just wanted to say, in case anyone was wondering about the FFV video - it is being made, and i am working on it whenever i can, but i have been really unwell the last year and haven't had as much of a chance to work on videos as i would've liked. if you want more specifics/details on what's been up, head to the community section of my channel and scroll down a few entries until you get to the '2023 end of year update'. but yeah, i am working on it when i am able! i promise it'll be out as soon as it can be. i am looking forward to it :) thanks for your patience friends. - alastair
this video is so insanely well researched and written, if your future videos are anything like this i’ll absolutely make sure to tune in to each and every one! take as much time as you need, something of this scale takes serious time and dedication that i respect so much.
I've watched all of these so far, and I especially enjoyed this one because I grew up with FFIV. I'm really looking forward to your FFV video! No worries if you need to take your time on it.
This is my fourth repeat watch of your fantastic video. Your outlook, your dignity, your thoughtfulness - this promises me a friend I've never met yet know they engage admirably and generously illustrate their genius somewhere in the world. It's a bizarre blessing to cherish, I know, but I genuinely look forward to your masterful work. To your health, my friend. The world needs more folks as considerate and as fair as you. You add to the splendor of the real world, and that is no small feat. I appreciate your content so much. Refreshing to see a creator highlight thoughtfulness as their talent and appeal.
@bottom_lizard192 or they are just all living in the future while we're all stuck in the past... I can't believe how long it used to take to get Japanese games in the west 😮
I choose to think the Kain thing isn't that he got re-brainwashed, but that Golbez never ACTUALLY fully let him go in the first place. He let the party go with his implanted double agent just in case, and it ended up paying off, 'cause they did the work of getting the last crystal for him. Then all he had to do was Find My iKain and uber him home.
This flows so nicely just following the story and stepping aside to analyse different things rather having a huge section about gameplay, then a huge section about characters, then a huge section about music etc. It works and feels like I'm watching a good movie or documentary. Well, I guess I am!
Jeremy Parish made a point in his video series on this game that I think might help address some of the writing issues in this game. Takashi Tokita had a background in theater and cited that as a big influence on his design decisions here. In a lot of plays, especially opera, characters can be very simplistic on paper and the actions can be very straightforward and dramatic, so it’s up to the combination of the performances and music to convey the more complex emotions and themes. Since the original game lacked voiced dialogue, I think this reliance on music and the simplistic gestures of the character sprites to fill in the blanks is very similar. If you judge FFIV by the standards of a TV series or movie trilogy, it comes up a bit short, but if you look at it as an interactive opera, I think it fares better. Maybe that’s just me, though.
@@N3rv3d4m4g3 I’m having trouble remembering the exact quote, but I think Tokita did say something to the effect that he treated the character sprites like actors on a stage.
This might be why the DS remake of IV is still my favorite version of the game, even with the PSP and Pixel Remasters ports now. But that could also be my nostalgia speaking, as I was 12 when the game came out and I was simply blown away that there were fully voiced cutscenes coming out of my DS.
He says he spent 9 months on the video and I'm assuming since his channel is small at this point that it isn't his full time job. So that does mean he only had his otherwise free time to work on it but still, that's quite an undertaking.
@@Xpwnxage i am disabled and have chronic pain so can't work a conventional job - so basically, when i'm well enough to work, this is what i do instead! so i kinda try to look at this as if it's a full-time job at this point to be honest
What an absolutely amazing analysis. The fact it held my attention for over 5 hours straight is pretty damn astonishing. Your research and delivery (and editing... Honestly everything) are about as top tier as it can get. Thank you so much.
Rydia is definitely a favorite of mine. I suppose she impressed so strongly on me because of when I played the game. I was around her (child) age when I first played. Her characterization is a bit messy in hindsight, but as a young kid playing a game at a time where this was the most ambitious game story I had experienced so far, I didn't see the flaws. And then she comes back, all grown up to save the party for Golbez and remains an extremely powerful character in battle for the rest of the game, and can become even more powerful by gaining additional Summons with optional side quests. A lot of kids yearn to grow up quickly. Adults are big, strong, and taken seriously. So, I guess I experienced some relation that lead to fantastical wish fulfillment through her, which I happened to be the right age for. Ocarina of Time did something similar, which is why a lot of people that were around age 10 when they played it wanted to continue to play as a grown-up Link again from the moment we pulled the Master Sword until we were finally given an older Link again in Twilight Princess, and by then we were grown up ourselves, so it hit different then. Kids want to be adult Link, adult Rydia, at least I did and a lot of other kids my age did.
I think Rydia's aging up concept-wise is supposed to feel like she's come into her full potential. The thing the false king at the start of the game feared was a fully fledged summoner and now through fate Golbez has created exactly that. She's mastered that power inside her that let her suddenly summon Titan and is back to use it for the party. The problem though is there's no real role for her as 'wise-summoner' she doesn't come back with any strong exposition and as pointed out doesn't have very strong scenes after her amazing return. Most of why I think she resonates so well as the poster girl for 4 is how memorable every core scene she relates to is: "That boss fight? Well killing it killed someones Mom!" "Whoa that kid can summon a mountain that breaks the world!" "Whoa! I totally wondered why she couldn't use fire!" "Oh my god I thought I was just bad at the game! Im SUPPOSED to lose!" "Whoa look at all these cool summons! These guys raised her?" They aren't consistently good characterisation for Rydia- But they are incredible setpieces and worldbuilding, and that's probably why the 'Destined Summoner' keeps coming back as a character in Final Fantasy with often very different personalities.
I think the age up would have worked better if we got more time with kid Rydia, actually had her develop more as a character, and then like perhaps had her *choose* to go to Feymarch or something like that like I think she should have stayed a kid much longer before she got aged up
@@elipticalecliptic481 I think that Rydia's character is actually handled rather well. She's always been my favorite Final Fantasy character from the first time I played Final Fantasy IV. Her actions in the beginning of the game echo when she returns. At the start she's a child running away from a scary man in black armor. She's lost her entire world. Her mother is gone, her town is gone, she's in the company of the man responsible for her mother's death. Her entire world is gone. She has nothing left. For all she knows her traumatic summoning of Titan killed everyone left in the town. She very well might have killed people, in the original Mist goes from being 2 tiles wide to 1 tile wide. She literally destroyed half of her already bomb-scarred town. The General tells Cecil to stand aside, but rather than do so and let Rydia be killed, he defends her, putting himself in danger on her behalf. He didn't mean to kill her mother, he doesn't want forgiveness, he just wants to make things better. So that's what Rydia does, that's who she patterns herself after. She wants to be like Cecil to defend people. And the first person she encounters after that is Tellah, who is determined to rescue his daughter from "a wicked bard," only to have her die at his feet. So little bitty Rydia takes the example from her two adult role models and sees in Edward a reflection of herself that she dislikes. She stood over her mother's body and cried and nothing positive came out of that. Crying and lamentation did nothing for her, while Cecil stood steadfastly in the way of the soldiers come to kill her, remorseful but steadfast. And Tellah, rather than weep over his daughter's corpse marches off to go and kill his daughter's killer. Rydia is a traumatized child trying to emulate the two adults that she looks up to now that her mother is gone. Her character is literally what you see in Dwarf Castle. She is a LITERAL child who was forced to grow up too soon. And not only one made to grow up too soon, but is an inverse of Cecil in a way. Cecil abandoned his darkness. Rydia abandoned her light. Adult Rydia traded away her capacity for white magic in order to specialize in black magic and summoning. She doesn't think of herself as a healer, a remover of afflictions. She's like Cecil, she's a soldier, a walking artillery piece with the capacity to lay waste to any battlefield before her. And that's what she does for the rest of the game. She comes along with you, she learns increasingly greater and more powerful magics and summons. She does have some healing capacity with Sylph and Asura but the Sylphs hide away from the world and Asura is fickle and unable to be truly relied upon when you need her most. And that's Rydia's character. She has everything she's ever known ripped away from her in one instant by a soldier who didn't know what he was doing and killed her mother by accident. In a moment of panic, Rydia did something similar, calling the Titan and laying waste to a significant portion of her town. Cecil wants to atone, wants to do better. She uses Cecil and the wrathful Tellah as role models, and in the Feymarch she chooses her path where her only purpose is war. And when Cecil is facing death at the hand of a leader of Baron's military forces, Rydia is there to step in and stop it like Cecil did in Kaipo. She's a child orphaned by war who loses her innocence and is made to grow up too quickly and fight in the very same war. Her narrative arc effectively concludes at Dwarf Castle because she's attained her goal and shown that she's somebody that can defend people, just like Cecil did for her. He banished his darkness, and she left behind her light.
@@Hellkat9940 fair enough, I guess it could work that way she loses her home and is forced to grow up way too quickly though personally I think if they went that way, I think it should have went in more to how it negatively affected her, but then again I'd say that for all of the MCs honestly; it was still like the 4th game so I don't blame the game too much, pretty much all of the characters aren't that complex
@@Hellkat9940 Fucking bravo mate, that is a wonderfully insightful analysis of Rydia. You perfectly tied together the aging up with being forced to grow up too fast, and fighting in the war that took your family, but I'll admit I never considered that she willingly trained to become a living weapon... that really adds some extra weight to her
I can't believe this video was 5 hours long! Well, I can because it took me over a week to finish it, but the fact that it feels like a cohesive work at this size is astounding. Excellent work. I learn so much about *how* to analyze media from your videos, the way you dive into etymology and mythology is unique and deeply interesting, and has altered how I engage with names in stories for good and for the better. Very impressed, very proud of you for finishing such a massive undertaking. Can't wait for the rest of the series :)
@@Ludiscere I disagree. This video deserves all the praise it has gotten and more besides. You obviously put an enormous amount of effort into this video and the result was absolutely in proportion. I watched the three previous FF videos you made, and while those were good, this was fantastic.
OP is right, this video is an example of what should be expected out of any analysis of art. No pretensions, biases laid out up front, serious digging with a flair for pacing and letting the audience breath in the music. I hope to see more, at least up through Yuna and the Blitzball Express. Then again, you have to survive the creation of a Final Fantasy VI video first
And due to my circumstance in life i can rip through a long video like this, but here’s to a 7 hour final fantasy 7 video lol, but you know jokes aside 6, would be 7 hours too, though 5 might be the same as this.
Something else nice about Palom and Porom, is that their age and station have a nice resonance with the intro- Implying that the best black and white mages left in the town are these kids- Because the others have all died.
This is EXACTLY what I look for in a longform analysis of video games. What a treat! I cannot wait for the next iteration in this series, spectacular work! :)
I could follow this video so easily that I listened to most of it while working. Your writing style, your voice, it was just so easy to follow along. Incredible job!
Your research was impeccable. Drawing on so many diverse sources for the most minor of details really made all the difference to understanding the game. Everything the writers might have put in, everything they meant to put in, everything they most certainly should have put in - you put it all together. Well done. Impressive. Bravo.
I found you from your Hades video and immediately went back to watch much of your other videos. The amount of dedication you put into your content, coupled with the passion, makes for some incredibly engaging videos and honestly, the longer the better. This was such a treat to watch and I cannot wait to see more from you!
I have a soft spot for FFIV because it was my introduction to the franchise. To address a few of your points, I think Kain's edgy bad boy nature definitely got a little bit of the Draco in Leather Pants treatment where the fandom ends up softening and liking a character more than their traits in the story may warrant. Another influence I felt at points in the video was from the 1986 Transformers movie. The Quintessons have the rotating face thing where each face is a different personality. It's the closest analog to what you're asking for anyway. I also saw parallels in boarding the Giant of Babil to destroy it from within to the climax of the Transformers where they're fighting inside Unicron as he lays waste to Cybertron, though the red jewel and explosions make me think more of the angels from Evangelion like Sachiel
24:25 In the SNES version the king gives Cecil a "package." Cecil in the Pixel Remaster is all like, "we were sent to destroy the village!?", and I'm like, dude, he gave you a bomb to deliver.
You are brilliant! The way you weave linguistics, history and mythology into an incredibly structure recap of a video game story is awe-inspiring. Amazing job!
I think that Rydia's character is actually handled rather well. She's always been my favorite Final Fantasy character from the first time I played Final Fantasy IV. Her actions in the beginning of the game echo when she returns. At the start she's a child running away from a scary man in black armor. She's lost her entire world. Her mother is gone, her town is gone, she's in the company of the man responsible for her mother's death. Her entire world is gone. She has nothing left. For all she knows her traumatic summoning of Titan killed everyone left in the town. She very well might have killed people, in the original Mist goes from being 2 tiles wide to 1 tile wide. She literally destroyed half of her already bomb-scarred town. The General tells Cecil to stand aside, but rather than do so and let Rydia be killed, he defends her, putting himself in danger on her behalf. He didn't mean to kill her mother, he doesn't want forgiveness, he just wants to make things better. So that's what Rydia does, that's who she patterns herself after. She wants to be like Cecil to defend people. And the first person she encounters after that is Tellah, who is determined to rescue his daughter from "a wicked bard," only to have her die at his feet. So little bitty Rydia takes the example from her two adult role models and sees in Edward a reflection of herself that she dislikes. She stood over her mother's body and cried and nothing positive came out of that. Crying and lamentation did nothing for her, while Cecil stood steadfastly in the way of the soldiers come to kill her, remorseful but steadfast. And Tellah, rather than weep over his daughter's corpse marches off to go and kill his daughter's killer. Rydia is a traumatized child trying to emulate the two adults that she looks up to now that her mother is gone. Her character is literally what you see in Dwarf Castle. She is a LITERAL child who was forced to grow up too soon. And not only one made to grow up too soon, but is an inverse of Cecil in a way. Cecil abandoned his darkness. Rydia abandoned her light. Adult Rydia traded away her capacity for white magic in order to specialize in black magic and summoning. She doesn't think of herself as a healer, a remover of afflictions. She's like Cecil, she's a soldier, a walking artillery piece with the capacity to lay waste to any battlefield before her. And that's what she does for the rest of the game. She comes along with you, she learns increasingly greater and more powerful magics and summons. She does have some healing capacity with Sylph and Asura but the Sylphs hide away from the world and Asura is fickle and unable to be truly relied upon when you need her most. And that's Rydia's character. She has everything she's ever known ripped away from her in one instant by a soldier who didn't know what he was doing and killed her mother by accident. In a moment of panic, Rydia did something similar, calling the Titan and laying waste to a significant portion of her town. Cecil wants to atone, wants to do better. She uses Cecil and the wrathful Tellah as role models, and in the Feymarch she chooses her path where her only purpose is war. And when Cecil is facing death at the hand of a leader of Baron's military forces, Rydia is there to step in and stop it like Cecil did in Kaipo. She's a child orphaned by war who loses her innocence and is made to grow up too quickly and fight in the very same war. Her narrative arc effectively concludes at Dwarf Castle because she's attained her goal and shown that she's somebody that can defend people, just like Cecil did for her. He banished his darkness, and she left behind her light.
I remembered from my playthroughs that Rydia is supposed to be young, but it wasn't until this video that I realized or remembered young: Seven is wild (and even more shocking thinking about Palom and Porom being five, especially given the sacrifice they make). I do think the narrative could have been made a little more believable by aging them each up maybe... 5-6 years each? But as the video says, it's fantasy
So, I'm about 2 hours in, talking about Tellah and Meteor, and it makes me think of one of the single eyebrow raising parts of the game, that I noticed even back when I was a kid. They spend the ENTIRE game building up what a massive deal Meteor is. And then... Rydia just randomly learns it one day. And you can use it all you want. No one ever mentions it, there's no cutscene, nothing. NBD. Always thought that was odd. Maybe that's mentioned later but I don't know how many more days/sessions it'll take for me to finish :D
plus, she mot only is forved to grow ip too fast, but then literally ages faster and returns as an adult. It really drives home the idea of growing up too fast, metaphorically and literally!
I just wanna say that I found crazy the depths you went in the research, and the patience through all the effort in actually putting the video together. This was great. I love this kind of content and you made it really special
Oh my god. I swear I hadn't checked out your channel in so long, I got back into Hades a few days ago which brought me back to your video, and i wondered: hey when is Ludi's next video coming out? Bam. 1 day ago, 5 hours of FF4. Which I am currently replaying. You sir are a gentlemen and a scholar
This the 5 hour analysis video I never knew I needed! 👏Structuring it to follow the main story alongside other topics when needed was a very good idea. Can't wait for my favourite next time, FFV!
My reward for cleaning my room as a kid was my mom going to Video Shark (kinda like blockbuster) and renting Final Fantasy 2 for me. It made school so difficult to sit through knowing that this game was sitting on my bed at home. This was the first game that made me fall in love with video games and it taught me how to write compelling stories. Thanks for the review, I enjoyed it.
I finished IV for the first time a few days ago, and I just wanna say this is one of the best analysis videos I've ever watched. As someone who didn't enjoy V, I can't wait to see how you cover that one, but I'll be visiting your other vids until then! :)
Woah! Honestly, having seen how much work went into your earlier "retrospections", I expected your FFIV video not sooner than February or March. That's a big surprise. I will have to watch it in parts :) Thanks for your work and Merry Christmas!
Imagine if Gobez fought at the end like you suggested, but became an incarnation of hatred so he COULD deal the final blow. It would add a layer of tragedy to the final boss.
On Rydia's character, I found that she was my favorite character, but when you went in on how she's mostly poorly written, and her characterization is strange and unwieldly, I totally agreed. When I first played final fantasy II/IV I was only 6 or 7 years old- the same age as Rydia, so I was excited that there was another kid in the game the same age as me, and then she comes back as an adult and is one of the most powerful characters in the game, consistently throwing out those 9,999s. It was really sort of a power fantasy- of how a little kid like me could 'grow up' and be this spell slinging badass. I wonder if there are a lot of people who like her for similar reasons.
I think, unfortunately, Rydia was mishandled and underused like the video says. To be the sex object of the pervert creep. But it's good that you took something positive out of it.
Just finished watching the whole video... and I loved it. Even though I look at this game through my nostalgia lenses 'cause I played it for the first time over 20 years ago, I think every criticism you discuss is well-justified. This is not just a review or mere rumination... it's basically a dissertation on FFIV LOL Can't wait for your videos on V and especially VI (which is my favourite FF). Also, I'm super impressed by the vocabulary you use in this video. English is not my native language but I consider myself pretty fluent. Then I started watching this video... and you kept on slapping me in my face with C2-level English for 5 and a half hours :D It was... well, kinda refreshing LOL
I'm also greatly anticipating VI since it was my first FF and holds many great memories with my grandmother (she was a #gamergirl before it was cool lol). Also X!
thank you for pointing out the flaws in the character interactions. One part that always angered me to no end was how Rydia and Cecil treated Edward, and it made me unable to like either of them, and in turn contributed to my inability to finish the game. That and the constant character death fake-outs have always caused me to lose motivation to keep playing. Anyway, I really enjoyed your video! Thanks for making it!
Palam and Porom left a huge impact on me. I remember just crying with my DS in hand during that scene. It doesn’t seem like a scene that really lumps it on, but wow does that scene build upon the rest of the game to be a massive gut punch. Having the wind up Porom minion in FFXIV was such a great nod to me and it felt like so few understood the significance of that character
I think Rydia's characterization is more consistent than you're giving it credit for, particularly with regards to her forgiveness of Cecil and impatience towards Edward. After the death of her mother and the destruction of Mist, she's quite reasonably distraught... but her uncontrolled emotions only manage to make things worse. Yes, Cecil was responsible for the burning of the village... but for all Rydia knows, she might have accidentally reduced it to rubble by summoning Titan. And, at the very least, she went from having lost her mother to being separated from everyone she'd ever known. So the moment that Cecil decides to take care of her, she finds herself in a position of absolute dependency -- he's literally the only reason why she's alive. How awful must it feel for her to know that she'd be dead if not for the pity of the man who killed her mother? And, furthermore, for her to have no idea what his intentions are or how far his willingness to support her even extends? Under those circumstances, Rydia forgiving Cecil isn't necessarily evidence of psychological maturity. Rather, it's simply the most effective means for her to neutralize the enormous amount of psychic tension generated by her simultaneous hatred for and need of him. His willingness to fight his own people to protect her is a tremendous opportunity in that regard -- she's able to assume the much more psychologically stable position of feeling assured that she can trust him to keep her safe because he's a good person who happened to make a terrible mistake. The fact that she feels responsible for the consequences of her own terrible mistake doesn't hurt in that regard, either. And that aspect makes sense of much of the rest of her characterization. She's learned from experience that her emotions cause more harm than good, so when she's pushed to set them aside to open a path forward with Fire, she's willing to do so. And when she sees Edward getting emotional about Anna, she's furious rather than sympathetic because she's come to the conclusion that such emotion is counterproductive if not downright dangerous. Given that trajectory, it makes perfect sense that by the time she returns years later, she's set her past aside nigh completely. Perhaps it might have been more subjectively satisfying to see her come to terms with her trauma rather than putting it soundly behind her, but that seems more a matter of preference than skill.
This was so incredibly put together, well presented and so meticulously researched. I’ve only recently started playing through all the FF games and 4 stood out to me when I was finished with it. This video certainly did it justice and then some. You gave praise where earned and criticism where deserved, really made me reconsider some elements of the game I totally overlooked, or made me appreciate parts I previously didn’t. Banger video. I’ll definitely have to tune into the future FF analysis videos and catch up on the previous ones 👌🏻👌🏻
Can't wait for your FFVI analysis. Next to Chrono Trigger, it's my favourite game of all time. I'm scared to think how long the video will be 🙂 8 hours? Whatever the length, I'm all for it. I love juicy info-heavy videos on things I love.
Final Fantasy 4 is a game which in my opinion is centered around Cecil and his heel-face-turn from a brooding Dark Knight with angst to a righteous Paladin with firm convictions. He ends up like a typical JRPG noble hero, but the important part, and by far one of the biggest character arcs of its era, is him starting out as a stark contrast to the hero he later becomes. Not only is it a revolutionary idea, but it also makes you much more excited and happy to see your JRPG protag being a knight in shining armor... because you've seen the whole path leading up to it. It's such a simple twist yet executed ingeniously. And while that's one of the biggest story beats in the game thematically, it's by no means the climax. You see Cecil finally become the Paladin he wishes to be, and then you get to play him living up to his Paladin title by showcasing his virtue and protectiveness. It's not like he immediately becomes and unstoppable badass either; you see him struggling a lot and needing to be saved by others in turn as well (just look at the magnet cave). Yet rather than making it look as if Cecil is weak, it only showcases how strong the bonds he forms with his fellow party members ends up becoming. I love Cecil, and I find his character arc to be a beautiful showcase of not just atoning, but also growing as a person despite your past.
I love this game so much. It was my first FF game and I played it when I was 11. This video was so entertaining to watch and I really appreciate all the time and effort that went into making it. Thank you so much!
I found your channel recently and I’m glad I did. I’ve been trying to watch a little bit of these FF retrospectives every night but fall asleep. I really love watching them and I can tell this was a labor of love for you. Please keep on because this is amazing work.
This was quite the monolith! While I agree largely with some of the ideas you present. I would have wanted to hear some of your ideas about how these loose story threads could be tightened up. Characterization via olden times is always a tricky business. You noted something near the end that Cecil is the sun and the other characters revolve around him. Yet at the same time you said he was a great character. This implies that the other characters mostly needed to be less... as Tokita says, eccentric, for Cecil to shine brighter. My favorite character is Tellah, personally. No other character has so much gameplay/story synthesis. As you noted his stats weaken as he "levels up" implying age, his static MP prevents him from using Meteo, and when he finally does he's using it on the back of already using 80 MP (Firaga, Blizzaga, Bio), leading to his death from over-exertion. He loses himself in hatred, realizes it, but can't let his hate go in the end, even as he recognizes it as his fatal flaw. I find that to be an interesting character point personally. As for Tellah's attack having no effect, I entirely disagree. It's something you didn't note in the battle with Golbez in the original. He has only 20000 HP in the next fight with him in the Dwarven Castle, in the 3D version he has only exactly 9999 HP. Implying to me that he was still reeling from Tellah's Meteo. As for Rydia, I do agree that more could have been done with her. But 1991 and all that... my headcanon for Leviathan's attack is much the same as yours, to keep the last Summoner safe from Golbez. As for her aging up, it made sense to me, it explains why she forgot White Magic and how her Summoning skills improved dramatically in the time (you also provided an excellent myth reference for it). I personally don't see much sexist overtones though that lets the characters "down" per se, as your only "complete" characters were Cecil, Golbez, Edward, Palom and Porom (who I'd argue are only seen that way because of their brief role). You seem to have quite the high expectations for character development, entirely fair, but the time period should be taken into account I'd argue that incredibly deep characters are not necessary to tell an intriguing narrative. Does it help? Absolutely, but some may feel that it can hurt if not handled in the right way. FFVI handles most characters with an incredible amount of care that even the lechery of Edgar is offset beautifully by his fraternal bond and sense of responsibility for his land and the lives of his people. Gau, the wild boy's tragic backstory is incredibly memorable, Locke is a wonderfully written psychological mess who I adore for that reason, and so on. While a truly admirable written analysis, I... ironically, am left wanting to hear more about how you would have fixed some of the issues that you put forth, as in some cases I do agree they were issues that need touched up (Rydia's forced to learn Fire, Yang's role in the plot, the ridiculous fake-outs) but some I felt were a bit overblown. (Rydia's rejoining, Rosa's purpose, Kain's distastefulness, Zeromus' impact as a final boss, etc.) One thing I am surprised that wasn't mentioned was the Final Fantasy IV Settei Shiryou Hen, which has some excellent background info. on many of the characters (though some may now be retconned). The language used, especially in regard to spells, feels more mechanical and scientific than one may expect. It is a shame you didn't take to The After Years. It was written by Tokita Takashi after all, but I do admit that the format may not be too appealing. I think it has some interesting narrative hooks. I especially like how it handled Palom and Porom, along with Ceodore and Kain.
Ok, you mention how Edward's creator wanted to make him strong and yet didn't. I think he got the last laugh in the end. So, I was looking up party stats for the GBA version because you can customize your party in that version. Edward is the weakest, by far, at the start. But there's a certain point where he gains crazy stat gains and becomes insanely powerful. Kind of like "If you put in the effort to level him up, you will be rewarded".
For reasons like these, I think the GBA version is my personal favorite. Add in the fan patches for the rom, and it's practically perfect, at least for me. When I played this when it first came out, all those years ago, I wished I could have all the characters who died/left back in the party, and the GBA version finally granted that wish! And the issues I do have with the GBA version are addressed with the fan patches, so for someone like me, it's like a dream come true! Edward blossoming into the most powerful character is the icing on the cake!
@@RedSpade37 The PSP version has all the same features and content as the GBA version, but is more polished, and doesn't have that ATB glitch the GBA one has.
@@tamerkoh Oh my lands, truly? I was led to believe only the GBA had the extra stuff. Well, thank you for letting me know, and now I know what I will be doing for New Years!
@@RedSpade37 Yup, it has all the extra stuff, and the two sequels in one package. It's the definitive version of 2D FF4. And the higher res pixel art looks gorgeous, the environments are really beautiful! This is true for FF1 and FF2 on PSP as well, btw, their definitive versions with all the content up to that point!
Cecil finding out he was a lunarian was the "I am your father moment, but then finding out he had a brother is the "there is another skywalker" moment from Yoda
If this is a series you are putting together, I'll be here from now on! Started with this and watched the previous 3. Looking forward to the rest, especially 6 for me.
Oh man. Your FF analysis videos are the absolute best. I love how you go over so many small things that nobody does. I cannot wait to hear your analysis of V. I think there's a lot of interesting things to say about Exdeath that nobody seems to mention beyond his surface level cartoon villain appearance.
Incredible video. Wouldn't consider myself a fan of JRPGs, but videos like this still entice me, with their depth and amounts of analysis. A great video.
Just finished and wanted to say - as always - excellent work and so many thoughtful points put out here. I love the music breakdowns especially, though I do wish they were voiced, maybe playing a small sample and then talking about it. I do think Zeromus itself makes sense, but Zemus before it does not: the game opens with mass murder, deals with genocide, and the struggle of evil within oneself (as well as friction between types of people like above/below, the Lunars who wanted to wipe out the planet) and all in an at times highly metaphorical way so ending with "the embodiment of hatred itself" as the grandiose last boss makes for a sensible ender. But you could definitely delete Zemus and do what you said with Golbez as a final boss and have Zeromus come out from him instead. As a thematic boss, you would want to keep Zeromus mostly mysterious, but I think adding some lines about how the latent hatred of everyone - the Red Wings who helped the king, Golbez, even the sleeping Lunarians who pushed for wiping out the king, and yes Cecil himself through his actions - formed into an entity like Zeromus. Now I'm imagining a version of Zeromus that while looking monstrous also imitates or takes on the forms/powers of people we know, like Tellah who desired murder over his own life, and Cecil having to use "protect" instead of attack at key points to stop a party wiping spell...
This is EXACTLY the kind of analysis video that I wanted to find and watch right after finishing my first playthrough of FF4. So much rich detail and analysis of pretty much everything I wanted to be talked about and then some. Truly marvelous work! Was definitely worth watching the full length of it. I look forward to more Final Fantasy videos from you in the future.
I very rarely comment on this site, but you killed it with this vid. There's so much love for Final Fantasy as a franchise in this video. I can hardly wait for whatever you have planned next.
This analysis is absolutely incredible. Staying tuned here- this series has an exceptional potential. Everything from your meticulous details to your unique approach to talking about the music is appreciated. When I was nine, my whole family played this game together while we were traveling in India. It was really cool to be able to talk about these characters with them and listen to their unique opinions. Final fantasy 8 was my first play too. These stories had such an influence on me. Needless to say just really brought me back well clarifying things I never noticed. Cheers to you sir 👏
As much as the After Years was a botch job of a sequel largely thanks to greed and questionable writing, I kinda like some of the ideas they used with Kain's story there. Execution is not the greatest, but I like that upon his initial trip to Mt. Ordeals he fails to defeat his darker side. Now his darker side escaping and what follows was just, well, bad, and don't get me started on what they did with Cecil. What I do like is that Kain is not able to overcome his darker side until he actually reckons with his past and those he harmed in some way. Just being generally 'repentant' and becoming a loner doesn't really address the matter and doesn't work to develop yourself moving forward. I like that part of his penance comes through saving and mentoring the child of Cecil and Rosa, the people his seeds of resentment kind of stem from and who he betrayed previously. Through this he eventually finds the strength to actually vanquish his dark side and become a Holy Dragoon. In the midst of all the plot contrivances and bad writing in The After Years, I think the seeds are there for an interesting Kain epilogue. If they made a muuuuuuch shorter story focusing just on Kain's journey while cutting out all the apocalyptic threats and made it a down to earth character study I really do think that it could have been great. That is a lot to ask, but like I said, I think there was something there buried beneath the shit.
This analysis is such a breath of fresh air. I love how you structure it by not separating certain elements into its own category, but discuss relevant tangents along the way. I really wish a lot of analysis and retrospectives did just this because this is actually more engaging.
I never looked at the gang pressuring Cecil to forgive his brother at the end but considering it would be their last time seeing one another that he should at the very least say his final goodbye but hearing another opinion I do see more in the scene than before 💪🏽 amazing work
I love the touch how we find out Rydia didn't know how to summon Titan, only chocobos - she dug deep in her emotional state, and tapped into her potential.
As soon as you mentioned that you enjoyed the 3D remake best, I knew this was going to be a special video. While the Final Fantasy series as a whole is very important to me, I also think it's one whose retrospectives can get bogged down in the baggage of nostalgia. Seldom will you find a fan of this franchise who doesn't hold one game strangely beyond reproach and another in odd contempt. This retrospective provided not only a uniquely thorough look at the entire work, but was also even-handed in its criticisms and praises throughout, unafraid to offer thoughts and opinions that differ greatly from the more widely accepted views held by the majority of its audience. It's led me to more thoroughly reflect upon some of my own opinions about this game. I think part of the danger of nostalgia lies in the fallibility of memory--we like to overwrite content and fill in gaps over time. So your final character analysis on Kain was especially intriguing to me. I like that it came at the end, after I had digested your previous analyses with great interest and come to largely agree with most. But Kain felt different. It's not that I even disagree with your conclusion--I think there was a lot about him that was under-utilized. The thing that niggled at me was why he holds such a vaunted place metatextually in spite of that. My solution to this apparent contradiction lies mostly in conflict. Conflict is interesting. In conflict lies a wealth of possibility. Kain is unique in his role occupying that morally gray area of both antagonist and protagonist, and I think as a concept that this is inherently appealing. My only quibble is that such conflict comes less as a consequence of character than of plot. If Kain had played an active role in his treachery, rather than each betrayal being relegated to the role of plot device, I think the intrigue of his unique position as both protagonist and antagonist would have been more satisfyingly explored. I also think that a character being unlikeable is a very strong trait to set them apart from a cast of likable people. Regardless of execution, Kain stands out in a crowd in more ways than just design. I think that's why he remains a strong presence in the minds of the audience, even in spite of his lack of such presence in the story itself. Beyond all this, I also have to add that, as a former student of linguistics, the focus on language and etymology in so many aspects of this retrospective really piqued my interest. I can't wait to dig into your other videos, and am eagerly awaiting more to come. Thanks so much for all your work in this regard.
This is crazy good analysis. I'm looking forward to FF5, and your look of music, themes, and localizations where fan translation of original game is still one of the best.
I hope this series comes back soon. Can't wait to one day watch a video like this about Final Fantasy XIV. Only problem: The video is probably 24 hours long.
The spoony line fits so well , when you realize it was a term for someone who was love struck used 80ish years ago in books and in a few songs and applied Tellahs age (60ish years prior from the games release) . I mean people still say things they have said their entire life even if it's outdated.
By far your best analysis yet, well worth the wait. I can't even imagine what a treat the next one of these is going to be if you keep improving like this
Finally finished this behemoth! To be honest, at points I did feel you were a bit harsh towards the game given its age, but I appreciated the reveal that you yourself grappled with this dilemma. Its funny since I noticed most of the narrative missteps you pointed out, but I tended to just roll with it given how video game's writing was in its infancy at the time. That said, you definitely helped me appreciate the game more, specifically in the level of research you did to point out where many of the game's elements originally stemmed from, it's nice to know that there was a lot of genuine thought put behind many aspects of the game's world. On that note however, a small point of contention that I do have though is that you tend to put a bit too much stock in what the devs had to say. I am not sure how you feel, but I am more firmly on the side of "death of the author", that's not to say we should completely ignore everything the devs have to say about their own work, but if you have a certain read of the text and the author contradicts it, I don't think that's a good reason to abandon your argument. An analysis of a work is not explicitly about revealing intent, and while I do think there is value in getting the perspective of the creators and it's fine to take what they say into account, at the end of the day it shouldn't define how you interpret their work. Anyways, all that aside, this was genuinely great and I eagerly look forward to your coverage of the rest of the series! I do have a question though, are you gonna tackle FFXI too? I can't imagine that being an easy task.
hey pal! yeah, it's something i found hard to reconcile throughout the writing process, definitely found myself being inconsistent in being lenient with some things, harsh with others - with a video this long, there are always going to be those kinda tonal inconsistencies in the script, so i thought it better to just address it. thanks for the kind words on the research! i think that's interesting - i get behind 'death of the author' to an extent, and do apply it a fair amount, but i also find myself naturally drawn to the idea of the creator's original intent taking some sort of precedence. although i do agree that an analysis isn't explicitly about revealing intent, i find a kind of comfort in this sort of objective unassailable fact, hearing the basis of an idea directly from the source, and i quite enjoy exploring that angle when it's available; that does mean that sometimes the 'analysis' itself can take a back seat, but it's just how i enjoy doing these things. just a personal quirk i guess. i can't disagree with anything you've said though - really good points! cheers mate, and yeah, i hope so - assuming it's still running in 20 years when i reach that video haha! it won't be easy, but i reckon it will primarily be narrative analysis so that it has some focus, and it'll probably be less intensive than VI-X will. honestly though, it's XIV i'm worried about. that's gonna be a hell of a project.
I get it's a long ways off since we're only just getting to IV, but I can't wait for you to sink your claws into XII. Aside from having my favorite character, Balthier, and some of the coolest summon cutscenes, I also like how it tackled the typical "evil empire" every series has. Instead of a clear good and evil side you're really just dealing with being sandwiched between two empires (albeit with one being more narratively antagonistic to the party) that are both having a run of jingoism. Given Dalmasca's middle-eastern influences you could probably draw Cold War parallels.
Shame the PSP or Pixel Remaster versions didn't choose to add in the new DS scenes. Crazy how an extra 5 minutes of exposition and flashbacks can turn Golbez into a fairly tragic and compelling villain. Anyway this video is incredible, I am so looking forward to when you get around to the others.
absolutely LOVE the amount of dedication you have put into this video. My brothers got final fantasy 2 when it first came out on SNES and this game is very dear to my heart. playing hundreds of times has taken its toll as i get older and notice many thing i didnt when i was younger. but thats ok. look forward to your other vids in the future!
if you are asking for a description of the paladin in D&D, here it goes: the paladin in that game is defined by 3 class features, those are, lay on hands, divine smite, and, aura of protection, here's what each of these does: lay on hands you get at level 1 and its basically free healing without expending a spell, divine smite is unsurprisingly a special attack, it deals somewhere between double and triple damage than a regular attack, and lastly altho definatly not least, at level 6 the paladin gains aura of protection, which is a bonus to magic resistance for half of the party, 24/7, just by being alive, that bonus, literally requires a bard to use up a resource,to give to a single member of the party, only once, and that version is still worth it btw (also the 2 bonuses stack with eachother)
I’ve been a huge fan of your FF retrospective and have been excitedly waiting for the next since FF4 is one of my favs in the series. When I saw the video was 5 hours long I audibly clapped. Thank you very much for this and I hope you continue the excellent work.
Final Fantasy IV is one of my favorite games. i greatly appreciate the amount of depth in this video. i look forward to hearing your thoughts on FFV and VI.
I got this game for Christmas when I was 12...I can still vividly remember playing for hours on Christmas night. This game blew my mind at the time and I still remember my SNES Final Fantasy II (we didn’t know about the earlier sequels at the time) very fondly.
Final Fantasy IV has been my all time favorite game ever since it first came out on the SNES. I'm already getting hyped for the Pixel Remasters getting dropped on console this spring and this is a very well done analysis into a game I truly cherish. Great job!
Holy hell, if this is how incredible your analysis has become on the 4th game in this franchise, I can’t wait to see what kinds of analysis we might see on the black sheep of the 13 trilogy!
Holy shit, Recently I was scripting a summary of ff4, and my world-view cracked wide open, because I realized that zemus and zeromus aren't just last minute twist villains to upstage Golbez, and I think they actually represent humanity's tendency to hate and harm itself. And I was thinking that the themes of the story are about the toxicity of hatred and the power of forgiveness. And then I stepped back and thought, is it that deep though? So I'm really hype to see where you go with this analysis.
What an incredible video, how impressive, the effort behind it, the research, the pace, the information, the tone, the voice the ideas the edit, I mean this has so much work put into it! I really appreciate it, 5,30 hours seemed like nothing because of how well constructed everything was, be proud!!!!
You bring up some very thought provoking and interesting points about Rydia! I remember way back when I first got the After Years...I had hoped the individual character chapters would have spent some time with her in the Feymarch as a kid learning to and getting to understand the summoned monsters...unfortunately that didn't happen! As for your mentions of needlessly sexualizing her, you phrased it perfectly. To be fair, there's nothing wrong with someone being portrayed as sexy and/or beautiful but they don't spend anytime really making that part of their character; either Rydia or Rosa. And yes, I do consider that a waste! Now I'm wondering how you're going to explain and analyze FF5
Hey man! Just watched the entire video and I loved it! Just wanted to throw an idea out there: The Magus Sisters are based on Hecate, the Greek goddess of magic (among other things). I mention this because 1. The numerical link, where Hecate is usually being depicted as 3 women linked back to back, and there are 3 Magus sisters, 2. The name "Magus sisters" hints to them having a direct link to the essence of magic, and Hecate is a goddess of magic, 3. Hecate is also a goddess of the crossroads, and narratively speaking Tellah is in a crossroads of sorts (whether or not he will succumb to his hatred and sacrifice his life for a chance to kill Golbez) and 4. Hecate is ALSO a moon goddess, with her 3 faces representing the 3 phases of the moon (new, waxing, and full). Seeing as how in the end of the game we end up dealing with Lunarians, tangential foreshadowing maybe?
I started playing all FF games a while ago and after finishing one I like to watch a video to get different POVs and further lore. I really enjoyed yours but was very sad to think you stopped uploading them. Today you showed me that I had nothing to fear and the wait was worth it. Thank you so much for this ❤️
Amazing as always, your vids are always a highlight of my feed whenever they show up! I'm really interested in how you'll approach FF5- it's probably my favourite of the series, but it does also feel like a regression to the older style of FF compared to the games on either side of it.
This is probably one of the top five videos I have watched on this platform this year. Probably took this guy the whole year to make it, too. Someone NEEDS to do something this in-depth on Final Fantasy IX!!! Won't be me, but I'm definitely planning on making my own kind of video about it.
the year was 1992, i was ten years old. popped this sucker into my snes as a random rental, a final fantasy fan was born. ive played them all since and cant wait to see what XVI has in store for us 😃
just wanted to say, in case anyone was wondering about the FFV video - it is being made, and i am working on it whenever i can, but i have been really unwell the last year and haven't had as much of a chance to work on videos as i would've liked.
if you want more specifics/details on what's been up, head to the community section of my channel and scroll down a few entries until you get to the '2023 end of year update'.
but yeah, i am working on it when i am able! i promise it'll be out as soon as it can be. i am looking forward to it :)
thanks for your patience friends.
- alastair
Thanks for the update and the great video I'm watching right now 😅, I hope you're doing OK or that you're getting better
this video is so insanely well researched and written, if your future videos are anything like this i’ll absolutely make sure to tune in to each and every one! take as much time as you need, something of this scale takes serious time and dedication that i respect so much.
I've watched all of these so far, and I especially enjoyed this one because I grew up with FFIV. I'm really looking forward to your FFV video! No worries if you need to take your time on it.
This is my fourth repeat watch of your fantastic video. Your outlook, your dignity, your thoughtfulness - this promises me a friend I've never met yet know they engage admirably and generously illustrate their genius somewhere in the world. It's a bizarre blessing to cherish, I know, but I genuinely look forward to your masterful work.
To your health, my friend. The world needs more folks as considerate and as fair as you. You add to the splendor of the real world, and that is no small feat. I appreciate your content so much. Refreshing to see a creator highlight thoughtfulness as their talent and appeal.
Keep it up chief. It'll be great. No one makes better FF videos than you do.
I am Dutch. Zot means "insane". I always thought the reference was "Tower of Zot" = "Tower of Madness"
Foolish is more apt than insane, actually.
Niec 🇳🇱
@Beorcbuster That is insightful! Thank you for sharing... 😀
Japenese are ahead of their time
@bottom_lizard192 or they are just all living in the future while we're all stuck in the past... I can't believe how long it used to take to get Japanese games in the west 😮
I choose to think the Kain thing isn't that he got re-brainwashed, but that Golbez never ACTUALLY fully let him go in the first place. He let the party go with his implanted double agent just in case, and it ended up paying off, 'cause they did the work of getting the last crystal for him. Then all he had to do was Find My iKain and uber him home.
The DS version... Golbez explicitly states what you share here. Something about loosening the rope, though never letting it go entirely.
This flows so nicely just following the story and stepping aside to analyse different things rather having a huge section about gameplay, then a huge section about characters, then a huge section about music etc. It works and feels like I'm watching a good movie or documentary. Well, I guess I am!
This is my favorite aspect of it!
Jeremy Parish made a point in his video series on this game that I think might help address some of the writing issues in this game. Takashi Tokita had a background in theater and cited that as a big influence on his design decisions here. In a lot of plays, especially opera, characters can be very simplistic on paper and the actions can be very straightforward and dramatic, so it’s up to the combination of the performances and music to convey the more complex emotions and themes. Since the original game lacked voiced dialogue, I think this reliance on music and the simplistic gestures of the character sprites to fill in the blanks is very similar.
If you judge FFIV by the standards of a TV series or movie trilogy, it comes up a bit short, but if you look at it as an interactive opera, I think it fares better. Maybe that’s just me, though.
Thanks for this!
@@Goozeeeee No problem, I was happy to share!
That actually explains so much about the way all the cutscenes are choreographed o.o
@@N3rv3d4m4g3 I’m having trouble remembering the exact quote, but I think Tokita did say something to the effect that he treated the character sprites like actors on a stage.
This might be why the DS remake of IV is still my favorite version of the game, even with the PSP and Pixel Remasters ports now. But that could also be my nostalgia speaking, as I was 12 when the game came out and I was simply blown away that there were fully voiced cutscenes coming out of my DS.
You are mad, this is incredible. Hats off to you. Such hard work must have gone into this.
He says he spent 9 months on the video and I'm assuming since his channel is small at this point that it isn't his full time job. So that does mean he only had his otherwise free time to work on it but still, that's quite an undertaking.
@@Xpwnxage i am disabled and have chronic pain so can't work a conventional job - so basically, when i'm well enough to work, this is what i do instead! so i kinda try to look at this as if it's a full-time job at this point to be honest
@@Ludiscere you will surely get lots of ad income from me then asumming your channel is monetized and you are in the RUclips partner program.
Can’t wait for him to be dancing mad going off on every phase of Kefka fight heh.
@@Ludiscere wow. I am sorry . best wishes to you and thank you so much for your effort
What an absolutely amazing analysis.
The fact it held my attention for over 5 hours straight is pretty damn astonishing.
Your research and delivery (and editing... Honestly everything) are about as top tier as it can get.
Thank you so much.
Any news on if/when a FFV video will be out ?
P.S. Your Hades video should replace a college course, it's so well done.
Rydia is definitely a favorite of mine. I suppose she impressed so strongly on me because of when I played the game. I was around her (child) age when I first played. Her characterization is a bit messy in hindsight, but as a young kid playing a game at a time where this was the most ambitious game story I had experienced so far, I didn't see the flaws. And then she comes back, all grown up to save the party for Golbez and remains an extremely powerful character in battle for the rest of the game, and can become even more powerful by gaining additional Summons with optional side quests. A lot of kids yearn to grow up quickly. Adults are big, strong, and taken seriously. So, I guess I experienced some relation that lead to fantastical wish fulfillment through her, which I happened to be the right age for. Ocarina of Time did something similar, which is why a lot of people that were around age 10 when they played it wanted to continue to play as a grown-up Link again from the moment we pulled the Master Sword until we were finally given an older Link again in Twilight Princess, and by then we were grown up ourselves, so it hit different then. Kids want to be adult Link, adult Rydia, at least I did and a lot of other kids my age did.
I think Rydia's aging up concept-wise is supposed to feel like she's come into her full potential. The thing the false king at the start of the game feared was a fully fledged summoner and now through fate Golbez has created exactly that. She's mastered that power inside her that let her suddenly summon Titan and is back to use it for the party.
The problem though is there's no real role for her as 'wise-summoner' she doesn't come back with any strong exposition and as pointed out doesn't have very strong scenes after her amazing return.
Most of why I think she resonates so well as the poster girl for 4 is how memorable every core scene she relates to is:
"That boss fight? Well killing it killed someones Mom!"
"Whoa that kid can summon a mountain that breaks the world!"
"Whoa! I totally wondered why she couldn't use fire!"
"Oh my god I thought I was just bad at the game! Im SUPPOSED to lose!"
"Whoa look at all these cool summons! These guys raised her?"
They aren't consistently good characterisation for Rydia- But they are incredible setpieces and worldbuilding, and that's probably why the 'Destined Summoner' keeps coming back as a character in Final Fantasy with often very different personalities.
I think the age up would have worked better if we got more time with kid Rydia, actually had her develop more as a character, and then like perhaps had her *choose* to go to Feymarch or something like that
like I think she should have stayed a kid much longer before she got aged up
@@elipticalecliptic481 I think that Rydia's character is actually handled rather well. She's always been my favorite Final Fantasy character from the first time I played Final Fantasy IV.
Her actions in the beginning of the game echo when she returns. At the start she's a child running away from a scary man in black armor. She's lost her entire world. Her mother is gone, her town is gone, she's in the company of the man responsible for her mother's death.
Her entire world is gone. She has nothing left. For all she knows her traumatic summoning of Titan killed everyone left in the town. She very well might have killed people, in the original Mist goes from being 2 tiles wide to 1 tile wide. She literally destroyed half of her already bomb-scarred town.
The General tells Cecil to stand aside, but rather than do so and let Rydia be killed, he defends her, putting himself in danger on her behalf.
He didn't mean to kill her mother, he doesn't want forgiveness, he just wants to make things better.
So that's what Rydia does, that's who she patterns herself after. She wants to be like Cecil to defend people.
And the first person she encounters after that is Tellah, who is determined to rescue his daughter from "a wicked bard," only to have her die at his feet.
So little bitty Rydia takes the example from her two adult role models and sees in Edward a reflection of herself that she dislikes. She stood over her mother's body and cried and nothing positive came out of that. Crying and lamentation did nothing for her, while Cecil stood steadfastly in the way of the soldiers come to kill her, remorseful but steadfast.
And Tellah, rather than weep over his daughter's corpse marches off to go and kill his daughter's killer.
Rydia is a traumatized child trying to emulate the two adults that she looks up to now that her mother is gone.
Her character is literally what you see in Dwarf Castle.
She is a LITERAL child who was forced to grow up too soon. And not only one made to grow up too soon, but is an inverse of Cecil in a way. Cecil abandoned his darkness. Rydia abandoned her light.
Adult Rydia traded away her capacity for white magic in order to specialize in black magic and summoning. She doesn't think of herself as a healer, a remover of afflictions. She's like Cecil, she's a soldier, a walking artillery piece with the capacity to lay waste to any battlefield before her.
And that's what she does for the rest of the game. She comes along with you, she learns increasingly greater and more powerful magics and summons.
She does have some healing capacity with Sylph and Asura but the Sylphs hide away from the world and Asura is fickle and unable to be truly relied upon when you need her most.
And that's Rydia's character. She has everything she's ever known ripped away from her in one instant by a soldier who didn't know what he was doing and killed her mother by accident.
In a moment of panic, Rydia did something similar, calling the Titan and laying waste to a significant portion of her town. Cecil wants to atone, wants to do better. She uses Cecil and the wrathful Tellah as role models, and in the Feymarch she chooses her path where her only purpose is war.
And when Cecil is facing death at the hand of a leader of Baron's military forces, Rydia is there to step in and stop it like Cecil did in Kaipo. She's a child orphaned by war who loses her innocence and is made to grow up too quickly and fight in the very same war.
Her narrative arc effectively concludes at Dwarf Castle because she's attained her goal and shown that she's somebody that can defend people, just like Cecil did for her.
He banished his darkness, and she left behind her light.
@@Hellkat9940 fair enough, I guess it could work that way
she loses her home and is forced to grow up way too quickly
though personally I think if they went that way, I think it should have went in more to how it negatively affected her, but then again I'd say that for all of the MCs honestly; it was still like the 4th game so I don't blame the game too much, pretty much all of the characters aren't that complex
@@Hellkat9940 very nice take. Well said.
@@Hellkat9940 Fucking bravo mate, that is a wonderfully insightful analysis of Rydia. You perfectly tied together the aging up with being forced to grow up too fast, and fighting in the war that took your family, but I'll admit I never considered that she willingly trained to become a living weapon... that really adds some extra weight to her
This gave me a whole new appreciation for Final Fantasy IV. Adored this.
Just stumbled across your content and binged this series. Can’t wait for the 28 hour analysis of FFVII 😂
I can't believe this video was 5 hours long! Well, I can because it took me over a week to finish it, but the fact that it feels like a cohesive work at this size is astounding. Excellent work. I learn so much about *how* to analyze media from your videos, the way you dive into etymology and mythology is unique and deeply interesting, and has altered how I engage with names in stories for good and for the better. Very impressed, very proud of you for finishing such a massive undertaking. Can't wait for the rest of the series :)
kinder words than i deserve! thank you mate :)
@@Ludiscere I disagree. This video deserves all the praise it has gotten and more besides. You obviously put an enormous amount of effort into this video and the result was absolutely in proportion. I watched the three previous FF videos you made, and while those were good, this was fantastic.
OP is right, this video is an example of what should be expected out of any analysis of art.
No pretensions, biases laid out up front, serious digging with a flair for pacing and letting the audience breath in the music.
I hope to see more, at least up through Yuna and the Blitzball Express.
Then again, you have to survive the creation of a Final Fantasy VI video first
And due to my circumstance in life i can rip through a long video like this, but here’s to a 7 hour final fantasy 7 video lol, but you know jokes aside 6, would be 7 hours too, though 5 might be the same as this.
Something else nice about Palom and Porom, is that their age and station have a nice resonance with the intro- Implying that the best black and white mages left in the town are these kids- Because the others have all died.
oh
oh fuck
I did not realize that
I love, love, LOVE your style, the depth of the study, the cadence, the quality of the writing... You got it all man!
This is EXACTLY what I look for in a longform analysis of video games. What a treat! I cannot wait for the next iteration in this series, spectacular work! :)
I could follow this video so easily that I listened to most of it while working. Your writing style, your voice, it was just so easy to follow along. Incredible job!
Your research was impeccable. Drawing on so many diverse sources for the most minor of details really made all the difference to understanding the game. Everything the writers might have put in, everything they meant to put in, everything they most certainly should have put in - you put it all together. Well done. Impressive. Bravo.
I found you from your Hades video and immediately went back to watch much of your other videos. The amount of dedication you put into your content, coupled with the passion, makes for some incredibly engaging videos and honestly, the longer the better. This was such a treat to watch and I cannot wait to see more from you!
I have a soft spot for FFIV because it was my introduction to the franchise. To address a few of your points, I think Kain's edgy bad boy nature definitely got a little bit of the Draco in Leather Pants treatment where the fandom ends up softening and liking a character more than their traits in the story may warrant.
Another influence I felt at points in the video was from the 1986 Transformers movie. The Quintessons have the rotating face thing where each face is a different personality. It's the closest analog to what you're asking for anyway. I also saw parallels in boarding the Giant of Babil to destroy it from within to the climax of the Transformers where they're fighting inside Unicron as he lays waste to Cybertron, though the red jewel and explosions make me think more of the angels from Evangelion like Sachiel
24:25 In the SNES version the king gives Cecil a "package." Cecil in the Pixel Remaster is all like, "we were sent to destroy the village!?", and I'm like, dude, he gave you a bomb to deliver.
I think the PS1 version referred to it as just "Ring"
After such a long wait and so much effort I'm sure that this will be great. All 5 and a half hours of it.
You are brilliant! The way you weave linguistics, history and mythology into an incredibly structure recap of a video game story is awe-inspiring. Amazing job!
I think that Rydia's character is actually handled rather well. She's always been my favorite Final Fantasy character from the first time I played Final Fantasy IV.
Her actions in the beginning of the game echo when she returns. At the start she's a child running away from a scary man in black armor. She's lost her entire world. Her mother is gone, her town is gone, she's in the company of the man responsible for her mother's death.
Her entire world is gone. She has nothing left. For all she knows her traumatic summoning of Titan killed everyone left in the town. She very well might have killed people, in the original Mist goes from being 2 tiles wide to 1 tile wide. She literally destroyed half of her already bomb-scarred town.
The General tells Cecil to stand aside, but rather than do so and let Rydia be killed, he defends her, putting himself in danger on her behalf.
He didn't mean to kill her mother, he doesn't want forgiveness, he just wants to make things better.
So that's what Rydia does, that's who she patterns herself after. She wants to be like Cecil to defend people.
And the first person she encounters after that is Tellah, who is determined to rescue his daughter from "a wicked bard," only to have her die at his feet.
So little bitty Rydia takes the example from her two adult role models and sees in Edward a reflection of herself that she dislikes. She stood over her mother's body and cried and nothing positive came out of that. Crying and lamentation did nothing for her, while Cecil stood steadfastly in the way of the soldiers come to kill her, remorseful but steadfast.
And Tellah, rather than weep over his daughter's corpse marches off to go and kill his daughter's killer.
Rydia is a traumatized child trying to emulate the two adults that she looks up to now that her mother is gone.
Her character is literally what you see in Dwarf Castle.
She is a LITERAL child who was forced to grow up too soon. And not only one made to grow up too soon, but is an inverse of Cecil in a way. Cecil abandoned his darkness. Rydia abandoned her light.
Adult Rydia traded away her capacity for white magic in order to specialize in black magic and summoning. She doesn't think of herself as a healer, a remover of afflictions. She's like Cecil, she's a soldier, a walking artillery piece with the capacity to lay waste to any battlefield before her.
And that's what she does for the rest of the game. She comes along with you, she learns increasingly greater and more powerful magics and summons.
She does have some healing capacity with Sylph and Asura but the Sylphs hide away from the world and Asura is fickle and unable to be truly relied upon when you need her most.
And that's Rydia's character. She has everything she's ever known ripped away from her in one instant by a soldier who didn't know what he was doing and killed her mother by accident.
In a moment of panic, Rydia did something similar, calling the Titan and laying waste to a significant portion of her town. Cecil wants to atone, wants to do better. She uses Cecil and the wrathful Tellah as role models, and in the Feymarch she chooses her path where her only purpose is war.
And when Cecil is facing death at the hand of a leader of Baron's military forces, Rydia is there to step in and stop it like Cecil did in Kaipo. She's a child orphaned by war who loses her innocence and is made to grow up too quickly and fight in the very same war.
Her narrative arc effectively concludes at Dwarf Castle because she's attained her goal and shown that she's somebody that can defend people, just like Cecil did for her.
He banished his darkness, and she left behind her light.
I remembered from my playthroughs that Rydia is supposed to be young, but it wasn't until this video that I realized or remembered young: Seven is wild (and even more shocking thinking about Palom and Porom being five, especially given the sacrifice they make). I do think the narrative could have been made a little more believable by aging them each up maybe... 5-6 years each? But as the video says, it's fantasy
So, I'm about 2 hours in, talking about Tellah and Meteor, and it makes me think of one of the single eyebrow raising parts of the game, that I noticed even back when I was a kid. They spend the ENTIRE game building up what a massive deal Meteor is. And then... Rydia just randomly learns it one day. And you can use it all you want. No one ever mentions it, there's no cutscene, nothing. NBD. Always thought that was odd. Maybe that's mentioned later but I don't know how many more days/sessions it'll take for me to finish :D
plus, she mot only is forved to grow ip too fast, but then literally ages faster and returns as an adult. It really drives home the idea of growing up too fast, metaphorically and literally!
I think you're just creating your own fanfiction here. Nothing in the game's dialogue or themes supports your analysis. It's almost hermeneutics.
It’s like Rydis went into the hyperbolical time chamber for summoners and grew up
I just wanna say that I found crazy the depths you went in the research, and the patience through all the effort in actually putting the video together.
This was great. I love this kind of content and you made it really special
Oh my god. I swear I hadn't checked out your channel in so long, I got back into Hades a few days ago which brought me back to your video, and i wondered: hey when is Ludi's next video coming out? Bam. 1 day ago, 5 hours of FF4. Which I am currently replaying. You sir are a gentlemen and a scholar
This the 5 hour analysis video I never knew I needed! 👏Structuring it to follow the main story alongside other topics when needed was a very good idea. Can't wait for my favourite next time, FFV!
My reward for cleaning my room as a kid was my mom going to Video Shark (kinda like blockbuster) and renting Final Fantasy 2 for me. It made school so difficult to sit through knowing that this game was sitting on my bed at home. This was the first game that made me fall in love with video games and it taught me how to write compelling stories.
Thanks for the review, I enjoyed it.
I finished IV for the first time a few days ago, and I just wanna say this is one of the best analysis videos I've ever watched. As someone who didn't enjoy V, I can't wait to see how you cover that one, but I'll be visiting your other vids until then! :)
How didn't you enjoy ff5 it's quite a great game and with another legendary soundtracks
Woah! Honestly, having seen how much work went into your earlier "retrospections", I expected your FFIV video not sooner than February or March. That's a big surprise. I will have to watch it in parts :) Thanks for your work and Merry Christmas!
Imagine if Gobez fought at the end like you suggested, but became an incarnation of hatred so he COULD deal the final blow. It would add a layer of tragedy to the final boss.
On Rydia's character, I found that she was my favorite character, but when you went in on how she's mostly poorly written, and her characterization is strange and unwieldly, I totally agreed. When I first played final fantasy II/IV I was only 6 or 7 years old- the same age as Rydia, so I was excited that there was another kid in the game the same age as me, and then she comes back as an adult and is one of the most powerful characters in the game, consistently throwing out those 9,999s. It was really sort of a power fantasy- of how a little kid like me could 'grow up' and be this spell slinging badass. I wonder if there are a lot of people who like her for similar reasons.
Can't wait till I'm an 80 year old grandpa going "Heck yeah Fusoya my man!" 😆
I think, unfortunately, Rydia was mishandled and underused like the video says. To be the sex object of the pervert creep. But it's good that you took something positive out of it.
Just finished watching the whole video... and I loved it. Even though I look at this game through my nostalgia lenses 'cause I played it for the first time over 20 years ago, I think every criticism you discuss is well-justified. This is not just a review or mere rumination... it's basically a dissertation on FFIV LOL Can't wait for your videos on V and especially VI (which is my favourite FF). Also, I'm super impressed by the vocabulary you use in this video. English is not my native language but I consider myself pretty fluent. Then I started watching this video... and you kept on slapping me in my face with C2-level English for 5 and a half hours :D It was... well, kinda refreshing LOL
I'm also greatly anticipating VI since it was my first FF and holds many great memories with my grandmother (she was a #gamergirl before it was cool lol). Also X!
thank you for pointing out the flaws in the character interactions. One part that always angered me to no end was how Rydia and Cecil treated Edward, and it made me unable to like either of them, and in turn contributed to my inability to finish the game. That and the constant character death fake-outs have always caused me to lose motivation to keep playing.
Anyway, I really enjoyed your video! Thanks for making it!
Palam and Porom left a huge impact on me. I remember just crying with my DS in hand during that scene. It doesn’t seem like a scene that really lumps it on, but wow does that scene build upon the rest of the game to be a massive gut punch. Having the wind up Porom minion in FFXIV was such a great nod to me and it felt like so few understood the significance of that character
It's especially stirring when you think about how young they are, which I'd forgotten until this video reminded me - absolutely wild
I think Rydia's characterization is more consistent than you're giving it credit for, particularly with regards to her forgiveness of Cecil and impatience towards Edward.
After the death of her mother and the destruction of Mist, she's quite reasonably distraught... but her uncontrolled emotions only manage to make things worse. Yes, Cecil was responsible for the burning of the village... but for all Rydia knows, she might have accidentally reduced it to rubble by summoning Titan. And, at the very least, she went from having lost her mother to being separated from everyone she'd ever known.
So the moment that Cecil decides to take care of her, she finds herself in a position of absolute dependency -- he's literally the only reason why she's alive. How awful must it feel for her to know that she'd be dead if not for the pity of the man who killed her mother? And, furthermore, for her to have no idea what his intentions are or how far his willingness to support her even extends?
Under those circumstances, Rydia forgiving Cecil isn't necessarily evidence of psychological maturity. Rather, it's simply the most effective means for her to neutralize the enormous amount of psychic tension generated by her simultaneous hatred for and need of him. His willingness to fight his own people to protect her is a tremendous opportunity in that regard -- she's able to assume the much more psychologically stable position of feeling assured that she can trust him to keep her safe because he's a good person who happened to make a terrible mistake.
The fact that she feels responsible for the consequences of her own terrible mistake doesn't hurt in that regard, either. And that aspect makes sense of much of the rest of her characterization. She's learned from experience that her emotions cause more harm than good, so when she's pushed to set them aside to open a path forward with Fire, she's willing to do so. And when she sees Edward getting emotional about Anna, she's furious rather than sympathetic because she's come to the conclusion that such emotion is counterproductive if not downright dangerous.
Given that trajectory, it makes perfect sense that by the time she returns years later, she's set her past aside nigh completely. Perhaps it might have been more subjectively satisfying to see her come to terms with her trauma rather than putting it soundly behind her, but that seems more a matter of preference than skill.
Came here from Adam Millard's channel -- watched this on a whim and then went back and watched the whole series! Now I can't wait for the next one!
This was so incredibly put together, well presented and so meticulously researched. I’ve only recently started playing through all the FF games and 4 stood out to me when I was finished with it. This video certainly did it justice and then some. You gave praise where earned and criticism where deserved, really made me reconsider some elements of the game I totally overlooked, or made me appreciate parts I previously didn’t. Banger video.
I’ll definitely have to tune into the future FF analysis videos and catch up on the previous ones 👌🏻👌🏻
Can't wait for your FFVI analysis. Next to Chrono Trigger, it's my favourite game of all time. I'm scared to think how long the video will be 🙂 8 hours? Whatever the length, I'm all for it. I love juicy info-heavy videos on things I love.
Final Fantasy 4 is a game which in my opinion is centered around Cecil and his heel-face-turn from a brooding Dark Knight with angst to a righteous Paladin with firm convictions. He ends up like a typical JRPG noble hero, but the important part, and by far one of the biggest character arcs of its era, is him starting out as a stark contrast to the hero he later becomes. Not only is it a revolutionary idea, but it also makes you much more excited and happy to see your JRPG protag being a knight in shining armor... because you've seen the whole path leading up to it. It's such a simple twist yet executed ingeniously.
And while that's one of the biggest story beats in the game thematically, it's by no means the climax. You see Cecil finally become the Paladin he wishes to be, and then you get to play him living up to his Paladin title by showcasing his virtue and protectiveness. It's not like he immediately becomes and unstoppable badass either; you see him struggling a lot and needing to be saved by others in turn as well (just look at the magnet cave). Yet rather than making it look as if Cecil is weak, it only showcases how strong the bonds he forms with his fellow party members ends up becoming. I love Cecil, and I find his character arc to be a beautiful showcase of not just atoning, but also growing as a person despite your past.
I love this game so much. It was my first FF game and I played it when I was 11. This video was so entertaining to watch and I really appreciate all the time and effort that went into making it. Thank you so much!
I found your channel recently and I’m glad I did. I’ve been trying to watch a little bit of these FF retrospectives every night but fall asleep. I really love watching them and I can tell this was a labor of love for you. Please keep on because this is amazing work.
This was quite the monolith! While I agree largely with some of the ideas you present. I would have wanted to hear some of your ideas about how these loose story threads could be tightened up. Characterization via olden times is always a tricky business. You noted something near the end that Cecil is the sun and the other characters revolve around him. Yet at the same time you said he was a great character. This implies that the other characters mostly needed to be less... as Tokita says, eccentric, for Cecil to shine brighter.
My favorite character is Tellah, personally. No other character has so much gameplay/story synthesis. As you noted his stats weaken as he "levels up" implying age, his static MP prevents him from using Meteo, and when he finally does he's using it on the back of already using 80 MP (Firaga, Blizzaga, Bio), leading to his death from over-exertion. He loses himself in hatred, realizes it, but can't let his hate go in the end, even as he recognizes it as his fatal flaw. I find that to be an interesting character point personally.
As for Tellah's attack having no effect, I entirely disagree. It's something you didn't note in the battle with Golbez in the original. He has only 20000 HP in the next fight with him in the Dwarven Castle, in the 3D version he has only exactly 9999 HP. Implying to me that he was still reeling from Tellah's Meteo.
As for Rydia, I do agree that more could have been done with her. But 1991 and all that... my headcanon for Leviathan's attack is much the same as yours, to keep the last Summoner safe from Golbez. As for her aging up, it made sense to me, it explains why she forgot White Magic and how her Summoning skills improved dramatically in the time (you also provided an excellent myth reference for it). I personally don't see much sexist overtones though that lets the characters "down" per se, as your only "complete" characters were Cecil, Golbez, Edward, Palom and Porom (who I'd argue are only seen that way because of their brief role). You seem to have quite the high expectations for character development, entirely fair, but the time period should be taken into account
I'd argue that incredibly deep characters are not necessary to tell an intriguing narrative. Does it help? Absolutely, but some may feel that it can hurt if not handled in the right way. FFVI handles most characters with an incredible amount of care that even the lechery of Edgar is offset beautifully by his fraternal bond and sense of responsibility for his land and the lives of his people. Gau, the wild boy's tragic backstory is incredibly memorable, Locke is a wonderfully written psychological mess who I adore for that reason, and so on.
While a truly admirable written analysis, I... ironically, am left wanting to hear more about how you would have fixed some of the issues that you put forth, as in some cases I do agree they were issues that need touched up (Rydia's forced to learn Fire, Yang's role in the plot, the ridiculous fake-outs) but some I felt were a bit overblown. (Rydia's rejoining, Rosa's purpose, Kain's distastefulness, Zeromus' impact as a final boss, etc.)
One thing I am surprised that wasn't mentioned was the Final Fantasy IV Settei Shiryou Hen, which has some excellent background info. on many of the characters (though some may now be retconned). The language used, especially in regard to spells, feels more mechanical and scientific than one may expect.
It is a shame you didn't take to The After Years. It was written by Tokita Takashi after all, but I do admit that the format may not be too appealing. I think it has some interesting narrative hooks. I especially like how it handled Palom and Porom, along with Ceodore and Kain.
Tellah rules!
Ok, you mention how Edward's creator wanted to make him strong and yet didn't. I think he got the last laugh in the end. So, I was looking up party stats for the GBA version because you can customize your party in that version. Edward is the weakest, by far, at the start. But there's a certain point where he gains crazy stat gains and becomes insanely powerful. Kind of like "If you put in the effort to level him up, you will be rewarded".
For reasons like these, I think the GBA version is my personal favorite. Add in the fan patches for the rom, and it's practically perfect, at least for me.
When I played this when it first came out, all those years ago, I wished I could have all the characters who died/left back in the party, and the GBA version finally granted that wish!
And the issues I do have with the GBA version are addressed with the fan patches, so for someone like me, it's like a dream come true!
Edward blossoming into the most powerful character is the icing on the cake!
@@RedSpade37 The PSP version has all the same features and content as the GBA version, but is more polished, and doesn't have that ATB glitch the GBA one has.
@@tamerkoh Oh my lands, truly? I was led to believe only the GBA had the extra stuff. Well, thank you for letting me know, and now I know what I will be doing for New Years!
@@RedSpade37 Yup, it has all the extra stuff, and the two sequels in one package. It's the definitive version of 2D FF4. And the higher res pixel art looks gorgeous, the environments are really beautiful!
This is true for FF1 and FF2 on PSP as well, btw, their definitive versions with all the content up to that point!
@@tamerkoh Wow! Sounds great! Somehow, I never knew this. Thanks again!
Cecil finding out he was a lunarian was the "I am your father moment, but then finding out he had a brother is the "there is another skywalker" moment from Yoda
Hey Ludiscere I really love your the mythology behind Hades video my Request is the mythology behind God of War video
If this is a series you are putting together, I'll be here from now on! Started with this and watched the previous 3. Looking forward to the rest, especially 6 for me.
Oh man. Your FF analysis videos are the absolute best. I love how you go over so many small things that nobody does. I cannot wait to hear your analysis of V. I think there's a lot of interesting things to say about Exdeath that nobody seems to mention beyond his surface level cartoon villain appearance.
No pressure
You deserve way more views and subscribers. I hope you continue this series all the way through the whole of at least the numbered FFs.
Incredible video. Wouldn't consider myself a fan of JRPGs, but videos like this still entice me, with their depth and amounts of analysis. A great video.
Just finished and wanted to say - as always - excellent work and so many thoughtful points put out here. I love the music breakdowns especially, though I do wish they were voiced, maybe playing a small sample and then talking about it. I do think Zeromus itself makes sense, but Zemus before it does not: the game opens with mass murder, deals with genocide, and the struggle of evil within oneself (as well as friction between types of people like above/below, the Lunars who wanted to wipe out the planet) and all in an at times highly metaphorical way so ending with "the embodiment of hatred itself" as the grandiose last boss makes for a sensible ender. But you could definitely delete Zemus and do what you said with Golbez as a final boss and have Zeromus come out from him instead.
As a thematic boss, you would want to keep Zeromus mostly mysterious, but I think adding some lines about how the latent hatred of everyone - the Red Wings who helped the king, Golbez, even the sleeping Lunarians who pushed for wiping out the king, and yes Cecil himself through his actions - formed into an entity like Zeromus. Now I'm imagining a version of Zeromus that while looking monstrous also imitates or takes on the forms/powers of people we know, like Tellah who desired murder over his own life, and Cecil having to use "protect" instead of attack at key points to stop a party wiping spell...
This is EXACTLY the kind of analysis video that I wanted to find and watch right after finishing my first playthrough of FF4. So much rich detail and analysis of pretty much everything I wanted to be talked about and then some. Truly marvelous work! Was definitely worth watching the full length of it. I look forward to more Final Fantasy videos from you in the future.
I very rarely comment on this site, but you killed it with this vid. There's so much love for Final Fantasy as a franchise in this video. I can hardly wait for whatever you have planned next.
This analysis is absolutely incredible. Staying tuned here- this series has an exceptional potential. Everything from your meticulous details to your unique approach to talking about the music is appreciated.
When I was nine, my whole family played this game together while we were traveling in India. It was really cool to be able to talk about these characters with them and listen to their unique opinions. Final fantasy 8 was my first play too. These stories had such an influence on me.
Needless to say just really brought me back well clarifying things I never noticed.
Cheers to you sir 👏
As much as the After Years was a botch job of a sequel largely thanks to greed and questionable writing, I kinda like some of the ideas they used with Kain's story there. Execution is not the greatest, but I like that upon his initial trip to Mt. Ordeals he fails to defeat his darker side. Now his darker side escaping and what follows was just, well, bad, and don't get me started on what they did with Cecil. What I do like is that Kain is not able to overcome his darker side until he actually reckons with his past and those he harmed in some way. Just being generally 'repentant' and becoming a loner doesn't really address the matter and doesn't work to develop yourself moving forward. I like that part of his penance comes through saving and mentoring the child of Cecil and Rosa, the people his seeds of resentment kind of stem from and who he betrayed previously. Through this he eventually finds the strength to actually vanquish his dark side and become a Holy Dragoon. In the midst of all the plot contrivances and bad writing in The After Years, I think the seeds are there for an interesting Kain epilogue. If they made a muuuuuuch shorter story focusing just on Kain's journey while cutting out all the apocalyptic threats and made it a down to earth character study I really do think that it could have been great. That is a lot to ask, but like I said, I think there was something there buried beneath the shit.
Yesssssssss, I love your channel so much. Glad to see a new release. I hope you get much more attention
This analysis is such a breath of fresh air. I love how you structure it by not separating certain elements into its own category, but discuss relevant tangents along the way. I really wish a lot of analysis and retrospectives did just this because this is actually more engaging.
5 hrs pure quality content 😍❤
I never looked at the gang pressuring Cecil to forgive his brother at the end but considering it would be their last time seeing one another that he should at the very least say his final goodbye but hearing another opinion I do see more in the scene than before 💪🏽 amazing work
I love the touch how we find out Rydia didn't know how to summon Titan, only chocobos - she dug deep in her emotional state, and tapped into her potential.
As soon as you mentioned that you enjoyed the 3D remake best, I knew this was going to be a special video. While the Final Fantasy series as a whole is very important to me, I also think it's one whose retrospectives can get bogged down in the baggage of nostalgia. Seldom will you find a fan of this franchise who doesn't hold one game strangely beyond reproach and another in odd contempt. This retrospective provided not only a uniquely thorough look at the entire work, but was also even-handed in its criticisms and praises throughout, unafraid to offer thoughts and opinions that differ greatly from the more widely accepted views held by the majority of its audience.
It's led me to more thoroughly reflect upon some of my own opinions about this game. I think part of the danger of nostalgia lies in the fallibility of memory--we like to overwrite content and fill in gaps over time. So your final character analysis on Kain was especially intriguing to me. I like that it came at the end, after I had digested your previous analyses with great interest and come to largely agree with most. But Kain felt different. It's not that I even disagree with your conclusion--I think there was a lot about him that was under-utilized. The thing that niggled at me was why he holds such a vaunted place metatextually in spite of that. My solution to this apparent contradiction lies mostly in conflict. Conflict is interesting. In conflict lies a wealth of possibility. Kain is unique in his role occupying that morally gray area of both antagonist and protagonist, and I think as a concept that this is inherently appealing. My only quibble is that such conflict comes less as a consequence of character than of plot. If Kain had played an active role in his treachery, rather than each betrayal being relegated to the role of plot device, I think the intrigue of his unique position as both protagonist and antagonist would have been more satisfyingly explored. I also think that a character being unlikeable is a very strong trait to set them apart from a cast of likable people. Regardless of execution, Kain stands out in a crowd in more ways than just design. I think that's why he remains a strong presence in the minds of the audience, even in spite of his lack of such presence in the story itself.
Beyond all this, I also have to add that, as a former student of linguistics, the focus on language and etymology in so many aspects of this retrospective really piqued my interest. I can't wait to dig into your other videos, and am eagerly awaiting more to come. Thanks so much for all your work in this regard.
This is crazy good analysis. I'm looking forward to FF5, and your look of music, themes, and localizations where fan translation of original game is still one of the best.
I hope this series comes back soon. Can't wait to one day watch a video like this about Final Fantasy XIV. Only problem: The video is probably 24 hours long.
Yay! A good video to spend the day making Christmas cookies/candy to! Haven't started it yet but thank you so much!
a rare game to get such a long video, good stuff, thx
The spoony line fits so well , when you realize it was a term for someone who was love struck used 80ish years ago in books and in a few songs and applied Tellahs age (60ish years prior from the games release) . I mean people still say things they have said their entire life even if it's outdated.
By far your best analysis yet, well worth the wait. I can't even imagine what a treat the next one of these is going to be if you keep improving like this
Finally finished this behemoth! To be honest, at points I did feel you were a bit harsh towards the game given its age, but I appreciated the reveal that you yourself grappled with this dilemma. Its funny since I noticed most of the narrative missteps you pointed out, but I tended to just roll with it given how video game's writing was in its infancy at the time. That said, you definitely helped me appreciate the game more, specifically in the level of research you did to point out where many of the game's elements originally stemmed from, it's nice to know that there was a lot of genuine thought put behind many aspects of the game's world. On that note however, a small point of contention that I do have though is that you tend to put a bit too much stock in what the devs had to say. I am not sure how you feel, but I am more firmly on the side of "death of the author", that's not to say we should completely ignore everything the devs have to say about their own work, but if you have a certain read of the text and the author contradicts it, I don't think that's a good reason to abandon your argument. An analysis of a work is not explicitly about revealing intent, and while I do think there is value in getting the perspective of the creators and it's fine to take what they say into account, at the end of the day it shouldn't define how you interpret their work.
Anyways, all that aside, this was genuinely great and I eagerly look forward to your coverage of the rest of the series! I do have a question though, are you gonna tackle FFXI too? I can't imagine that being an easy task.
hey pal! yeah, it's something i found hard to reconcile throughout the writing process, definitely found myself being inconsistent in being lenient with some things, harsh with others - with a video this long, there are always going to be those kinda tonal inconsistencies in the script, so i thought it better to just address it. thanks for the kind words on the research! i think that's interesting - i get behind 'death of the author' to an extent, and do apply it a fair amount, but i also find myself naturally drawn to the idea of the creator's original intent taking some sort of precedence. although i do agree that an analysis isn't explicitly about revealing intent, i find a kind of comfort in this sort of objective unassailable fact, hearing the basis of an idea directly from the source, and i quite enjoy exploring that angle when it's available; that does mean that sometimes the 'analysis' itself can take a back seat, but it's just how i enjoy doing these things. just a personal quirk i guess. i can't disagree with anything you've said though - really good points!
cheers mate, and yeah, i hope so - assuming it's still running in 20 years when i reach that video haha! it won't be easy, but i reckon it will primarily be narrative analysis so that it has some focus, and it'll probably be less intensive than VI-X will. honestly though, it's XIV i'm worried about. that's gonna be a hell of a project.
5 hours of content based on my second favourite RPG of all time? You shouldn't have I feel spoiled, thank you for your incredible work on this.
I get it's a long ways off since we're only just getting to IV, but I can't wait for you to sink your claws into XII. Aside from having my favorite character, Balthier, and some of the coolest summon cutscenes, I also like how it tackled the typical "evil empire" every series has. Instead of a clear good and evil side you're really just dealing with being sandwiched between two empires (albeit with one being more narratively antagonistic to the party) that are both having a run of jingoism. Given Dalmasca's middle-eastern influences you could probably draw Cold War parallels.
Phenomenal video! Extremely well structured. Thanks for the upload!
Shame the PSP or Pixel Remaster versions didn't choose to add in the new DS scenes. Crazy how an extra 5 minutes of exposition and flashbacks can turn Golbez into a fairly tragic and compelling villain.
Anyway this video is incredible, I am so looking forward to when you get around to the others.
Ooooh yo, congrats on finishing this monster of a video!! :D
Ludi u crazy 4 this...but good to see you back!
how in the actual fuck you dont have more subs? yours videos are so good
absolutely LOVE the amount of dedication you have put into this video. My brothers got final fantasy 2 when it first came out on SNES and this game is very dear to my heart. playing hundreds of times has taken its toll as i get older and notice many thing i didnt when i was younger. but thats ok. look forward to your other vids in the future!
if you are asking for a description of the paladin in D&D, here it goes: the paladin in that game is defined by 3 class features, those are, lay on hands, divine smite, and, aura of protection, here's what each of these does: lay on hands you get at level 1 and its basically free healing without expending a spell, divine smite is unsurprisingly a special attack, it deals somewhere between double and triple damage than a regular attack, and lastly altho definatly not least, at level 6 the paladin gains aura of protection, which is a bonus to magic resistance for half of the party, 24/7, just by being alive, that bonus, literally requires a bard to use up a resource,to give to a single member of the party, only once, and that version is still worth it btw (also the 2 bonuses stack with eachother)
I’ve been a huge fan of your FF retrospective and have been excitedly waiting for the next since FF4 is one of my favs in the series. When I saw the video was 5 hours long I audibly clapped. Thank you very much for this and I hope you continue the excellent work.
Final Fantasy IV is one of my favorite games. i greatly appreciate the amount of depth in this video. i look forward to hearing your thoughts on FFV and VI.
This was something I always wanted
A complete breakdown of ff4 my all-time favourite final fantasy
It's the best!
I just finished it and it instantly became my favourite too!
I got this game for Christmas when I was 12...I can still vividly remember playing for hours on Christmas night. This game blew my mind at the time and I still remember my SNES Final Fantasy II (we didn’t know about the earlier sequels at the time) very fondly.
Great! Ive been waiting for this!!!
Amazing video dude, I really enjoy this series and am astounded at the amount of effort and detail put into it. Keep it up man.
Amazing video
Been a long time but it's always worth it
Final Fantasy IV has been my all time favorite game ever since it first came out on the SNES. I'm already getting hyped for the Pixel Remasters getting dropped on console this spring and this is a very well done analysis into a game I truly cherish. Great job!
Holy hell, if this is how incredible your analysis has become on the 4th game in this franchise, I can’t wait to see what kinds of analysis we might see on the black sheep of the 13 trilogy!
Holy shit, Recently I was scripting a summary of ff4, and my world-view cracked wide open, because I realized that zemus and zeromus aren't just last minute twist villains to upstage Golbez, and I think they actually represent humanity's tendency to hate and harm itself. And I was thinking that the themes of the story are about the toxicity of hatred and the power of forgiveness. And then I stepped back and thought, is it that deep though? So I'm really hype to see where you go with this analysis.
Congratulations friend! Heck of an achievement, looking forward to getting stuck into it.
What an incredible video, how impressive, the effort behind it, the research, the pace, the information, the tone, the voice the ideas the edit, I mean this has so much work put into it! I really appreciate it, 5,30 hours seemed like nothing because of how well constructed everything was, be proud!!!!
You bring up some very thought provoking and interesting points about Rydia! I remember way back when I first got the After Years...I had hoped the individual character chapters would have spent some time with her in the Feymarch as a kid learning to and getting to understand the summoned monsters...unfortunately that didn't happen! As for your mentions of needlessly sexualizing her, you phrased it perfectly. To be fair, there's nothing wrong with someone being portrayed as sexy and/or beautiful but they don't spend anytime really making that part of their character; either Rydia or Rosa. And yes, I do consider that a waste! Now I'm wondering how you're going to explain and analyze FF5
Hey man! Just watched the entire video and I loved it!
Just wanted to throw an idea out there: The Magus Sisters are based on Hecate, the Greek goddess of magic (among other things). I mention this because 1. The numerical link, where Hecate is usually being depicted as 3 women linked back to back, and there are 3 Magus sisters, 2. The name "Magus sisters" hints to them having a direct link to the essence of magic, and Hecate is a goddess of magic, 3. Hecate is also a goddess of the crossroads, and narratively speaking Tellah is in a crossroads of sorts (whether or not he will succumb to his hatred and sacrifice his life for a chance to kill Golbez) and 4. Hecate is ALSO a moon goddess, with her 3 faces representing the 3 phases of the moon (new, waxing, and full). Seeing as how in the end of the game we end up dealing with Lunarians, tangential foreshadowing maybe?
All awesome points.
I just finished watching the video! I loved it!
Great video! The structure made it flow very nicely, didn't feel as long as it was, gripping throughout! Thanks for the content.
Not me bellowing with laughter at 3:11:10 😂😂😂. That sound cue was EVERYTHING lmao
Look at the love put into this! Omg
It has taken me about 9 months to finish watching this video. Thank you for making it - it’s helped me to understand my favourite game a little more.
I started playing all FF games a while ago and after finishing one I like to watch a video to get different POVs and further lore. I really enjoyed yours but was very sad to think you stopped uploading them. Today you showed me that I had nothing to fear and the wait was worth it. Thank you so much for this ❤️
This is such an amazing piece of work! And for my fav FF. Thank you so much for this analysis! Enjoyed every single bit
Amazing as always, your vids are always a highlight of my feed whenever they show up! I'm really interested in how you'll approach FF5- it's probably my favourite of the series, but it does also feel like a regression to the older style of FF compared to the games on either side of it.
This is probably one of the top five videos I have watched on this platform this year. Probably took this guy the whole year to make it, too.
Someone NEEDS to do something this in-depth on Final Fantasy IX!!! Won't be me, but I'm definitely planning on making my own kind of video about it.
the year was 1992, i was ten years old. popped this sucker into my snes as a random rental, a final fantasy fan was born. ive played them all since and cant wait to see what XVI has in store for us 😃