![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroBenjamin’s village was destroyed and he was named the legendary hero by a mysterious floating old man, so it’s up to him to travel to the four areas of the world and restore the power of the four elemental crystals.
I haven’t really used the 9X-S Handheld in the last year and a half because the RG350 is so much better in pretty much all regards, but I went to a campsite this past week and I wanted to make sure I was okay with my stuff getting broken or stolen, so I brought the 9X-S. And despite the lousy SNES emulation, I felt like playing FFMQ anyway. I wanted a relatively simple and straightforward jrpg for relaxing downtime, something that I didn’t have to think hard about. This fit the bill nicely.
A problem the 9X-S has with SNES games is that it tends to run them too fast (though it gets heavily hit by slowdown if there are too many graphical effects). That worked out pretty well, because FFMQ gets very grindy, with big batches of repetitive battles (especially on the overworld battlefields) and those battles are generally fairly mindless. And they were running at 150% speed or thereabouts in general (and walking/transition speed was faster, too), which made for a pleasant gaming experience.
I had forgotten quite how formulaic FFMQ was, and how much it was a jrpg stripped down to the basic conventions. The world map is limited to places the plot wants you to go. The puzzles are obvious and self-contained to each dungeon. The level curve is obvious (you get a higher-level partner for each area who doesn’t gain XP, and by the boss of that area you should be at the same level as your partner), and the number of battles you’re likely to fight doesn’t vary significantly. The consumables are plentiful and respawn constantly, but also aren’t terrible necessary. Battles are easy except when the RNG decides they aren’t (with a petrification attack or a timely critical hit, for instance), but you can immediately restart any battle you lose. The equipment curve is straightforward; everything is pure improvement and the only real option is which of the four weapon types to use for any given attack. There are real strategies (using status effects with the claw weapons, when and how to use your magic), but you can also ignore them and get through the game just fine.
Unfortunately, a combination of factors forced me to stop playing right before the end of the fire area. There’s an unskippable battle in the Lava Dome (one of many, really) that causes the emulator to go to a black screen when I complete it. Because the 9X-S doesn’t save SRAM and relies on save states in a custom format, I can’t move the save data to a different device. I tried swapping in different versions of the ROM, but they either still have the problem or they aren’t compatible with my save states. So I’m stuck. Which is annoying, but I don’t desperately feel the need to finish the game (I’ve played it lots of times; I know what happens) and I’m not interested in restarting and replaying half of it. I’ll do another full replay on a different device eventually, I’m sure.
Overall: This is in the category of games that I love for nostalgia value, but I don’t think I’d recommend to anyone who doesn’t. There are plenty of other SNES rpgs with stronger plots and more interesting systems; this was an “entry-level” jrpg that got mostly forgotten for a reason. This play-through was the equivalent of a “beach read” of an old book.
I haven’t really used the 9X-S Handheld in the last year and a half because the RG350 is so much better in pretty much all regards, but I went to a campsite this past week and I wanted to make sure I was okay with my stuff getting broken or stolen, so I brought the 9X-S. And despite the lousy SNES emulation, I felt like playing FFMQ anyway. I wanted a relatively simple and straightforward jrpg for relaxing downtime, something that I didn’t have to think hard about. This fit the bill nicely.
A problem the 9X-S has with SNES games is that it tends to run them too fast (though it gets heavily hit by slowdown if there are too many graphical effects). That worked out pretty well, because FFMQ gets very grindy, with big batches of repetitive battles (especially on the overworld battlefields) and those battles are generally fairly mindless. And they were running at 150% speed or thereabouts in general (and walking/transition speed was faster, too), which made for a pleasant gaming experience.
I had forgotten quite how formulaic FFMQ was, and how much it was a jrpg stripped down to the basic conventions. The world map is limited to places the plot wants you to go. The puzzles are obvious and self-contained to each dungeon. The level curve is obvious (you get a higher-level partner for each area who doesn’t gain XP, and by the boss of that area you should be at the same level as your partner), and the number of battles you’re likely to fight doesn’t vary significantly. The consumables are plentiful and respawn constantly, but also aren’t terrible necessary. Battles are easy except when the RNG decides they aren’t (with a petrification attack or a timely critical hit, for instance), but you can immediately restart any battle you lose. The equipment curve is straightforward; everything is pure improvement and the only real option is which of the four weapon types to use for any given attack. There are real strategies (using status effects with the claw weapons, when and how to use your magic), but you can also ignore them and get through the game just fine.
Unfortunately, a combination of factors forced me to stop playing right before the end of the fire area. There’s an unskippable battle in the Lava Dome (one of many, really) that causes the emulator to go to a black screen when I complete it. Because the 9X-S doesn’t save SRAM and relies on save states in a custom format, I can’t move the save data to a different device. I tried swapping in different versions of the ROM, but they either still have the problem or they aren’t compatible with my save states. So I’m stuck. Which is annoying, but I don’t desperately feel the need to finish the game (I’ve played it lots of times; I know what happens) and I’m not interested in restarting and replaying half of it. I’ll do another full replay on a different device eventually, I’m sure.
Overall: This is in the category of games that I love for nostalgia value, but I don’t think I’d recommend to anyone who doesn’t. There are plenty of other SNES rpgs with stronger plots and more interesting systems; this was an “entry-level” jrpg that got mostly forgotten for a reason. This play-through was the equivalent of a “beach read” of an old book.
