The Ringer-Verse - The ‘Final Fantasy’ Party Draft | Button Mash

Episode Date: February 19, 2024

Ben, Matt James, Justin Charity, and Rob Mahoney party up for a pre-‘Rebirth’ draft of ‘Final Fantasy’ favorites. First they discuss an amazing month for remakes and remasters (4:00), followed by three pressing questions prompted by ‘Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’ (9:40). Then they recap their histories with the ‘Final Fantasy’ franchise (31:12), explain the draft rules (39:17), and assemble their all-time-great rosters of ‘Final Fantasy’ characters (42:40). Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Matt James, Justin Charity, and Rob Mahoney Producer: Devon Renaldo Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Services not available in all areas. Hello, Lallyho, and welcome into the Ringiverse, your Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, Senior Editor for the Ringer and Buttonmash Master of Ceremonies. If you've read the title of this episode, you know what's coming. We're going to draft a Final Fantasy party a little later on. However, it turns out, I've already had the draft of the day because I have assembled such a stacked party of podcast guests. We cannot collectively be beaten.

First up, a brooding Buttonmash sidekick who speaks softly and carries a big sword, painting pictures with words and with Photoshop, ringer deputy art lead. Matt, Macho-Eyes, James is here. Hello, Matt. Oh, wow, Macho-Eyes. Yeah, hey, how's it going? Glad to be here.

Feel very appreciated. Thank you, Ben. Next up, a man who casts a spell over me every time he speaks. He cheers us up when we're Phoenix Down, Black Mage and senior staff writer, Justin Charity. Welcome. Insert deranged Seperol.

Rant in the library. Charity is not the sole senior staff writer with us today because we have a first-time caller on the line. He is equally comfortable discussing save points and point guards, power-ups and power forwards, shooting games and shooting guards. He's not in the night country now, but he is in a group chat, debuting on Buttonash, the great Rob Mahoney in the house. Greetings, Rob.

Ben, I am in awe. I thought I was ready for this. You've really thrown me off my game. I've been injecting Mako straight into my veins all morning. I've been blasting Final Fantasy scores into my eardrums. But now I'm off my game. So you've succeeded in your draft strategy, I think. It's all part of that.

I'm trying to unsettle my opponents before the draft even begins. All of that wordplay, all of those witticisms, completely off the cuff. Never script an intro. How dare you suggest that I have to be written any of that? I couldn't have summoned a stronger crew. for this episode because speaking of Phoenix, we're less than two weeks away from being reborn in the flames of Final Fantasy 7.

Rebirth is about to arrive on PlayStation 5, and if the demo didn't get you in the mood for Midgar, we hope this podcast will. We're all pretty pumped. We hope you will be by the end of this episode if you're not already. Now, here's what we're going to do. We're going to draft, as mentioned.

But we have a few preludes to the draft. We're going to ask a few questions prompted by Final Fantasy. We also have one bit of banter here that is only tangentially related to Final Fantasy 7 rebirth. And that's that there are a bunch of other great games coming out. We will devote most of our energies

to Final Fantasy on this episode and in the next episode, which I feel bad about because it means that we neglect a bunch of other great games, right? Grand Blue Fantasy Relink, Ultros, Helldivers 2, which I wish I had played

instead of Suicide Squad, but maybe I'll wait until the servers work. However, it's been a great year already, not just for new games, original titles, but also for remakes and remasters. Last month, we had The Last of Us Part 2 remastered. We had another code recollection. We had Apollo Justice Ace Attorney trilogy.

This month, though, much better than that. In fact, having done no research whatsoever to support this statement, I would venture to say that this might be the best month for remakes slash remasters ever. because even beyond rebirth, it's an amazing month. We've got Tomb Raider 1 to 3 remastered. We've got Mario versus Donkey Kong. We've got Star Wars Dark Forces. We've got Persona 3 reload.

We've got brothers, a tale of two sons. And so my question for each of you is hype-wise, what second on your list below rebirth? And let's start with charity, because I feel like this month is so tailored to your interests that the entire video game industry must have gotten together. They're like, what could we remake a remaster to please Justin Charity personally? And then let's release all those games at once.

So Tomb Raider, Final Fantasy, Persona 3 reloads. You are a happy camper these days. What is making you happiest? Prisota! Yeah, because I'm definitely excited to play the Tomb Raider remaster. Even though I know, I know I'm actually going to hate actually playing it. Because I remember playing those games back in the day. and I know those controls are terrible, but I'm going to do it.

It's in the backlog. You're going to go tank controls? Or you're going to go modernized, but still terrible. I was born in 1987. Come on. Let's go. No, but reload. I'm about, I want to say I'm a good halfway through reload.

I've played persona 3 before. I played P3 portable. And I love it. It feels great. They kind of did the thing where the visual style is more like persona. right? That's a lot more like that. And they kind of imported some of the combat quality of life stuff for the persona five, but it's sort of halfway between that and the original persona three. And I have complicated feelings about persona three in general, but I really love the characters and the

story overall. I mean, I kind of hate like the villains of Prisona three, but I like kind of the I like the gist. That's a dark game about death and grief. And it's, it's, yeah, it's. It's got a lot of striking imagery. Proto 3 is a good, it's a good time. And I'm loving Reload so far. This is good commentary for me and a good asterisk, Charity, because I would say Persona is the game in this list that I'm most drawn to, realistically.

Rebirth is going to consume any possibility. I have of playing it on a short-term basis. But I'm going to need to lean on you a little bit. As I ease my way into the persona world for the first time, there's a lot going on. I'm scared of the bright lights and the flashy text. And I'm going to need your help. is all I'm saying.

So I want to warn you up front. Yeah, you couldn't ask for a better guide. This is your man right here. Yes, Lacquay, listen, I'm around. Let's do it. I'll talk about Prisota all day. Put some soundtracks on, let's go. What you got other than reverse?

Persona, baby. Okay. I took the plunge finally with Persona 5 Royal a couple of years back, I think now. Man, I put 100 plus hours into that. I loved my time with it. I have been waiting for this remaster, this reload. But now I'm excited to get to Persona 3, which I'm going to get to as soon as I finish

like a dragon, Infinite Wealth, another massive game that might never end. It might never end. As I'm telling you, it says Infinite in the title. There is no after like a dragon, infinite wealth. Truth in advertising. Yeah. But I'm also excited for Brothers,

A Tale of Two Suns, which is a game I'd never played. I know you love that game. I love brothers. Which makes me more excited. Yes. That I'm a little less excited about just because I feel like it's less in need of the remake treatment.

and it's not that old and it looks okay. But if you have never played it, then I would highly highly recommend that you check that out. It's probably not the best scheduling that there are multiple remakes or remasters coming out like a day apart from rebirth. That's sort of a Horizon Zero Don Zelda situation in my mind. But I'm going off the board

just to differentiate the persona masses here. I'm taking Star Wars Dark Forces, which is probably pretty predictable. We knew it. I could only be. I am. I've known you for so long, but. And I have known Star Wars Dark Forces for so long.

I think it was the first shooter I played. I mean, it was a milestone shooter at the time. It was like, what if you could look up while you play a shooter? What if you could jump? What if we could go into another dimension? It's also just a great Star Wars game. It's one of the Star Warsiest feeling Star Wars games. My man Kyle Katarn is introduced.

in this game, which set the precedent that Star Wars games were going to be able to tell their own original satisfying stories. So it really just teed up decades of satisfying Star Wars experiences in my mind, and I could not be more excited to revisit it with updated graphics. So I will probably have more to say about that game sometime down the road. But we have much more to say now about Final Fantasy. So if it takes a trilogy to remake Final Fantasy 7, let's do a trilogy of questions prompted by rebirth before we get to our draft. And the first one is this. There are two innocuous words that when play side by side have the power to enrage people who play games. Where do we stand on the defining Final Fantasy-related debate of our times? Yellow paint,

crime against gaming, necessary evil, or non-issue. And for anyone who has somehow avoided this conversation, which hats off to you. Every now and then, there is a new round of internet Adjita about a game that has perhaps two clearly marked indications of what you can break, boxes that have yellow paint on them. This is a resonant evil issue, if you think it's an issue. Or in this case, this latest flare-up of the yellow paint debate came about because the Final Fantasy 7 reber's demo has some yellow paint flex. on walls that you know to climb because the yellow paints there, uncharted style, right? So this is nothing new, but there's a new round of discourse every time this happens in a prominent game.

And the debate is, is this breaking our immersion? Because we remember that someone's holding our hand here. This is a game. It's not just the natural environment unless there's some sort of explanation for why there's yellow paint. And then everyone else, developers who've been on the other side of this issue, will say, we need the yellow paint, actually, because gamers are dumb. You all don't know how dumb you are and how lost you would be if there was not yellow paint telling you where to go. And I sympathize with that perspective, and yet I also sympathize with some of the frustration.

So as usual, I'm finding a middle ground here instead of a hot take. But what do you all think? Are you angry about the yellow paint? Do you welcome the yellow paint or are you resigned to the yellow paint? Who has the strongest thoughts on yellow paint? I got some pretty strong thoughts on yellow paint. All right. Let's hear him.

What you got? I think that if a video game wants to acknowledge that it's a video game and have yellow paint on things to help you get along, it's totally fine. Like what since when do we need such realism in video games that we are unwilling to, like you might as well get rid of the heads up display in games, right? Because that's unrealistic too, right? Like there's no heads up display in life unless you're walking around with a Vision Pro on your face, which I don't recommend,

simply because of how people look at you. But yeah, there's yellow paint out in the world. Like, you know where there's yellow paint? It's helpful? The road. Like, we need definitions on things to know where to be and where not to be. Yes. It's fine. This is a big, stupid discussion.

You don't want to waste time in a great new game, like not instantly knowing where to go. It's fine. That's the thing. like I'm already going to sink 100 hours into this game when it comes out. And I will get stuck in a room trying to figure out which ladder I need to climb to get out of it. So I want to spend my time grinding through otherwise meaningless encounters as the RPG gods intended and not being stuck in a room without yellow paint. So that's that's me speaking as admittedly an official player's guide kid growing up with Final Fantasy games.

I'm very used to someone pointing in a direction and telling me where to go. I find that conversation pretty rich in RPGs this dance. Now, Resident Evil, things are a little more straightforward. I can understand the complaint and certainly the immersion aspect for a horror game, but for an RPG, I need the help. I need the direction. Justin? I'll push back a little bit because I think, I don't know, people hear yellow paint and they're

like, oh, the ledge thing instead of, you know, guiding players and how they can interact with the environment. But I did think that one screenshot of like they're being yellow paint on a ladder. like that struck me as like, yeah, I can see somebody being like, oh, come on about that. And I kind of sympathize with that. And I think a lot about the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy. Because I felt like that series had the best, like, for people who haven't played it in that game, you can actually go in the settings and toggle kind of basically the context clues that

the game gives you or that Laura will say out loud for helping you sort of like figure out if you're stuck somewhere or figure out an environmental puzzle. And so it's a kind of difficulty slider, but for the specific thing of like being a little lost, not knowing how you're supposed to get through the environment. And Laura will tell you or not, right? And I'm kind of surprised that more big games don't adapt that kind of approach of like trying to have their cake and eat it too, right? Like, you know, give people an option to disable some of the yellow paint. Right? Like maybe that is a happy medium, even though I know somewhere a dev is screaming and just imagining like having an even larger workload. Yeah.

Right. Because of suggestions like this. You just said three studios into Crunch right now. Yeah. Yeah. I single-handedly responsible for Crunch as a phenomenon in the video game industry. But I do get, because I think it matters on the genre too, right? Like something like Tomb Raider where the whole point is to kind of solve big, clever environmental puzzle. Yeah, I don't want Laura to spoil them halfway through solving them. I don't want yellow paint, right?

Also, I just finished playing Sekiro, and I feel like that solution where, okay, the paint is white. Even that makes it a little less conspicuous and a little less head slapping. The fact that it's like, okay, it's more subtle white paint on climable ledges as opposed to this big, tacky, glaring yellow paint. Yeah. That even might help sort of deescalate this discourse a little bit. Uncharted. I think it uncharted sometimes they're just worn edges. where it's conspicuous, but it's not like someone came along and painted that wall for some reason,

which I guess is the difference between your yellow paint example, Matt, which is that we know where that paint came from. We've seen people apply that paint. Whereas in the game world, it's like, why is this here? Why was someone moved to apply that paint? Now, sometimes you could have kind of a winking acknowledgement of that. Like you see someone actually applying those things. and we kind of in a meta way, a self-conscious way, just own up to it.

My solution, the middle ground, I guess it's just kind of like a get-good solution, which is just like find a more elegant way to do this, which easier said than done. And probably if I were a dev, I would be very frustrated with myself saying that. But I did see of the many, many viral threads about this issue, there was one that I appreciated from Joe Wintergreen, who's a dev on Weird West and some other games. And he sort of struck that middle ground, too, where saying this is bad design or saying it's necessary, those are the extremes, right?

And both probably take it too far because there are games that do this. Well, they figure it out, right? There's some sort of visual language to the game where they convey this information subtly, but effectively. Maybe it's lighting, right? Maybe it's just that certain boards look a little different and just read as more breakable to you. So I want my hand held, but if possible, I don't want to be aware that my hand is being held, right? Fool me is basically what I'm saying.

Yeah, that's a good way to put that. Fool me. Yeah. Well, you know what game actually does a decent job of that sort of thing is the original Final Fantasy 7. Or if you are lost in the screen and not sure where to go, you could hit the select button. and then all of the exit points, as well as the location of your character would be displayed on screen.

So maybe a happy medium is there's a button on your controller that you could hit that will highlight climable ledges. And perhaps that sort of HUD overlay is less disturbing to people than the yellow paint in the world. Right. But at the same time, like, I still feel like, okay, the yellow paint is there. If, like, it's immersion breaking for you to,

to be saying yourself, well, who painted these ledges? Is someone painting these ledges? Like, you're at the same time ignoring that, you know, Cloud is climbing this ledge with a sword that is impossibly heavy on his back. There's a video game logic that we all accept that these are the way things work. And we might not even notice it until someone tweets a screenshot that goes viral, right? We accept all sorts of limitations. That's just how games work and we don't even think of it until you play with someone maybe who's not a gamer. And they're like, why can't you just do this. And you're like, because it's a video game. That's how they all work. I don't know. But I agree. Final Fantasy 7 had a good solution to this. That was a great game. They should

remake that one, maybe. Someday. All right. We're still pretty hyped. Yellow paint or not. This will certainly not stop me from being excited about rebirth. Now, our second big question about rebirth release, another source of some conversation and dispute leading up to the release is spoiling the original Final Fantasy 7 in advance of the release of rebirth. And I put spoiling in air quotes because I don't know that it's even appropriate to say that it's spoiling. But this is something I guess we've got to navigate on this very podcast potentially later on. The big thing that happens in Final Fantasy 7 has it reached a level of cultural saturation

and prominence where lo these many years later we can speak freely about. something like that, especially when you're talking about rebirth, a game that in many ways is based on the understanding that we know what happened in the original, and maybe the characters also know what happened in the original, right? And yet, there are also plenty of people who are discovering this game for the first time. And so I'm sort of sympathetic to that too. So, Rob, what's your thought on navigating spoilers, if we can call them that when it comes to this classic? Yeah, with this particular issue, I think it's not only okay, but kind of required, like to have full appreciation of this remake project, to get like the brain-breaking potential

of it, you have to know where we've been. You have to know what happened. You don't have to play through the whole game. You can watch a let's play on YouTube. You can get the greatest hits. You can just know this one critical spoiler that we're talking around right now that is maybe the one singular fact that a lot of people know about this game. Right. And I would think if you don't have that, you're just having a dramatically different experience playing remake and rebirth. And maybe that's fine for you, but I would encourage you to seek this one out. And I say that as someone who's very spoiler sensitive in general. But I think this one is conducive to the experience of playing it.

I have strong opinions. Now we have. Because I mean, look, we write and we grapple with all the time, spoiler warning stuff, people getting mad about how long after an episode of Game of Thrones, are you allowed to talk about the plot of Game of Thrones on Twitter? You know, that kind of thing, right? And I do sympathize with people to an extent. I think the reason why the spoiler snowflakes is I surely would not call them.

But like the reason why I think it can be frustrating to interact with people in, in terms of their expectations of avoiding spoilers for things is because it feels like it's so easy for accommodations to creep up to a level of like avoiding spoilers about a 90 year old video game. And to me, it's just like I don't know where that ends. Like, do we avoid spoilers for the book of John and the Bible? Like, what are we doing? Like, what this? I just, I think there's got to be a council that we convene on the internet somewhere at some point that formalizes, like the statute of limitations. Yeah.

For expecting people to walk on eggshells talking about the plot of like decades old content. I don't, I reject it. I rebuke it. The name of Jesus. I was just trying to remember what the twist was in the book of John. I remember being memorable, but it's left me. If I recall correctly, it's pretty similar to the Sopranos finale. I think you need to think of the children here, okay?

Think of the kids. Yeah. It's not okay to do the spoilers. And here's why. It's not your fault if you're 18 years old right now and you didn't play the original. And I think that you have every right to experience this story. whether it's the original or the remake without getting the defining event of it spoiled for you. So I think that we should keep, you know, if there's something that we think is of particular value,

like, yeah, let's protect it for the younger generations and let them have the same experience that we had. Now, that being said, oh, man, it's so much fun to spoil things. It's very funny to do. I'm holding back. There it is. There it is. Man, it's fine. But, yeah, think of the kids.

Come up. That's where I stand. I like that. Yeah. I mean, there are certain things that people of our generation would take for granted as kind of the cultural lingua franca of video games. Of course, everyone knows this. It is the most iconic moments, one of the most iconic moments in video games. But I don't want to gatekeep what we assume people know.

And yeah, I mean, there are things that we don't know that other people would assume that we know and somehow we have avoided knowing that thing. People are always constantly discovering things, right? There's that XKCD comic about that. And so I am sort of sympathetic, at least to not going out of your way. That's now. Yeah. Can we emphasize that for a second? Because I think there's obviously like a difference, right?

Like I obviously am opposed to somebody rolling down the car window and shouting out to Harry Potter and the half-blood prints. Right. But often when we talk about spoiling stuff, we're not talking about protecting the children, so to speak, from that person. We're talking about, like, being on the subreddit for Final Fantasy 7 and apparently not being allowed to talk about the plot of Final Fantasy 7 because somebody who comes under that subreddit

and doesn't want to know the plot of Final Fantasy 7 thinks that, like, all of that should bend around them. And that's what I think is a little bit entitled. a bit. There's no rules in a subreddit. That's all lawlessness. And if you walk into there expecting any different, that's on you. So we are thinking of the children. We just despise some of them. It sounds like. Yeah, it's always like that. It's duality. It was 1997. Titanic sank. I don't want to break any news that anyone. Granted, that was a real life event. Maybe that's a slightly different category. But still, it has been a while. And yet,

I will not go out of my way to spoil this for anyone. It's a different category, obviously, than Night Country just ended. Oh, it's Monday. That aired on Sunday. I didn't get around to it. Yeah. I'd say it's even different from the Last of Us part two, maybe, right? Which Matt spoiled when we talked about it recently.

But we warned everyone that it was going to be spoiled. So much warning. That was only a few years ago. That was very big of you. Also, there are a lot of people who have not played those games, right? They are introduced to that property through the show. And so they are in suspense.

and I think we can have some sympathy and understanding there. So I guess our policy for the rest of this pod will be, we will not blurt out spoilers just for the hell of it. But if we get to one organically, I mean, look, I can't stop you. Our producer, Devin, could potentially stop you after the fact we can fix your spoilers in post. Now, our final pressing question about rebirth, and it might be related to what we were just talking about. So it might be kind of difficult to tiptoe around that spoiler here,

but I want to know what is each of your most pressing, most burning single question about this game that we will soon have our hands on. Rob, want to lead us off? Yeah, my most pressing question is actually quite answerable, and I know this because Matt has talked about it on the podcast, which is how is it going to feel for me as someone who loves these games to be back on an overworld map in 2024,

that feeling of getting out into the larger world, getting off of the tracks for the first time, a style of RPG that has kind of been weeded out, if not eradicated over the last 20 years or so. And so it's not a plot reveal so much as just that gameplay opening of how will my heart soar for the first time of feeling all the opportunity of a game like this? Matt, what you got?

Yeah, so as Rob was alluding to, I was on the pod earlier talking about my experience at a press event that I went to surrounding Rebirth where I got to sort of get my hands on it and play the opening part where you open into the, the overworld, the open map, beyond what happens in the demo. So my impressions of that, as I stated, was just that, wow, this kind of brings the remake project into a whole new tier for me, where, like, the first remake felt a little bit on

rails, and this has the potential to really introduce, like, a different kind of pacing, a more rewarding pacing to it. So my big question is really, it's sort of two-pronged. It's like, so what exactly is the scale of this, right? Because from my impression, it felt like this was going to be big, like vast. And now I know it's broken into regions. And there's a few regions, but they're all sort of connected open world regions. So the scale is something that is definitely interesting to me.

And then the other sort of prong of that question is the pacing going to be of the plot going to be impacted by the scale of that open world. How are they going to kind of juggle pacing a game that has such a vast open world element to it? So those are the two things I'm really kind of looking at. Justin? My big question is how hard the second game is going to lean into what in the first game I sort of identified, especially toward the ending of the first game, as sort of like the kingdom heartsification of Final Fantasy 7. And I kind of, as somebody who never played Kingdom Hearts, right?

But I've watched a decent amount of like play throughs of Kingdom Hearts. I've just never played it, right? And it was never growing up, that whole franchise was never my sort of wave. But I kind of like the fantastical also kind of power of friendshipy vibe going on in the last act of remake. And yeah, I keep thinking about like, I wonder how hard they lean on that. with whatever the sort of big twists in the, not just the direction, but I think the tone of the game. Because I feel like the first, it's underrated how much like the original Final Fantasy 7 is a pretty like depressive game for long stretches, right?

Like a lot, you know what I mean? Like all the stuff with the pilgrimage and the ancients and Saffroth and the library and cloud mumbling to himself and Mako poisoning. And yeah, I just, I think a lot about the opportunities for tonal distinction of remake, which feels like a lot more upbeat and optimistic in turns, I think. My most pressing question is very specific and esoteric, and it's how long will the knights of the round summon be? What is it three minutes in the original game?

It's like three and a half minutes for some. Given how much longer remake, rebirth, whatever the next game is are than the original I want the same multiplier applied to nights of the rounds. Bring that same energy. Yeah. If it was a minute and a half or whatever it was in the original cinematic, then give me 10 times that. Like, I want to be able to take a nap and go out. It should be the length of that Final Fantasy 15th like prelude movie.

You know what I mean? Kingsglave. Africa is called. It should be the length of that movie. And in fact, reuse some of the assets from it. There you. I can't believe you brought that up. I feel like I'm having signs stolen from me ahead of this draft.

Yeah. Yeah. It's on my board. not to give too much away. But yes, that is maybe not really my most pressing question. My most pressing question is probably like, is this a sequel or what? Is it a remake? What about that spoiler that we were just dancing around?

Does that thing happen again? Or how does it happen? But I am kind of curious about nights of the round. We might not get an answer to that question yet. That could be in the third game. It could be an end game side quest. Maybe you collect the knights. Who knows?

But everything's happening out of order. We got summons and remake that weren't in that. point in the original game. All bets are off. So we will have answers to most or all of these questions soon, and we will discuss them on our next episode. Quick programming notes for the Ring of Versen-Hausavar, fairly light week by our standards. At the end of the week, the Midnight Boys will be discussing the first few episodes of Avatar, the last airbender, and midweek on Wednesday, over on House of Our Bad Bad Bad Badge Back. And that means that we are back discussing it. I will be on House of R with Mallory, and we will discuss the three-part premiere of the Bad Patch,

the third and final exciting season. And of course, you can contact us at ringerversegaming at gmail.com. Tell us what you think about yellow paint. Now, leading into our draft, just to sort of set the tone here without telegraphing too much about your interests and tastes and your possible selections, give me just a brief history, each of you, with Final Fantasy, just so we know where your history with this franchise lies. Give me your first Final Fantasy game and maybe your favorite Final Fantasy game, if it's a different answer. Matt, you want to start? Sure. My first Final Fantasy game was Final

Fantasy 7. I did not have a PlayStation when Final Fantasy 7 came out. I could not afford a PlayStation. So what I did do is I waited a year for the release on PC. And I played a play. that on my family PC for the first time. That was how I experienced it. Keyboard, not even with a controller. Weird, right? Yeah. CD-ROMs, weird. And I think that my favorite Final Fantasy still is seven, although I will say that tactics is probably a close second, and I have a few others that are sort of right below that, but I don't want to tip my hand any further than I already have. Okay.

Rob? See, I refuse to tip my hand. I'm not telling any of you. You're not disclosing anything. Either my first or my favorite Final Fantasy game. If you force me at gunpoint, I'm going to pick Chokebo racing, and that's going to be that. My man. I respect it.

I can't eat on that. All right. For all we know, he's only on 11, obviously. Guilty is charged. Justin, what do you care to do? disclose. I mean, my first one was Mystic Quest on the S&ES. Okay. Hell yeah. The fake, the boom fake, Final Fantasy, which, you know, I remember liking the music in it. It's not even a Nui Matsu soundtrack, I don't think, but yeah, I mean, I mostly

remember when I got into the real, you know, Final Fantasy 7. And then I think shortly after that played Final Fantasy 6, love both those games, love both those soundtracks so much that I picked up the saxophone in middle school because I wanted to play all the music from those games. And then, Fast forward to where we are now talking about it on the podcast is grown-ass men. Well, I'm going to need your rendition of Eric's theme on Sacks next time we podcast, please. Yeah. Well, I don't mind divulging. I don't mind spilling all the info here because I will freely admit I'm overmatched in this draft.

I'm trying to lower expectations, but also I actually feel that way. This is classic stuff. This is some love is blind bull. I'm a Final Fantasy. Dilettante. I'm a late adopter, I think, compared to the rest of you. I'm going to be, Rob, the blog boy of this draft. This will be based on stats and video, like on the eye test. I'm not crunching the tape here. I'm going based on reputation in some cases. I may be drafting characters from games I haven't played. And that's because Final Fantasy and I were sort of ships

passing in the night when I was a kid. It was like misconnections, Final Fantasy, with me, because I just never had the right systems at the right time. Because I had an NES and then my NES broke and also by the time I got it and was aware of the world, I had missed the first few Final Fantasies. I was alive for them, but not a sentient person. And then my NES broke and I had a drought where I did not have a console because, and this is not uncommon, but video games sort of an adversarial subject with me and my mom. It was always kind of a battle. What can I play? How much can I play? Of course, limiting my access to them only made me want to play them more. And so my mother created a monster inadvertently who would be hosting a video

game podcast decades later. Serves you right. Not that I'm bitter about it still. But there was a period where I just didn't have a consul. So I didn't have an S&S at the time. I didn't have a PS1. So I would play at Friends House at any opportunity, but you're not going to go over and play the entirety of a Final Fantasy game on a play date, probably. So I missed a lot. And my first and still favorite Final Fantasy game was 10. And I think that's partly because it's a great game and partly because of the circumstances in which I played it, where finally I was fed up and I went rogue. This was my adolescent rebellion. I didn't smoke. I didn't drink. I bought a PS2 when I was not supposed to. It's pretty innocent as rebellions go, right? But that's a shame because

you could have hid cigarettes in that little back part of the PS2. It was really good for hiding stuff. Missed opportunity. Was this in a blend? Which one was it? The original one. The original, yeah. The year was 2002. That's where we are here. Yeah. So they were readily available by this point.

When it came out, there was a PS2 black market for sure. So you may have been underhanded even in getting your PS2. I don't want to make assumptions about you, Ben. It had been out long enough that I don't think I had any trouble obtaining it. I had trouble obtaining the funds to obtain it. But once I did that, I had my first summer job. This was the summer after I graduated from grammar school, eighth grade. I went back to my school and packed stuff up for the summer.

And I had income, a bit of disposable income. I felt independently wealthy for the first time in my life. And I splurged on the forbidden fruit, which was a PlayStation 2, which I was not supposed to have. I did have some other consoles by this point. We had come to an agreement where Xbox and GameCube were out by that point. And I was like, I'm going to make up for a last time. I'm going to get all the consoles somehow. And I went out and I went rogue and I got a PS2.

and I stashed it at my grandma's house. Because I thought, this is how I can keep it off my mom's radar. And so the summer of 2002, an idyllic memory for me. I got Final Fantasy 10. I got Ace Combat 4. And I got GTA 3, which, of course, I had to get my grandma, unsuspectingly, to purchase for me because of the rating. It was just lies, just web of lies and deceit that I wove in order to ensure my access to video games. I was a desperate man.

And I feel like I spent most of that summer at my grandma's house in Brooklyn just playing Final Fantasy while she made me soup. Just how it done Blitzball. Yes. Yes. Such a warm memory for me. And it didn't have a happy ending because eventually I got greedy or greedier. And I thought, this grandma's house, this second location, this is not going to cut it. I need to have access to my PS2.

So I smuggled it into my house. And I thought she'll never notice. Like she doesn't know video games. It's just another plastic box, right? Unfortunately for me, the GameCube might be the most distinctive looking console ever. And the Xbox had a giant X on it. And so even my mom could tell that the PS2 was not one of those. And eventually I was discovered the PlayStation was confiscated for some period of time.

and my happy days and warm summer nights were over. But while it lasted, bro, when you just described as like the plot of Scarface, but instead about the PlayStation 2, that's crazy. That's wild. You need to option that.

I flew too close to the sun. You really need to option that to like Edgar Wright or something. My mom was very nice, as she still is. Excellent mother in most respects. Just not this particular one. She drove me to a life of console crime. So that's where I'm coming from here.

And so I've really only played recent Final Fantasy's and gone back and played seven. So that's what you need to know for our draft. You also need to know the rules here. Let's go over the ground rules briefly. What we are doing is assembling a party of Final Fantasy characters. We have six categories. They are the hero, the protagonist of a game, the warrior, the maid, the villain, the summon, and the wild card.

Now, we each have to make one pick per category, but we don't have to go in the same category order. In other words, one of you could take a hero with your first pick. I could take a villain. It doesn't matter. As long as your dance card is full by the end of the draft, we're good. Also, once a character is picked, they are off the board and cannot be drafted by anyone else.

So no duplicates here. Now, when it comes to the categories for hero, protagonist, those definitions can be somewhat squishy. We're kind of going to go with a, you know, when you see a Justice Potter sort of rule. And if we have disagreements, we will hash them out. The warrior and the mage cannot be a main hero or villain. So if a main hero is a warrior or a mage, you can't draft them in the warrior or mage categories. Has to be a supporting character, but a playable character. That's a targeted ban, by the way.

We'll get it. A little bit, yes. When we draft a summon, we get all incarnations of that summon. So otherwise, we will be drafting specific characters from specific games, pretty much. But when we draft a summon, we get all the versions of that summon. To make this more manageable and competitive, we will be considering only mainline numbered Final Fantasy games. So no spinoffs, no direct prequels or sequels. Sorry, fans of Final Fantasy tactics and Crisis Corps and 10-2 and 13-2, et cetera.

We love you, but they are not in the pool for this draft. Fittingly, this will be a turn-based battle, and we will follow a snake format. Now, the goal here is kind of up to you. If you want to just draft as many beloved, iconic characters from Final Fantasy as possible, you can. If you want to consider team chemistry, interpersonal dynamics, how would these characters get along? What would they talk about? What adventure would they go on? You can.

If you want to assemble some sort of themed team, if you want to try to reassemble the party from your favorite Final Fantasy game, anything goes. Ultimately, your performance will be judged by how you feel about your draft and how everyone listens, who listens to this feels about your draft.

So we will open it up to the Ringervverse audience, as usual, on social for people to vote and support their favorite parties. any questions, points of order, clarifications before we begin? None whatsoever. None. All clear. All clear.

Then Devin Ronaldo, producer, can you tell us the randomly determined draft order? That I can do. I'm going to give it a spin right now. So it is in real time. And it is looking like Matt, you're going first, followed by Ben. followed by Justin, which means Rob, you will close us out. Okay. So Rob gets to pick on the turn and go a couple times in compensation for having the last pick in this draft.

So let's kick things off. The pressure is on. Matt, who's your number one pick in the Final Fantasy Party draft? Well, I didn't want to go first. Let me say that. But being first, I'm left with no other option but to drafts perhaps the most I iconic, most widely recognizable character in all of Final Fantasy history, I'm going to pick Cloudstripe, number one. Sometimes, sometimes at the top of the board, you just got to pick

the number one ranked, you know? You got to go best available. And that's what I'm doing here, Cloud. Complex character, no spoilers. As many of you young kids will find out soon for the first time, should everything not be spoiled from older people for you. Very complex character, very cool character. I mean, he carries a real big sword. He's got some great friends that rally around him. He's got a cool backstory. He's a bit of an uptight sad boy,

which is not my favorite, but not to the levels of like squall or anything. So yeah, I'm just, I'm going to take cloud. I'm not going to overthink this. We're going number one cloud for protagonists, obviously. How do you feel about the fact that all the cool things you just laid out? And I will offer a mild spoiler here. are just Cloud cosplaying another dude.

It's perhaps a minor. No more detail needed. Yeah, I feel like judged on his own merits. I mean, you could poke holes in this pick. There are nitpicks about Cloud. There are a lot of great protagonists out there. But just in terms of catering to the crowd, this is, after all, a crowd sourced results draft.

and he is just the most instantly recognizable. And let me tell you, I will not be catering to the crowd beyond this big. Okay. Yeah. So this is the one for you, one for them, school of thought. I just can't leave him on the board. I just can't do it. Yeah.

Okay. I think it's a chalky pick, but it's a smart pick. Now I have draft, and I am also weighing whether I want to go with fame and notoriety, or whether I want to get a little bit more creative. And I guess I will also play this the way that you did. Of course. And I will take the big name character on the board here. I'll just go with Sef Roth, right?

I think just to have the counterpart pick, clouds off the board, it feels appropriate that Seffi would go off the board next. It's obviously debatable because if we were going based on positional scarcity here, then you could make the case that villain quite a diff, Quite a deep category. A lot of legendary villains in Final Fantasy history, who I would be happy to have on my team. And yet, in terms of cultural crossover, appearances in other franchises, name recognition, authoring of certain memorable moments that we have agreed not to discuss, I don't think you can go wrong with taking another safe pick at the top of the draft.

Hopefully we won't go all Final Fantasy 7 here in first round, but it feels like the way. to go. It's a good game. It is a good game. Just playing to the base on an inherently Final Fantasy 7 podcast. I see what you're both up to. I can't respect it, but I see what you're doing. I think we should call it out. Justin, are you going to go super niche here? Are you going to go with some Final Fantasy game that I was too young or too console deprived to play? I suppose so in the sense that I thought about this. And I really want to talk about Ranoa. Dear Renoa from Final Fantasy 8 and they're my, you know, the mage of my heart, right? That's who I want on my team.

Let's talk about Renoir real quick because I find that Final Fantasy 8 has the most incoherent plot, the most deranged plot of any of the mainline Final Fantasy games. Absolutely. So Renoa, right, a general's daughter who is also a terrorist leader and a witch. and she has an extremely cute dog that she can shoot like a cannon in combat. Like that's incredible.

That's incredible to me. Final Fantasy 8 is this game that has like space travel. I don't want to get into it. Rinawa is on my team. And we're going to talk, well, I don't want to spoil some other stuff that I'll come up later in this conversation. But Rinawa is definitely on the team.

I like it. I like the picture. I also like the pick and I feel like I've been outflanked a little bit because my red flag is that I will cape for Final Fantasy 8 on many different occasions.

I like it a lot, but it's a bizarre. It's definitely a bizarre game both in terms of gameplay and the story. Yes, that's a car game when it comes to Final Fantasy. We want bizarre.

We stand the bizarre Final Fantasy games. It's part and parcel of the experience in a lot of ways. But so I'm a little worried about my Final Fantasy 8 favorites now. Now that I know Justin's on the Renoa wavelength, these aren't as protected as I thought they might be. I would venture to say that Renoa would have been on the board a little longer.

I can't critique the pick just purely in terms of draft strategy. I don't know that that would have been my next name that I called. But hey, you never know. Sounds like Rob might have been considering it. I was definitely considering it. But, okay. Ben, I actually have a very different take on the villains. I'm worried about this villain crop.

I think it gets a little dicey pretty quickly. And so I'm going with my first pick, I'm going Kefka from Final Fantasy 6 as my villain pick. Yeah, that was a next. You know, the novelty of a clown villain may not hit the same in a world where we are all literally the Joker now, but I find him to be a perfect Final Fantasy villain. Goofy until he becomes really unsettling

and then absolutely terrifying. It's hitting like the full tonality of what I want a Final Fantasy villain to be. Plus, an absolute master. piece of 16-bit animation. The weird, like, vibrating chuckle that he does will haunt me for, basically, for the rest of my life. So, Kefka's got to be my

guy there. Yeah. Just an unhinged nihilist. Totally. Yeah. And as is often observed, the rare antagonist who gets what they want, who actually pulls it off, right? At least in part of the game. Yeah. So it's a strong pick. I think there are other excellent villains still on the board, but I do

think there's a clear top two. And now those top two have been selected. Agreed. But Rob, you get back to back. picks here. I think with my other pick, I am going to go perhaps a little chalky, perhaps playing to the base, but I got to get some voting on my side. And so in the warrior category, I'm going with Tifa as my warrior in my party. The woman who launched a thousand fanfix, I admit that I'm always I'm a former Final Fantasy fanfic offer. I want to point out how many of those? I personally authored of those thousand. None for me personally. But

No judgment. Do you think she should be in Tifa? Do you demand her in Tegan? We demand Tifa in Tekken. We demand a brawler who cares about the environment. Nobody wants Ereth in Tekken. No. Absolutely not.

That's staff. Get out of here. Definitely not. Tifa's, I think, the best supporting character of Final Fantasy 7. She's from the I Can Save Him School of Dating, which is sad to watch her with cloud. Talk about it. It's tough. It's tough.

And you really respect the effort, even though. it's a failed effort. I mean, Ranoa, you know. It's true. Having to deal with Sad Boy, it's a squaw. That's even, who's just,

it's poor women. It's poor women. It's bleak out there when you're opposite a silent protagonist. But I think what separates Tifa, too, from the other brawlers and warriors we're going to talk about, the bare-knuckle characters in Final Fantasy games,

I find her often like a little stale and a little boring. And she's really fun to play, and I will say, especially fun to pull off combos and remake. So I'm really looking forward to playing her in rebirth again. Yeah. All right.

Strong pick. We're back to you, Justin. Okay. So this is, my pick here is my wildcard. And it's actually a follow up to my whole soliloquy about Renoa, Angela. So I feel like inspired by Persona 3 Relo, which has a character name, a playable character named Coromaro, who is a dog. I want to specify that Angela, Ranoa's dog in Final Fantasy 8, is in fact like an independent, like fully fledged member of my team.

That is my wild card, Angelo, the dog. You could be getting Angelo for free as part of her Noah. No, no, because I don't want it to be like, no, I'm using up the spot because I don't want it to be like in the game where it's like it's part of her limit. I figure what they're even called you. A. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That would be angel. To Angela's. Controllable. Gets his own moves set in my party. Gets health insurance. It gets coverage. It gets everything. Right.

Gets the vacation. My board is ruined now. My whole strategy is gone. A real vulture pick here. I'm crossing off everything I had. Are you going for an all eight lineup here? No, no, no, no, no, I promise that. I have other big ideas in store here.

That would be a bold strategy. Is this a dog thing to? I'm wondering if Shadow and his dog are going to be on the board. It's a point. I mean, they called Red 13 a dog a lot. Oh, it's close enough. Oh, okay. Yeah, Torgle.

I mean, from 16. Anyway, not to ruin your game plan. Rob took a warrior. I'm also going to go with a warrior. I'm worried about a run on warriors. And personally, I felt like there was also kind of a top couple here. I guess that's typically true of almost all of these categories. But it felt like a weaker category to me,

given that we have roped off the protagonists here. And so I'm going to go with a character here who is near and dear to my heart, part of my early exposure to the Final Fantasy franchise, and that is the fashion legend. Oran. What a pick. I knew he wouldn't slip to me. I knew it. The man has style.

The man had tolerable voice acting in a game where that was not the norm. That is very much. High level for 10. Best speech of the game. It was a strong first effort. It was a try, you know, going from the text to the voice, it's a little bit of a little bit of a leap there. And it's kind of like, you know, you go from the silent movies to the talkies. And it turns out not everyone has the voice for those, but Arryn did. And Arryn was iconic just in terms of cosmetics, iconic in terms of a twist, which I will also leave unsaid here for the benefit of everyone who might be wanting to check out Final Fantasy 10 sometimes. Also, a rare exception to the agest Final Fantasy franchise.

Just a bunch of kids out there saving the world every time out. Aran, an older gentleman with some streaks of gray in the hair. And also interesting arm placement in the coat. Oh, yeah. Which I just walked around like Aran for a while. Still haven't quite figured out what the point is there. But it looks great. And maybe that's sufficient to be a point.

So, Orrin, it is for me. He's definitely the best of the old sage figure category, which I think could be one of, in itself for this draft, but like, I've always thought of him as Obi-One if he smoked two packs a day or was a roadie for Motley crew. Like, he has that kind of energy in Final Fantasy 10 in a way I appreciate. Yeah, my comp was Wilson from home improvement, just the way his face was short, was obscured. Some high-collar action going on that on that coat.

Like, if Wilson had seen some shit, you know. A great mentor, a great warrior. Next up, Matt, back to you. Oh, man. I have been just stressing that one of y'all would snipe this from me. I'm going to go with a mage here. Oh, no. I'm picking VV from FS9.

I knew what was going to happen. Now, if I was picking first with my heart, VV would have been my first pick overall, and I thought about it. I really did, but I figured he could slip to me in the second pick, and he did. I'm really happy about it. VVie is one of the best characters to me in all of Final Fantasy.

a really unique character. He's this sort of black mage that doesn't really belong anywhere. He's not raised with other black mages, and all of the humans don't really know what to make of him and kind of give him a hard time. And he just kind of finds family, and ultimately, like, this is a minor spoiler for FF9, so if you don't want to hear that, just jump 10 seconds.

VVV finds out that his species only lives a year. And finding that out, he has to kind of decide, well, okay, well, what does my existence mean then with this short timeline on it? And another character in the game also has that sort of similar experience and goes a totally different direction with it. And VV comes close to like a religious experience for me and hits me in a lot of my core beliefs as a human of that, like, ultimately what we're here to do, what we put stake in is other people and our relationships and that journey along the way with them and finding meaning in those connections that we have. And VV is also visually iconic and very funny. So I'm thrilled to be able to pick VV maybe my favorite character ever in Final Fantasy. It's a great pick.

I was weighing whether to go with VV or Oren. I knew that one or the other was not going to be there when it got back to me. Yeah. Yeah. Aren't we all VV in our way? Hopefully we have more than one year. Yeah. But our time is limited and isn't mortality what makes our time here podcasting together precious. We all have a lot to learn from VV.

We always reminded me of a Jawa with human hands. Definitely. Even though I guess black mages are based on the dark crystal. but to me at least it's a Java with human hands and a funny hat great pick and you get another pick

I get another one okay great I'm going to go with Warrior here and I'm going to take Celeste or Celiz depending on your reading of it from Final Fantasy 6

she's my warrior she's cool as fuck she was infused with magic at a young age by her dad and became this kind of magitech night sort of figure and then when things started getting unethical on her side,

she wouldn't stand for it. And she stood on her morals and kind of hit rock bottom. There's a pretty sad scene with her in the game. And she also gets to sing a dope opera, which in the pixel remaster is now actually sung. Whereas in the original 16-bit, they kind of put the words on screen while the music kind of matched them as close as possible.

really memorable, cool character and what you want to see in a Final Fantasy hero, someone who knows who they are, what they stand for, and will fight for it and do so while being an empathetic person. And she's real fun to play us too. So that's my pick. This is the first pick that's killing me. I really thought she was going to be there on the board. I thought I was safe to coast out cells. I was honestly, and she's a character you could probably take as a mage just as easily, right? One of these, like, hybrid magic using, sword using characters. Yeah, I'd let you argue for it, for sure.

Yeah. I mean, as well developed as any character in six, just gets like a ton of narrative thrust, super interesting. And the opera, as you said, Match is just like pantheon final fantasy stuff. As moving as anything you'll experience in any of these games. I did realize as I was pre-voice final fantasies, often kind of tough to tell how to pronounce some of these names. Definitely.

I watched a lot of YouTube videos to prepare for this draft, and a lot of the YouTube videos were like multiple pronunciations because the YouTuber also did not know how to pronounce these names. So we're doing our best here. Apologies to anyone if we mingle names. All right. I guess I'm up again. I'm still smarting.

It still stings that you stole VV from me, but I do have a close second in the mage category. And since I showed my hand when it comes to my Final Fantasy sentiments. You can probably guess where I'm going to go here. Great pay. Thank you. I'm taking Yuna as my mage. Now, you could make a case potentially for Yuna as the protagonist of Final Fantasy 10 might be a bit of a stretch in terms of which character I like more. No shots at Titus. I enjoy Titus at times, but not nearly as much as Yuna. Of course, in arguably the protagonist of Final Fantasy 102, which is not eligible here.

She's got a bit of a different vibe, a different fashion sense in 10-2. But she's shown up in multiple games, and for good reason, I think she's just the beating heart of Final Fantasy 10 for me. And because you never forget your first Final Fantasy. For me, I got to go with Una.

And, you know, this is a consolation for me because I'm sad that I missed out on VV, but if I couldn't get VV, this is the next best thing and it's not a distant second. Una, my mage. That's great. You get the sense, too, that in 10, like, Yunna has such a large role to play in that.

You kind of get a sense that maybe in the developer's mind she really is the protagonist, but perhaps they were pressured, you know, by the industry at the time. 2001. To have a male protagonist in a Final Fantasy game, you know? Yes. The true, the unoblished. official, but in our heart's protagonist of Final Fantasy 10.

Well, to that point, there is kind of a Renoa squall thing happening in Inverse, where Titus or Titus, however you want to pronounce it, is like the manic pixie dream boy of that story, right? It's the one who's kind of bringing Una into a different world and a different version of herself. I mean, such a somber game, and I think it's, you know, that's carrying the weight of it a lot of the time. So just a phenomenally well-drawn character. Okay.

Justin, I feel like you've been scheming, science. You've been studying your board. You've been drawn up the plays. I have. You're on the clock. I have a villain. And I'm happy to be the one. So I'm taking this villain off the board.

Rufus Shinra. Oh, yeah. Final Fantasy 7, you know, it's like one of those things where because Sephiroth is so iconic. Mm-hmm. And sort of, you know, again, it's like one of the top, most recognizable, not the most, you know, at least second most recognizable. will figure out of the whole series. It's like, I don't know, man,

Rufus, like, Rufus both, I love him in remake, too, but in the original game, he just has so much sauce, there's so much trip. It's out of control. Those polygons are out of control, bro, with the coat,

with the white coat, and he's just the dickhead, and he's the president, and his old man's got popped, and he doesn't even care. He's just, like, a trust-fund brat. Yeah.

And he's a genocide air. and confidence in the world. Yeah, and he's got the shotgun, and he has a dog. I'm not drafting his dog independently. You know, I've used my wild card already, but, man, Rufus has the drip. Rufus is on my team. Rufus has the ammo. Come on.

Yes, Rufus. Rufus Rufus. Yeah. It's one of the great things about Final Fantasy 7 is that you could have drafted, say, four villains from this game, and they all would have been defensive. sensible picks. I strongly considered not picking Sephroff because I knew that this was a deep category just in seven alone. So yeah, that you could make a case. Not a lot of screen time, I guess, in a relative sense, but perhaps the most evil of all, perhaps the enabler of all that is ill

about Midcar. All right. Rob, back-to-back picks from you. This is where I go with my heart. And by my heart, I mean the emo side of me. Oh, boy. He's going to do us. A literal face palm animation. I'm taking squall in the hero category, taking him off the board. Look, if Final Fantasy 8 is about anything, it's about how saving the universe requires you to get in touch with your emotions.

And so I'm trying to get in touch with my emotions with you guys here today. There are dozens of us who love this game. I am one of them. I am a sucker for its love story. I am a sucker for all of its complete Final Fantasy nonsense, including the perfect Final Fantasy weapon, the gun blade makes no sense.

How does it work? Could not tell you. Just mash that R1, brother. I don't even care. It just feels so satisfying to do. So between that, between emo squall, between the brilliance, honestly,

of the garden and seed concept in that game, which is, look, we need more games for child soldiers. That's my take on the subject. Metal gear solid. Metal gear solid. Fire emblem three houses.

I'm all about a child soldier game, and I'm all about this child soldier. Squal. Squall's my guy, and I got to show up for him. It's a controversial pick. It could be divisive. It could win you some votes. It could lose you some votes.

I'll tell you, I wasn't going to pick him. Definitely name recognition-wise. Yes. Up there, right? You know Squall, probably. If you haven't played the game, even, if you don't know that much about Final Fantasy, perhaps you've heard of Squal. Maybe that I'll get you some support.

But I like it. You've got to follow your heart. That's what these games are about. That's what this draft is about, part of me. And if I'm going to follow my, heart there. If I'm going to respect the emo, I also have to respect the goth. And so in mage, I'm taking Lulu from Final Fantasy 10. There's a lot of belts happening. I can't explain all of them. The originator of the belts. A lot of belts. The more of belts. Honestly, a lot of belts for

school, too. That's the highest belt count in the draft by far. The belt ratio is completely off the charts. That's belt ratio. I love Lulu in that game. And you can infer whatever you want to what that says about me, but I love her as a point of view character. I mean, oh my God. Another highlight in the game of a lot of voice acting low lights, but Lulu is great. And her as a point of view character when, like, look, we're all rolling our eyes at Tetus during a lot of that game. And she is leading the charge in eye rolls, leading the charge and being skeptical of

this guy. And as she warms up to him, I think is how we warm up to him. And so really important structurally for that game, really cool character. Plus, once you start double casting in that shit, You're buzzing through enemies. And so a really important battle character for my group, too. Yeah. Final Fantasy 10-2 did Lulu dirty.

No longer a playable character. Ridiculous. It's an outrage. But you've rectified it by having her represented on this draft. Next up, we have Justin Charity. Back to you. So my hero pick, it's going to be a compliment to something Rob just said, or game Rob just said,

because I'm I'm counting that. And I think this is, I think this is kosher. Laguna. Yeah. Laguna. Final Fantasy 8's Laguna. I don't always think that the way they do the weaving of the timelines in 8 is all that great. But I think Laguna is a character being like a revolutionary and then he's the president of an invisible city with space travel.

It's just, come on. Come on. The man with the machine gun. Come on. that's my hero. I feel like Final Fantasy has a lot of good, like, main, main characters, but there's something about the vibe of Laguna that if I think of this exercise is not just being about picking favorite characters, but building a team,

Laguna is that guy. Laguna is that guy you want running point on everything. That's my man's. If you are building a team, how are you feeling about, I will say, the somewhat checkered and complicated interpersonal dynamics of Laguna and Renoa on the same team. Okay.

I feel that. I feel where you're coming from. Yep. And it's like the yellow paint thing. Sometimes you got to, it's just, that's how games work? I don't know. I'm trying not to think too hard about it.

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One mission. Clinic Kids is using sports and evidence-based. wellness coaching to help kids build confidence, resilience, and the tools they need for life's challenges and opportunities. Up through August 2026, they're running 100 free sessions for school and community-based organizations near you. Learn more at clinickids.com slash 100KK. That's clinic with a K. Clinic Kids is registered 5.101c3 nonprofit. All right. I also am going to go with my protagonist here. And I'm going to pick a glue guy, someone who I think will knit the disparate personalities on my team together, someone you enjoy being around, unlike a lot of Final Fantasy protagonists,

someone whose name I was not sure how to pronounce. Is it pronounced like the famous French footballer? Probably, perhaps. I'm going to go with that. And I'm going to take Zadan tribal, the protagonist of Final Fantasy Nine. And I'm taking it. Zadan for a few reasons, but probably the main reason is that Zadan's a good hang, you know, at least relative to many other Final Fantasy protagonists, some of whom have been drafted in this draft, and I will not name out of respect for your choices. How dare you? However, if you want to hang out with a Final Fantasy protagonist, and most likely you don't,

but if you do, Zadan's got to be at the top of your board, right? Now, that's not to say that there's not some pathos. there. There's not some suffering that perhaps is hidden by the fun-loving, womanizing veneer and facade, putting a brave face on some trials in Zadhan's past. And yet, I think Zadhan makes a great compliment to VIVI because of all of the depth and the emotions that Matt described, you need a slightly lighter character as a counterbalance to VVI, I believe. And I think that this just brings my team together. I like the idea of putting Sedan on a squad with Aran, with Una, going up against Sephiroth. I really like what I have work in here.

See, you say womanizing, Ben, I say being a weird perv isn't a personality, even if you're a monkey man. You know, it was a different time. It was a very different time. All right. I'm glad you seem to approve. I'm happy. because if I did not get to it in, I was going to be struggling a little bit with where to go in that category. Matt, you're up next. Okay, I'm going to pop over to the wild card here,

and I'm going to take a character that is just so fucking cool. I'm going to take Vincent Valentine as my wild card. Really cool backstory, tortured character, like Oran, one of those, like, silent guys that just has all the vibes. Shoot some guns. He's really cool. I don't know what else to say.

He's this cool guy. So I'm taking him for my wild card. And then I'm going to crack the seal on the summons. Oh, okay. And start the run on summons. Yeah. And I feel like I got a real good one here. I'm going to draft Fat Chocobo.

First overall in the summons category. God damn it. Fat Chocobo is very big. And also a chokobo. And that's all I have to say about that. Have you done the boss, the remake in that simulation chamber with fighting the fat chokobo? Yeah, it's very big. Oh, my God.

My God. Wow. I mean, I guess it makes sense that summons all lasted this long. Maybe it's a little less integral to the party. A lot of them are pretty powerful. But I don't know that I would have predicted that it would last this long or that fat chokobo would be first off the board. That's inspired. Got to go in my heart.

It is. It is. Well, I only have two categories left, and I was going to go with a summon two, and I was not going to be as creative as Matt just was. I was going to play to the crowd again. This one is probably the summon who is most closely associated with this franchise, the OG. I'm going with Bahamit, another character who many people are confused about how to pronounce. You can find many game facts.

threads from many years ago asking, how do you pronounce Bahamah? And there's not really a great consensus. And in fact, I just pronounced Bahamut a different way than I did the first time I said it. But I mean, the original, right? Like so many Final Fantasy summons date to Final Fantasy three, where you had the eight, right? But Bahamuk goes all the way back. I mean, not that I was playing at the time. I was barely alive when Bahamette came into our lives in Final Fantasy. But, you know, you think about what is sort of the face of Final Fantasy. What are the most iconic characters and images? Because, of course, it's kind of a weird franchise in that you have a whole lot of standalone or mostly standalone games loosely knitted together by various elements that they share. And one of those

elements, one of the most prominent elements, is Bahamut. It's going to be a bad time for the bad guys when Bahamut shows up. A real crowd pleaser. I wonder, I wonder with summons like Bahamette, if fans have as strong a connection to them because it's clearly iconic, but usually you get them so late in the game. It's like you don't even get to use them that much by the end unless you're really grinding out side quests and stuff like that.

So it's something you always covet and you know is important, but like how many times in my life have I actually summoned Bahamana in the Final Fantasy game? Right. I mean, Matt and I were considering Knights of the Round. I thought you were going to go with that, Matt. And that's where you guys... That was gamesmanship.

Yeah, you might not know that's an option, right? You've got to get a golden chokobo. like unless you read about it online. You're only getting that. Yeah. Yeah. And yet fan favorite, you got to respect just how elaborate and over the top it is. So I did consider going with that.

It's obviously super powerful. It's not the only super powerful summon that I weighed here. Anyway, I guess you guys got to get your summons soon. Justin, don't want to tell you what to do here, but I do want to tell you that it's your turn to pick. I'm going to do finally my warrior pick. I would have done a summon too, but I, you know, I'm going to go against the screen and I'll do my warrior pick. We've talked about the dark brooding characters like Aaron and Vincent.

To me, the character who fits that mold best in my heart is Freya from Final Fantasy 9, a drunk, a lancor. I just remember loving the fact that like Freya's jump attack is like she just jumps off screen. No one can hit her. She just jumps off screen for a turn and then just like fall. and attacks the next time. I love that. I love the idea of that. I love her little red coat outfit.

I love that she's like a rat. You know what it is? Freya looks like an Eldon Ring character. That is what I think of like all the different races in Eldon Ring. And Freya looks like that. And just has that kind of dickish, dark, that kind of piracy personality. That just gray. Her theme is incredible.

Yeah, Freya. Freya is on my team. I'm glad you clarified rat person because one of my favorite things about the PlayStation 1 era of Final Fantasy is there's always one character's like what are you? What is that? Yeah, yeah. What are you exact? Are you the cat? Are you the Mughal or are you what? And for yeah, Freya, I've been baffled for years. I've never been able to put my finger on Ratt Person. But now it's all I can see. Now when I look at it, I'm only going to see Ratt Person from here on out. I feel like Justin, like you are revealing your deep knowledge.

of Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy lore, whereas my draft, I might do well, but I am just kind of playing it right down the middle. Like, this is the draft of someone who has not played as many Final Fantasy games as you have. You can tell that you have put the time. I mean, I'm only naming three of that.

I feel like I'm really leaning on the millennial, you know. Like, it's not like I'm going to Final Fantasy 13, you know. There's a reason for that. There's a reason for that, though. I mean, yes, fair, fair. Okay. We're getting there. Rob, the last two picks for you.

I have a point of order question, and that is, who would you consider to be the lead of Final Fantasy 6? I considered this question. I would say Tara. Yeah, I would say Tara. And I think if you had wanted to pick Celette's as or Locke, I would have. That would be my vote, is that Final Fantasy 6 actually has no lead character.

Because I feel like Tara is not, and it's not Locke, and it's, I don't know. I would say zero. Tara usually is the representative in the other like offshoot properties. So maybe that's a point to her being the league. I don't know. In the art, you see Tara. It's an ensemble cast, of course.

I don't think it's a clear protagonist in that game. It's not, I mean. So if you want to pick that for a while. Maybe Kafka is the protagonist. Have you ever thought about that kind of hot take? Yeah, Thanos and Infinity War is actually the, um, Terra was on my board for protagonistics. So, I mean, I would have gone there, and so I cannot block you personally.

I would sanction this. I would allow this myself. I don't know if other guys want to try to veto. Yeah. I guess the question is if she's a protagonist, we're saying protagonists are not eligible in Wildcard or they are? Yeah. They're not.

Yeah. But this, this, I mean, I would have picked a different person for my wild card if I could have done a protagonist. But I think that I don't think that anyone in six is definitively a protagonist, so I think it's totally fair for you to pick a six-person for Wildcard. Ben, how do you feel about it? Did we specify that protagonists cannot be Wildcard? We said, I feel like it's weird to have rules about Wildcard when the name is Wildcard.

Yeah, we already got Angelo off the board in Wildcard. Anything can happen. But you put Obama in Wildcard. It's called Wildcard. You know, what are we doing? Well, it has to be playable. That's the only definitive. Right.

That was it. Yeah. That was the only condition we imposed. So I say, feel free. Go for it. If it's fair play, I'm taking Tara and Wildcard. And we've already spoken to the silent protagonist type of the hero spectrum here. Tara has all like the amnesia-driven development of someone like Cloud in her game,

but plus she's also the moral center of her story. Really cool character, really cool arc. And as we've alluded to, the whole like interim question of that game, all these Final Fantasy games are wrestling with these existential threats, these end-of-the-world type threats. Final Fantasy 6, again, somewhat of a spoiler for the middle of that game. So jump ahead if you don't want to hear this. The question asks is like, what if you couldn't stop it?

What if the world didn't? And what Tara does before and after that, I think, is as compelling as an arc as you'll get from anything in any Final Fantasy game. So I'm thrilled to have her on my team. Plus, her theme is a jam. And it makes me want to jump into a big meck suit and fuck some shit up. So let's go. Good pick. It's a strong pick.

summon, I'm going to go what is the most important bit of Final Fantasy iconography for me and that is cactuar. Crucial character. It's a goddamn cactus that shoots spines at you and runs really, really fast.

What more could you want in a summon? You can keep all your elemental types, you can keep your big, like, end-of-game quest summons. I just want something simple and it's a little dude is going to make me laugh every time he's on the screen, bring on cactwar.

I feel so basic for drafting Bahamit now. It's like, Ifrit is still out there, Shiva's still out there, and you're all just like, I'll take cactuar. I'll take that, Chocobo. All right, well, this is my final pick, too. I only have wildcard remaining. Justin, you're up.

I will say that cactuar was my backup pick for some of it. So I'm glad Taktur was honored in this proceeding. Had to be. I'm with you about shooting spines. And having that adorable animation of the Taktwar running is like, come on. However, the moment in Final Fantasy 8 when Gilgamesh arrives to avenge Odin. Very good. And we don't have to get into this specific people who don't want to be spoiled on this 90-year-old video game, Final Fantasy 8.

Gilgamesh. My pick for summon is Gilgamesh. just like the fact that he just kind of randomly shows up the fact that which attack he will even do during his summon is random his design the fact that he's like muttering to himself when he walks off state like it's just a Gilgatch man and it's like and I'm also thinking of the version of a Gilgamesh and Final Fantasy 5

also who's more of like an antagonist character than a summon but yeah man Gilgamesh is like one of the most enduring sort of characters with a good bit frankly throughout the series. I love Gilgamesh. He's on the team. Love it. I love the summons

you can never really count on to show up when you meet them. It just makes me want them more like the chase. I can't help it. Odin, Gilgamesh, that whole Phoenix in some games like that whole lot.

So tantalizing. Playing hard to get. Yeah. All right. Well, my final pick then. Hooh. Okay. I have only wild card remaining.

This could be controversial. I think I'm within the bounds of propriety here, given the agreed upon conditions. We said playable character, right? We need some way for my party to get around. I mean, it's one thing to draft a great party, but if they can't cross the overworld, then they're never going to save the world. We need someone who can be some form of conveyance, something that can carry my party around. Now, I strongly considered drafting regalia from Final Fantasy 15, the car. Yeah, yeah, good car.

Good car. And I like that because you could pile my whole party in there. Playable. Playable, exactly. Playable. Yeah. A lot of miles. We didn't say it had to be an animated, animate object, right?

And regalia is alive in some respects. But I think I'm going to go with. The more iconic conveyance here, even though my party will have to take turns, I'm going to take the golden chocopoe. Probably the best of all chocobos when you acquire the gold chocobo if you do. We already named the fad chokobo. That's the best of all chocopos. The best non-summon chokobo. When you get the gold chokobo, if you do, they are constantly telling you, what a wonderful chokobo.

This is a great chokebo. And I agree. It's a great chocobo. I feel like, again, this kind of, you know, it's reaching for the lowest common denominator to some extent. I firmly admit I'm pandering here a little bit. I'm going for the popular appeal. Again, if we're talking about images associated with Final Fantasy, Chocobo's going to be up there. I couldn't take a Mughal.

I'm going to go with a chokopo. Okay. I considered like, can I just take the concept of a chokobo? I didn't think I would get away with that. Like if I could get all the chocobos, like the platonic ideal of a chokobo. Yeah, the essence of a chokubo. You went with the luxury model. Yeah, I did.

All the bells and whistles. Yeah. Running over mountains. I would have gone with every man's chokobo personally. Wow. But you can cross any type of terrain. Populous chogo. And I feel like that's pretty important here because who knows.

The cyber truck of chok. Or not, really. The culture does not rust in the rain. I mean, it's good. You're in the top 2%, I guess. All right. I mean, we considered, we hash this out before the draft, I was like, can we draft a Biggs or Wedge?

Like, can we summon Biggs or Wedge? Do we get all the Biggs's and wedges? But we agreed, not playable. Doesn't count. All right. I'm done. Nat. Last pick.

You're finishing us off here? I'm finishing off. Okay. I just want to say, I wish I could have picked a Final Fantasy 16 character, but I cannot. A little respect to that game, underappreciated. I think in time people come around to it.

I was envisioning some scenario in which Clive would have been my protagonist. Didn't happen. Anyway, got to pick a villain to close this out. And I left it for last because I know that you all had no awareness of this. And most people won't have any awareness of this either. But I'm going to go with the, I think, if you play the games, I think in arguably one of the top three Final Fantasy villains of all time, and this is from Final Fantasy 14

and you can't even see this until you're 80 plus hours deep really Emmett sunk from Final Fantasy 14 was on my board not from personal experience but from research

this is some real sick oh shit he's some real sick oh shit let me tell you but in the he's kind of like the opposite of Kefka in a lot of ways because whereas Kefka right, is this completely unhinged nihilist, right?

Everything that Emmett Selk is doing is coming from a place of logic, and it's coming from an intention of trying to save and bring back his people, right? So without going into the incredibly complex story in Final Fantasy 14, he's trying to bring his people back in his world that has shattered into a bunch of offshoot worlds. And in his view, of these offshoot worlds that are currently existing matter, nothing that he does in the matters, because to him, they're not the real world. So any of these millions of people, he's responsible for orchestrating the death of across many dimensions.

Yeah. And so it's a really interesting morality play that goes on with him. And on top of that, he's charismatic. He's visually striking. He's clever. Really fantastic, fantastic, villain that unfortunately a lot of people are never going to get to experience because he's so deep into the very long story of Final Fantasy 14. Yeah, it's a deep poll, but it's a good one. There are people out there who suggest that Emmett Selk is the best villain in this franchise, and you have stolen him with the final pick, except that some people will not know who that is. But the most people.

Even knowing who it is is a spoiler. Yes. the real Final Fantasy heads. They will say, I see you, Matt James. I just want to be seen. I feel bad that Seymour. Seymour did not make anybody's picks for Villas. Michael Jackson voice and that haircut,

the weekend hair before like a decade and a half for the weekend had it. That's crazy. I'm sorry. Shout out to the Act 1 and Act 2 villains in Final Fantasy, which I honestly identify with a lot more than the sorceress or meteor that's coming to kill everyone at the end a lot of the time.

So shout out. to see more. Yeah, I thought about Noctus as protagonist slash hero. I thought about Arden, thought about Steiner, thought about Barrett, thought about Yo Jimbo, the one hit Joe, some of the hell. Yeah, I love Yo Jimbo. I hate that you mention him. Oh, I wish I think Joe Jimbo.

The most expensive and yeah, most effective. Yo Jimbo is worth every gill. Master Tombury. I wanted Master Tombury on Wildcar at night. I'm going to do it. Yeah. I thought about Eric,

thought about Zach Fair. I mean, Hojo would have been a good villain to pick you. I was going to say, considered Hojo for sure. I was surprised

that you went Rufus Shindra over Hojo, but I totally get it. They're both like FF7 has more good villains than it knows what to do with. It really does. And a most improved candidate

is someone I never would have imagined picking in a draft like this who I remake forced me to. I really thought about Jesse in Wildcard. I was really charmed by her. She's so specific in remake. She has such a specific energy.

Very specific energy. And don't get me wrong, like a very flirty character looking right down the barrel of the camera. Like they know exactly what they're doing. But it's a character in the first play through. I did not think about it at all. And she comes and goes in the story.

She's a non-entity. And part of the joy of the remake and the rebirth experience is fleshing out those sorts of characters. I think Jesse's been one of the most successful versions of that so far. My wife is named Jesse. and I almost as a tribute to her and our love

and the recently past Valentine's Day drafted Jesse, but I didn't. You picked a chocobo instead. Yeah, wow. That's great. All right. I think we did okay here collectively. I think we did great.

A little too heavy on the eight for me. But aside from that, I think everyone did great. Not having. I was ready to take Zell. Yeah, we were locked and loaded out here. I can't believe we got two eight apologists on this. I was going to have. Final Fantasy 15 in here.

Like I thought, yeah, I don't know. I wanted to get prompto in here because he's weird. Yeah. And I like Arraniah Highwind a lot, but it's just Freya is kind of like a better version of Raraniah Highland, you know. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, look, there will be lifers out there who will criticize us for not going low single digits with anyone here. No Cecil. Anyone like that making our words here.

No, but. Yeah. Yeah. If we can say it very quietly, those games aren't that good. Don't worry. Don't worry about it. Below five. Below five, I'm out.

They said an example that other games built on and improved upon. Five, very good. Five very good. And no representation for five is tough. But so it goes. Unless you count Gilgamesh. There you go. Okay.

Now that our work is done, it is time for the ceremonial recapping of the picks. Devin, you have recorded our results. Tell us who we drafted. All right. For our protagonist, starting with Matt, we have Cloudstripe. Matt also picked Vivi as his mage, followed by Celeste for his warrior, coming with his villain, Emmet Selch, Summon, Fat Chocobo, and his wild card was Vincent Valentine. Ben, you came in strong with your protagonist, Zadon Tribal, your mage was Una, your warrior was Orin,

villain Sephiroth. Your summon was Bahamut, and then you went with your gold chocobo for a wild card. Justin for his protagonist picked Laguna. Justin picked Ranoa for his mage. Freya for his warrior. Villain was Rufus. His summon was Gilgamesh. And of course, his wild card was Angelo the dog.

Rob, you closed things out for us. You gave a squaw for your protagonist. Lulu for your mage, Tifa for your warrior, Kepka for your villain, great choice. Your summon was Gactuar. And of course, your wild card was Tara. All great choices, all great picks. Well, please let us know what you think of our selections. Let us know via your votes on the various ringerverse socials.

Let us know via email at ringerverse gaming at gmail.com. Matt, Justin, Rob, I would go into active time battle with the three of you any day. Thank you so much for taking part in this exercise. Anytime. Of course. Thank you also to Devin Ronaldo for producing and determining our draft order and keeping track of the picks. Thank you to Arjuna Ramikpal for his senior management of the ringerverse. Final fantasy is kind of a contradiction in terms in that there's always another fantasy.

and this was not our final, final fantasy pod. So ButtonMash will be back with continuing coverage of rebirth, hands-on review, impressions, our questions, have they been answered, how have they been answered? Stay tuned also for coverage of Avatar, The Last Airbender, coming up elsewhere on the feed, as well as me and Mal with the Bad Batch midweek. And I think there's only one way to end this episode, and that's by quoting Vivi. I'm so happy I met everyone. I wish we could have gone on more adventures,

but I guess we all have to say goodbye someday.