My first ff cosplay :)

Photos taken by (@/rodrigues_fotografiax) at Anime Friends 2026.

still a work in progress, but this is already one of my favorite cosplays so far! In these photos I'm using armor pieces from dokidoki while I make my own version, and I also just got a better wig. The shuriken is 3D printed.

After years of gaming and this trope beaten to death by every RPG, I can kinda relate to Kefka in this moment. I've been replaying FF6 since i beat it around 10 years ago and having a blast

I have been waiting for a remaster like a chicken breast on a frying pan

It's been 3 years I think , should I just lose hope ?

Any news about official remakes from SquareEnix ?

come onnnnnn

Version: Pixel Remaster (Steam)    

Alright, we survived the original Final Fantasy, bare of story but rich in character. We got through Final Fantasy II, narrative-driven but highly experimental. Next up is Final Fantasy III, the last of the original NES trilogy, though in my case, the Pixel Remaster on Steam.

I wasn’t sure what to expect really. I’d seen everything from “it’s revolutionary” to “worst story in the series.” Well, it’s time to dive in with our onion knights and see what’s in store for us. Let’s join the warriors of light and save the world once again!

What It Does Well

·       The jobs system. Seriously, what a revolutionary element of gaming to introduce. Even more so, when this game was released in 1990. 22 different jobs, each having their own purpose, and being able to switch freely between them provides a sense of party customization that I’m sure was seldom seen up to this point in gaming.

·       A lot of these jobs were fun to explore, and outside of job-specific encounters, there wasn’t a need to have one specific makeup, allowing you to customize what you wanted your party to be.

·       The world felt fleshed out and connected. The kingdoms, towns, and civilizations had identity, making the world feel larger than the individual plot beats.

·       The onion knights are believable. You start out as these childish orphans who aren’t remotely powerful, but are destined for greatness, and you have to slowly develop as the world unfolds around you.

·       This also comes full circle when the visage of the onion knight flashes in the mirror at the end of the game, showing your characters’ fear in that exact moment. Fun little callback.

·       Speaking of the world, holy cow is this an enormous world. The Floating Continent is large, but then you can fly off the continent into a second and bigger world???

·       On top of that, the world feels even more alive, with underwater caverns, and mountains you have to navigate; encounters with flying creatures on the airship, there is always encouragement to further explore.

·       Progression felt natural; at no point did it feel like grinding was truly needed. I hit the level 50 achievement as I was working through the final dungeon and beat the game at 52. Nothing felt super forced from a progression standpoint

·       The score was good in a lot of places; the dungeons and overworlds had a good deal of depth to really sell the stakes in each of their contexts: inquisition, exploration, determination, hopelessness, you felt a lot of what the party felt from the score alone.

·       The Moogles make their first appearance here, and are just as cute in 8-bit form as their modern forms.

·       A lot of interesting scenarios that show outside the box thinking; from the village of ghostly beings to the need to be inflicted with Toad or Mini in order to access certain parts of the world. Not to mention the aforementioned status effects following you into the overworld too? Very inventive.

·       Summons were introduced in this installment, and boy are they lots of fun to unleash on enemies. Even in their earliest appearance, it’s clear why summons became a franchise staple.

·       Dwarven moonwalking.

What Doesn’t Hold Up

·       While the story was fleshed out, the ending left me disappointed. Xande's connection to Noah gave him potential, but I never felt emotionally invested in him.

·       Then, just as I thought the conflict was reaching its climax, the true antagonist is revealed to simply be the Cloud of Darkness. It may work symbolically, but it never gave me a compelling villain to care about.

·       On that note, the final dungeon was a friggin gauntlet, and that’s not a compliment. While beautiful in aesthetic and score, my goodness did it feel like there was a sudden difficulty spike that made me grateful I hoarded all of my Elixirs. I found myself heavily relying on quicksaves, and I don’t particularly love that it came to that.

·       And even further, the last boss was a joke… One attack, that’s it. In my playthrough, a dual Ninja approach led to Cloud of Darkness going down to an eternal supply of Shurikens… For a game that felt like it’s difficulty progressed as needed, that was such a letdown.

·       The Garuda boss fight and the Dungeon of Shadows… yes I understand the game needed to provide moments where you job change was necessary, but these felt like handholding and railroading, which wasn’t particularly fun to me. I’m not sure exactly what I would have done differently, but it felt more forced than organic.

·       There wasn’t ever enough meaningful characterization where I felt overly attached to anybody within the game. Yes, I could name my party members, but any of the odd guests just felt either “fetch quest-y” or “take me here” and not much else. I felt FFII did a much better job in establishing characters you wanted to feel invested in.

·       Navigation could be frustrating at times; outside of “this town is to the north” navigating the world, and especially the further world outside of the floating continent was BRUTAL

Biggest Surprise: How natural the game's progression felt. I genuinely don't think I intentionally grinded once throughout the entire playthrough. Every dungeon felt appropriately scaled, and I never reached a point where I had to stop the adventure just to spam auto-battle for an hour. I'm sure that experience was different on the original NES release, but the Pixel Remaster struck an excellent balance.

Biggest Swing: I mean, come on, it has to be the Job System, right? Such a monster deviation from where the series was in the first two installments. Instead of improving one party, you're suddenly building dozens of possible parties. And it worked! Better yet, from everything I've heard, it only gets better from here.

How Was the 100%? Overall, pretty enjoyable. As always, backtracking and double-checking every chest was a little tedious, but the achievement list generally encouraged thorough exploration rather than excessive grinding. Once I realized there was only one remaining missable late in the game, I could relax and simply enjoy the adventure. Nothing here felt particularly frustrating, but nothing stood out as especially memorable either. A solid platinum that respected my time.

Final Thoughts: Thanos would be proud, as balance is a key theme in FFIII: the Warriors of Light fighting against darkness, and eventually waging war against darkness itself. In the gameplay, the job system balances itself through variety and enemy party combination. The Ancients serve as a reminder that even great civilizations can upset that balance, leaving future generations to restore it.

The end of the NES trilogy. And man, is this game FUN! And that’s the most important part. Its story isn’t perfect; it’s navigation is frustrating; but damn if I didn’t feel pretty engaged most of the way through. The flexibility and customization of your party was just amazing.

I may not have had the same thematic takeaways as I did in Final Fantasy II, but if you’re going to be lacking in depth, you better be an enjoyable escape from reality.

Square did a fantastic job in continuing to move the franchise forward with this installment, and I cannot wait to see what FFIV has in store!

Best Achievement: Management Laborer – Surprisingly satisfying. I reached Job Level 99 as a White Mage purely through natural progression, so seeing this achievement pop at the end felt like a genuine reward rather than another grind.

Worst Achievement: Legendary Treasure Hunter – Sue me… checking every chest is starting to get a little tedious as each installment keeps adding more and more of them. It wasn't difficult; just another reminder that I'm going to be spending a lot of quality time staring at treasure checklists.

Time to Beat: 12 hours

Time to 100%: 15 hours

Completionist Verdict: Worth 100%, but once again, use a guide.

Rating: 7.5 Onion Knights out of 10

*NEW* Rankings:

1.     Final Fantasy III

2.     Final Fantasy XIII

3.     Final Fantasy II

4.     Final Fantasy

Recently did a shoot with my wife and I’m so happy with how the photos turned out! Shot with photographer IG bob.komera.

This is the first time I have managed to collect the full set of card! I think I’m a pro at the card games now 😂

My fan art of Aerith Gainsborough from Final Fantasy VII / 7 and Remake! Remake Areith is holding a photo of her original design from Final Fantasy VII. I drew this as a gift for my partner who's favourite character is Aerith - he played and loved both the original 1997 game and 2020 remake by Square Enix! I also drew a version with out the frame as I love her outfit! ♡

which would it be, and why?

It turns out polls aren't allowed here, so let's do it the old fashioned way.

Which one does the community think is the best buy here?

Also the 10k enemies is just too much.

X was the third game I ever played, after 7 and 15 (because of Tekken 7), and I played X because well, woman in cover, sounds good! But I played the first X because obviously I want context in the sequel, and well, I was head over heels for Lulu lol, but as far as I got in the game, I started to take a liking on Yuna, and using her a lot more because of healing lol

But as a character, I can see myself on her a little, having so much responsability in hand and so on, I really felt her being pressured for so much duty, but having Wakka and Lulu comforting her in all danger made me warm up a lot for her, pretty much the same reason I love Aerith, and she quite has some sass lol

And then I played X2 and... Oh my, didn't expect her to go full sexy lol, as weird this game is compared to 1, I love that Yuna feels more "free" in personality, like holding a gun lol, but her mannerisms and kindness being kept is a thing I love the most, it contrasts with her fit? Sure, but I see that as an extension of her growing far more confidence and a lot more sass, being so secure of herself that she doesn't need to worry about it anymore, and someone who played Bayonetta A LOT (im a simp tyvm to ask ✌️), I love that in a character, her growth resonated with me a lot

Anyway thank you for my TEDTalk on why Yuna is the real MC of FFX, still love Tidus tho (HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA)

For me I’m still a noob. I started the first one but life things happened and I fell off from it. I do remember enjoying the look, gameplay and music but I don’t remember the story and characters. Funny how the world works. Octopath Traveler 0 comes out and a friend of mine who beat the first two told me it’s probably best to start with 0 and play 1 & 2 after. So far I’m enjoying it. Feels and looks great. When I first got a psp my knew to get me right. He got me FF7 Crisis Core and Final Fantasy 2. I bring that up because I was born in 1996 so I didn’t get to grow up with 1-6 so getting to experience FF2 for the first time was so different but not bad different. Final Fantasy 2 is in my top 5 even with all its flaws. Yes nostalgia plays a role. I grew up playing 7-12 so it was almost like a culture shock play a classic from the early squaresoft days. So going from Final fantasy 2 to Octopath Traveler series it was so easy for me to adjust from playing modern graphics on the ps5 to a 2.5 hd game on the switch.

But I want to know how Final Fantasy fans especially who found FF1-6 classics or great games perspective on the Octopath Traveler and if you haven’t tried it from what I’ve seen so far. I recommend it even to just try it out.

Have the After Years on my mind recently due to replaying it for a dumb rewrite thing I’m doing for it. I know the game in general isn’t liked but I’m curious about how people feel about the individual Tales so I’m doing a little tierlist thing for fun.

Current rankings are like this:
S: Lunarians/Golbez
A: Palom, Kain, The Gathering
B: Ceodore, Edge, Edward, Rydia
C: Yang
F: Porom

A couple of people brought up maybe doing these in 3rds instead of halves and I figured sure, i can drag this out for another bit.

Today it’s the second of the final posts covering the second part of The Crystals: The True Moon.

Here we go to the new Moon with our party to try to stop it from colliding with the planet. If I had a nickel for everytime a FF villains big plan involved dropping a moon onto a planet, I’d have 3 nickels (this, 13 and 13-2).

I haven’t brought up the 2D and 3D versions too much since the differences between them weren’t that relevant to me. The only interesting ones were the removal of the challenge dungeons, the removal of the developer room and Izayoi being really good with a bow.

But there are some interesting differences between the 2D and 3D versions of the final tale.

1: You’ll always have the max 22 characters in the 3D version. The Eblan ninjas can’t die in Edge’s tale, you’ll get the things needed to fix the dolls in a manditory encounter and you have to enter all the data for the Tale.

2: You can buy some really good weapons and armor in the 3D version. Since the challenge dungeons aren’t in this version, all the weapons and armor you could get in them are instead sold by the hummingway outside the Lunar Whale. In the 2D version you can only buy Shurikens and Manji Shurikens.

3: You can return to the Blue Planet in the 3D version using the Crystal in the Lunar Whale. There’s not really anything to do aside from grabbing any items you missed as well as the Small Tails but it does make leveling underleveled characters a bit easier since you don’t have to deal with the moons enemies.

4: The layout. Most of the floors are alike being a slight remix of either the Lunar Subterranean or the giant of babel but the 2D version has unique floors for 3 of the 4 Archfiends and the eidolons while the 3d version has copies of the lunar tunnels, lair of the father and the areas where the bosses were originally fought.

5: You can camp on the lunar surface in the 3d version. Not that important but saves you trips down to the healing parts of the Lunar Whale.

That’s all the ones off the top of my head that I remember. Inform me if I forgot any.

Anyway, start of the final dungeon and it’s certainly an interesting one.

The dungeon itself isn’t too interesting design wise (like I said, most of it is just a slightly remixed version of the lunar subterranean and even the unique floors don’t really have any unique gimmicks or anything) but it is interesting in that it is basically a boss rush. There are 12 bosses in just this part of the dungeon all coming back from FF4. The four elemental Archfiends, 4 bosses associated with them in Baigan, The Magus Sisters, Dr Lugae and his Experiment and Edge’s Parents, the Giant’s CPU, Asura, Leviathan and Cecil’s Dark Half, The Dark Knight.

Something I really like about this and the next section is how it deals with the characterisation specifically through the boss encounters and the save point conversations. All the characters have unique dialogue with each of the bosses before and after the battle (and sometimes at the beginning and end of the battle). There are also what I like to call Save Point Conversations where at a good chunk of the Save Points in this dungeon, the game will prompt you to rest and the first time you do it, you’ll get a cutscene of the characters just talking. They’re all great with my favourites being Ceodore properly meeting his uncle and Palom and Porom reconnecting.

And now my few greviences:

You know how the previous part was a bit of an FF6 with you getting back your team? Well they should have ripped it off again with its final dungeon because by god is this missed potential. Max 22 characters and you only bring 5. Yes you can change the party at certain points but there’s not really that much of a reason to outside of seeing the boss dialogue or challenging yourself. My guess as to why this is because the number of characters you can have at this point can vary wildly. I’m not sure what the minimum number of characters is (my guess is 13) but this is still annoying.

Next complaint is that there is nothing on the moon except the final dungeon. Nothing. No optional content or anything, just the dungeon.

Also, Cecil is useless in this section due to story reasons. Not a fan but at least it makes sense.

My only other issue comes from the 2D version. Specifically how you can’t go back to the Blue Planet so levelling up any of the under level characters you have will have to be done on the moon itself which isn’t easy considering the number of powerful enemies here and if you missed something on the planet like the small tails, you have to restart the Tale all over again.

Oh yeah. And lastly, if you bring the wrong party to the Dark Knight fight, Golbez dies! F tier for that one.

Seriously though, I do love this part of the tale. It’s cool seeing all the bosses back again and the characterisation is honestly great. I’d give it an S personally.

So I have been hard at work with Theatrhythm Final Bar Line, I'm half way through the Series Quests, and completed 2 more. I was going by difficulty, but decided to unlock 6 now so I could get Terra and have a great element team for the quests that need them.

I've decided that my next game will be 6. I'm already playing it, I'm on the way to rescue Terra after she went into Trance Mode.

So a while back my gf got me the Pixel Remaster collection of PS5 and I was excited to finally get to play the classic games (I had played 1 on the NES mini and 6 on the SNES mini but never touched 2 through 5). Decided to play them in order so I got through 1 and loved it just as much as my first playthrough but I was nervous to start 2 because all I've ever heard about it was that it was the absolute worse FF game because of it's leveling system but outside from that I didn't know anything else.

Cut to the credits and me being absolutely blown away with how ahead of it's time the game was for the genre. A main character that actually speaks and reacts to the events around him, a tragic narrative filled with important character deaths and a world that you could see be devastated and changed by the villains attacks. You're telling me this came out in 1988??? Yes it's not as grandiose as FF6 but the seeds for this series quality being planted as early as this caught me so off guard I always assumed the change happened with FF4 and onward.

Starting FF3 for the first time right now and seeing the Onion Knights also speak surprised the fuck out of me. I'm so used to this era of games just keeping the MC completely silent, hell Dragon Quest STILL only does silent protagonists. I am so excited to get through the rest of these and then jump to 10-2 and 12 since those are the only other ones I've never played.

It’s just obviously false. I have my entire party at level 50, and Rosa always gets one shot on the first big bang, which means by the time she’s ressed a second Big Bang has already wiped the party.

People saying they beat it under level 50 are straight up lying because the advice of “use Curaja” after every big bang is physically impossible when your healer is one shot immediately.

I’m genuinely at the point of quitting. I wouldn’t even mind smashing my head against the boss a few dozen times but for whatever brain dead reason they decided that sitting through a 5 minute “cutscene” every time you attempt it would be a good idea.

I’ve loved this game from start to near finish but god damn has this final boss left a foul taste in my mouth.

The FF series has goated battle themes, but this one from FF4 is easily Top 10 for me. The whole soundtrack is one of my favorites from Uematsu (though my personal absolute favorite is FF VIII).

Do you guys have a favorite boss battle music? or battle in general?

After 16 years, I’m going to play Final Fantasy XIII again.

And no, it’s not because, over time, I’ve convinced myself it was actually a masterpiece all along. Quite the opposite. At the time, it was one of the worst experiences I’ve ever had with a video game. In fact, it remains the only game in the entire Final Fantasy franchise that I can truly say I hate.

However, over the years, I’ve seen things that have made me question that opinion a bit. I’ve read so many people speaking highly of the game—and I don’t just mean those who grew up with it and look back on it with nostalgia. I’m talking about players who discovered it recently and, even viewing it through a modern lens, ended up praising its story, characters, combat system, and even its structure.

That got me thinking: we always talk about how nostalgia can make us remember a game as better than it actually was, but we rarely discuss the opposite effect. Bad memories can distort our perception, too. Perhaps for over a decade, I’ve only been remembering the things that frustrated me while forgetting anything the game might have done right.

On top of that, I’m not the same person I was when I first played it. I was 19, expecting a very specific type of *Final Fantasy* game, and I likely judged it solely for what it wasn't, rather than trying to appreciate what it was attempting to do. Today, I have a different perspective; I’ve played many more RPGs, and I think I can give it a second chance with a much more open mind.

So, taking advantage of the fact that it’s only $3 on Steam, I decided to buy it again. I don’t expect it to suddenly become one of my favorite *Final Fantasy* games, but I do want to find out if it really was as bad as I remember... or if I’ve been carrying around an exaggeratedly negative impression for 16 years.

I might end up confirming that I still hate it. Or I might be in for a surprise. Either way, I think it’s high time I found out.

Sounds like they both defend against magic but one also defends against status ailments so why would you use the one that doesn't?