Final Fantasy Marathon: The Search for the Black Mask – Final Fantasy II #7

With Fynn safely back under the control of the Wild Rose forces, the time has come to take the fight to the Empire. To do that, we’ll need some firepower.

Minwu set off for Mysidia a while back in an attempt to track down the Ultima tome, but no-one’s heard from him for a while. Firion and company decide to set off in search of him… but not before they stop by the Tropical Island to track down the Black Mask they’ll need to find what they’re searching for. Which, of course, begs the question why Minwu didn’t take it with him… but we’re not supposed to think about that.

Today’s episode is a bit shorter than previous ones; we’ll probably go back to about this length from hereon, as it’s a little more practical for me to record. It’ll mean the series as a whole takes a bit longer to get through… but these games aren’t going anywhere!

2 thoughts on “Final Fantasy Marathon: The Search for the Black Mask – Final Fantasy II #7”

  1. Based on your description of how the spell “rolls” work, it sounds like they pretty much just applied how the multi-hit system for physical attacks works to them as well. Been forgetting to mention this, but there’s an interesting quote attributed to lead FFII/SaGa producer/designer Akitoshi Kawazu: “Not sure how true this is, but I once heard that Kawazu said in some interview that he makes SaGa games so labyrinthine in their mechanics on purpose. His reasoning is that every time he plays his -own- game, he wanted to be surprised. On the surface, this comment seems harmless, but when you really think about how games are made… it must take a hell of a lot of complex coding to create something functional where the creator itself has no idea of the expected result.”

    And what you said about the mechanics being (relatively speaking) rather interesting and strange is very true, and probably contributes to people calling it a “bad” game, both due to the fact that it’s so different from what people expect out of the kind of game it is, and the fact that the game doesn’t explain any of it to you. Of course, the game not explaining shit makes sense, since you don’t need to know every single little facet about a game or its mechanics to be able to play it competently/beat it, let alone enjoy it. I think it might just be people expecting the game to explain all the shit to them, as lots of games tend to do, but that may just be me reaching/projecting.

    Is this the guide you were talking about, by the way? https://guides.gamercorner.net/ffii/

Share your thoughts. Be nice!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.