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Is anyone else excited about this release? It landed on the PS4 Store this morning. I am very excited. I'm going to buy it and throw it up on stream soon. FFIX was and still remains my favorite FF. I remember an article a few years ago about how FFIX is the Dragon Quest fan's FF. And I agree. It's much more similar in tone to DQ. Doesn't take itself as seriously as the other FFs and has a good amount of nostalgia to it. But yes, this makes me very happy .

I have a friend, as I am sure you all do, who is in love with the Final Fantasy series. As someone who has played and enjoyed both Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, I attempted to have a conversation with this friend, to see what he thought of the two series, and why he would play one but not the other. So, for this topic, we will be discussing Final Fantasy vs. Dragon Quest. Important backround: Friend A has played every Final Fantasy game. Friend A has played Dragon Quest IX. Beets (yours truly) has played every Dragon Quest game. Beets has played the Final Fantasy games numbered I-VII, with some experience with XII and XIII and general knowledge about the rest. Let us being the conversation. Beets: oh. so you've played the generic one Friend A: well beets, i get the impression they are all generic Beets: i just meant that DQ9's got no faces. all I meant was that that game's town's are all disconnected, and that the story is fed to you in little bits, and that you just forget the bits after you've been fed. that's all I meant! i really meant that you played the least representative sample of a Dragon Quest game that you possibly could have. you can't say the series is generic without having played the rest Friend A: ok, Final Fantasy I, II, and III, they tried to be Dragon Quest-- Beets: they sure tried to be! Friend A: right, and for all intensive purposes they might as well be Dragon Quests Beets: yo, for the sake of argument, let's just say that Final Fantasy I is better than Dragon Quest I. now, i don't actually think that, but let's just say it is, because many would think so. Dragon Quest has one character. Final Fantasy has four characters. that's kinda critical, you know? Friend A: right, so, rpgs are about role-playing. Dragon Quests are about role-playing you; you name your character and you go on a quest. Final Fantasy gives the player four party members. so, if the player wants the black mage to be stoic, they can, and if they want their monk to be very brave, they can Beets: yeah, in Dragon Quest, you only had one party member. in Final Fantasy, you have four. that's four times the $#!& to manage; people like that! people play games, as we have discussed earlier, because they like to manage $#!&. where do you think your milk and cheese come from, anyway? dude, the monsters--let's have a history lesson. take a peak at the boxarts for these games: look man, japan got this pretty cool anime boxart with toriyama's work all over it. people like that stuff. then look at this! this is what people in america where sold: Dragon Warrior. it's generic, it envokes Dungeons & Dragons ripoff. and i mean we can't deny it, Dragon Quest a love letter to Dungeons & Dragons. but people in japan saw toriyama's boxart, and then they played the game, and nothing looks like toriyama's art! like, nothing. except for the dragon and dragonlord. but he's not 'till like the end, man. i guess there's the golem, too. but man, the rest look like an ugly globs of pixels. but you know what? nobody cared: japan ate that stuff up. they loved it for what it was. it's fun. Dragon Quest is fun. and then comes Dragon Warrior. all the kids look at it and think "ahh yeahh, time for a cool manly beef-time, time to add another dragon head to my wall of plastic swords," right? that's what this boxart says. Friend A: but that's what marketing is. they were able to market the same game to two different markets. Beets: yeah but it failed! nobody cared about Dragon Warrior in america. people saw this boxart, they expected something, and they play it and didn't get that something. they expected to go on a dragon-killing spree only to be disappointed that there's only two dragons. people wanted dragon combat, but Dragon Warrior isn't about the combat . . . Friend A: then what is it about Beets: it's about the people! the towns you explore, the conversations you have. there's only one save point, but you don't lose experience, so long as you don't turn off the game anyone can beat it. but it's never about "man, i'm ready to kick some big dragon butt" Friend A: it's about the classic role-playing adventure. it's about The Quest Beets: yeah! but they wanted to market it different Friend A: yeah, the marketing flopped, and they couldn't give 'em away Beets: do you know there's three sequels on the NES? three! nobody knows what those are! and then Final Fantasy comes along Friend A: right, nobody wants to play 3 or 4 because of the ever lurking question "what if i missed something big in the previous game?" the smartest thing Final Fantasy did with regards with its western releases was to skip the games and rename the ones they did release "II" and "III" Beets: yeah they skipped the bad ones. best decision squaresoft has ever made! Friend A: Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy are both about the classic role-playing adventure. some might argue Final Fantasy did it a little bit better, by giving you more party members, and II tried to give the characters personality and goals-- Beets: let's not talk about II--no one wants to talk about II Friend A: no one wants to talk about II, and they shouldn't, but the point is they tried something, which is big. Dragon Quest is about perfection. if one guy doesn't like one Dragon Quest, i'd find it hard to recommend the others in the series, whereas i could recommend a different Final Fantasy game to each person depending on who they are . . . to be continued in the meantime, let's ask ourselves this incredibly leading question: is Final Fantasy better than Dragon Quest?

I don't know if anyone here plays Final Fantasy XIV but if you do there is a Dragon Quest event going on right now! http://eu.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodestone/special/2014/Theres_Golems_in_Those_Hills/ The event was super easy, just had to beat up a few Golems. And you get a baby "wind-up" Golem for your time. I plan on having it follow me every where. Yay crossovers!

My favorite main series Final Fantasy game is FFIV followed closely by FFVI. Tactics is up there as well, although a different game. The others are ranged from good, bad, and ugly. Those two originally for SNES are my favorites. This is a direct sequel originally for mobile phone in Japan. If you have not played the original, don't bother with this game. If you don't like FFIV, you won't like this game. I borrowed a Wii and played this on the classic controller. It looks like a SNES game. It's actually sold in parts. There's the base game and stories from Rydia, Palom, Edge, Porom, Edward, Yang, Lunarians, and Ending. They are sold separately. I was a bit taken aback when I finished the base game. I later found it is really just parts 1-3. If you think of the base game as just the intro and two character stories, then it's much better. As a separate stand alone game, the first part sucks. As part 1, it's not bad. This game uses a "chapter" system like DQIV, except that each chapter costs money. That part I don't like. One piece of advice. Use separate save slots for each portion of the game. Do not override saves or it makes the last part much more difficult in regards to items and levels. I'm grading all the DLC parts together. That's the only way this game is worth playing. Graphics - B - It's a SNES type game. Price - C- - It's an expensive game. About $40 total when all is said and done. I've played $60 crap and I've played $3.99 games worth $40. For $20, this is a good get. For $40, die hards only. I probably wouldn't have been as irked if they sold all the parts together for $40 as a stand alone one time thing. It's the practice of base game for $8, $3 for other parts, and $8 for the ending that bothers me so much. It's everything I don't like about Downloadable Content (DLC). Combat and Play Control - A - On the classic controller, it's just like FFIV, which I think is still the best turn based system out there outside of the old Dragon Quest turn based. Characters can be a bit unbalanced at times, and I'm going to go back and try and build things up so I can get different combination at the last part. Story and Atmosphere - B+ - This game takes place 17 years after FFIV. The old favorites are back, and so are some new characters. The settings are mostly the same. I got what I expected out of it. Voice Acting - Not Applicable - Knowing Square, that may be a good thing, although FFIV DS wasn't bad. FFX on the other hand.... Difficulty - B (So far) - I haven't taken on Mr (or Mrs) Big yet. It's tougher than FFIV SNES which was fairly easy where I didn't have to grind at all until the end (once I got Holy/White spell it was easy) . It's not nearly as hard (so far) as FFIV DS. Length - B+ - This saved the game. About 6-7 hours in, I finish part 1 and have a WTF reaction because it was marketed as "base game." Including the downloadable content, it's about twice the length of the original game. Each DLC part until the ending is about 2-3 hours without bonus content. The ending part is at least 20 hours. This is overall a good 50 hour game. Overall - B if you're a fan. If not, don't get it. I would have given it a B+ or A- if the price was $20 like many games like this cost. I like the continuation of the game, and the original is my favorite in the series. Price aside, I liked it. It's what I expected when all the parts are taken together.