Final Fantasy Quest - The Best Final Fantasy Game Ever Made (Legit, 100%)

Instead of finishing the repetitive Final Fantasy IV: The After Years or the farcical Final Fantasy V, I opted to play the superior Final Fantasy game. No, not VI, VII or even awkward-laughing X. I mean, of course, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

Released in the US on October 5, 1992, Final Fantasy Mystic Quest was not at all given to us because the developers thought we sucked at JRPGs and need a basic game to train with. Rather, it is the true pinnacle which all true Final Fantasies strive for.

Mah boi!

It is the epic tale of Benjamin (most likely an orphan) and his quest to save the four elemental crystals. Like any Final Fantasy protagonist is wont to do. To cut out the fussiness of managing 5 players at a time, the player is given no more than 2 characters to control at any time. And unlike a certain other game, the game is not automatically over if the main character gets KO'd!

Ahem.

In all seriousness, FFMQ is at best decent, and at worst mediocre. The preceding year saw the release of Final Fantasy IV with its epic scope and (relative to a lot of other games at the time) intricate plot of friendship, betrayal and battle. Enemies didn't wait for your turn and bosses were tough. Surely the next game in the series would kick everything up to an 11? (Or, at least, a V).

Enter Mystic Quest. Few would consider this a worthy follow up to IV, or any entry in the series, for that matter. Gameplay was oversimplified and almost nothing like that of the "superior" entries in the series. To my knowledge, there hasn't been a remake of it like the other games.

And yet.

Perhaps time has afforded a more balanced perspective. Mystic Quest, despite not being the amazing V, is still worth considering. For instance, you can jump. There's tools that affect the world map, like a claw-shot or axe. Partners can either be automatic or controlled manually. While I won't apologize for the game's deficiencies, it's unfair to vilify the game merely because it's not IV or V.

What were the things I liked? One notable example is the Focus Tower. The game has no over world in the traditional sense, but the Focus Tower serves as a hub for the different areas to which Benjamin goes. Inside, there are several doors. These doors are unlocked as the game progresses. I admit, it was fun to wonder where each door would lead, and then finally unlock it.

One of the first doors seen, but the last unlocked

Another cool feature are the battle sprites of the enemies. Even in the glorious oeuvre that is Final Fantasy VI, very few enemies have more than one battle sprite. Not so in MQ. Almost all enemies have two sprites, one normal and one battle-damaged. Bosses have more, anywhere between 3-4.

Good thing ol' Flamey had a few spare ribs, eh?

Where's Interceptor?

I wouldn't recommend it before V or VI, but if you have the time and are so inclined, go ahead and give Mystic Quest a shot.

I win again again

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Whew! This article had been sitting around unfinished for a while! In the meantime, I tried to get a little further in The After Years, but I'm still stuck before a particular encounter with the Mysterious Girl on the moon. At least I get more time to play as Golbez! And I started into VI and Crisis Core.

But enough rambling, I'm off to play that free demo of Final Fantasy XV!

Final Fantasy Quest - The Search for Silly

It's hard to believe the amount of expressions that can be expressed in 16-bit form.

Until you play Final Fantasy V (FFV) for the first time.

Long story short, my favorite aspect of FFV are the characters. Coming off the heels of the played-straight serious FFIV, the zany hijinks of Bartz and crew are a nice change. Yes, sad stuff happens in the game, but the overall tone is more light-hearted. This game is the birthplace of Final Fantasy's best recurring character, Gilgamesh. (Also, heavy spoilers to follow after these lovely pictures).

Haha! It's not like I wanted you to show up, or anything...

*gasp!* The fiend!?!

If you're familiar with this game, what I say next will be no surprise. The job system is pretty rad. A dramatic improvement over the system in FFIII (more on that in a future article, hopefully) the job system in FFV allows a player to assign characters to whatever jobs they want. Skills mastered can be added to other jobs, so you can have a white mage that can brawl, or a monk that can heal everyone. Plus, once a job is fully mastered, it passes abilities on to the "Normal" class that you began as.

However, the best part about the job system is this:

Pirate ninja princess.

I'll say it again: pirate ninja princess. The pirate captain Faris, who is the best and most badass character in the party, can be a ninja too.

Plus, Square did the "pirate captain who is secretly a princess" thing a good ten years before Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker.

Not such hot stuff anymore, huh!?

Story-wise, the game is somewhat predictable. The main focus, again, is trying to keep the four elemental crystals intact (and failing miserably). As I said above, the characters are the best part of FFV; namely, how they interact and react to people and events. They may be simple 16-bit sprite, but they are able to express a wide array of emotions.

What even is that pose, Faris?

There are even a number of optional spells and espers, like a few of the Bard's songs, some blue magic and the summons Shiva or Carbuncle. And unlike a few of FFIV's harder-to-get summons, these ones are actually worth finding.

Overall, this is one of the better entries in the series, and it is definitely a viable entry point for newcomers to the series. Even with the myriad of jobs, it is manageable to keep your party powerful, as all playable characters remain in the party, and which jobs you master depends on your particular play-style.

In the Faris screenshot, you could see that I had mastered all the jobs (barring Mime class). This is not a task I would advise someone to do, as it took hours of grinding to accomplish.

Anyway, I'm close to finishing it, having made a good bit of progress in World 3 (out of 3). Apologies for not getting to The After Years, I got stuck and put it aside for a bit. Because I know I love FFVI, I might pause before moving on to that entry.

Until next time, later guys!

Math - My Journey with Choose

In light of recent stormy/controversial political events, why not take a break with something that everyone loves? (Or hates, but how could you possibly hate it?)

Math!

Yes, math. Ever since undergrad, I'd always fancied myself something of a math enthusiast. I don't understand half the stuff, but it's endless fascinating.

Lately, I've been going at a random college textbook I have. College Algebra and Trigonometry (from 1984 no less!) has a nice spread of concepts, including the mystifying sigma notation and the methods for doing matrix operations. Important today, however, is an equation found on the inside cover:

AKA binomial equation, or binomial formula

My interest was piqued when a math channel, associated with my favorite math(s) channel, Numberphile, did a video on the "choose function," which used the above equation to figure out the number of ways objects in a subgroup could be arranged in the overall group.

That same mathematician talked about how spreadsheets could be great fun, so I decided to combine the ideas. Doodling various combinations of 7 choose 2, or 7 choose 5, I saw that some results were the same. For instance, there are 7 ways to choose 1 object in 7 objects, and there is the same number of ways to choose 6 objects in the same group of 7.

Confused? It'll be cleared up soon, don't worry.

Figuring out a general equation proved to be too difficult/require too much effort, so I leaved off doing that. However, observing that the numbers increased and decreased in a steady manner, I did the only logical thing: I made a bar graph from the data. Witness the beauty below:

Extra large for your viewing pleasure

If you do any work with statistics at all, you'll recognized this as the normal distribution. I could go on about how the choose function is related to binomial coefficients and Pascal's triangle, but that would be excessive and redundant, since they're all so closely related.

With my limited skills in mathematics, being able to put things together like this was really fun. For the skilled mathematician, something like this is a given. It is fascinating to be able to take a series of numbers, work some "magic" with them in a spreadsheet, and discover a relation I never knew before.

But I suppose that's the heart of math, then? Using the tools to discover new and cool things?

Anyway, I'll close before I ramble on too long.