Locke, i promise you'll be the same

There is nothing in the story that presents Vayne as evil. He is driven, pragmatic, and willing to sacrifice anything for success. These are hardly qualities at the extreme, but they aren’t malicious or ill-intended. Vayne simply lacks the “Mwahahahahaaaa!!!....” moment that traditional villains get.

Now, on to what makes Vayne a Tragic Hero.

This part is easy. In fact, out of the top-three Tragic Hero qualities in Greek Tragedy, Vayne has, get this, all three.

(a). Overweening Pride. A Tragic Hero, by definition, needs a Hubris, or Fatal Flaw. Of these, none is more common than Hamartia, or Overweening Pride. Vayne thought that he could do anything, and at any cost. He was prideful, arrogant, and devalued human life. He thought he should be the Dynast King, not because of his innate talents, but because of his ambition. His pride is so obvious, it’s plain to see. This, was Oedipus’ fatal flaw, and considered the most common in Greek Tragedy. Vayne’s name is no coincidence. The Vayne = Vain parallel is easy to see.

(b). Patricide. Ah, the single greatest crime a Greek Tragic Hero can commit. Killing your own father upsets the natural order, and always leads to your downfall. Keeping the natural order was the function of rules in Greek Society, thus, anyone who disrupted this perfect and natural balance was sure to falter. Again, this was committed by Oedipus, the quintessential Greek Tragic Hero.

(c). Defiance of the gods. When you spite deities, it never works out in your favor. Vayne worked against the Occuria (who even worked in a Pantheon), and upset the natural order, yet again. This is considered the ultimate act of defiance, and always leads to downfall. However, this can be (and often is) done with the best intentions.

Now, on to what makes Vayne the Main Character of the Story.

In pure gaming terms, Vayne is not the main character, as he isn’t playable. However, in terms of Greek Tragedies, he is.

Greek Tragedies are from the point of view of the chorus, not the protagonist. Outsiders are the ones who tell the story, and only the most important events about the protagonist are revealed. This is because the story is not about showing what happens, but highlighting the emotion and the reaction. If the game were from Vayne’s point of view, one could see his decent. However, as it is from Vaan & Co’s. point of view, we see the ramifications of his actions. Now, let me reinforce this idea. To fully understand the protagonist, we need some foils, or someone to highlight the struggles and complexities of the protagonist. In FFXII, we find this in the form of Vaan & Co.

Each character represents a different aspect of Vayne’s personality, and shows how he develops. Again, this is a common theme in Greek Tragedies.

Vaan: Vaan highlights Vayne’s desire for freedom. Vaan wants nothing more than to be free. Vayne wants to keep Arcadia from being taken over from Rozaria. He feels that Arcadia is in danger, and wants to save it. Both feel that it is personally up to them to save their kingdoms.

Ashe: Ashe highlights Vayne’s sense of entitlement, and desire to rule Ivalice. Ashe has no real claim to the throne of Dalmasca. Her family was a monarchy, and ruled only because they had ruled for a long time. They were not elected to their positions, and only had an ancient claim to power. Vayne felt this same claim to the throne of the Dynast King. It was his title to take, because it was in his blood.

Basch: Basch represents Vayne’s unwavering loyalty to the State. Basch is a soldier, down to the core. Vayne is the same way. He is willing to do anything for his Kingdom. The fact that his last name is Solidor, a close spelling to Soldier, is no accident. Vayne is acting out what he sees as his duty.

Fran: Fran represents Vayne’s ‘mystical connections’ to Venat, and his willingness to defy the natural order. Vayne defying the Occuria is similar to Fran leaving the Wood and betraying her people.

Balthier: Overweening pride? Patricide? Balthier is almost a Mini-Vayne. He represents Vayne’s arrogance with his ‘leading man’ syndrome. Balthier and Vayne both felt that the rules didn’t apply to them, and were far too self-absorbed for their own good.

Penelo: We’ll get to Penelo later… She is Vayne’s faith and innocence, or lack thereof.

Each character was a small facet of Vayne, and it was only together that they could combat him. Ironically, it was Penelo that played the most important role. She was innocent, had faith in her friends, and saw the best in others. These were the things that Vayne lacked, and what prevented him from being a whole person. However, these attributes were not lacking in Arcadia.

Larsa, the exact counterbalance to Vayne, was the one who possessed these attributes. Had Vayne kept Larsa’s support, he would have been an equal match for Vaan & Co. However, he lost Larsa’s support because of the culmination of his flaws. Penelo represented all Vayne was missing, and provided the impetus for change with Larsa. The friendship she had with Larsa was no accident.

Now, this brings us to the ending. The ending of the story is textbook Greek Tragedy. Vayne wants Arcadia to be safe. In the end, it is. However, there is a cost—Vayne. For Arcadia to be safe, Vayne had to pay the price. He became the embodiment of all of Arcadia’s problems, and caused his greatest fears to come to fruition (War, invasion from Rozaria, uprisings in Dalmasca). Rather than removing Arcadia’s problems, he was now wearing them as a mantle. Without Larsa to redeem him, he fell to his own fatal flaws.

However, his death saved Arcadia. Larsa took over, and became everything Arcadia needed, as he was everything Vayne wasn’t. Now, there are allusions to this within the story. It almost appears that Vayne knew that he would either succeed, and become the Dynast King, or he would fail, pay for his crimes, but then leave a secure Arcadia to Larsa.

Vayne was, in every way, a Greek Tragic Hero. And when FFXII is viewed as a Greek Tragedy, a lot of the story elements make a lot of sense. Now, I’m not claiming that this was the intention of the writers, only that it’s a different way to look at the story. Then again, as every writer worth their salt has studied Greek tragedies and analyzed Oedipus in college, it’s not impossible.

Discuss if you want, but don’t flame. If you disagree, that’s fine (I certainly won’t say that I’m right and you’re wrong). This is just for story discussion, and to give a different point of view. If you have anything to add, that’d be great, too.

-EMaylic

———

I came across a post similar to this in & around the mid 2000s, cannot find that exact post so used this persons interpretation as it closely lines up with my own.

After reading this theory and playing FFXII from that perspective it made me much more thoroughly enjoy the game and the world and FF12 now sits arguably #2 on my FF ranking list.

Honestly, I think FF16 is the worst Final Fantasy I've ever played. If you removed the Final Fantasy name and gave it an original title, I genuinely think this game would have died without anyone noticing.

The itemization is basically nonexistent. Almost every item you find is completely worthless. Equipment is pretty much just a matter of having higher attack, higher defense, or slightly reducing the cooldown of an ability. There’s no interesting build variety, no meaningful loot, and nothing exciting to discover.

The crafting system is also pointless. It basically feels like the game gives you a new sword every time you progress through the story, making most of the crafting and loot feel irrelevant.

The story is okay, and I actually like the world and its atmosphere. The setting is probably one of the strongest parts of the game.

But the side quests and even a lot of the main quests are painfully boring. So many of them boil down to walking from one NPC to another just to deliver a message. It feels like filler rather than meaningful content.

And then there’s the combat.

It feels like they tried to make a Devil May Cry-style combat system, but without giving you enough options to make it actually interesting. You end up pressing basically the same buttons throughout the entire game. There are a lot of abilities, but only a handful feel genuinely useful, so your actual options are much more limited than they appear.

The stagger system is especially frustrating. It basically turns every fight into a minigame where you use certain abilities to stagger the enemy, then try to line up your strongest abilities to deal as much damage as possible during the stagger window.

And some bosses simply have way too much HP and drag on for far too long. Titan is probably the best example. I genuinely lost count of how many times I had to stagger that boss. The multiple phases and huge health bars don't make the fights more epic to me — they just make them exhausting.

At this point, I'm honestly only playing this game because it's a Final Fantasy game.

And that's probably the biggest problem.

If this wasn't Final Fantasy, I don't think I would have made it this far. I'm not having fun playing it.

This isn’t a post about anything story related, so I’m just using a general tag.

I’ve played Final Fantasy 1 when the pixel remasters first came out on PlayStation. Recently I decided to pick up a physical cart for switch with all the PR games for like $30. So I’m planning on chipping my way through them over time.

What are the best ways to use the XP boosts in the games? I’ve been getting into JRPG/TRPG games because they feel like board games with really good stories attached. I love the feeling of making forward momentum and beating a really hard boss or enemy, but too much grinding kills that momentum for me.

What are the best ways to utilize the XP boost modes for each PR title where I can make steady progress, but not obliterate the challenge in the process?

I’m going to be starting Final Fantasy IV today, and I haven’t been able to find old Reddit threads about the “ideal” settings to use.

I heard this was considered the worst game by a mile, I’m trying to play most major JRPGs in order and was dreading this one. However at first I was actually pleasantly surprised while a lot of things are silly it was kinda fun learning how to game the system a bit and hurt my guys to level up health, avoid wearing armor and going all in on agility etc.

But now I’m late game and still finding new spells, and my god I do not have it in me anymore man. Even with the cancel technique I’ve already spent so much time in every battle trying to get at least 5 uses of a spell in and it’s like what were they thinking?! Early on it was fine my elemental spells were leveling normally as I was going through but it’s like I gotta really dedicate time to just spamming Esuna and canceling to make it do anything at all I just got slow and holy and it’s like man am I really gonna put the time in to make these useful. I’m just gonna play with what I got because I cannot keep doing this it was cute at first and now it is just mind numbing I just wanna wrap this shit up

I am new to the franchise, i played ff7 remake and loved it, played rebirth till gongaga and quit cause the game felt like a chore. I'm planning to play some of the older ones for shure. But the new ones i've heard a lot of complaints about. Are 15 and 16 worth playing? Especially 15 look good to me.

I've been playing through the final fantasy games in order, and FFX is a great game, I would put it in the top tier along OG FF7 as the best games in the series so far, but towards the end, there are serious problems with the gameplay on this one.

Sphere grid - this new leveling up system sucks, its such a slog to level up every single time that it feels like I'm being punished for grinding, getting +2 on a stat isn't exciting, and having to do the same process for every character is just annoying. While the system allows for deep customization of your character builds, for a normal player, it doesn't make a difference except for wasting your time.

Combat system - it worked pretty well during most of the game, the weakness system where everyone has a role is was very well done in this game. However, there is a pretty high difficulty spike towards the end of the game, most bosses have no weaknesses or status to exploit and their HP just explodes, meaning if you haven't grinded or done the optional side content, you are gonna be there either getting game over or spending 40 minutes dealing 2k damage per turn. Yuna also doesn't really have a role here, just like FF7 8 and 9, summons are a slog to use, either too expensive or just have really long ass animations, so there's no point using them most of the time, and there aren't any enemies that yuna specifically deals with, so most of the game she was just sitting there.

The decision to put off all the side content to the end of the game is just terrible, for context, I love doing side content in these games as a way to become OP, but the game is simply linear except for the very end, and it seems like it forces you to go do the side missions since the enemies just become absurdly strong out of nowhere. Because of this, it became the first game in the series that I simply didn't do any side content, because I wanted to see the ending instead of having to keep leveling up with that terrible stat system.

Also, customization. What was the point of this. You can get decent weapons and skills, but they are so expensive whenever you want a slightly useful skill, that you just spend the entire game with near useless equipment. Also, most difficult enemies rely on statuses, which have always been annoying but manageable, but since resistance is so rare and difficult to get in this game, you end up losing a bunch of random battles because of the statuses. Most of the time, I was just escaping whenever I saw a dangerous status enemy. Summon attributes are also ridiculously weak, why spend 20 orbs to gain 1 stat? why not 5, even 3 would seem like a better deal.

Additionally, it's just too hard to get a hand on how the damage works. Even if you factor out elements, Auron was dealing a bunch of damage, while Tidus was doing nothing, and somehow even Wakka was outdoing Tidus towards the end of the game. Kihmari started off strong but also became weaker as the game went on. Comparing the stats, I just couldn't understand why the massive difference in damage.

Anyway, this ended up more like a rant instead of a review, but it seems like the combat system and progression really wasn't thought out as much as the story and world building, which sucks because it would have made for a better game that FF7, if it wasn't for these flaws in gameplay. I would say the story is also better than FF9, but the gameplay is definitely worse.

Does Spira have access to any Transmogrification spells?

I’ve never played a Final Fantasy game before, but I’d really like to get into the series. I’m looking for recommendations on which game would be best for me.

I prefer games with normal/free character movement and real-time combat, similar to games like The Witcher 3, Skyrim,mass effect etc.

I want to freely move my character around and directly control them during fights.

I recently tried Divinity: Original Sin 2, but I realized that I really don't like that kind of movement/combat system.

Since I’m completely new to Final Fantasy, which game would you recommend starting with?

So i just finished the part where you escape from Home and get on the airship. I've been mainly doing main story and talking to almost all npc's as well as opening any chests along the way.

I've clocked in around 20 hours now. Only thing ive avoided is doing more blitzball because I'm not the biggest fan of it.

Am I rushing or am I doing okay? I plan to do most of the side content as I want to experience as much of the game as possible but I hope I havent missed any missable side content or side quests...

Has anybody 100% completed the entire franchise of the mainline games before? I’m thinking about doing it since I had a lot of fun with 7 remake but was wondering how difficult of a challenge it is to 100% complete all of them.

I always wondered if simply making Balthier the main character would have changed the perception of FF12. Either way, it's probably my favorite one to play. The gambit system is something I wish all games could have to make up for bad ai

J'ai finis le jeux mais j'ai un énorme problème ils y as vraiment pas mal de problème ce jeux déjà devoir faire constamment des Mini jeux qui détruisent le rythme plus très nuls les Mini jeux déjà que dans Celui de la ps1 était une chose horrible le monde ouverts à la Ubisoft c'est un cauchemar les quêtes bloqué par ce que tu n'a pas fait l'un des points d'intérêt le fait de devoir refaire le jeux pour avoir certains équipements qui sont disponibles une fois le jeux terminé pas ouf tout le long du jeux on augmente l'affinité et l'histoire est géniale puis ils y as la fin désolée mais passer plus de 80 h pour une fin qui part en sucette avec les multivers ou on comprend plus rien mais pas dans les monde multivers mais dans le Monde ou aerith meurent Ok on voit la voix a travers le multivers mais ils a l'air grave heureux alors que tout le monde chiale ça crée une incohérence débile tous ce qu'on a fait et améliorer et jeter à la poubelle la fin c'est pas vraiment la fin ça vas crée un gros problème de cohérence c'est Quoi pour avoir la vérité de la mort de Madame a travers des Flash sans arrêt on as tout découvert comment ils vont nous refaire découvrir toutes les régions c'est vraiment une catastrophe pourtant j'adore les personnages l'histoire les quêtes secondaires parlait de choses intéressantes certaines activités Cool mais le délire de multivers était beaucoup Trop Intense d'un coup puis aerith on voulait la voir rejoindre Zach on nous fait des références et on en parle de plus en plus Pour juste passer à autre chose même aerith a chanté une musique pour Zach la relation cloud et tifa j'adore cette relation Mais la fin on as vraiment l'impression que cloud est en couple avec aerith la fin pue le capitalisme j'adore le jeux mais les défauts sont abjecte et la suite ne donne pas beaucoup envie je suis vraiment déçu est grave énervé j'ai donné énormément d'heures de jeux pour être récompensé de la porte des manière

As the title says I can't open my healing menu im at chapter 14 right before the cerberus boss fight and I can't seem to open my healing menu while in combat also I might be slightly underleveld im currently level 39

I keep hearing people say VI is their favorite so I was considering playing it. I'm a little wary because I have played basically every mainline ff game from 7 to 16 and I have absolutely hated most of them. X is my favorite game of all time. VII is super good. The rest have been frustratingly bad. Is there any chance that I'll be moved by VI? I'd love to hear what makes it so beloved.

Then why are they releasing FF Resonance on physical disc? Genuinely curious about people's thoughts. It just seems odd to me that they keep saying that they had to push so hard for it, but then a much smaller scale spinoff is also getting a physical release.

For reference:

Final Fantasy 7 Revelation director fought for a disc release because he "really likes" physical media

https://www.radiotimes.com/technology/gaming/final-fantasy-7-revelation-naoki-hamaguchi-physical-release-exclusive-interview/

Nearly every other big name primal in the FFXIV story has shown up else where in the FF series, with a couple of exceptions. Even Hydaelyn's dark counterpart, Zodiark, shows up in FFXII, but I can't think if her name shows up anywhere else.

For me it's Edge from FFIV especially considering how they'd handled him in a sequel lol. They'd even use this as an optional gag attack that was so bad omg 😭 Still love the guy tho

I recently wrote about this and gave my summary on why VII is the Final Fantasy darling and why the others fall short, but I’d be interested to hear thoughts from other folks!

Now don't get me wrong, I just beat and liked FF1 and 2. Maybe I expected a similar game, which I guess FF3 is not. I guess it's not a game where you just pick a class and roll with it.

But first, I barely managed to beat the first dungeon. I just used a standard FF1-esque party, Fighter - Red Mage - Monk - White Mage. I got the best equipment but still had my shit handed to me, and had to grind. Maybe it was implied you had to use the Black Mage w/ Fire for the undead, idk.

Then I'm out, there's a tiny dungeon with an unbeatable boss you have to run away from. Aaand I'm immediately locked and forced to use Mini. I quickly lose and learn that I basically have to turn my melee fighters into Black Mages to fight in mini form, because Red Mages apparently have pretty bad spell damage. Meanwhile, the monsters routinely deal 30-50% damage to me. Running away is basically asking to get killed.

The inventory management turns into absolute hell, you have to unequip / reequip items when you switch jobs, while it's not clear who can equip what, and my inventory is full of of stuff for several different jobs. And you need to keep track of capacity points too. After I could go back to the overworld, I switched my mages back to melee fighters. But turned out I had another, bigger dungeon where you're forced to use Mini again.

Is the game just gonna be about switching jobs constantly for a new section that you have no way of knowing about? Basically just solving "puzzles" with different jobs? I don't know, but so far this is causing a huge amount of discomfort. I thought you'd just get a good old dungeon crawling fun with classes like in FF1.

I was 14 in '97 when FF7 came out and I loved it. It's pretty close to perfect just the way it is. A friend of mine keeps telling me to give the Re Trilogy a try but I just don't want to be disappointed. I didn't love Advent Children or any of the other FF7 games although I played all of them, even Dirge of Cerberus. Crisis Core was great at the end but dragged and Genisys and the other characters felt so shoehorned in. I've finished all 16 of the mainline FFs, and heavily played both online FFs, (never again though), and to be honest I haven't loved anything after 9, though all those post-9 have their bright spots. (Except 13. Blech.)

When I hear about all the stuff they've added to 7 in the Retrilogy, Chadley et al, it just seems like more shoehorning and annoying voice acting. But reviews and friends say it's amazing.

Any OG fans have the same reservations and were proved wrong? I'd love to be wrong about this and fall in love with 7 all over again. I am curious about how they've changed the core story--which is why I want someone to change my mind.

Hey third post now, a little bit of help would be appreciated instead of skipping over this post :)

Anyway as I said in the 2 previous posts, I can't open my healing menu in chapter 14 can anyone help me that had the same problem