More Final Fantasy

[System Error]

I did a solo Thief run on FF Renaissance. Hilariously a day after I started it, Sullla posted his own solo Thief run on the same. They are definitely two completely different beasts despite being the same challenge, and not just due to different writing styles. I went a little insane in particular...

[MJW (ya that one)]

Two differences.

1. Sullla did get lucky against Astos. 31 tries against him isn't that bad due to the short walk and just having to mash fight. A far cry from Berserker FF5 Soul cannon.

2. Encounter table not resetting isn't actually a bug, just emulating cartridge hard-reset.

Luck bug+people not save-scumming is what probably pushed white mage over the thief in NES.

[System Error]

2. Encounter table not resetting isn't actually a bug, just emulating cartridge hard-reset.

To explain this, the v1.3.3 version of Final Fantasy Renaissance had a bug where the encounter table did reset after a game over. This obviously isn't the case as any challenge runner can attest to. It heavily affected Sullla when he did a solo White Mage and his Berserkers challenge there. In order to preserve the encounter order in that and earlier versions, it was necessary to pause and hit "soft reset" from the program's in-game menu. It was fixed in v2.0 and a game over will no longer disrupt the encounter table. However, you can still emulate a cartridge hard reset by instead selecting "exit to menu" from the program's in-game menu and reloading the save, starting over from encounter 1.

[Sullla]

I opened up this thread 15+ years ago with one of my reports for the original Final Fantasy. It feels appropriate to post here again with what will likely be my final solo character run for the venerable game: the melee-only solo Black Mage.

https://www.sullla.com/FF/Kuro1.html

[T-hawk]

Fun read, though I'm surprised to see you go for any kind of mod or hack to a game. Yeah this wouldn't have been possible with the real release, although it is a window into what could have been had the original programming not been so shoddy. And yeah, your references to months of grinding had me cringing on recalling doing that with my own FF5 white mage.

[Fenn]

Thanks for the excellent report. I have dim memories of reading about a full party of melee-only Black Mages on the Playstation version, but doing it solo might well be the first of its kind.

Also good to learn about the existence of this Renaissance program. Between that and the Restored patch for the NES version there's been a lot of love and care towards polishing up this great game.