the story kind of works. But what I mean is: In several places, the plot is quite wonky. And the levels sometimes don't fit what the story is about:
Why does Irene put Ryu in a cell that is basically in walking distance to one of the four bosses? Why is the cell located high above the ground with a huge mountainside in the background? We were just in a big city. Plot-wise, I would have exptected another city level, maybe a sewer or something for variety, and not in the middle of the fucking Rocky Mountains. How did she drag him there? And why? Why does she choose the villain's hideout to give Ryu the statue?
If the game had no cutscenes, you would simply assume that this is the next location that Ryu has to go. But with the cutscenes, the gameplay feels dislocated from what the plot is actually about.
Then we have Walter who's either living 15 minutes away from the next bad guy hideout. Or there's a huge off-screen gap between the lake level and the snowy mountains level and Ryu was chasing that ninja for hours.
Anyway, the statue was snapped away by some regular-sized green ninja, but in the end, you fight a huge monstrous guy in orange baggy pants. So, either Ryu got outsmarted by some common mook (who is never seen again) or once more they didn't care for consistency when that three meter high guy can dress as a regular-sized human. (Why did he wear a ninja costume anyway?)
And when Jaquio throws Ryu down a trap door, they don't even
pretend anymore that it's a prison cell. It's just another underground cave where Ryu just has to follow the path to get out. Jaquio is more stupid than a James Bond villain. At least they put Bond in an actual death trap before leaving. Here, he simply put him into a cave where a bunch of mooks seem to hang out in their freetime.
The game attempted to bridge together the levels by actual character motivations. But many times, the connections between cutscenes and levels have no rhyme or reason.
Contrast this with "Final Fantasy Adventure" where the cutscenes all happen within the actual game world and are therefore much more integrated into the overall game and feel more consistent with the gameplay.
Pokun wrote: ↑Fri Nov 27, 2020 12:48 pm
I 100% agree with you. This was quite a weird decision. Though considering all the bosses have very simple patterns, I think they wouldn't be able to do something as complex as a mirror match.
It can actually be implemented quite easily. You don't need a "Street Fighter II"-level AI.
"Vice - Project Doom", a game heavily inspired by "Ninja Gaiden" right down to the cutscenes, does exactly this for the first form of its final battle:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=o84PiCvcgdU&t=40m37s
"Castlevania III" has one as well:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFFKAl2A898&t=1h28m22s
"Mega Man" also:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sKcjUjbPr4&t=20m30s
Pokun wrote: ↑Fri Nov 27, 2020 12:48 pm
Besides they already had a ninja boss in Basaquer/Berserker (BTW since a berserk is a viking I think it's a strange name on a ninja).
In how far is a guy who looks like a genie and who jumps back and forth in a pre-defined, never changing arc and shoots three bullets a ninja opponent?
I was talking about a character that mirrors Ryu's abilities: The same walking animation, the same kind of roll-jumping, a sword slash and the ability to use one or more of the sub weapons.
Pokun wrote: ↑Fri Nov 27, 2020 12:48 pm
And if we are picky, RPG is a sub-genre of the adventure genre, so Final Fantasy Adventure, being a very pure action-RPG, is also technically an adventure game.
That's why I included it.
Pokun wrote: ↑Fri Nov 27, 2020 12:48 pm
I think this is the problem here. You are now looking for a pre-SNES non-adventure game that has more and possibly better story than Final Fantasy Adventure, which isn't even a pre-SNES game itself.
Yeah, but it was at the beginning of the Super Nintendo life cycle. It predates "A Link to the Past" by almost half a year, therefore couldn't take inspiration by that game, let alone by stuff like "Chrono Trigger".
And even "A Link to the Past" only has a very rudimentary form of this kind of advanced storytelling, and only in its Light World segments. (The Dark World part is almost exclusively gameplay.)
By the way, I'm not actually looking for one. I'm fine with games that have no real plot. I was just challenging people who say: "I found the plot of FFA unremarkable and can't remember it anymore": Well, which plot
can they remember then? Which plot that comes before those huge SNES-RPGs is
not unremarkable to them?