Retronauts - 485: Final Fantasy IV - The After Years

Episode Date: October 3, 2022

Oh no! Final Fantasy IV: The After Years! Square Enix's belated sequel isn't exactly well-loved, but it casts a weird spell over anyone who has the patience for it. Nadia, Victor Hunter, and Ash Paulsen talk about its weaknesses... and its strengths?! Edits by Greg Leahy. Cover by Nick Wanserski. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts a part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us and more great shows like us at podcast.com. This week on Retronauts, the moon is like super haunted. Hello everybody and welcome to Retronauts. I'm our host for this week, Nadia Oxford of the Axis of Blood God RPG podcast. Thank you for joining me. This week I'll be talking about Final Fantasy 4, the after years, a direct sequel to Final Fantasy 4 that did not need to happen, but happened anyway, and keeps happening. Joining me today is my good friend and after years defender, Victor Hunter.

It's that lally ho over there, Victor Hunter. And Ash Paulson, another very good friend of mine. Ash Paulson, are you a defender of After Years or just a kind of a tourist watching the disaster from afar? Well, I feel like I need a nickname, too, so I'll say it's that Spoonie Bard over here, Ash Paulson. You know, I wouldn't call myself a defender, but I don't hate it. I don't have this vitriolic hate of the after years that so many other people seem to. And I kind of enjoyed, I liked it in its own weird, quirky way. So I'm not going to go out and say, like, I defend this game to the death like I would, Final Fantasy 13, for example.

And I just lost all of your audience. I'm so sorry, Nadia. I hear that. On your side, 100%. I'm on your side. Yes, yes, one of us. Thank you. There are dozens of us.

Dozens. But no, I like it in its own quirky, weird way, even though I wouldn't call myself a staunch defender of it. No, that's fair. I think that that goes for most people who like the game. Like, I am a kind of a defender. The more I play the stupid broken game, the more irritated I get, but the more I like it at the same time, like, I like seeing conclusions for our favorite characters, and they're all just not like all nantly wrapped up Harry Potter conclusions, like their actual struggles and stuff they have to deal with. And, I mean, I once compared it to having a beer with old friends who, you know, you love being with them and you love talking to them, but they are jabbing. the back of your hand with glass every 10 minutes and or spitting in your beer. So you kind of take the bad of the good and, you know, just eat it all up. Now, personally, I bought the game

when it first came out in North America, which I think was 2009 on Wiiwear. But before that, Final Fantasy for the after years was actually a, God, it was a flip phone game in Japan. And that's a whole era of gaming that just really kind of passed by the West. And I think that's a bit of a shame, really. It's really interesting.

Yeah. There's a bit of a resurgence in preservation of some old feature phone stuff right now. But yeah, who knows what's going to be saved and what's even going to be emulatable and what's going to be playable ever again. But yeah, I mean, this and FF dimensions and there are just, chances are your favorite Japanese video game series has some lost feature phone games from. Absolutely. Like 2006 to 2009. Well, and just saying, I mean, just talking about the fact that the first time this was more widely available outside of mobile platforms was freaking Wiiware. That already dates this game in a very specific, unique way. And it's like, wow, weware.

I remember those days. And this was a big deal back, you know, as big a deal as Wiiware could ever be. This was a big deal back then, like, this was a flagship marquee release for Wiiware. like, wow, we're getting the sequel to Final Fantasy 4, and then it ended up not being really all that. But it's still kind of weird to think that this was a major Wiiware release. It was, and that's something that's actually very notable about it, because in this generation, this was Wii, Xbox, and PS3.

Japan was still very hesitant to get on board with the digital marketplace, whereas Xbox and Microsoft are just flying. So I remember when I bought the game, the chapters off Wewear in the day, Like, it was still new to me, the experience of buying a game online, especially chapter by chapter. And it seems, something seems so delicate about the whole process back then. Now I'm just like, eh, press a button, there we go, PayPal. Oh, I have this game. I'm never going to play.

But it was, like, it was just interesting to see Japan slowly changes attitudes about online stuff back in the day. And I think this is one mark of that. You definitely see that reflected in a lot of the reviews from the time, too, because people didn't really know how. to handle this type of game. First of all, you have a handful of reviews from the time that basically only reviewed the first chapter because the structure of the game produced by Takashi Tokita, who is in the zeitgeist again because of the Live Alive remake. Yes.

And he has had a sort of obsession with creating episodic RPGs. Yeah, that's right. Alive Alive back in the 90s. He did it with after years and then FF Dimensions. And then that sort of went on to influence things like Octopath Traveler. I mean, all of these games are eight chapter experiences. But yeah, just looking at a lot of old reviews, people would just sort of, because the way it released on Wiiware was, I believe it was 700 Wii points, which works out.

I don't remember the domination. It's like talking about bison bucks. Yeah, exactly. And that would give you the prologue chapter, Cedor's chapter, and Cain's chapter. And together, that creates about like a five to six hour experience if you're just going through the main story. So for, you know, eight bucks or whatever, that's fine.

People, like, you'd think people would understand that concept that you are getting the beginning of a video game and then you will get more chapters released later on. And those other chapters were, I think, 300 points. So like three or four bucks. The last one was a bit more. Yeah. But you have a lot of people saying like, oh, well, so I tried to buy the after years.

And dang, Square Enix trying to nickel and dime me, eventually this game's going to cost $35. What a ripoff. Shock and off. How anti-consumer of them. And like if only we knew how exploitative pricing schemes we're going to get for the video game market in the coming years, because that seems so quaint. But yeah, a lot of people just not understanding what the release schedule was meant to be and how you were you were meant to, because they were release over a period of time. Every month or two, they would release another chapter leading up to the.

the like season finale that was the final chapter. Yeah. And a lot of people just saying like, I thought I was getting a full game. It was five hours long. What's going on? Very, very funny.

In a weird way, it's like the proto FF7 remake, which is a comparison. I never thought I'd make between the after years and FF7 remake. But yeah, so many people were like, I thought I was getting the full game.

This is just the first eight hours of the original, even though it's really fleshed out into like a full 50-hour game. that's another debate. Yeah. Yeah. I remember there being a lot of belly aching about the release model for the after years back then.

And, you know, to be fair, as you have been saying, that was new and novel at the time. So I get some consternation about it. But I do think as as has ended up happening today with games like F-S7 remake. And just the pricing,

the discussion around pricing and game in games and general, I believe it just went a little too far. Even back then, it was like, you know, I don't think the after the after years is a great game by any means, but I also don't really regret spending 35 bucks on the complete experience. Because it was, you know, it was a weird, wacky, just kind of experience. It certainly was a thing, right? Yeah. And distraction. That's a good word for it. I don't regret spending time with it at all, despite like me kind of making fun of it. And I have to say at least now, if you want to play the game, it's weirdly accessible in the weirdest ways. Like, first of all, I recommend it on the Final Fantasy 4 Complete Collection for the PSP, which is one of the best collections for any Final Fantasy game ever.

I wish I was a little more accessible. But you do have a 3D remake on, is it mobile and Steam it is on? iOS Android and Steam, yeah. You can get the inexplicable 3D remake that uses. Inexplicable. So I can get into a lot of this later, but yeah, there is a full 3D remake that reuses the assets from the FF4D remake. Right. And it is also, and all of these versions are quite different, too.

I don't know how granular we'll be able to get, but they are very different experiences. I do want to say, when you contacted me, Nadia, and said you wanted to do an after-year's episode, I was very excited because this was a good excuse to replay the game leading up to this. I replayed the Wiiware version and the Steam 3D version. Oh, right. Yeah, you see you mentioned that. Yeah, and I was fully prepared coming into this. You know, over the years, we've always sort of joked like, it's a bad game, but there's some good little nuggets of stuff in there for Final Fantasy 4 fans.

I think I'm fully prepared to say with, there might be a few. caveats, but after playing through this game twice, I think it's good. Maybe your brain should spend a little bit a road. Maybe I'm broke. Maybe I'm fundamentally broken.

But I was prepared to replay it and go, oh, what a slog. I'm glad I got through that and it's over. I had a really, really, really good time in a lot of different ways that I wasn't expecting. So I'm sure we'll get into it down the road, but that is my thesis.

That is the hill I'm dying on today, and I'm prepared to make some enemies. But I think after years is a good game. That's a good thesis. That's a good, like, juicy SEO-friendly headline to get up there. Totally. Is this game good? It is better than you think it is. I mean, I have to say, because I ever played it too, not recently, but I have played it like

three times for some ridiculous reason. And the final dungeon, which we'll get into, as much of a slog as it is, it's so interesting that I still remember doing it. I remember starting and thinking, okay, maybe there's three floors, maybe there's four floors, maybe there's a hundred floors full of bosses from old games, like jumping out of treasure chests. Like, I think that's a pretty cool dungeon at the end of the game. And you have like a huge party you can toy with. But we'll get into that first, just like a little bit of debriefing about the game. well we already went over Takahashi Tokita and

what he did with this game and what he did with basically as you pointed out Victor he does a whole bunch of chapter based stuff I never made that connection before but now that I do oh okay that does make a lot of sense Kazuko Shibuya did the, am I reading this right? Did the artwork? Yes

so she was most people will know her as the original pixel artist for Final Fantasy 1 and throughout the good chunk of the series one of the ones she didn't actually do the pixel art four was Final Fantasy 4. Takashi Tokita, the director was the pixel artist for FF4. He created those original sprites.

So this was her first time interpreting these characters, really. And it had been 10 years since she had been doing pixel art. Her last project, I believe, was Bar-Bap-Pa-Saga Frontier. in 97 so she started working on this i don't know if either of you have the book ff dot i want to get it it looks great which is it's her her beautiful art book that is just it's like full page spreads of final fantasy pixel art just presented crisp and beautifully and uh there's a really great interview with her in the back but uh yeah this was her return to pixel art she had been doing um a lot of ui design and stuff for like crystal chronicles she did

a lot of menus and things. Right. And then she got to come back to pixel art. And, yeah, it sort of laid the foundation for stuff like the pixel remasters today. You can see a very clear through line between the after years designs, their battle sprites, and the redone designs that she made for the pixel remasters. Absolutely. There are like three different versions of this game.

though, as we have talked about, not just a 3D version, but the Wiiware version and the PSP remake or revamp have very different sprite sets. And I actually love the sprites in the remake. But the original has such a unique look to it. I have a tough time with those PSP sprites. I love them. I love it to death.

Yeah, I have a soft spot for them. I mean, I like the original sprites in the Wiiware version as well. I don't know that I would choose one over the other, but I do have a soft spot for those PSP Sprites. right something about some about their pixel count just doesn't it doesn't feel i don't know there's something something about it i'm sure i can figure out a way to articulate it at some cursed pixels they're cursed pixels yeah a little bit we also have akira auguro uh who was the storyboard artist for the game if i'm not mistaken here also did a lot of storyboard for uh golden boy

evangelian that really tracks attack on titan also tracks a whole bunch of stuff and also did the uh character art event director for Final Fantasy 4 D.S. And here's what I'm interested in. Illustrations for the after years and Final Fantasy 4 novelizations. I would kill for those novelizations to be translated. I would. I would shank a baby. I honestly would.

The Square has, for the last maybe like two or three years, they've been on a bit of a tear with translating a lot of and localizing a lot of the Final Fantasy novellas and stuff. I have all the FF13 ones and I have the, there was an

Anniversary one that was about like one, two, and three. And I believe they are all written by a woman from Vancouver here. Oh, cool. She does a really good job. So, yeah, I don't know if Square is still, you know, pursuing a lot of these old novellas and things. But that FF4 and after years one would be great. I love to get those. And yeah, he's, he wasn't the storyboard artist for the after years, but he was the character designer.

Oh, okay, pardon me. Yeah. But still, anyone who's like elbows deep into Evangelian an attack on Titan is going to have like some interesting things to say in the Final Fantasy realm. Totally. I think his art is great. I think he straddles the line of like a mono style sort of ethereal colors and

hair and all the characters have bobbles and beads and things on them and stuff. So basically Goldbez in the after years. Yeah. That's an ogreau design for sure. Big ripped monk guy. Yeah, I can deal with it. And finally, we have Jonja Nakano, who is the composer, created 11 new tracks for after years.

Most of them, you're only going to hear in the final chapter, which is, I think there's a theme song for the main ads. And, of course, there's the NBoss theme, which was great to be honest. That's all I really remember for the new stuff. Yeah. It's funny. You can hear, you know, I'm super into video game music.

And, you know, if you follow the different composers like I do, and I'm sure like we all do, you can hear Nakano's style from a mile away in this game compared to the original FF4 and Nakano I believe got his Final Fantasy debut as one of the three composers in Final Fantasy 10 and he immediately set himself apart

with more of a more of kind of an ambient kind of more lush approach than having necessarily a focus on strong melody lines. You know, FF4 is known for having so many strong melodies and the athlete is a bit more ambient and reels things back a little bit

And kind of is a little bit more about, I would say, subversive storytelling than just throwing these really strong melodies at you. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, one thing that I don't think Junio was responsible for this, but one thing that always kind of creep me out about after years is the final dungeon, you get the moon surface music inside.

Like, that was a bit of a weird flip that made me a little bit uneasy. So you don't hear too much in the way of new music and after years, but what you do hear is kind of mixed up and really interesting. ways. Yeah, that main theme is eerie and really spooky and sort of foreshadows that what you're going to be experiencing, the threat you're facing is not of this world because the music is so stylistically different. And I think, I believe Nakano did the arrangements for the DS remake of four, which get reused in the after years. So I think there's that little bit of a stylistic bridge but yeah you you definitely as soon as you encounter the the mysterious girl the first time that

that theme song is very uh unlike anything else in for it's definitely it definitely gives you a sense that something is wrong something is off right it's almost a bit of a almost a bit of a horror vibe to be honest i i know he's got a bit of a horror vibe from the music in the after years and kind of just from the after years in general as a vibe i would say it's it's a little scary it's a little yeah something is always a little off you're not quite sure what but you know things are a little messed up and the music really plays to that and i'm sure we'll get there eventually but there uh i do love as part of the final battle theme it's called the battle for life and i go back and listen to this song on repeat quite often because it's just so good and i love how you can hear the final fantasy four main theme light motif woven into the final battle theme it really brings everything together not just from a full circle moment for the original game but from the beginning of the original game all the way to the end of the after years. It's such a great full-circle moment when you hear that main theme

and the final battle theme of this game. Yeah, I agree completely. And it really, it feels like those, like, triumphant melodies that you're familiar with are triumphing over the weird otherworldly evil. It's very, very cool. Yeah. And like you say, the horror element really hit me this time because there are so many scenes.

that end or chapters that end with your character confronting someone that you think is familiar and then it being left on a cliffhanger of like what is what's wrong like there are so many scenes where Cecil is a little bit off and he says something not not you're not comfortable at the very end or scenes where you're not sure which version of Kane you've been with this entire time and they they play with that quite a few times and because the game is told a little pulp fictiony. Like, it jumps all over the place. Even if you were to play each chapter going down the list, you're jumping all over

the place chronologically. So especially when it's a character like Kane, who will probably touch on later, we don't always know what Kane we're with. And that makes for some really great dramatic tension. And I think it does it really well. I think the after years is a good game. Game, guys! HyperX has refined their lightweight Cloud Stinger headset

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story chapter by chapter here, but I was wondering the Wii version of the game and the 3D version of the game, does that have the epilogue, the prelude chapter, like the intermission chapter, because... So that's the thing that separates the PSP

version from the rest of them is that it has the interlude chapter, which is about... It's about three hours, I would say, maybe three or four hours. Yeah. Yeah, and it takes place closer to the end of FF4 than it does

the beginning of after years. Yeah. Quite a bit closer, actually, because in the game, how old does see Ador, the Cecil's son? How old is he like 17, I think? He's 17, because it was 17 years since FF4 came out and they wanted to do like a, this

is also, this is late 2000s. This is 2009. So we are fully into dad game territory where we're moving into a generation of game creators who are having big dad feeling. We're getting Bioshock.

We're moving into that era of dads making video games about being dads. Right, right. In fact, that's why I was saying because the interlude ends with Rosa discovering she's pregnant. So that would be a really big gap in between the games. But the interlude, as I recall, what happened is Rydia, does she lose contact with the Idolans? And she has to find out what's going on. Basically, there's something bad going on. She has to get to the bottom of it because there's someone imitating her.

Yeah, we don't actually get to see a ton of that from Rydia's perspective in the interlude because most of the time we are teamed up with who we think is Ridia. Right, right. And then it ends up being one of the mainids who we don't learn about later on. And that I believe, if I'm remembering correctly, that was sort of the testing ground for the Mainid army. Right. You're right. That was the creator sending a maided down to see how receptive she would be to idolin's and that sort of thing. There's a whole deep lore.

We need that novelization. We really do. Yeah. Yeah. The Wewear version starts a chapter one. And as you wrote here, Victor, the beginning of Square Enix has terrible font choices. Oh, God. Yeah.

I remember that. This is it. This is the turning point. We had the early two, early mid 2000s where we had all those beautiful fonts in like the the final fantasy advance versions and all those DS games that had great fonts super cute they were fantastic and this came along and just gives you a sans serif just boring just white bread it's very legible and that's all I can say for it yeah and we are still fighting that battle today 15 years later

How they haven't gotten the memo in 15 years of these horrible font choices is something I will never quite understand. I don't get it either. There's got to be a reason. They got it. Only they know. It's one of those secrets that a game company keeps close to its breast and nobody will ever know why. But for the first chapter, we kind of had three chapters combined for Wewear. And was this the one that was free or did it cost?

I can't remember off the top of my head. Oh, gosh. I don't think there was a free version. and you had to buy in, if I'm remembering correctly. Oh, you might be thinking of dimensions. That's what I'm thinking of, right. The prologue chapter for FF Dimensions was free. And then you still had a bunch of people complaining about how it was only three hours long,

and now you want me to pay for the game? Mobile games are never destined to be profitable. Yeah, boy. So, yeah, you have three chapters, and a lot of stuff goes down very quickly. Number one, as we said before, this game takes place 17 years. after the events of Final Fantasy 4. Cecil is a dad, as Victor pointed out, and Rosa is a mom, and they've had this kid named Seador.

Victor, go ahead and defend Seador's name right now. Okay, so I mentioned this. Nadia and I did a live-alive and episodic RPGs episode of Retronauts a couple years ago now, but I mentioned this on there that a lot of people, people complained about the name Seador. I'm calling you out Jason Schreier.

So many people had a problem with the name Seador. And in Japanese, so Golbez's real name is Theodore. Yes. So the brothers, Theodore and Cecil. Obviously, we can extrapolate from that.

Oh, Cecil wanted to name his kid after Theodore and it's Cecil's kid, so Seedore. Fine. Whatever. Right. But the Japanese version Golbez's name is spelled with the characters for Seyodororu

in Japanese. Seodor's name is spelled Seyodowa. So they would both be localized as Theodore if they existed in a vacuum. Both of those names are

Theodore. But to outline the fact that in Japanese, they are named slightly differently. They are variants on the same name. They decided in what I think is a really thoughtful localization choice to name him Cedar, instead of just calling him Theodore, because then you miss out on that discrepancy, that Cecil is still honoring the family lineage, but also giving him room to be his own person, which is of what Seador's story is about. localization choice.

I feel like it's really one of those like, you know, shit or go blind moments because what would I, I'm thinking what would I do? I might, I can't remember how Theodore's name was spelled in the DS version of Final Fantasy 4, but I might take that and spell it slightly differently. But it's also, as he said,

it makes perfect sense why he's named Seador, if he consider it in context, but a lot of people don't consider it in context. They go, who's kind of stupid name is Seador? Yeah. Yeah. Their alternative would be like naming him Theodowa.

I don't know. That would have been the literal. That would have been the literal change, but, yeah, they took some artistic license, and I think it reflects why Cecil named him that. So, yeah, I fully admit, I used to be one of those people, I used to be one of those people who was not a fan of the name Seador. And even though I still don't think it necessarily rolls off the tongue very well, I would certainly never name my own child, Seabor. Sure, yeah. I definitely appreciate it more in context, having had the chance to think about it and reflect on it. for many of the reasons you mentioned Victor

and I don't dislike it anymore again I don't dislike it's a great name but I'm used to it now and I go and I'm like okay that's a good name for the protagonist of this game being Cecil's son like I'm cool with it now I've made my peace with it. What I like best

is that there is a point much much much later in the game where Theodore and Cedaror get to talk and Goldbez Theodore I don't think he really has any response to the fact that this kid is named after him. It's just like Cool. Yeah, I don't remember seeing anything like that. All that drama?

Yeah. But by the way, I looked it up, Nadia, and the original, it was originally priced at 800 wee points for the first three chapters, meaning the prolog, Seador's tale, and Cecil's tale. And then everything after that, I'm sorry, prologues, Cedores and Keynes. King's Tale, yeah. Those three are 800 wee points. And then everything after that, starting with Rydia's tale, was 300 wee points. If you today told me that I could buy.

by a RPG that was five hours long and was only eight bucks, I would be ecstatic. Same. That's a dream. I'm too old to get mad over $30 games. I just am. I was there when I played $150 Canadian

for Final Fantasy Six. You can't really don't. Exactly. I mean, seriously. Like, you know, I was part of the generation that was buying in 64 games, right? Like, Kirby 64, the Crystal Shards came out and it was like 80 bucks at launch.

Like, $100 Canadian for a harvest moon 64. Exactly. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. Basically, when we start off, Cedor is training to become a red wing, and that involves going off and fighting some things and getting a, he has to get the rat's tail, doesn't he, to prove himself, which is a very rare item in the original Final Fantasy for it. It's always been that, though. Like, Final Fantasy has always had the rat tail as a mark of a champion. I think in the very first game, you had to give a rat's tail to Homet to upgrade.

I always thought that was an interesting little thing. But either way, yeah, he has to get this rat's tail to prove his worth. And as you're right here, Victor, it's a very, I wouldn't call it really pro-monarch bloodline purity is very weird. Yes, people keep saying to him, oh, you are the son of Rosa and Cecil, you can't help but be wonderful. And he's telling them to shut up already, like, because, yeah, that's true. He has one of people trailing him. His arc becomes, like, he has a few moments late game where he talks to Ursula about it. And the, even in the chapter itself, Cedor's arc is to go,

Actually, yeah, it is great to be of royal blood. I don't know why I was denying myself the joy of being a prince. And I should embrace the fact that I'm chosen because of my bloodline. And it seems very, very weird. In general, like, even FF4 original was pretty pro-monarchy. But that's just, you know, the kind of fantasy, yeah, pale that they're telling. But for this to be a game about, like, passing the torch onto the next general. generation. And, you know, that sort of generational shift, it's very weird for him to go,

actually, yeah, my very rich mom and dad are right. And I, yeah, I'm so glad you touched on that because that was, that was kind of interesting for me. I originally, I found that I identified with Seador when I first started the after years, because as Nadia knows, you know, I grew up more or less in the shadow of a celebrity father. And so I kind of. kind of was viewing Seador through the lens of having my own experience, having a dad who's just, you know, growing up, he was larger than life. And he's still, to this day, a huge celebrity. And our relationship has changed, and it's much better and more equitable now.

But growing up, that was very difficult. And so I saw a bit of myself in Seador in terms of how he was kind of feeling just, you know, stressed over the fact that his dad is just larger than life figure. And in his case, his dad saved the world. I mean, he's got it way worse than I ever did. But that he was trying to kind of forge his own path and define himself absent the context of his larger-than-life father. And I love that about his character. I saw a bit of myself in him.

And then, as you say, Victor, the way it ultimately ends is like, oh, well, actually, you know, finding myself and charting my own path, screw all that. I just want the privilege of being a prince. This is great. Hell yeah. Probe monarchy, let's go. I'm a prince. And I'm just going to be Cecil version two. That's my purpose.

And I completely fell off. He did come very, very close to losing his parents. And that probably brought him closer to them. And also by the end of the game, he is a, I think he's pretty much a red wing. And he's probably spending most of his time with Kane, actually, like doing training and whatnot. So Cecil is a king, but at least he's a good king. He's a cool dude. And I still like Cecil.

Don't get me wrong. I just, I think for me, in terms of seeing myself in Seador, I just kind of fell off a little bit because I'm like, wait, you were just all about trying to chart your own path in the context of your father being this larger than life figure. And now suddenly you're just cool with kind of embracing the fact that you've got royal blood and you are meant to be Cecil's successor. And I'm like, I just feel like they could have gone in a slightly more interesting way with that. I understand completely. Yeah. I think there is a bit of, I also put it in the notes, but you get Kane as sort of a piccolo to.

to see it or is go on. He doesn't throw him into a cliff, though. Not quite, yeah. Kane, you know, full disclosure, always been one of my favorite Final Fantasy characters ever. I very much like his arc in this game. When I first heard the, oh, no, here comes Dark Can again. I said, oh, shit, here we go again.

Because if you know Kane, as sickly as I do, you know that there was a supplementary story in Final Fantasy 4 advance and the PSP version of the game, where everyone kind of has a lunar trial, which comes up in Final Fantasy 14, by the way, hint, hint, hint. And his was all about his darker desires, basically, where subconsciously or maybe even consciously, he wants to kill Cecil and he wants to take roses for himself

because he's jealous of their love. And he's also jealous of the fact that Cecil has their Red Wings, which you don't really get it much in the Western version of the translation. But the Red Wings essentially pushed out the dragoons from Barron. And he's, since the dragoons are a position of, like, heredity and tradition. and all that. Like, that's a very, very big thing to lose. So he kind of has that resentment. And in Final Fantasy 4 advance,

he has to deal with that head-on. And I was actually looking at that scene again where it's basically really set up interesting, but there's a murder mystery with a bloodied lance and all those other cool stuff. It seems like he resolves it, but no, there is a lingering thread of, I'm pushing this all down inside me,

and it's going to be okay. Everything's going to be freaking great. Now, the thing with Final Fantasy for the after years is somebody played, persona four before making this game. Uh-huh. And it is very much, the dark Kane chapter in particular is very much, I am now, thou art I. They kind of get to, they take a long, long, long path to that, you know, realization that my dark side is myself and I am my dark self. But until then,

uh, basically Kane is where we left him at the end of Final Fantasy Four, which is on Mount Ordeals, you know, trying to deal with his jealousy and, you know, trying to train to become a dragoon, et cetera, et cetera, sad anime boy tropes. And he, and he's, and he's not. And he his, he's in the mirrored chamber where Cecil became a paladin and his dark side just kind of comes out of the wall and like the Kool-Aid man and just knocks him out and starts running amok throughout the kingdom, throughout Baron. And so you have two Keynes with basically, you have quote unquote the hooded man, basically Kane's okay side. And you have the dark dragoon, noir dragoons, so whatever it's called, you have the bad dragoon like going around being an

asshole over in Barron. And it is a hooded man, good Kane, who kind of goes after Dark Kane, I guess, and decide, okay, I got to eat this guy again or whatever because he's, I can't just leave him running around. And he meets Seador, who at this time, like, bad things are going down in the kingdom. Cecil is obviously something's very wrong with him. Rose is not doing well either. And so Cecil's kind of on his, sorry, Seidore is on his own without his parents. And Kane kind of takes him under his wing and, you know, teaches him how to survive, how to fight. And there's a scene I really like in the game where Cecil, sorry, Seador, damn that name, and Kane go up to Barron. And this is when things are bad.

And Kane talks to Cecil and to see something is very, very wrong. So he goes back out and he, you know, Seador's like, hey, I have my parents are there. Did you speak to them? And Kane realizes he doesn't have to know. He doesn't have to see his parents like this. So he kind of like, you know, says, no, they're not there. And maybe a lie isn't always a good thing. but he was trying to protect Cedore, basically.

And I like it when a character does that. Like, I know he's very jealous of Cecil, but he's not like, one of the worst tropes in the world I despise is Snape from Harry Potter because, like, your mother rejected me, therefore I'm going to take it out on you. And I've kind of had that with me, except involved with teachers unions on my grandfather.

But in the case of like someone picking on a kid because they're the product of like your rival and the woman you loved, just go to hell. Like, Kane never, ever, ever did that. He was always good. And just, I don't know, I appreciated that bit about him. I love that. I think it's a great moment when he says that they're not there

and just, like, turns him away from the throne room. And I love that the dark cane isn't just, like, a rampaging monster. No. Like, the dark cane, when we encounter him, I think one of the first times, again, it's all out of chronological order. But he's also just up on Mount Ordeals contemplating. And that's, there's some crossover with Porum's tale and Porum is in danger. And he goes to save her and the Macedian mages.

And, you know, eventually he turns on her and takes the crystal and whatever. But we also get to see that like he's not just crazy. and you get that acknowledgement when when Kane reconciles with himself is that you are a part of me, you're not pure evil, whatever, you know, it's Youngian psychology stuff that is just pervasive

in this kind of media. But, yeah, that Dark Kane isn't just, yeah, out to, I mean, he is out to kill Cecil, but he's also not brainless. He really has a bad for Cecil. Yeah, yeah. If anything, there's a bit more nuanced to Dark Kane's character than there is in the original FF4, which I found, I always found that to be interesting and a little bit refreshing, actually.

And I also just like the idea of Kane trying to go do the same Paladin thing that Cecil did and failing and seeing what happens when you fail that trial. I don't know. It was fun. Yeah. Yeah, I thought it was pretty good. After this is good, guys. There actually is a little bit of interesting visual storytelling. There is, of course, a scene where the party fights Dark Kane.

If Dark Kane aims for Rosa, he'll always miss. He'll never hit her. That's fantastic. I love stuff like that. Yeah, so that's a nice little detail. In general, this game has a lot of storytelling through battle mechanics, through combat, which is something that, you know, FF4 really pioneered. You're right.

You know, with Tela and using Meteor and, you know, know, it using up all his health and stuff. You know, there was, there was this bridge between gameplay mechanics and narrative that four really, really pioneered. And of course, in the 17 years between that and after years, a lot has changed and that has been expanded upon. And the stuff that after years tries to pull still feels a little dated. But it's nice that they sort of recognize that lineage, too.

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Head over to hyperX.com and check out the selection and enter code HXPN, as in HyperX podcast network, in all caps to get your 15% discount at checkout. Previously on Chat of the Wild. But what we have to do is there are these seeds in these little holes that we have to put specific water on to make them grow up. And we get the Mario sound effect for the vines going up. What exactly is the sound effect for Mario that they use? Can you guys just do that simultaneously again?

Blu-blu-l-lop. Thanks. Chat of the Wild Breaking down Zelda and Zelda-like games One Dungeon at a Time Wednesdays on the HyperX Podcast Network So the next chapter

The I Dolan Shackle This is a Ridiya's Tale I like what you said here Victor This chapter basically is what amounts to a real version of Keep Aerith alive Playground Rumors So this is brilliant

And it's something that's lost In the 3D version This is one of those differences that I feel where the 3D version overcorrects a little bit and loses some of the charm of the 2D version. Because how it works is that like you play through all of these optional chapters and then for the final chapter, you get to choose all the save data you want to load and it carries over your characters and items and levels into the final chapter, which incentivizes you to do as much as you can in all of these. individual chapters. Part of the episodic model was, you know, you'll get a chapter released each month. So you have a month to play as much of it as possible and, you know, ring every single droplet of gameplay out of this stone as you can until the next chapter releases,

which is something that's lost now that, you know, you just buy it wholesale. But one of those things was carrying over characters. And there are two chapters, Rydia's tale and Edge's tale. where you can miss out on characters that you can bring into the final chapter. Right. So Rydia's tale stars Ridia and Luca. Yes, Luca's great in this game, by the way.

Yeah, I love. She's a fantastic character. But there is also Luca's puppets, Kalka and Brina. You can get them in Final Fantasy 14. I love that. They're fantastic. I love them so much. But part of the narrative requires that

They basically salvage Calca and Brina for parts to repair their airships. Right. They can get out of the underworld. Underworld, yeah. But in one of the dungeons, there is a single room in their final dungeon. If you go to it during the correct moon phase and fight enemies that have a like 1% drop rate of certain items. And if you collect enough of them, you can use those parts to repair Calca and Brina so that when you import your save data, you get to use them in the final chapter.

They will be under-leveled. They will be completely useless. But it's so like playground rumor. I heard if you talk to the guy on top of Cinebar, Jim, he'll give you a mew, you know, that kind of thing. Like, it's so off the beaten path and sounds so inexplicit. but it's real and I feel like that's such a cool throwback to that kind of

how those rumors and things pass. Yeah, it was actually making me think of the, well, back when in Final Fantasy 4 it was called Final Fantasy 2 and I was on the S&S, it was called the Pink Puff that you'd find in the moon for like one room and like one out of 2505 encounters, one out of 255 drops, it's absolutely ridiculous to get this sword

that wasn't really worth it, But it was for the clout. And I remember it being one of the first, like, hidden things. I remember hearing about an RPG on a BBS of all the things. God help me. Like someone was mentioning like the pink pops. And I said, what's a pink puff? And I said, oh, well, it's a very, very rare thing and get in Final Fantasy 4.

And I was just like, wow, that's really cool. So that's just like one of the earliest examples of someone on the internet telling me like, hey, do you know you can revive eras? Although in this case, it was true. And I think this specifically touches on something I kind of love about the after years in general. Like, again, I don't think it's the best game. not even close but not only is there is there this very acute example of kind of that

playground rumor type feeling in ridia's tale i always got kind of that sense from the after years in general like the after years kind of feels like an alternate scenario like an alternate secret scenario that plays out if you do something very specific you know obviously that's not what it is but like the way the after years always came off to me is kind of like a like a sequel that could have been a hidden extra scenario in the original game all along that remixes all these things you know in weird and unsettling ways. Kind of like the second quest in Zelda, for example. Exactly. It kind of felt like that. And I love stuff like that. I've been talking to quite a few people recently about how much I loved that TriForce percent run that was done recently at

SGDQ because, yeah, you guys know exactly what I'm talking about because it made manifest, even though it wasn't actually all in the game, it made manifest with in 64 era assets, all these playground rumors and all these things we've had in our head growing up. And we got to see it play out on screen. And the after years always kind of felt to me a bit like a playground rumor made manifest. And I think that's kind of what I like about it so much, even if it isn't necessarily my favorite game to go back and play. Right. It does have that kind of whimsical feeling to it. Yeah. I think there's a weird sort of uncanniness to all the assets being reused, except for like your character sprites. That's just a little decentralizing.

That's like, especially because it's such a tiny thing, but the overworld sprites are twice as tall as they were on the original FF4, which they started doing with FF6, where, you know, your overworld sprites had different proportions. than your battle sprites for the earlier 2D Final Fantasies. And to have, especially because after years goes back and forth between some flashbacks to original Super Famicom FF4, and they're using their old squashed sprites. And then it jumps to the current time, and they're using these taller, different proportions sprites. There's a weird sort of, I don't know,

there's a dissonance going on with some things that I feel is reflected in the presence of the mysterious girl. and the summons being used against you and all of these things that feel a little off-kilter. People would kill me for saying this, but twin peaks. That's like saying the Dark Souls of whatever. The Twin Peaks of Final Fantasy. Yeah.

One of those, speaking of just going off of the playground rumors stuff, we haven't talked about the band system, which is like the big gameplay mechanic. I never used it very much, to be honest. Me neither, yeah. So I found this integral because I realized in these playthrus that you sort of have to approach the after years as if it's like a dungeon crawler. Yeah. Especially by the end.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. It's not as easy as OGFF4. It is difficult. You do have to have a pretty good understanding of your character's traits. And because you're basically resetting from the beginning every time you start a new. chapter, you have to sort of recalibrate your brain to, you know, who's my healer? Do I have a healer? Who's going to be DPS? Like, how do I, how do I roll with having a completely new party

every few hours? And I think that's actually one of the game's weaknesses in a way because going back to the underground chapter for a second, it's like, this is where you start to discover there's a big problem with Final Fantasy, the after years. And that is, it's a real slog to play sometimes. As I recall in chapter, basically, Rydia is like, okay, something's very wrong and I dole in town. I got to get the hell out of here. But she has to go to the surface of the underworld. I know that's confusing, but she has to ascend from the town of summoned monsters slash the fame arch by like kind of like going backwards from the summon cave that you already know. And these are very much like, these are still very strong battles. These are still like the

battles that you remember when you went down the first time in Final Fantasy Four. But you have And you have Luca and God bless Calca and Breedna, but you don't have very much. They're trying their best. They're trying their best. You have a lot of difficult unbalanced battles in this game that are made worse by the fact that sometimes you are just not given the tools you need to beat them. Like I remember one encounter. I think it was in Damned Sion somewhere where here's a red jelly. Okay, great.

Where's my magic user? Where's my black magic user? Nope. Do I have, you know, the items I could throw out this red jelly because you can't. can't really hit it with your sword physically. It's like I might have had a couple from from past instances, but you're kind of screwed. You can run or you can hope you have the right item. And that's not exactly great balanced gameplay.

That's I expect better from Square. See, I swing the other way. And I think this is like this feels like like a dungeon crawler, like an Etriian Odyssey or like a persona Q where you have to plan your resources out beforehand. And, like, I, especially in some of those chapters where you have just like a party of two people who are level five and have just nothing with them, you, you bring your Antarctic wins, all of those, all of those attack items that you never used in the original. Because they got to work out here. Because this was, this was developed by Matrix Software, who is just coming off of doing the DS remake, which is notorious for being. way harder than the original. Everything about FF4DS

is there to subvert your expectation of how a battle is supposed to go. So I think there's a real charm in the difficulty that I don't blame other people for not enjoying. I'm a broken human being. I'm

profoundly busted and I had a really, really good time figuring this out. And like I say, part of that was figuring out the band system, which is not intuitive at all. And they sort of remedy a bit in the 3D remake. But basically, if you have characters who share some kind of bond, you can try to... So, okay, first of all, on the character who's initiating the band attack, you have to select an ability from their menu that you want to use as the basis for your band.

Then you select a character and then you select from that character's menu of abilities. what you want to combine your ability with. Then you have to wait for both characters' ATB gauges to fill, and then it will let you know if you've successfully found a combination. Who has time for all that, though? No one. It just was so poorly implemented. Which is where the playground rumor thing comes in,

because when I discovered that if you have Cecil, Rosa, Cain, Rydia, and Edge, and you use all of their abilities together, you get to use a final attack called Final Fantasy. Yes. It limit breaks, and it can do over 9,999 damage, and it was the coolest thing I had ever heard of in my life.

That is really cool, to be fair. I think I come, well, not even I think. I know I come down closer to where you feel on this, Nadia. Like I have no issue with dungeon crawlers as a genre. I know they appeal to a lot of people out there. They're just not for me specifically. I've never been into my Etriene Odyssey's, my room factories. That's just not my thing.

And I think that might be the after years as great as failing, not because it makes it a bad game, but because it kind of kneecaps its own appeal to a wider audience because when you see the name Final Fantasy 4, the after years, you think, oh, Final Fantasy 4, Part too. This is going to play like Final Fantasy 4 did. And really, even though there are the surface level similarities, of course, the base gameplay is very similar to Final Fantasy 4, the way it all plays out couldn't be more different. Because as you've been saying, Victor, it's essentially a dungeon crawler. And that, I don't think, is what a lot of people are looking for from a sequel to a mainline Final Fantasy game. And that's, I think, what really hurts the after years' appeal

and its legacy more than anything, even though it doesn't make it a bad game. No, for sure, for sure. And if you really want to punish yourself, then you go for the challenge dungeons at the end of the channels, which are loot-based, brutally hard gauntlets that even if you max your character levels out for that chapter, you will struggle every single time.

And I love them. I love them. I don't have the patience. I don't have the patience for sure. Well, this is another sort of balance thing where they overcorrected a little bit with the 3D remake because those challenge dungeons are gone from the Steam version. I guess they would be, yeah. And that that removes some incentive to like focus on a save file for each chapter. Yes, I remember that.

Even if I'm not going to do a playthrough of the after years, I'll hop in and, you know, run through one of the chapters that I like in two hours. and then if I have a little bit more time, like, okay, I'll try the challenge dungeons for a little bit and see how far I can get. But you're right. That's so antithetical to the design of original FF4. It is more in line with FF4DS and Matrix Software's kind of stuff. But, yeah, they're mercilessness.

But moving along to Yang's tale, because one thing we forgot to mention is that Yang is a dad now, which is why Victor said, this is a dad game. It absolutely is. Yang, as I recall, there was a meteor fall around Fable Castle and he goes to investigate it. And how did they run out of fuel in a sailboat? Victor I forgot about that. I completely forgot about that. Yeah.

I remember I remember liking this tale because it subverted my expectations of what was actually going on with Yang, or I guess it's young. I can't say young. Everyone, I don't say young. I can't do it. Yeah, it's Yang for me. But like, you know, I like probably some other players, just kind of assumed that Yang was being that gruff dad, like, oh, I'm going to protect my daughter.

I don't want her to, you know, I don't want it to be in danger. And I'm going to be that kind of traditional asshole dad who doesn't. doesn't want to put my daughter in the line of duty or, you know, put her in danger even though I'm this big shot martial artist who saved the world. I thought he was just kind of being a bit of a jerk and a bit misogynistic. I just kind of assumed that. You know, he was like that shotgun dad. Yeah, that's not at all what he was doing. Yeah. And that's, and it subverted my expectations. That's not at all what he was doing the whole time. He was in fact, preparing her because she was a little bit too focused on getting stronger. Yeah. And I love that subversion of my

expectations in this chapter. You can kind of see in the, if you look at the, uh, CGI intro for Final Fantasy for after years, you do see this kind of mirrored bit where Yang is training with his daughter. And that was in the original CGI for the first Final Fantasy 4. And it's the exact same movement. It's just the Yang is doing it alone. Oh, that's so cool.

I thought that was a really cute little addition there. I love that. I, in general, I love that CG intro and, and sort of the, the shots that it remakes from the original and then the little additions. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I'm a big fan of it.

I'm a big fan of Moses Squares, CGI. They rarely go wrong with that stuff. Same. Yeah. And then we get to, this was interesting to me, Palim's tale and Palom and Parham and Parham in this game. They were inseparable twins in Final Fantasy 4 to the point that they kind of died together, kind of. Whereas here and after years, like, they've really kind of gone their own ways.

And that's always interesting when you have a story where twins grow up very close and then suddenly they just kind of have a crack. and say, okay, well, we've got to go our separate ways now. And that's kind of what's going on here. Victor, the way you wrote down about the chapter, I don't recall being a very fun chapter to do. I did kind of like the character of Lenora. Lenora.

Is that how you pronounce your name? Yeah, Lenora. Is it a Lenora? Okay. Yeah, I like her just fine. This chapter's story, I don't know if it makes sense. I need to go back and maybe read it properly because, yeah, Yeah, the sage or the elder of Massidia sends Palom to go train a white mage instead of Porum.

And Porum's a little bummed about it and Palom's confused. Yeah. And then he shows up and the E-Pops and Troia are confused about why he's there. It sounds like my life. Everyone's just confused. Where are they supposed to be and where they're going? But then the twist is that they know he's supposed to be there because Troia is preparing for war so they want black magic in their ranks but then why were they confused in

the first place anyway it's all moot because lenora uh decides she doesn't want to be any popped anyway and moves on with her life isn't she doesn't she become a sage i can't remember exactly she decides that she's going to pursue uh sagedom yeah right because palvin quorum had decided whether that's what they wanted to do with their lives they were facing i think some pressure to succeed the great sage but they're like i don't know if i want to do this actually yeah i remember this um palum is the boy i always makes them up halm's the boy he's pretty bitter in this one and i think part of that is because as he said as she has expectations put upon him was parham studying to be a sage as well i know she was i don't think she was studying to be a sage but i also don't know what her

life goal is yeah it was kind of mushy it was from what i remember i don't know if she knew what her life goal was in her chapter either, which is fair. Yeah, I think I'm mixed on these, on these chapters because Palom and Porham were two of my favorite characters in the original. And I really, I really like, or I should say Porum was, Palom always pissed me off. But I like Palom a little bit more in this game, because I could understand, I could see the through line for his character. I can see why he grew up the way he did, why he's so bitter.

And I like the idea that, you know, you play as Palom in the original game, and he's this fledgling mage, who's trying to prove himself. And now in the after years, he's actually the mentor to Lenora. And I like playing as a palim who is more self-assured, more experienced, and now is acting as the mentor. And I think that's cool. But this also, I think, is a chapter that's emblematic of what I see as the after years as having a bit of an identity crisis. And what I mean by that is it's so that the story is so consumed with this idea of passing on the torch to the next generation. And that's great.

That's a great story theme. But then this is one of those chapters that bends over, not only backwards, but sideways, diagonally, and inverted to make sure you remember this thing that happened from the original game. Hey, remember when Palham and Plum petrified themselves to sacrifice for the greater good? Well, guess what? Palham does that again here in this chapter, too. Yeah. And it's like the game is, it seems so torn between telling the story of passing the torch to the next generation, but also. beating into your head all these things all these gotcha remember that moment yeah original ff4 that it can't quite step out of its own shadow yeah those get pretty egregious later on too yeah uh but i i can't tell maybe it's just the nature of the pacing of a 2d top down RPG with no voice acting or or whatever but i feel like the the moment where because palham does really have a really great moment where uh one of the

Maynids is trying to steal the crystal and he wraps his arms around it and casts break on himself which I think is really cool you know that it is sort of again it's the same thing but it's him doing it alone there's he he sends Lenora away he teleports her out of the room and then immediately after Lenora comes back and heals him of break and it's like I feel like there could have been like it undermined the tension in a weird way and yeah yeah we didn't have I don't know that there's some way that could have been staged well and lenora can could have had some moment where she acknowledges like hey you can't go back to the the tricks that worked before or something you know like there is a way to subvert that and make it interesting

also kind of weird that like her break immediately worked whereas a whole thing in final Fantasy 4 was you cannot break the break yourself because they made them table into stone out of their realingly. Which could say something about like Palom's hesitance. Like maybe he

in his heart he didn't really want to sacrifice himself and there's interesting tension there and character development to be had there but it doesn't nail it. It doesn't commit to those ideas. Side note, wasn't this game also the one where you could click like 50 porn men?

and I think Lenora would throw one out if you... So, one of the best side quests. One of the best side quests in Final Fantasy history is in the after years. And people will remember that there is a secret bar in Troia in the original... Was it Troy? No, wasn't it in...

Wasn't it in King G.S Castle? There's the secret one in the Dwarves Castle. Yes, but isn't there one in the original in FF4? or two or maybe this is all new after year's stuff because we we get a real good rule of threes so at the the pub in troia there's someone standing by the wall and he says like you got the goods kid uh if you search around you'll find an npc who will sell you a membership card it's very expensive you have to get a ton of money to do it uh they they brought the cost down in the 3d remake but you bring in the card he says all right

welcome and you go into this this secret bar and it's all built up because all of these 2D Final Fantasies have a moment where you go talk to a dancer who's a very cute feminine sprite and she will do a little dance and it's always different and they always have different music and it's it's sort of it's like a puff puff style running gag so you get to this first secret bar and all these girls come out and then they spin around and reveal that they're all old women. Oh, no. And Palim's so disappointed that he doesn't get a,

he gets a lap dance from a bunch of old ladies. But if you search around the bar, you can talk to another guy standing by the wall and says, he says something like, are you satisfied with the heights you've reached or something like that? And if you say no, then he'll be like, then present to me the secret item.

And of course, you have to search around, find another membership card. And you can get to the second level of this secret bar. I think this one's called, oh, because the first one's called the King's Gambit, I think. The second bar is called the Queen's Gambit.

You enter there, you sit down at the table. Palom gets really excited for the girls to come out. The girls come out and they run down to the table and they grab Lenora and they bring her up and give her a lap dance. That's so good. And she's all embarrassed. They have a back and forth.

And the dialogue between them is different. The more times you do it, too. She's like, I think the second time, she's like, actually, that was kind of fun. Let's go again. Nice. Then you go talk to somebody else. And he says, are you satisfied with the heights you've reached? And then if you go find another item, then you get to go to the third secret bar, which is called the emperor.

And that's where two dozen dancing girls come out, floods the screen with dancers. They come down, they grab Palum and Lenora, drag them both up onto stage, give them a lap dance. And then Lenora and Palum join them in their choreography. And they spell out with their sprites on stage. They spell out a big, I think they spell out FF4 or something like that. I never got this. Now I'm fast. Me neither. I never did.

Fantastic. After. Yeah. Then you can search through the back and you can go into the girls' change rooms and you can find secret stores. And one of the stores, one of the dancers, will sell Lenora the queen's gear, which is the queen's whip. Of course.

which has a chance of turning an enemy into a toad and then yeah I think it's called the Queen's Gear and it's all you know it's all suggestive of a dominatrix which is very

against type for Lenora I was gonna say she's not the dominatrix type but I guess that's the joke totally and the Queen's Whip is the only way you can get a secret band in the final chapter if you have you have to have five female characters who are all equipped with whips

and then you unlock I'll find the name later but anyway that's the highlight of Palom's tale for me is this weird side quest I didn't even know about that it's kind of emblematic of how unique and interesting the after years is as a game

in the wider spectrum of Final Fantasy games too just because this is a single chapter like two to four hours I guess and yet there is so much that you can dive into that you can there's so much side stuff to to dig into not equally across every chapter of course but there's so much you can do in these

individual chapters sometimes yeah especially considering the fact that they sometimes aren't more than a couple of hours and don't figure that much into your final party and it's funny because i as we talk i keep seeing all these kind of uh commonalities between this game and live alive and we were talking about how takashi tokita yeah exactly and you can see so many through lines between this and live alive which i just finished the remake of like a couple of weeks ago and as we talk I'm like oh wow there's so much of live alive's DNA in this game as well and I never saw that before yeah yeah for sure Hey, Retronauts, it's Jeremy.

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Again, that's hellofresh.com slash retro 65, where code retro 65 will get you 65% off plus free shipping on America's number one meal kit. Yeah, one thing I think about after years is that some chapters are definitely strong than others. And the next chapter is Edge's Tale, which I remember being kind of eh on. There were some interesting things. Like you do kind of have to adapt to solo play, which is interesting. I think what bothered me was Edge is kind of the king of Eblen now. And he has the quote unquote Eblen 4 following him.

I do not remember a single one of these gibronies. I just, they just did not stick whatsoever. Suki Noah, Gecko, uh, uh, is. Zangetsu. How could you forget everyone's favorite Final Fantasy characters? As you say their names, I start vaguely remembering them. They had face masks and Zengetsi. Isn't that the name of the sword that Auden has and like ripped you apart? No, that's Zontetzucan, yeah.

Oh, okay. That's what you're thinking of Odin's side. Yeah. And Victory wrote here, I wish they explored the parallels between Ribicante, Edge, and the arch fiends. I'm trying to recall what that was about. Right. So... It's reflected even in Ogaro's redesign of Edge. He's basically wearing Rubicante's cape as a scarf.

I did not even notice that. Right. I forgot about that. Yeah. And you do get a little bit of it in this and in one of the final chapters where you're trying to recollect all of Rydia's Idolans. But the fact that Edge is now the leader of a team who specialize in elements. Right.

I see. You have Izayoi is water. Sukinoa is wind. Zangetsu is lightning and gecko is fire. And Edge is like the culmination of all these. He's the master of all of these elements. And that's why they all train under him. Yeah, basically.

And there are little nods to it. But I feel like they could have explored that a little bit more. But the fact that he's got that scarf, he's got this team of his own elemental arch fiends I think was really fun and again I yes they are forgettable characters but I love their designs so much they they have really great colors really striking designs I I recommend anybody even if you're not going to play the after years go look at Ogaro's character designs because they're they're wonderful they are they are great designs yeah and one thing I will say kind of really jumping ahead here but of course time is is slimmer than I'd like is you do see

the four fiends later on, much, much later in the game. And in the moon, you encounter them again and you fight them. And one thing that stuck with me was Scarmilione. Is that he pronounced the same? Remember last time I was having trouble with it, Victor? Scarmilione. That's the one. Miglione.

That's how you say it. Okay. Yeah. And, oh, my lawn z. My, okay, is my one said, yeah. When I was a kid, it was just, or like, well, no, I should say a team. When I first saw that name was like, Scarmigljone. Yeah, that's his name.

Spaghetti. Yeah. But one thing, there was a scene in there where Golbez talks to the arch fiends as, like, kind of friends. And he says, Scarmilione says to Goliz, you're like the only one ever treated me with respect. And thank you for that. So we do get some closure with the arch fiends. But as he said, it could be better with Mr. Edge here and his four sub fiends for pseudo fiends, minions. Looking at their character designs now, I look them up.

I do remember them now. I didn't remember them, like, just going into discussing this chat. after, but I do remember them now, and Nata, you'll appreciate this. I'm actually, weirdly enough, I'm reminded of the four guardians from Mega Man Zero, like how they're all kind of, oh, heck, yeah. Yeah, because they're like, they're like color-coded offshoots of X, right? Right, right. Yeah.

Fafnir who's red and fire-based and Leviathan is, well, a lighter blue and water-based. Yeah, so it kind of reminds me of that. That's pretty cool. That's a good point out right there. Go ahead, Victor. I know we have to move on I'm so sorry I made six pages of notes but this is another chapter

like Rydias that has optional characters because when you go off to play as these four different ninja there is permadeff and if you choose to keep going even after someone has died and you reload or you use that save file for your final chapter they have canonically died

so you can miss out on four characters for the end of the game. How does that work in like the more complete versions like the PSP or 3D version? Like is there still primitive? They took it out of the the Steam version. Same with how Calca and Brina will just automatically be in your party in the Steam version. They took out the Permadeath. And there's a really great moment where you're playing as Gecko and it's, again,

it's a crossover with Yang's tale. He encounters some Fabul monks who are being attacked by a Maynid. and gecko has been sent you are all on reconnaissance missions you are not supposed to engage with the enemy and you are given a choice as gecko do you help the monks or do you hang back and if you choose to help them he gets killed by the mainid

and you just have to move on so yeah there's cool stuff going on here no that absolutely is I really like that's one of my favorite things about this game there's a pervasive sense of mystery to the whole thing where it feels like so many different things could possibly happen from chapter to chapter, where you're not quite sure if you try this thing, what's going to happen? And perma death, it's a perfect example of one of those things.

Like, and I don't love that that more experimental, ballsy stuff was removed from the steam. Right. Like, I don't like that at all. Keep that stuff in. That's what gives the after year's so much of its unique DNA. No, for sure. Yeah. Moving on to Porum's tail.

Now, I do not remember a thing about Porum's tale. So I'm glad you wrote this down on victory because you have free mages. And now that is, of course, Porum. That is, who else is the Eritia? No, it's Porum and a nameless white mage and a nameless black maids that are assigned to you by the elder. That's right. And the white mage's portrait is just them looking away from the camera. I'm like, you square ennex, why do you got to do this to me?

Couldn't even give her a face. Yeah. Just turn away. This is kind of one of the weak. ones in that I also can't remember what happens in it really other than other than I thought it was

my cane I think is a dark cane well you team up with Kane and then he turns on you at the end because yeah but I thought it was interesting trying to manage a party that you are forced to have of just three mages that was interesting as I recall I remember the game

I remember this chapter not being very engaging story wise but I remember having fun playing it yeah which is kind of reversed for a lot of the content in this game. Yeah, I think this is the one that jumps around chronologically the most, too. You actually start out in the time of FF4, then you play a section that is a few years ago, and then you play a section that is current day, but also not chronologically in order with the last chapter you played.

So this one's, it's in a weird spot, which is too bad. Yeah, for sure. There's also, there was a slump for sure. in the middle of this, I don't know how I would describe it, Chronicle, where I was just like, do I even want to bother by the next part? And I think maybe that came around this point, which is Edward's tale. This is not a good chapter.

He wrote it down yourself, and you're absolutely right, because there's so much retreading of old areas. And just, it's funny, because I actually think Edward is by far, like one of the best characters in this game. He is the one. He gets a huge glow up, number one. He's in charge of damn science. which is his castle and everything's thriving.

He's great. I've said this a million times before, but I will say it again. It has the meanest line in RPG history where a woman says to Edward, if Anna was still alive, your air would have been born by now. And it's just like,

what? That's not even villain. Just some passing old lady. It's like, here's a game where Cecil has a kid and Zyang has a kid. And by God, like poor Edward. He dearly,

dearly loved Anne to the point where he's not with anyone else in this game. I do think he gets with Harley at the end, though, which is awesome because Harley's amazing. But so Edward is the one who figures out something's going on. And he uses a callback from the first game in a really clever way, the whisperweeds slash twin harp. I think they called it in the first translation of the game,

which wouldn't have worked in this case. No. But yeah, he's the one who's like, he kind of goes underground. He kind of gathers the intel. And he actually in this game, he's a pretty good fighter,

but not enough to make this horrible, retread of the waterway three times like any fun. It's truly miserable. I mean, is there anything that could make going through that dungeon three times fun though? I don't know that anything could. One thing that...

Oh, go ahead. Sorry, one thing we didn't even bring up is the crazy ass moon phase thing they had going on in this game. Which is... That's right, yeah. Like, I would have been a little more tolerant. So here's the idea, as I recall. It's like, certain

moon phases are like, okay, one day is you have stronger white magic but weaker black magic and a stronger attack like during another phase but weaker defense and I can see this actually being kind of an interesting system if they had found a way to balance it out and make the time move beyond you go to an inn and you sleep and you can change the moon phase that way because it's so pointless and so redundant if you have okay I have a boss coming up but I know they're weak to physical attacks so I want to be at the height of my you know physical prowess so I'm going to sleep four times because the stupid moon's not going to not going to be on my side otherwise it's a really interesting idea that is not used to any sort of maximum capacity it's it's

just underbaked and that's exactly yeah it really is because i think it does have potential but yeah for what it is it's just an annoyance and it's not just one of those things that get cited as a reason not to play the game and it does it does throw wrenches and things a bit but yeah the edward other than his glow up um not a great chapter any chapter that put you through the waterway any chapter that put you through the freaking sealed cave i hate the sealed cave so much all I never need to go back to the sealed cave ever again. So terrible. I think it gets better once I realize, okay,

Edge's shadow bind magic will work on the dickheads at the trap doors. Trapped doors, yeah. Yeah. And of course, in this game, guess what's back? Hey, it's your old friend, the trap doors. You get to fighting with much weaker party members this time. Isn't that just fantastic? But thankfully, after Edward's tale, things really kind of take a turn for the better in the game, I think, because you start with Lunarian's, Lanurian's tale, Lunarian.

Lunarian. Lunarian. Why can't I say the Blue Planet that was? Now, basically anything to do with the Lunarians, I'm pretty cool on in Final Fantasy 4. And you said, Victor, it starts with an inversion of the ending of 4. Yeah. So it starts with you playing as Golbez.

That's right. Through all of the major fights from 4. All of the times where you were playing as Cecil and his party fighting Goldbez, you get to be Golbez and do these flashback fights. And you are starting as Golbez waking up at the bottom of the final dungeon from four. And you are retracing your steps back through the lunar subterrain up to the lunar surface. It starts out where there's no encounters. And then as you get closer to the surface and realize something's wrong, then you start getting into combat.

And Golbez is beefy. He's got great spells, bio rips through everything. It always does. All the Agas. It's really, really satisfying to play. After, you know, seven chapters of being disempowered every single time, you get this one chapter where you're just a tank. And that's definitely an inversion of four, because whereas you kind of get a moment to see

what Golbez and Fusoya are like magic-wise in four, it feels like the after you, years. It's just there's these two guys totally in their domain, just throwing around the strongest spells because they can. And it is a lot of fun. It is one of those chapters that I remember having a lot of fun playing. And it's also one of those chapters that does atmosphere very well. We talked about how the game can be kind of haunting at times. And yeah, that's definitely the case here because as you say, Victor, he wakes up. I recall it being kind of quiet or silent. And as you get closer to the surface, you're not just attacked by enemies. You're attacked by the creepy ass enemies, like face and breath and all those weirdos

who came after you at the bottom of the dungeon and four. Right. And if you go investigate, you see all the sleeping Lunarians in all their pods. And if you go investigate one, one of the guys has a lustful lallyho. Of course he does. What did you pick up from Earth? Yeah. That sample, animal sample.

I picked up this magazine. I think I love about lustful lollie hoes. I said it's Cecil's favorite. So he has like a dwarf fetish. That's just hilarious to me. I mean, the dwarves are kind of cute. but anyway. Very. So that was a... Luke is adorable.

Yeah. So that was a good start to the ending of the game, which although is not always 100% great and fun to play, is pretty solid. And it really, really, really gives us some character development, especially with Cecil and Kane,

who literally fights his dark self. Although he does that back in Baron. But the thing I like most about the dungeon is 100 floors. It really does have that dungeon crawler taste, I think, Victor, that you were talking about earlier. But it doesn't a lot more, a lot better than outside of the moon because it really does have the Etri and Odyssey feel. And you do have enemies as tough as FOE is coming after you.

And they can, I think basically this whole, this whole dungeon edge and his like shadow on magic, just save my ass. But you get closer and closer to the core of the moon. As you do, you actually have these scenes where you beat these like, I think you beat really hard bosses. Then you're kind of treated to a vignette, like every 10 floors, where the characters just talk to each other and see where, you know, where they are and where they're going. I mean, Seisel is kind of broken out of his like stupor by sheer will of his own. Plus, I think Goldbez helps him out too. And he has to talk to like, Kane for the first time since Kane took off

10 years ago. And sorry, 17 years ago. So you do have some really nice story bits there. And in between you have those really, really like rough boss fights from pretty much. every Final Fantasy boss you can conceive it's absolutely nuts. They are brutal. Absolutely brutal. And I think maybe this is where after years gets a little bit of

its official fanfic criticism from. Because it is as though with this final chapter that a fan fig writer devised some ridiculously just dumb way to justify having all these bosses come back from other

Final Fantasy games and like, does it make sense? No, not really, but let's do it anyway. And while I think it is a bit too, I think it's a bit too simple to say, oh, yeah, the after years is just like an official fanfic. I don't think that's necessarily true in a general sense. I think that's just too reductive. And I don't think there are some of those. I don't appreciate the, how many people at the time used fan fiction derogatorily either.

Agreed. We had a lot of that at this time, a lot of people saying, oh, it looks like an art. RPG maker game. Oh, it, the story is fan fiction. Like, fan fiction is great. There are a lot of great RPG maker games. Like, that's, I really, I really hope we can get away from that, that sentiment. Completely agree. It's kind of like when people use indie as a descriptor for a video game, it's like, indie games aren't, they're not, they don't exist separately from the rest of the games in their genre. They're just games. They just have a smaller budget, but indie should not be used as a derogative term or pejorative. So I completely hear what you're saying. No, I agree.

I just want to say that we don't have time to get into everything about this final chapter, but there is a whole, there's like a world of ruin segment where you are given a very small party that has to go around and recollect your all-year-old party members and get your summons back. And it is also a very different, it's got a different flow to it. It opens up world you get the airship there's sort of like an adventure game element where you have to figure out what items you're going to need for certain summons to come back and what who you need in your party it's it's kind of clever um it's it's not as ambitious as as i think it could be but it does give you that sense of the world of ruin style like scavenger hunt before the final

battle sort of yeah totally yeah no i absolutely agree like the lunerian's tail and the crystals together, I think, are actually a pretty strong ending for this game, especially getting to play as Hot Gold Biz. Who is going to be, by the way, is going to be in Final Fantasy 14 at some point and everyone's going to lose their minds. It's going to be great because I think, yeah, yeah. And yet again, with this final chapter, we see DNA of Live Alive, where the final chapter is by far the longest one. Right. And it's also the one where you get to finally mix and match your characters that you've met over the course of the several other chapters. And so it is really fascinated to me. As we talk about this, just how much of Live Alive you can see reflected in the

after years. Yeah. One thing. At all of the crucial points where you encounter bosses, because you can only take five of your party members with you, everybody has different dialogue pertaining to each boss. So if you want to know what Kane's thoughts are on Barbaricia or Goldbez's thoughts are on the Magus sisters, like it, everyone has their own unique bit of dialogue. You know, for when you encounter the boss and then after you defeat the boss. And it's really cool. It has incentivized me to play through that whole finale again with a completely different party composition.

No, for sure. In fact, you say here that the descent is quite different from each version. Like, it's been a while since I've descended through the entirety of the moon, so I don't know the difference between the versions. Yeah. So the 3D version gets rid of a ton of floors. Oh, really? They only made it 20-something floors.

Really? But I love how stupidly just incredibly dumb 100 floors is. It's paired back quite a bit. And instead of the like lunar subterrain style maps, each boss is sort of fought in a recreation of the room. You fight them in in the FF4DS version. Oh, interesting. So it's shorter.

All the floors are shorter. I don't know how well it works Also you don't get the throwback fights With all of the old Final Fantasy bosses Because they took all those out Oh wow Because this game had a budget of $5 So they couldn't

They couldn't do new 3D models Whoever has a model already gets to be in the club Everyone else can bugger off That makes sense They weren't going to make a Phantom train 3D model For a one-off gag at the end end of the after years. Okay.

But yeah, so it is quite different. It's shorter in some ways, but also because, God, because the 3D version doesn't have the challenge dungeons or anything, chances are you are going into the final chapter in the 3D version quite under-leveled. Right. So I find that the 3D version ends up being a little bit more grindy in these final chapters, which, I don't know, kind of balances the fact that you're not going. down a bagillion floors, but

I don't know. Yeah, it's sort of a different experience. I mean, to be even grandier than the original version is saying a lot, because this is a grinding game, no matter which version you play. Yeah, for sure. I actually enjoy that, though, in Final Fantasy 4, getting to the moon and realizing I am desperately

under-leveled and under-equipped with the whole point of the moon is to go in there and to fight the monsters and get the cool-ass weapons and emerge as a badass and then go back down and just like the skewer of Zirrimus and have yourself the nice day. Yeah. I mean, while I don't love the grindiness aspect, I do admit that it does lend the true moon, the oppressive atmosphere I think they were going for. As we were saying

earlier, the kind of the horror-esque vibe of the after years, the true moon feels like it should be oppressive given just kind of the vibe of the game, right? And just how incredibly difficult it actually is really does help lend that oppressive atmosphere. Like, yeah, these these heroes may have saved the world before and now yeah they've got their kids by their side but this is an enemy unlike any they've ever really faced before and the difficulty really bears that out like you say the the new music starts to come in this is the first time we start to get the new dungeon themes as we get deeper and deeper into the moon so we again get those those sounds that we're not familiar with and they're all really creepy too yeah yeah yeah

We should, I'm guessing what the hell is the spoiler cast anyway. Just talk about the final boss because there are a lot of parallels to another final fantasy game. I'm not going to name right now. I'm not going to talk about right now. But, yeah, the creator, I think they were called. They're very much a JRP boss. Yeah. Go for it.

It kind of goes off the rails a little bit here. And I'm actually here for it. I kind of like how weird it gets at the end. But I'm always about Final Fantasy Fermi paradox. Like, that's always one of my favorite themes ever. Uh-huh. I don't know. Like when I first found out that, oh, yeah, this is, you know, the creator is part of another civilization who's watched life ebb and flow.

over the generations, and they actually invented the crystals as these sci-fi mcuffins to record the data of how other races were evolving over millennia. Is it kind of dumb? Sure. But I like it. And if you don't, if it's not your jam and you think that the after years ruined your childhood and it ruins the integrity of the narrative, then ignore it. Just ignore it.

And the after years ever happened and the story ends up for, and that's fine if that's what you want. But I'm kind of here for the weirdness. Yeah. I think there, and maybe you two have other examples of this, but especially at this time, like, this is also the story of Gurin Lagan. Oh, totally is. It's very Avengers, Infinity War and Endgame, and like the Thanos stuff. This is an external force that has decided what the future of humanity should be because we have failed as a species. And there's so much anxiety of the new millennium and climate change and climate disaster.

And as we all go through the existential crisis of do we raise more people in a world that we don't feel confident is going to be around in 50 years, that's sort of like, it's the anxiety of stewardship of the planet. And, you know, when so many JRPs especially are about killing a metaphysical god, and even FF4, the original, was about, you know, Zemis was the embodiment of hate. It was about conquering sort of a more personal relationship. Right. Whereas this is very much a, this is a very real thing we are dealing with. And science fiction always reflects that. And this is one of those things where it's, yeah, how do you, how do you reconcile freedom of choice with a world that doesn't feel fair? That something external is keeping us, you know, it's, I don't know, it's a, it's a social responsibility thing.

It's this fatalistic God that decides we deserve to die and, and us deciding. that we deserve to live and shepherd the next generation. It's very, you know. There's this like, Ash, you'll agree with me on this. There was a Mega Man Battle Network game that has the same plot. I was just thinking the same thing. I think it was four. Was it four?

Yeah. I was going to say. That was duo, right? Yeah. The creator and Duo. Exce are the same character. You heard it here first. Yeah.

Yeah. That's like so completely. I've said many, many times that Shonen tropes, they are what they are, but it's how you write them. It's not how they're used. It's not like the fact that they're quote unquote overused. They're always good. You just have to write them well. And what I appreciate about Japan, though, is that you have these shonen tropes that are being shown to kids when they're like, what, 10 years old?

Like, any kids, the world might not matter at all. You have to decide for yourself. And so I like the fact that's instilled, that sense of gerad existentialism, just instilled in a Japanese school children at like two years old. I appreciate that so much. And I appreciate what they write around that whole theme because it comes up again and again and again. and Final Fantasy, maybe not exactly perfectly in after years, but it does it so well in 14.

And there is a lot of parallels between the two here. And I just appreciate it. I think as I say, Ash, it fits well with the Final Fantasy game itself. Like, we've established several times that Final Fantasy just isn't restricted

to people's feet on the ground. Like, they have gone to space. They have gone to the bottom of the sea. They've gone across the universe. Like, there's no limits of Final Fantasy. So, of course, it's going to be like, okay, well, here's a God who says you don't deserve to exist. What do you do now?

Well, I take out my sword. What else are supposed to do? And especially because it's a God who tells you that you didn't do a good job as shepherds for the planet. Like, you didn't live up to your evolutionary potential. It's, yeah, it's just, why are you perpetuating suffering? As a creator, I have failed, so I need to wipe you out, you know. Yeah, which is pretty heavy stuff, you know, especially as you. have been saying when you kind of put it up next to the very real situation we find

ourselves as stewards of planet Earth and how we're kind of screwing that up as well. Like when you really, when you really hold up a mirror and you compare it to what's happening in the real world, it's pretty heavy stuff. Totally. Yeah. But our heroes triumph and everybody does their thing at the end of the game, same way as they did with the first game.

I think Cecil and Rosa go back to Rolling Baron, Kane and Seador do the Red Wings thing and everyone just kind of chills out. Yeah. And I like there was always, there's always a through line of like, especially with Edward's stuff

where he's, he's contributing resources to, like all of the kingdoms are working to build each other back up. Yes, I like that. And that's reflected again here. Like, are all about how like what does fable send to to baron and what like what do we have to offer each

other which i think was you know it's a nice hopeful way to again that's reflected a ton in ff 14 and you know if you're an ff 14 player you've seen this story done better but this one was in 2009 on right we so whatever yeah your point is invalid The more we sit around here and talk about this game, the more I kind of want to go back to it. So well done, Victor, well done, Ash. That was a lot of fun. I still need to go and watch maybe like a YouTube play-through of the 3D version

because I know I'll never play the 3D version, but I just want to get a sense for it and check it out. I did listen to the 3D version of the soundtrack before we started just to kind of get a sense for it and I do prefer the original's sense I never was a big fan of the instrumentation used in the DS3 remake of FF4 Yeah, I was always a little bit iffy on it

Like it has some good ones and bad ones Like I don't like what the year feels very similar in that sense Yeah exactly exactly There are a couple of songs I think they don't work well in 3D version But it's generally okay Music you can't go wrong with Final Fantasy 4 music at the end of the day exactly my last question to you guys to kind of wrap this up is what was your party at the end who did you take with you oh my god i don't this is so long ago you're asked me to remember something from like 14 years ago at this point um so the first time through i did the original ff4 party um which means that somebody died in my story because there is there is a character that if you don't have a certain somebody in your party will die before you get to do the ending.

So, yeah, I lost a very, very, very important character. I'll just go ahead. I'm going to interrupt and spoil that because that is Golbez. And that actually, I can't enter the podcast without mentioning how Golbez has a really interesting internal struggle that's really kind of reflect. Everyone's fighting their demons in this game. Okay, if they're not having babies or fighting their demons, maybe they're doing both. Goldbez is one of them. Goldbez carries a massive amount of guilt from, if you play Final Fantasy for DS,

you get a lot more information about their background. Basically, he abandoned Cecil under a tree when he was, when Cecil was a baby. Oh, right. The king kind of found him and raised him, but Golbez carries that guilt with him, like, really, really deep. And his, when Dark Cecil attacks him, he's like, isn't this what you always wanted to die at the hands of the brother you abandoned? Now I said that was pretty metal. so that's pretty good yeah i did like seeing gold as that kind of vulnerable state but as he said

victor he will die i think quote unquote canonically defending uh cecil from whatever nonsense tried to kill him i don't remember at this point which is i think even the novel so it's considered canon that gold is dead and i'm not a big fan of that the alternative is that he leaves the party at the end of the game because of course he does he goes to search for foosoya who he left behind at one point he takes a he just takes the lunarian whale like so long suck I'm taking this baby across the universe. And I mean, if his father built it, I guess it's for both of them. And Cecil's had enough time with the Xbox.

Don't quote me on this because, as I said, it's been a long time. But if I remember correctly, I think I remember my final party was four of the original five plus Ciodore. Because I think I reasoned at the time that I wanted to have Cedore be the final party. I love the whole Goku, Gohan idea of, you know, of Cessal and Ciodore, safe. the world together this time. So I felt like I had to have Cedar and Cessel together. And I think for me, it was Cessal, Cedor, Rosa, Rydia.

Or no, it would have been, let's see. Did it kick Edge out? I think I kicked Edge out. Yeah, I think I kicked Edge out. Yeah, I think I was always my least favorite of the original five. So I think, yeah, so I think I kicked Edge out. And so it was four of the original five plus Seador is what I think I did. Yeah.

Yeah, because I did, let's see. I tried to keep it the family, I thought was nice, or not exactly the family, because Kane was in there, unless they're a polychial, which in my canon, they are. Sure, yeah. He's Uncle Kane, Cecil, Cedar, Rosa, and Gouldez. Yeah. And that was a pretty fun party. I think that that might be one of the big bands you can get, too, between the five of them, but I can't remember either way. It's one of those parties that feel good together.

And that's one thing you learn by the end of the game. there are so many fighting styles between the characters that it's a lot of fun just kind of tool around with them and see what you get. Yeah, totally. Definitely. I like it a lot. But that means you kick Rydia out of your party.

For shame, Nadia. Someone had to go. How did you kick Rydia out? Oh, my God. Don't tell my husband. All right. Yeah, I would like to do, I want to do like an Eblen for a run of the final dungeon with them and Edge.

Because if you take Edge with you to the fight with Rubicante, you get the option to solo it. oh that's right oh that's right yeah but yeah uh have you ever done that i i have not that i imagine that's very very very that sounds like murder yeah yeah yeah for sure but uh yeah i guess that's it for this very spoony episode of retronauts i really had a great time talking to you guys about this you know misunderstood game let's call it a misunderstood game yeah i mean listen it's not perfect i get it there there are a lot of flaws but there are still a a lot of really, really good elements

and I stand by it. I think I'm going to continue my life saying that actually after years is good. And it also led to Final Fantasy Dimensions, which has the best job system ever and is actually a really good final fantasy game. And no

one has played it. Fewer people have played dimensions than have played after years. Which is hard to think about, but you're absolutely right. Yeah. No, I, this is just a weird, wacky, one, you know, not I'm not going to say wonderful, but weird, wacky, little game that is way better than some of its parts and that I think much like FF13, although I think to probably a lesser degree, gets unfairly shat upon in the year

since its release. And it's not perfect. It's rough as hell around the edges, but I do think there is a lot that's worth discovering here for people who haven't played the after years. It's not perfect, but there's nothing else quite like it either in the Final Fantasy Pantheon. And that's kind of what I love about it. Same thing with like a game like Final Fantasy 13-2 or 10-2. Yeah, they're a little weird. Yeah, they're a little rough around the edges, but they're singular and they're so good in their own ways.

Yeah. It's definitely something that's easier to appreciate when in the AAA space, things tend to be very homogenous. And here's a really weird Final Fantasy game being really weird off in the corner. Yeah. Yeah. In as recent as 2021, Tokita has said that he still wants to see the after years re-released in some way. He said whether it be with the pixel remaster formula or he said he would like to maybe even do a have a slightly bigger budget 3D remake where he gets to add the voice acting and stuff that he got to do for the DS version of 4 because there's none of that in here, which is too bad.

But if you're listening and hey, listen, when we did our Live Alive episode, the day after we record or the day after it, launched is when I found out about the Live Alive remake coming out, which was the most bizarre confluence of events, Live Alive, of all things. Of all the games. Like, I would not have bet any money on that. Yeah. Basically, what you're saying is it's high time for us to have a Chrono Trigger episode, right?

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. There's always a good time for a Chrono Trigger episode. Hell yeah. For today, Victor, why don't you go ahead and talk a bit about where we can find you? Oh, sure. You can follow me on Twitter. At Victor E. Hunter, it's Victor the letter E. Hunter.

Please, end of service for Dragalia Lost is the end of November. I play the voice of the main character, Udn, in that. And I want to thank the fan base for being as incredible as you were throughout the entire run of that game. I know that game means a lot to a lot of people, and it means a ton to me. It got me through the pandemic. So, yeah, it's,

it's a really lovely game and a lot of lovely people. So I just want to thank all the fans and, you know, go go give it a try before it's lost forever, I guess. Gone to the digital realm. I don't know what's happening to it. Dragalia Ross forever. Yeah. Yeah.

I shouldn't laugh. But yeah, that's kind of the way it is. Ash, why don't you go ahead and say a thing? Well, you can find me. My name is Ash Paulson. You can find me at my name on Twitter. That's ASH, P-A-U-L-S-E-N. Follow me for just a lot of discussion on video games, video game music, cool pictures of dogs and food and all my favorite things.

But beyond that, I am the creator and co-founder of Good Vives Gaming. You can find us at Good Vives Gaming on YouTube and on Patreon, patreon.com slash givy gaming. And we are essentially the old Game Explained crew who went off and did our own thing and started our own thing, our own brand. We just passed 100,000 subs on YouTube. Oh, congratulations. A couple weeks ago. Yeah, thank you. We're already at 106K.

We're growing steadily, and we could not do it without our incredible audience, some of whom may be listening to this podcast. So if you are, thank you so much. And if you're not part of our audience, please do go check us out on YouTube. If you like what we did at Game Explain, you're going to love what we do here at GVG. And that's what we're all about. We just lead with the values of inclusivity and kindness and just bringing everybody into our community who loves video games despite their background. We welcome everybody. Absolutely.

Also, go on the way back machine and look up old Shifty look stuff. Oh, yes, Shifty Look. I was the producer of Shifty Look, or one of the producers of Shifty Look, for the Bondi Namco. And I miss that so much. Definitely go check out the Bravo Man animation. I think that's on YouTube. All of it's on YouTube now. Yeah, so much fun.

Yeah, for sure. And if you think this episode is cool, we have tons more content like it. Just visit the Retronauts Patreon at patreon. Patreon.com for access to media that goes along really well with a 100-floor dungeon dive, unless you're playing the 3D version, apparently. Support us at the $3 level to get early access to weekly episodes. Supporters at the $5 level to get episodes a week early, as well as two exclusive episodes a month. Support us at the Magic Number 64 for the opportunity to set the topic of a retronaz episode once every six months.

As of this recording, there are two spots left for that tier, so go ahead and snap them up. As for me, I am Nadia Oxford. I am the co-host of the Axel of Blog.R.P.G podcast alongside Eric Van Allen and Kat Bailey. We talk about RPG's old, new, Eastern, Western, everything you can imagine. We've been around for a while now. We'd love to have you as a listener. You can support us at patreon.com forward slash blood god pod and or follow me on Twitter at Nadia Oxford. That's all one word.

I also host a Final Fantasy 14 podcast alongside Victor. It's called Charlene Dropouts, and you can find more about that at patreon.com forward slash blood god pod. Until next time, thanks again for listening. And don't ever turn your back on your dark side because it'll smoke all your weed and eat all your Doritos. I'm going to be. I'm going to be. Thank you.