Final Fantasy Tactics: It's Still Good

Kirk, Maddy, and Jason are all playing the new remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics, which is widely considered to be one of the greatest games ever made. The gang talks about how the 1998 classic holds up today, the complexity of its systems, and all of the new features that Square Enix added for this version, like voice acting. Plus: Hades 2!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:03Jason Schreier?

  Here at Square Enix, we've come up with a new game. It's Final Fantasy, but it's also a tactics game. I think we'll call it Tactopath Traveler. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. This week, we are talking about the new remaster of Final Fantasy Tactics, one of my favorite games of all time. And somehow, I've convinced Kirk and Maddie to play it, too.

• 0:30Jason Schreier?

  I'm Jason Schreier. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  And I'm Maddy Myers.

• 0:35Jason Schreier?

  Hello. Hello. Nice to see you both. Shana to va, Kirk and Maddie, and shana to va to everybody. Happy New Year.

• 0:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 0:43Jason Schreier?

  Happy New Year.

• 0:44Speaker 01

  Happy Rosh Hashanah.

• 0:46Jason Schreier?

  Happy Rosh Hashanah. It's funny, my daughter asked me today, because we went to synagogue, we're celebrating the holidays. My daughter asked me, why is the New Year like the most important Jewish holiday? And I was like, that's a good question to ask someone at the synagogue.

• 1:04Speaker 01

  Amazing answer. Perfect answer.

• 1:07Jason Schreier?

  Perfect bit of dad jujitsu. I mean, the other, oh, jujitsu, good one. Redirecting, redirecting the question. Well, J E W.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  J W jujitsu.

• 1:18Jason Schreier?

  Totally unintentional pun.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  It was good, though.

• 1:21Jason Schreier?

  The other, well, the classic Jewish way to respond is to say, why do you think it's the most important holiday? Like, you always answer a question with a question. And if you want to hear us answer questions with answers, you should become a member of Maximum Fun, because we are a listener-supported podcast. You, too, can help us be supported. You can be one of those listeners in the listener hyphen supported. You can be a part of that hyphenated adjective by joining the Maximum Fun Network. And signing up today, go to maximumfun.org/join. In addition to making this show possible, you also get a whole bunch of bonus episodes, including our most recent one, which was an extremely fun conversation about the legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time. Really enjoyed that one.

• 2:04Speaker 01

  Good game.

• 2:05Jason Schreier?

  And we will soon be putting out a new bonus episode, as we do every single month, about the video Game Hollow Knight Silk Song.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  Also a good game.

• 2:12Jason Schreier?

  Game that we're all obsessed, obsessing over and we've all, we're gonna play until pretty close to completion and just talk about the whole thing, like in-depth spoiler, without any like spoiler warnings or anything, we're gonna spoil the whole thing. So that'll be fun and lots more, dozens of other bonus episodes are in the backlog for you if you've never become a member. So go and do that. But today we're talking about another game. Today, we are talking about a classic JRPG from the 1990s, which means that I have won our yearly prediction set.

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Honestly, if you had chosen this for a bet, I mean, I guess it's too late. We already played it, but great game, great.

• 2:54Jason Schreier?

  It would have been on my list. No, I get a freebie because Square Enix has released a remaster of the classic game Final Fantasy Tactics, released in Japan in 1997 and in the US, North America in 1998. And then there was a PSP version released in 2007, an iOS version, and now there is yet another modern version. This is a faithful, nearly one-to-one recreation of the original game with a few changes, some spruced up graphics, some UI improvements, a few quote-unquote "quality of life" fixes that we will get into shortly.

• 3:33Jason Schreier?

  And of course, Final Fantasy Tactics is a strategy role-playing game set in a medieval world called Yvelisse, and it takes place amongst a war that is heavily inspired, inspired by the real-life War of the Roses. This one is called The War of the Lions, and it is a beloved video game that is now remastered for modern platforms. We've all been playing it. We're gonna talk about it. I actually finished the entire game.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 4:04Jason Schreier?

  Somehow. We'll get into that. But first, Matty, so Matty, you are playing for the first time. Kirk and I have played this before. Kirk and I have played this before. Yeah, we'll get into that. Kirk and I have played this before. Matty, this is your first time ever playing Final Fantasy Tactics. What do you think?

• 4:24Speaker 01

  Loved it.

• 4:25Jason Schreier?

  And how much have you actually played?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  I, well, I have not played the entire thing. I am still playing a lot of Silk Song these days, I will admit, but that's not what we're talking about today. We're talking about Final Fantasy Tactics. I am into chapter two. I've played a few maps in chapter two. That's, that's as far as I am story-wise and really like the story. Actually didn't realize it was inspired by War of the Roses, but that makes a lot of sense. Isn't that also what Game of Thrones is kind of inspired by? Yeah.

• 4:52Jason Schreier?

  Yes.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  I like, so many people probably have said before, I was playing this game and being like, getting some Game of Thrones vibes from this, which I guess is like a Boss Baby-esque comparison in the sense that I'm like, how many other medieval fantasy books have I read? Not that many. It's not usually my genre, but nonetheless, getting some Game of Thrones vibes from this one, parentheses complimentary. Really, really like the story.

• 5:19Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, for, for context here, for context here, A Game of Thrones, the first book in the series came out August of 1996, so about a year before Tactics.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  Oh, so Tactics is a total ripoff of the first Game of Thrones novel. Just shamelessly recrea- no, not really. It's, it's a little simpler so far anyway, although I can certainly see some twists and turns already being built up, even as far as I am now. Really like the characters. Wasn't expecting the story to be so in-depth, but also, this is a strategy game. I love strategy games. And I know we talk about a lot of turn-based games on this show and usually I don't like them. That's because I just sometimes don't personally find them interesting, but, but a turn-based strategy game tends to be the exception for me. I tend to really enjoy a turn-based strategy game of this exact type, where you're

• 6:13Speaker 01

  moving tiles around and it's like a puzzle that you're putting together, where you start a battle in a very specific formation, you get to decide your party, that really matters, and how you've outfitted that party matters. There were certainly battles that I restarted from the beginning and chose a different party because I realized that I was ill-equipped, and that is also really fun and stimulating to me. I enjoyed every minute of that. I will say that Jason's suggestions and tips about how to play this game were indispensable to me in getting as far as I did the game, even the remake version that I'm playing. Really doesn't hold your hand when it comes to telling you what to do. And I'm sure we're going to get into that and perhaps relay some of those tips for anybody

• 6:58Speaker 01

  else who's like me and hasn't played this before. Because there are definitely some difficulty spikes that I really enjoyed, but only because I felt like I do what I was doing, thanks to Jason Trier.

• 7:09Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, this is your, not your first time playing, but I'm curious to hear what you think of it revisiting in 2025.

• 7:19Kirk Hamilton?

  I like it a lot. Yeah, I played this game for the first time back when you and I were working together at Kotaku and we published some fun articles. There's a few that we'll link in the show notes. There's one where Jason talks me through the daughter slums. And I basically copied an entire unredacted text message conversation between us and the article. And it's very funny.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  It's good.

• 7:43Kirk Hamilton?

  We would publish anything, man, in 2013.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  It's a good conversation, though. It's good and funny.

• 7:48Kirk Hamilton?

  Yes, it is a good conversation. It's very funny and it feels really like you're actually reading a conversation between two friends where one really knows this game well and the other one doesn't. And because the game is so complex, you know, you kind of explain it in a way that just feels very relatable and believable. Half remembering things, trying to communicate like various particular, you know, job titles. And also, in fact, referring to things by names that are not even in the game, which was something that struck me about this, this remaster, is that some of the names are different. And I don't have like a super strong memory of everything, but there are just characters where I'm pretty sure they have different names, or at least like things just sort of change over time.

• 8:28Jason Schreier?

  Did you play the PlayStation one version or the PSP version?

• 8:32Kirk Hamilton?

  I could not tell you which version I played.

• 8:35Jason Schreier?

  So what happened was the PlayStation one version has kind of an infamously bad English translation and a lot of the names were totally skewered and like totally wrong. And then a lot of those were changed for the PSP version in 2007, which, and then those newer names became the official ones and are used in this new version as well.

• 8:57Kirk Hamilton?

  I'm remembering also you talking about, I think, a priest, where we were talking about a white mage and a priest.

• 9:02Jason Schreier?

  Right.

• 9:03Kirk Hamilton?

  Where there are just these terms that are different.

• 9:04Jason Schreier?

  Yes, it's priest in the PS1 version and it's white mage now.

• 9:08Speaker 01

  But in this it's white mage, yeah.

• 9:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. So there's just kind of a sense of, kind of a lack of a definitive version of this game, even though it sounds like there kind of is one, and now maybe this is the definitive version. I was really struck by the writing, actually, playing this. I think it's really well-written and the sort of old English that they use in the script is really enjoyable. But I've really been liking it. It's a very complicated game. I think there's a lot to talk about. It's really interesting and clearly was very influential, and I have enjoyed my time with it.

• 9:37Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, it's interesting. So this new version, you would think it would be the definitive version, but it's a little hard to say that because actually, what it does is it takes the script from the PSP version in 2007, but it does not take any of the new content that they added for that version, which included one or two new classes, and included a bunch of new side quests, and included some, a couple of new characters you could get. Balthier from Final Fantasy XII you could get in that PSP version. In this one, there's still some side characters, so I won't spoil, because I think it'll be a delightful surprise for you, Matty, if you play that far.

• 10:17Jason Schreier?

  But that new stuff that was added for the PSP version is not in here, for some reason. The producers and the developers, they said like they just didn't want to do it. I don't know, they gave some excuse, but it wasn't really something that held up. So it's hard to say if this is the quote-unquote "definitive" version, but it's certainly the version you can play now. There are a lot of big changes. We'll get to that in a minute, but actually, let's talk about the fundamentals first. So this is a game about building an army, a small army, but an army nonetheless, and kind of creating, forging your characters and customizing them in whatever way you want. And there are a lot of really cool possibilities, and there's a lot of really interesting things

• 10:59Jason Schreier?

  you can do, because each character can become one of a dozen or so jobs, classes. Ranging from squires and chemists, the kind of lowest level classes to all the way up through super powerful summoners and ninjas and so on and so forth. And what you can do, which is really cool and unique to this game, or at least was at the time, is you can take abilities from each of those classes and just kind of blend them together. And there are five slots you can use. One is your kind of your main ability. Then the second one is your secondary ability. So like whatever combat abilities you want to use from another class. So let's say you're a white mage, you can take black magic and use that as your secondary ability. And then there are three others, which are your support

• 11:43Jason Schreier?

  abilities, which are all your passive abilities. And so there's a reaction, there's a kind of like boost, and then there's a movement. And those three, you can really, you can mix and match from all of the different character classes and do some really cool things and kind of break the game and find all sorts of fun ways to play around with that. Maddie, coming in for the first time, did you like have an idea of like how all this worked? Did you have to read through the tutorials? What was that like for you? Because it's really interesting. And I think that like, I mean, I've played this game a dozen times in the past, but like, I find that instinctively, I'm thinking about like, okay, how am I going to plan out each character in the long term as I go from battle to battle?

• 12:26Jason Schreier?

  And so instead of just thinking like, okay, I want to make a knight, I'm thinking, okay, I'm going to keep him as a knight for five job levels and then I'll be able to go to monk and so on and so forth. So what was that like for you coming into this for the first time?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I can't do that long term thinking because in my mind, I don't yet know what all those additional classes are going to be. But I will say that the indispensable advice you gave for what's the name of that early battle, like the Dalton slums or whatever?

• 12:53Jason Schreier?

  The daughter slums.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  That one is where I also paused the game and was like, this must be the moment where I need to consider what I am doing.

• 13:02Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that's your first.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  It's like your first big skill check.

• 13:04Jason Schreier?

  Difficulty spike. Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:06Jason Schreier?

  And this is a very spiky game, often to, or not often, but occasionally to an unfair extent, which I'll talk about a little bit later. But yeah, go on.

• 13:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's the moment at which all my characters. Or squires and chemists still, or those are the terms that are used in this version of the game. Which is to say, the chemist is like capable of throwing healing potions at people and the squire can like bonk people on the head. And those are two pretty simple jobs. And up to this point in the game, you're getting through just fine with those guys. But in this battle, you're really gonna need a white mage, for example, or maybe an archer, or an actual knight. A squire can become a knight. So I had really never even clicked on, there's like a jobs tab in the character select screen. I'd just not even really been looking at that stuff at all up to that point. And you can really get away with not doing that for a time if you just kind of play cleverly and

• 13:58Speaker 01

  just pay attention. But at this point, I was like, alright, it's time to look at the job screen. Once you actually do that, which the game does not tell you to do, I think it's fairly intuitive, actually. Like, I leveled up, quote unquote, each of the characters' jobs and then saw what Jason is describing, which is that you can actually select different abilities. And like, once you select a job, there's like this big learn abilities button that's tantalizing and easy to press and looks fun and sparkly. And that's fun and, and became something that in between every battle, I was like, oh, I bet I have enough points to learn some more abilities. And it also shows you how much each of the abilities cost in terms of these kind of experience points you're accruing. And so I would see one and be like, ooh, that one's actually 400 points. I'm gonna not

• 14:44Speaker 01

  spend my 200 yet. I'm gonna save it up and get that special ability later on. But oh, this other character has a pretty good ability that's only 200 points. I'm gonna go ahead and grab that one and add it. All of that I actually found really easy and fun. And in between battles, that was simple enough for me to do. There's shops where you can buy equipment. I, there's money that you're earning all the time in this game. I, I found all of that pretty intuitive, for what it's worth. I may regret saying this at some future point. I would like to continue playing this game and see what happens. And I'll definitely let you know if it gets to another difficulty spike. And I'll return to you, Jason, and be like, what am I doing wrong? Yeah. All I really needed to know and what the game doesn't tell you is that you really need to be leveling up those jobs. And it's kind of surprising to me that the game just

• 15:28Speaker 01

  doesn't say that to you. You would have no way of knowing that you're supposed to even open that tab.

• 15:33Jason Schreier?

  This was an era when a lot of the tutorials were just kind of buried and you can open up the, whatever it's called. There's a whole screen with like a UI that's like the state of the realm and like all of the events that have happened. If you want to go over and it has an encyclopedia, which is actually very helpful for if you forget who characters are.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I enjoyed that too.

• 15:52Jason Schreier?

  It's really well made and that's all, a lot of that stuff is revamped for this version. There was always like some sort of encyclopedia, but back in the PS1 translation was such a disaster that it was like misleading.

• 16:05Speaker 01

  This one's good.

• 16:06Jason Schreier?

  This one is really good. It's inspired by like Final Fantasy XVI's like state of the realm stuff. But anyway, that section has tutorials also and it walks you through like painstakingly, like in granular detail, exactly how everything works. There's some things you'll never need to think about, like there's a brave and a faith stat that like you really don't need to worry about. There's some stuff you only really need to min max. Are you playing on the, which difficulty setting are you playing on? That's a new thing for this game.

• 16:31Speaker 01

  The normal one.

• 16:32Jason Schreier?

  The three difficulty setting.

• 16:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, but there's, there's an easy and a hard. They call, they have cute names though.

• 16:37Jason Schreier?

  Make it easier if you need to.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's nice.

• 16:40Jason Schreier?

  Kirk, what's your experience been like with your, with kind of the gameplay of this game in 2025, having not played it in 12 years or 13 years or whatever it was?

• 16:48Kirk Hamilton?

  I think it's, it's cool. It definitely feels older and much more complicated than a lot of the turn-based games that sort of came out of it. I know XCOM actually came out right around the same time, the first XCOM. So that's kind of a parallel evolution, I guess.

• 17:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:06Kirk Hamilton?

  But, but playing a modern XCOM and then of course playing something like Midnight Suns or Tactical Breach Wizards, all of these tactical games, these sort of turn-based positional games that I really like, a lot of them owe something to Final Fantasy Tactics as well. And what's so interesting about Tactics is that a lot of the game is spent building your characters. I mean, this, this stuff that we're talking about here, this job system where you're In these menus that I agree are intuitive enough, but the process is still pretty fiddly. And you have to be down for a lot of micromanagement. That's a lot of the game and a lot of your success is going to hinge on whether you've done a good job of building out your jobs, you know, giving everybody the right jobs.

• 17:49Kirk Hamilton?

  And, and I agree, I am kind of surprised. I don't really know how they would do it. And I guess this is a faithful remake, so whatever. But it does feel as though there's an opportunity for this game to walk you through your initial job distribution before that daughter slums difficulty spike. Because even before that, I just had kind of forgotten all of this. And then I went back and read that article and kind of remembered and even texted with you some Jason and remembered things like JP boost, which is a boost to your job points gained that everybody can get if they reach a certain number of points in Squire, which you get, I think, only by being a Squire. I believe that's how it works. But that's all not totally clearly explained yet. Jason even is, actually, what does that mean? You're giving me a kind of a sort of.

• 18:37Jason Schreier?

  The, the main way to get JP is to, is by doing actions as that class. But there's also this kind of the spill over JP where like if another person is a Squire and they do Squire moves, then other characters will get a little bit of spill over JP too.

• 18:54Kirk Hamilton?

  Okay. I was wondering how I was getting.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Right. Just like learning stuff in real life where you get all the spill over JP.

• 19:02Jason Schreier?

  By the way, the kind of the granddaddy of all this, I believe, is the original Fire Emblem.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 19:09Jason Schreier?

  Which is 1990. And I think Shining Forest was another just kind of like, just child from that tree. But yeah, that was 1990. XCOM came out in 1994 and like a lot of these strategy games did different things. But, and then Final Fantasy Tactics is kind of a direct successor to Tactics Ogre, which was also grid based strategy game, whack each other a bunch of times.

• 19:33Kirk Hamilton?

  And Sakamoto and Iwata composed the music for Tactics Ogre. That is actually something that I love about Final Fantasy Tactics. The music is so remarkable. This is Hitoshi Sakamoto and Masaharu Iwata are the two composers for this game, who worked together on a lot of different projects, including, what, Final Fantasy Tactics A2? That was actually the first Tactics game that I played. Final Fantasy XII, beautiful soundtrack for that game, and Tactics Ogre. And I really think the music for this game, I mean, more than anything else, every time I play it, I'm struck by how beautiful it is.

• 20:11Kirk Hamilton?

  There's this motif that plays a bunch of times. It's so unusual.

• 20:25Kirk Hamilton?

  Really cool stuff. So it's an aesthetically distinct game, even now. Like, it doesn't actually feel like a lot of games picked up the aesthetics, other than, of course, the subsequent Tactics games. So, um, so, yeah, you can kind of see that DNA from Tactics Ogre carrying over.

• 20:42Jason Schreier?

  So, yeah, I mean, I think that the appeal for me about this game, or the kind of the gameplay side of things and the appeal of that, has always been twofold. One is just kind of the battle-by-battle level, just playing out the strategy and figuring out how to take out dudes. The harder things get, the more, the trickier it can be, and the more you have to really plan things out. Or at the very least, bum rush, like whoever the boss is, and just take them off.

• 21:09Kirk Hamilton?

  I did that a few times.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  You just kill the person who has objective over their head. You can just end the scene. Once I figured that out, I was like, some of these are fine.

• 21:17Jason Schreier?

  Yep, exactly.

• 21:19Jason Schreier?

  And then, actually, over the years, like, people have, like, created challenges for themselves, because they're like, you know what, Final Fantasy Tactics is too easy. I'm gonna do... The most popular one was always this thing called "Single Class Challenge", and the idea was, you have to make a party that is only archers. You have to make a party that is only dragoons, like, whatever it is, which is another fun way to go about this game. Some of those classes are easier than others, as you might imagine. Very hard to win with a party that's only white magic.

• 21:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Have you ever tried one of those challenges?

• 21:49Jason Schreier?

  I have not, no.

• 21:51Speaker 01

  It's not fun.

• 21:52Jason Schreier?

  I feel like I would, I would get too bored after, after playing. Just doing nothing but aim plus three. Yeah. Aim plus two. I mean, that gets to what I was saying, which is that part of the appeal for me has always been that like, in addition to doing these battles and just kind of planning your strategy and stuff, you also have in the back of your head, this kind of endorphin rush of like, planning things out and chasing those big job skills or like the, the high end jobs that require you to, to mix and match from job levels from a bunch of different ones. Um, and you, you guys will see as you keep playing some of the higher end jobs. So the easier, the kind of the first tier jobs are like, okay, squire goes directly to knight, which goes directly to monk, uh, which goes directly to dragoon, right? Or geomancer, whichever one it was, I forget.

• 22:35Jason Schreier?

  But, um, then as you get a little more complicated, it's like, okay, for this, to unlock this job, you need to have five levels of archer, four levels of monk, two levels of geomancer. And then you have to really mix and match because you'll have to go play around all over the tree. The highest, highest end job, which I don't think is worth it. I believe it's called mime and it requires you to have like level eight squire, level eight chemist, level four, like a whole bunch of them. Um, and so I think that there's a certain appeal to that kind of, that chase that is always got going on in the back of your head as you're playing like, okay, I'm every, every action I do is not only contributing to the smaller goal of beating this one battle, it is also contributing to the longer goal of getting my character to where I want it

• 23:20Jason Schreier?

  to be, or unlocking that, um, that special skill that takes 1300 JP and so on and so forth. And sometimes it's worth it to like, have your characters bonk each other over the head or like waste potions for no reason, just to get that extra JP because every action gives you JP in terms of that, like it, because it helps you for the long-term chase. Um, which is something I've always enjoyed about this game is just kind of that, that balancing of the short-term and the long-term.

• 23:48Kirk Hamilton?

  That was something that was fun about Metaphor Refentazio, right? I mean, that game had a sort of similar feeling where you're thinking, okay, I don't really need to be a dark mage or whatever, but if I get to a certain rank in this this job, I'll finally be able to unlock the super crazy one that I've been working to the whole game.

• 24:05Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I want to replay that game.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it also had a similar structure to Tactics in the sense that you had to plan out a battle, like an individual battle from a short term and long term perspective as well. Because you can see how long moves take to perform and some of them are not instantaneous. And that's also part of the strategy. I mean, this is, you were mentioning Midnight Suns and I was remembering like, oh, right. Part of why I'm enjoying Tactics is because I spent so much time in Midnight Suns just on my card deck. And like, I would just spend hours just being like, these are just the moves that I want my character to be able to do. I'm not even going to battle today. I'm just going to think about what could happen in a battle. And then even when you're in a battle, you're like, okay, each of these moves is going to take a certain amount of time. So I have to like, look at in this, in this game, it's on the left side, like how,

• 24:51Speaker 01

  how the attacks are delineated in the future and the past. And also how the enemy's attacks are delineated and how long it takes them to do things. It's just, it's just a form of planning that is extremely satisfying, especially when you get it right. Because you can just sit back and be like, it's all coming together. Like there, there's just something like that in a game where you, your fine plans all come together. And there is also nothing worse than casting a spell and having it just RNG you and randomly fail. And you're just like, okay, great. I hate everything now. I don't, I don't know why this is like this, but it's part of why it's fun. It's because there's a little bit of RNG.

• 25:30Kirk Hamilton?

  Maddie, you're describing sort of on the left side of the screen, there is a turn order. Which, am I right that this is a new thing, Jason? This was added to this version of the game? It's fantastic. It's a great addition.

• 25:40Jason Schreier?

  In the original game, you could see the turn order. You just had to like navigate a bunch of menu screens. Now it's just always there for you. It's just a very convenient thing. I want to talk a little bit about the new stuff in this game. Cause I think a lot of people who play the original will be wondering what's, what's actually new in this remaster? Is it worth 50 bucks? I can't answer if it's worth 50 bucks. I think it's one of the greatest games of all time. So to me, of course, it's worth 50 bucks. We all got it for free. By the way, we were playing on an early code from Square Enix. The game isn't out yet. We'll be out next week from when we're recording this. So some of the new features are, well, actually, I'll explain you how I've beaten the game already, which shocked you too. So the original version of this game took maybe, I don't know, 40 hours to beat. I beat it in like 20 hours. And there are two reasons for that. Number one is there's a fast forward button,

• 26:24Jason Schreier?

  which you can just kind of hold down the right bumper and it'll fast forward through everything. Animations, battles.

• 26:31Kirk Hamilton?

  And your whole party is dead and you're like, wait a minute.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  Sometimes I was accidentally fast forwarding.

• 26:37Kirk Hamilton?

  Kind of needs to be a rewind button.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, that actually would have helped me. But yeah, if you know the game like Jason, you know when to stop pressing the right button.

• 26:47Jason Schreier?

  That's true. Yes, maybe, maybe don't press it so much if you're new to the game.

• 26:54Jason Schreier?

  The other important new feature, this is the biggest one, is that random encounters are no longer forced. They are now optional. So in the original game and also the PSP version, when you landed, you could land on like a battlefield after you'd already, like if you're walking around the map after you've already done those battles and you're like going across the map to another city or like to another location or whatever, you could sometimes get in these random encounters with random battles, random groups of enemies as you went in hostile territory. Now it gives you the option of whether to fight or flee and flee is 100% chance. So you can just avoid those the entire time, which is very important in terms of like reducing the length of the game and also in terms of

• 27:35Jason Schreier?

  being able to do the game's kind of missions that are called errands or jobs or whatever they're called. The side mission things that you can get. I believe they're called errands.

• 27:45Jason Schreier?

  And you can send your characters out and get them a bunch of JP and get a bunch of gold and those are super helpful. In the original version, you had to either find like an area that was safe because it was just two cities and you could just walk back and forth between the two cities. Or you had to risk getting into encounters if you're going to do these errands. Because the way the errands work is that they take a certain number of days and days only pass when you're walking from place to Place on the screen. So this makes that much easier and not having random encounters makes it much quicker. And that's how I was able to beat the game super fast. It's also, I believe that the, the kind of the normal difficulty setting, there are three, easy, medium, hard. That's another new thing for this remaster. I believe the medium one is

• 28:27Jason Schreier?

  easier than the original game. I could be wrong. I'm not a hundred percent sure. Still, the difficulty spikes that are infamous in the original are still there, but it seemed a little bit easier. I don't know, I could be wrong about that, but I played at the medium difficulty setting. The other important big difference is that I don't think you two have gotten there yet on this playthrough, but as you go into like towards the end of chapter two, and then in this, in chapter three and four as well, four is the last one. Four is also much longer than the other three. You get into these kind of consecutive battle areas. And so like you'll get to a castle and it'll fight, force you to fight three battles in a row, one in the outside gates, and then one inside the castle, and then one in the depths of the

• 29:11Jason Schreier?

  treasury or whatever. And in the original game, you could get stuck there because you weren't allowed to leave. Once you got past the first battle and like were into subsequent ones. And there's one particularly infamous fight that I'll talk about in a second, that would just completely soft lock people because they wouldn't be able to do anything and they wouldn't be able to get, make any progress, especially if they had like saved over their original file. You had to kind of keep an extra save just in case. Now you can save between the battles and then you can also leave at any time. So if you find yourself running into a wall after like the second of three consecutive battles, you can just peace out and go to the world map and you won't get any of the progress. You'll have to like restart from the beginning of the consecutive fights,

• 29:54Jason Schreier?

  but you can live to fight another day and like go change your party or get new equipment or whatever. Let's talk about WeGraff. Kirk, do you remember this? Did you get far enough in the original to do the infamous WeGraff, WeGraff fight?

• 30:11Kirk Hamilton?

  You mean when he, like, the fight before the end of Act One?

• 30:14Jason Schreier?

  No, no, Act Three.

• 30:16Kirk Hamilton?

  No.

• 30:16Jason Schreier?

  When you fight him in Act Three.

• 30:17Kirk Hamilton?

  No, oh, okay. Because he, not when you first fight him, you're talking about something later in the game.

• 30:21Jason Schreier?

  Later in the game, yeah. So I won't spoil too much, but just kind of the broad overview here is that there is an infamous fight with Weegoth that has become the, like, very infamous among players of this game, because it forces you into a one-on-one battle with this guy, and you have absolutely no indication that it's coming. And if you are not set up with the exact right composition for Ramza, your main character, you will just lose immediately, because he can just destroy you with, like, two attacks.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  Right. So like, for example, if Ramza was a white mage, for whatever reason, you'd just be screwed here.

• 30:58Jason Schreier?

  You would just die, yeah. Unless you know what to expect and, like, equip Ramza with, like, anti-holy equipment or whatever else. Like, if you rig him just right, then you're fine. Otherwise, the only way to beat this one battle is, like, to cheese it essentially, or to, like, know what you're doing in advance and, like, make him a ninja who can just take out Weegoth in one hit or something. It is the worst part of the original game by far, and unfortunately, it has not been touched in this game. It remains the same. The only difference is that now you can't get softlocked on it. You can just leave and go re-set up Ramza with, like, a new build. But when you guys get to that, if you get to that, and if you stick with the game and you get to that, you will see why it has driven many a player mad over the years.

• 31:42Jason Schreier?

  And yeah, to people wondering, it has not been touched or changed at all in this remake.

• 31:48Kirk Hamilton?

  I definitely get the sense that Final Fantasy Tactics is a game that really rewards your time and attention. It's a game that, the more you put into it, the more you love it. I wrote this article for Kotaku interviewing game developers about why they love Final Fantasy Tactics, and a lot of what people said to me...

• 32:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Was along, sentiments along those lines. Basically, this game is kind of broken. It's really weird. You can do all these crazy builds because of all the synergies that they unlock. Because of all the cross-classing, you can come up with really crazy, you know, setups for your squad that are just totally unstoppable. And also, there are these crazy fights that people hate. There are these bizarre decisions and really challenging roadblocks that you learn to overcome. And the whole thing is like this big, complicated mess that you learn to untangle. And then in the process, you live in the mess and it becomes your mess and you love it. And it does make me wonder if this version of the game, which is still largely very

• 32:51Kirk Hamilton?

  true to that, is really designed or is a great, you know, starting point for people? It kind of feels to me like Final Fantasy Tactics is something that Final Fantasy Tactics sickos will always love. And there is now a new version of it that is really nice and nice looking and runs on modern systems and will let people continue to enjoy and experience it. But I do have to wonder, given how far Tactics RPGs have come in the, you know, almost 30 years since this came out, and also just how much more approachable and understandable a lot of them are, if this is really the one for someone who's never played it before.

• 33:28Jason Schreier?

  Well, that's the perfect segue because I think we should talk about the story of this game. And that is one thing that I think, playing through the whole thing again, has really held up quite well. And I think that even though you're right, Kirk, that the gameplay of Tactics RPGs, Strategy RPGs, has evolved in so many different directions and explored a lot of different things over the years. I don't, there aren't a lot of stories that are as interesting and as complicated and twisty and as deep as Final Fantasy Tactics is today. And there are lines of dialogue that you read today and you're like, holy crap, I can't believe, like, people came up with this in the 90s when it feels so prescient or it feels so relevant today.

• 34:10Jason Schreier?

  Questions about class war and the nobility and the largess and people just kind of like...

• 34:16Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, there was class conflict in the 90s, too.

• 34:18Jason Schreier?

  That's true. Yeah, that's true. Um, no, you're right.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  When isn't there a class war?

• 34:22Jason Schreier?

  Obviously, history, history echoes throughout time. But yeah, no, it's just interesting to, um, to, uh, uh, play through that. And I think that might be the reason to revisit Final Fantasy Tactics today is because the story is really good, but I'm curious. I mean, what do you two make of it? Manny, you're playing for the first time. What do you make of the story playing it today?

• 34:41Speaker 01

  I mean, I really like it. I think it, it definitely does that thing that I think of as like a 2010's video game thing, which is making you question really early on, like, are we the baddies? Am I the bad guy? Am I playing for the wrong side? And it does that pretty quickly and pretty effectively. I mean, it's like a story that you could certainly understand if you're 11 years old. I'm not gonna say it's like so complex.

• 35:06Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. Does it make you question it? Or does it show you very obviously that the guy on your side is a huge asshole? And you are definitely on the wrong side.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  For sure.

• 35:14Jason Schreier?

  Also, when you're 11 years old, reading this broken English, it's a little bit harder to understand.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  It's really a little harder. Yeah, like the hard part is the kind of like pseudo Shakespearean English for sure. But that's part of what probably makes you feel like.

• 35:24Jason Schreier?

  Well, no, no, no, I'm talking about, no, that English is great. I'm talking about the, the PS1 translation was just very difficult to parse.

• 35:31Speaker 01

  I am getting to experience the pseudo Shakespearean version as opposed to simply a bad translation. But yes, at 11, I'm sure I would have thought I was extremely intelligent playing this game. But that I think is kind of fun and I, I appreciated that it's like a late 90s version of that storyline. But to also kind of answer what Kirk was saying before, I am kind of a strategy game sicko in the sense that I do kind of enjoy the fiddly bits of these games. So I'm willing to be very patient, even with a much older version of the genre. Like I spent over a hundred hours in Midnight Suns just messing around and having a wonderful time. If that's not you, then yeah, this is going to be a tough hang just because it's like, that's the genre, no matter what.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Like in order to see the rest of the story, I would guess even on easy mode, you're gonna have to do some fiddling to get there. And is it worth it? Hard to say. But for me, having a really fun story to go along with a strategy game that I think is pretty fun as well, is absolutely washing it down. I, I, I'm enjoying that. And I, I can also see it for what it is, which is it's, it's made in the late 90s and it's something that's formative. And I also tend to enjoy just kind of like appreciating. Capital C canon works in that way, like going back and watching old movies and seeing, oh, okay, this is what so many other things were inspired by. That's just something I really enjoy, too. And I think from that vantage point, it's valuable and it's worth revisiting and

• 36:59Speaker 01

  also hearing about all the quality of life changes. I'm really glad this is the version that I'm playing because I do like that fast forward button. And I also really like that on the left hand side of the screen, I can see the turn order. I didn't even know that wasn't there in the original and that sounds annoying. So like, I am also experiencing a version of the game that is just, it's, it's going down easier for me. So if you're like me and you're, and you like this kind of game, then I think you would enjoy it. And I think you would get something out of it and, and see what it influenced.

• 37:30Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, the, um, the, the story is very, there's a lot of Game of Thrones in there. If you're a fan of Game of Thrones, to make the most modern comparison, um, there's a lot of just kind of great medieval politicking and lords, banner lords,

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Betrayals.

• 37:45Jason Schreier?

  and kings and betrayals and twists and, um, bloodlines and all sorts of good stuff. Um, there's a lot of, I actually found it striking, especially on this playthrough, how, um, similar this is to, the story is to another game released in 1998, which is Sweet Code in Two, in that it is a story of two best friends, one who is the kind of goody two shoes, who rallies an army and fights for the side of good, and the other who goes off and has his own machinations and potentially devious schemes because he believes he is doing what's right, or at least he seems to believe he's doing what's right and trying to stop the war from the inside by like, um, being callous and playing politics and betraying people along the way. Um, a lot of similarities, especially as

• 38:28Jason Schreier?

  you keep playing through the story. And I think you two will be very, uh, intrigued to see what happens with the story because it goes in some kind of unexpected directions. There's some darkness that comes about. How far, Matty, are you in act two, did you say?

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Not that far, but I, I'm gonna keep going. I mean, I, I want to know what happens. So don't, I, no one would hear.

• 38:48Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I won't, I won't get more specific, but, uh, this, the way this game treats religion specifically, I think I'm very curious to hear what you guys think as you keep playing.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  It's cool. Classic Final Fantasy topic. So makes sense it being here.

• 39:02Kirk Hamilton?

  I think that the addition of voice acting to this is actually transformative, or at least it has been for me. I really appreciate the voice acting. I think that actors are doing a good job. Agreed. And it also grounds the story in a way that I find very good. I think that it really enhances the feeling of it because there's something about the art style in this game that I've always found a little bit peculiar. It's not bad, but it's a little disconnected. This is a really grounded story. They threw you into the deep end. I mean, really into the deep end. This begins just like boom, you've got 50 names to keep track of. One guy's a bastard, two guys are brothers, but they treat him like a brother, but this guy's common born and this guy, I don't even know, is the duke of something and there's a kingdom, but you're not actually sure who the king is or who's in charge.

• 39:45Kirk Hamilton?

  There's a princess, she's kidnapped, but she's not actually the princess we're going to talk about for the next, for rest of the first act. Like it gets really confusing and you have to keep up. So it's expecting you to kind of pay attention and get invested in a lot of complexity at the sort of more bureaucratic level of a feudal system, basically. The dukes and the marquises and like those kinds of titles, not the kings and the princes and princesses, which are easier to keep track of. So that's all happening. It's very, it feels pretty grounded. The characters all don't have noses and look like they're 15 years old. And it's kind of a strange thing. And they also all kind of look the same, like there's only a few portraits and character models.

• 40:28Kirk Hamilton?

  And then their names are all pretty strange, you know, I don't know, they're, they're not like Delida, Ranza, Argath. You don't get a Jon Snow. You don't have Arya Stark. These are not names that are just like, okay, cool. Lannister, Stark, I can keep track of that. These are much more, you know, Argath and what Meluda and Weygraf and Golgaras. And they're like, the brothers are, names are really long and you're like, okay. But when you can hear people speaking, suddenly you have these adult voices ringing out these really wonderfully performed lines of really well-written dialogue. And suddenly it's like, okay, there is something I can hold on to. And it actually, it mixes with the music, which I think is also more low-key. It's a little bit more Baroque, I would say.

• 41:12Kirk Hamilton?

  ...influences than Uematsu, who is of course the most famous Final Fantasy composer, and wrote much more like prog rock, you know, like his, his soundtracks are much more synthesizers and polyrhythms and electric guitar solos. This is a lot more like chamber music, the way that these motifs evolve, and it kind of grounds things. And that was always, you know, I've always said that music stood in for voice acting back in the 90s when there wasn't voice acting in these games. You would have these strong melodies that would kind of almost become the voice of the game. And you'd be reading the dialogue and hearing the music and the two things would kind of merge in your head. Now, we actually have the dialogue, and while sometimes that can distract from the music, I think in this case, the dialogue, the spoken dialogue, really fits aesthetically with the writing

• 41:57Kirk Hamilton?

  and the, and the music and all of it, like, and kind of offsets that visual design of the characters, which I've always just found a little bit strange, where it just feels like I'm watching a bunch of little blonde children pretending to be like dukes and kings, but then they're killing each other. And like, so I like, a lot of the story is taking place in my head. So I'm actually finding that that enhances the story for me. And it is a really, a really cool story and a really interesting one.

• 42:20Jason Schreier?

  It's funny you say that, because on top of everything, on top of what you just laid out, there's also the contrast between like the grounded story and the, the kings and dukes and them fighting each other with swords and stuff, with the fact that in, on the battlefield, you can create a summoner who like conjures these giant hulking beasts to like lay down meteors on the battlefield. And it raises the question that is never really that relevant for something like Game of Thrones, which is why doesn't, why doesn't Ramza simply bring on a summoner to destroy the castle with just like a wave of her hand or something like that. But, so there is a certain level of suspension of disbelief required with some of this stuff, including the question of why they don't have noses.

• 43:04Jason Schreier?

  I'm not sure if that's ever quite answered.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  It would be helpful if they did.

• 43:08Kirk Hamilton?

  Right. And there's kind of a separation between what happens on the battlefield and what happens in the cutscenes. At least, I don't know if that happens through the whole game, but at least in the first act, it feels as though, you know, the combat is a representation of whatever battles just happened.

• 43:21Jason Schreier?

  Metaphorical.

• 43:21Kirk Hamilton?

  And then they get on with the story in the cutscene, and that's much more grounded.

• 43:24Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, there's a lot of stuff like that. There's also, there's mention a few times of like, oh, they have 200,000 men, yet somehow every battlefield is like five versus five.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Like seven guys, yeah. So they're representative of the 200,000 men, I suppose.

• 43:39Kirk Hamilton?

  This is something that I think Fire Emblem actually does really well. I like how Fire Emblem will begin zoomed out and then when fights happen, the camera swoops in, especially in the modern ones, and you see this actual, you know, like, you know, different sides of the conflict like playing out, and then it zooms back out to the kind of more abstract view, which Sweet Code in 2 did as well.

• 44:00Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 44:00Kirk Hamilton?

  So it's kind of something each of these games tackles differently. Tactics is just like, no, whatever. It's 6v6. You get it.

• 44:06Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:07Kirk Hamilton?

  It's representative of a...

• 44:07Jason Schreier?

  Just a bunch of, just a few guys, just a few guys on a battlefield.

• 44:10Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah.

• 44:10Jason Schreier?

  What's unfortunate about this game, though, is unless you're going to set limitations on yourself and be like, "I am only going to use the party members I create," or something like that, what winds up happening is that later on, as you get through chapters 2 and 3 and 4, you get these characters who are predetermined and have special classes. And so like, you guys have both met Agrius, and you've seen her skillset. Her skillset is so much more powerful than pretty much anybody else's because she has like this Holy Sword ability that is essentially a magic spell, except it's instant and costs no magic points. So she's so rigged, and then by the time you get to chapter 4, you get this guy named Orlando, who is like the most powerful, just a game-breaking character. And since you

• 44:54Jason Schreier?

  can only use five characters in most battles, you wind up feeling like a chump if you're not using Agrius and Orlando, and then maybe a couple others. And then it gets to the point where like, you don't need to think about building your characters anymore because you're just using these dudes. And the game gets so hard that it kind of, it feels like it's designed that for you to have those dudes. And then also, one other thing this remaster adds to the game is that it adds new dialogue. It used to be, back in the original version, and also the PSP version, once you recruited a character like Agrius, which you guys will get to, at a certain point, she stops becoming a guest character, and you actually can recruit her to your party. Once that happens, it's as if she

• 45:35Jason Schreier?

  doesn't exist anymore because the game is not, there's no, the game is not built to say like, "Oh, Agrius is in the party now. Here's what we can do with her." She might not be in your party, she might be dead, you might have dismissed her, whatever. But in this new version, they actually have added dialogue for each of those special characters in a whole bunch of the game's battles later on. Which means that you are incentivized, both gameplay-wise and story-wise, to have these special characters in your party, like Orlando and Agrius. And you kind of, again, you feel like a chump if you don't have them, which I think ruins some of the effectiveness of the party-building composition and that fun of it.

• 46:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Classic RPG problem, like Baldur's Gate, you want to, and Baldur's Gate 3, you want to have the party members. You can make your own party if you want, but why would you not have?

• 46:23Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 46:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, all these great characters.

• 46:26Jason Schreier?

  Although, at least in that, you can kind of customize them. That solves the problem and make it so you can just like make any character your own. In this, it's more like, if you're not using Orlando's special skills, you're just kind of like making it harder for yourself, which some, like, experts in the game do, like deliberately. They're like, "I'm not gonna use Orlando, because it makes the game too easy." But that's kind of a restriction you have to place on yourself. And if you find yourself just struggling against a tough boss, you might be like, "Why am I not using Orlando? Man, this sucks." All right, that's it for now. Hopefully, we'll talk more about this game in the future, because I think there's still a lot to unpack, especially as you two see more of the story. So I look forward to you both playing more. In the meantime, we're gonna take a break,

• 47:09Jason Schreier?

  and we'll be back with one more thing.

• 47:16Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Alexis. I am one of the co-hosts of Comfort Creatures, and I'm here with River Ju, who has been a member since 2019. Thank you so much for being a listener and the support of our show.

• 47:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, I can't believe it's been that long.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, right? As the MaxFun Member of the Month, can I ask what sort of made you decide to be a member?

• 47:36Speaker 04

  I used to work in a library, so I just used to listen to podcasts while I'd re-shelf all the books. Really helped with doing, reading at work. So I just wanted to give back to what's been helping me.

• 47:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:50Speaker 04

  It feels good to be part of that.

• 47:52Speaker 03

  As the Member of the Month, you will be getting a $25 gift card to the MaxFun Store, a Member of the Month bumper sticker, and you also, if you're ever in Los Angeles, you can get a parking spot at the MaxFun HQ just for you.

• 48:05Speaker 04

  Yay. I'm actually going to LA in September, so I'll get to use the parking.

• 48:10Speaker 03

  Yes. Thank you so much, River, for doing this. This has been an absolute blast.

• 48:15Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course. I've been so glad to be able to talk to you, too, and I'm so excited to be a Member of the Month.

• 48:21Jason Schreier?

  Yay!

• 48:22Speaker 05

  Become a MaxFun member now at maximumfun.org/join.

• 48:28Speaker 06

  Hey, everybody. I'm Jeremy.

• 48:29Speaker 07

  I'm Oscar.

• 48:30Speaker 08

  I'm Demetri.

• 48:31Speaker 06

  And we are the Eurovangelists.

• 48:33Speaker 07

  Or a weekly podcast spreading the word of the Eurovision Song Contest, the most important music competition in the world.

• 48:39Speaker 06

  Maybe you already heard Glenn Weldon of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour talk up our coverage of this year's contest. But what do we talk about in the offseason?

• 48:46Speaker 08

  The rest of Eurovision, duh. There are nearly seven decades of pop music history to cover.

• 48:51Speaker 07

  Mm-hmm. We've got thousands of amazing songs, inspiring competitors, and so much drama to discuss. And let me tell you, the drama is juicy.

• 48:59Speaker 08

  Plus, all the gorillas and bread-baking grandmas that make Eurovision so special.

• 49:03Speaker 06

  Check out Eurovangelists, available everywhere you get podcasts. And you could be a Eurovangelist, too.

• 49:08Speaker 07

  Ooh, I want to be one.

• 49:09Speaker 06

  You already are. It's that easy.

• 49:10Speaker 07

  Oh, OK. Cool.

• 49:12Jason Schreier?

  And we are back, Kirk Maddy. It is time for One More Thing. Kirk, what you got for us?

• 49:18Kirk Hamilton?

  I've been playing Hades 2 this week, an early version of the 1.0 build of the game, which is coming out, I believe, on the day that everyone is listening to this, on September 25. This is a long-in-development sequel to Hades 1, made by Supergiant Games, their first sequel, starring a different character, Melanoe, the daughter of Hades and sister of Zagreus, the protagonist of the first game. We have talked about this game before on the show. We played it, I think, when it first entered early access. It launched in early access with a lot of stuff in it. I think, at one point, very early on at least, it was bigger than Hades 1 already. And I have been waiting. I just played a little bit. I think I don't even know if I got past the first boss.

• 50:02Kirk Hamilton?

  I think I maybe got to her and fought her a couple of times. Then I was like, OK, I get it. I can talk about this on the show. I'm going to stop. So I just totally stopped. And we talked about this a little bit last week, that I've been very excited for Hades 2 because I stopped. And it's been, I don't know, a year or two since I played Hades 2. And, man, this game is great. I'm loving it. It's been a really great change of pace from Silk Song, actually. And it's reminded me why this kind of action game, specifically a rogue-like, rogue-light, run-based action game, is so much fun and can be so freeing. And so- Just engaging in a really distinct way. So I've been playing a ton of Silksong. Obviously, I'm like working my way through act three. It's brutal.

• 50:46Kirk Hamilton?

  It's so, it's so hard. And I'm, there is a lot of side stuff in that game, but there does come a point where your options begin to kind of narrow. And you just gotta go do the thing. You know, you gotta make your way through the gauntlet. You gotta beat the boss because you've gone and gotten all the mask upgrades you can get. You've gotten all the damage upgrades you can get. You've just kinda gotta get good and beat the boss. And so because Silksong is, you know, a metroidvania, you know, an adventure exploration game where you get a certain number of upgrades and you have a certain number of possibilities. And then you just try again and again and again. It's one type of struggle. You know, like all video games, I suppose with difficulty are a struggle. And Silksong is a very particular type of one where you, you basically have a set number

• 51:30Kirk Hamilton?

  of parameters and then you just struggle and you try to use those to overcome whatever obstacle. Hades is so different because in Hades 2, you have a different set of options and a different set of abilities every single run. And so there's this random element added to it, which I think some people really don't like. And I think is definitely very different from a game like Silksong. But I am finding it very refreshing and really fun, especially because I'm kind of playing the two games side by side. So I'm just really enjoying the feeling of starting a new run and seeing what kinds of, you know, boons that I get from the gods and, and how my character improves. I think we'll talk about this game more in the future. I'm, I'm wondering if I should explain how this game works to people who've never played

• 52:15Kirk Hamilton?

  a Hades game, but basically it's a, I guess I'll give a very quick version. It's an isometric action game. I wouldn't really call it an action RPG, even though it looks kinda like Diablo or something. You run around, top down view. You clear a room of enemies. You get a new upgrade. You pick which upgrade you wanna chase in the next room. You go to the next room. You fight a bunch of enemies. You get another upgrade. The whole game, you're meeting with the gods. You're kind of getting boons from all of the different Greek gods. So you never really know if you're gonna have like Demeter and Apollo. And whoever else, there are some really cool new ones in this game. And you'll wind up with a fire attack and lightning of Zeus on your dodge. And you'll freeze everybody every time you cast a spell because Demeter gave you an ice power.

• 53:00Kirk Hamilton?

  And then soon you start to unlock these strange synergies between different abilities. And then every now and then you'll get a build that's just unbelievable. And you've got some, you know, like, super major attack where your attack goes across the whole room and does crazy amounts of damage. And you wind up specking around, like, your ranged attack, for example, suddenly becomes really good. So you're doing nothing but ranged attacks for a whole run. And you get way farther than you've ever gotten because you happen to get a good build. So it's really improvisational. It feels like you're constantly adapting to whatever the game is giving you and seeing if you can figure out a gameplay style that works with it, which I think is just something really fun and something that Supergiant has been experimenting with for a long time. I mean, even back to Transistor, where you would take damage and some of your abilities would get damaged

• 53:45Kirk Hamilton?

  along with the hit point loss. And then you'd have to change your build because you've damaged some of your skills and you have to adapt. Like, they really like forcing the player to adapt. And I just think that that is really cool and has been a really refreshing change for me. So I'm loving it. I'm gonna keep playing it. It's got all those Hades rhythms. It's got that killer Darren Corb music. You know, the fight begins and the beat drops and the acoustic guitar riffs start. And it's like, oh, yeah, I love this. And it's also doing a similar narrative structure to the first Hades, where it just is introducing new characters. Each time you die, you get maybe a little cutscene, or maybe someone new turns up at the hub. And you're talking to more and more people. You're finding out the backstory of like, why Melanue and Hecate want to kill Cronos?

• 54:31Kirk Hamilton?

  And what's going on? And what Cronos did to her family? And it's all being explained in a kind of piecemeal way that layers really well with the rest of the game. So I'm super digging it. We might talk about it more down the road, just because it's a pretty major release. And it seems really great. And I'm just excited to see like, what is in the 1.0 version? Since, of course, I don't really know. How far have you gotten? I'm in the second biome, I guess. So like.

• 54:57Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, so I've gotten to the third biome's boss and I've also played a little bit of this, a few hours of Hades 2's 1.0 version. And the thing I keep running into is that it's just so much like Hades. Like, it doesn't really feel like a significant amount has changed, which is definitely a good thing in a lot of ways. But I also feel I spent so much time in that first game, then I'm starting to feel a little burnt out on like, okay, I feel like I've done this before. So I am curious, and maybe the three of us, yeah, can play more and talk about it more in the future, because I'm curious if it like, if it winds up showing other kind of traits or... There are definitely some differences. I mean, there's like, a lot of Melanoid's abilities are different, the weapons are

• 55:39Jason Schreier?

  all very different, but the rhythms of it are so similar to Hades that I do feel a little bit of burnout coming on.

• 55:46Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, I mean, if you feel burnt out, I would say we don't have to talk about it, but it, um...

• 55:50Jason Schreier?

  No, I definitely want to talk about it.

• 55:52Kirk Hamilton?

  Oh, well, I mean, it's definitely like, all the things that Hades did well, the rhythms, the combat, the feel, the vibe, they're all the same. And then the differences are just, it makes it feel like a different game, different protagonist, different story, different structure. And I'm sure, like, as you go, I mean, each of the bosses is different, like, it definitely, like, you know, has different challenges, there are different types of enemies, but it is still Hades, Hades 2.

• 56:14Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 56:15Kirk Hamilton?

  So I'm, I'm really into that, and I guess I'm not feeling burnt out only because I haven't played Hades in years, and I'm very excited, I'm kind of ready. It would be if, like, if I had played a ton of Hollow Knight and then was playing Silksong and was like, oh my god, I can't do this again. I played enough Hollow Knight to get excited for Silksong, but then, don't feel burned out by Silksong, so it's kind of that.

• 56:35Jason Schreier?

  I was gonna, it's funny you say it's different bosses, because the last boss of the third biome is actually somebody you've fought before, so, which just adds even more to the sense of what I'm feeling.

• 56:45Kirk Hamilton?

  I mean, okay.

• 56:46Jason Schreier?

  But yeah, I want to talk more about this, because, yeah, I'm definitely gonna play more.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  I'm gonna play it again. And I played it a bunch in early access, so I'm really curious what they changed. So, that'll be how that is for me.

• 56:56Kirk Hamilton?

  So all that notwithstanding, I suppose, I'm just, for me, it has been a really cool experience to play a game that is so different from Silksong and to remember why a rogue-like action game specifically is so much fun. Obviously, we all played Blueprints, that was great, and the randomness of that game was something that I really liked about it. But it's been a while since I've played a randomly, you know, procedurally-generated action game, where I'm like, it is my skill on the line and I am having to like play in this twitchy way, but I'm also having to improvise and adapt because I never quite know how I'm gonna be playing on a given run. And I just have, I'm finding that very refreshing and it leads to a very cool gameplay groove.

• 57:36Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that endorphin rush of like, oh man, just got this Demeter ability that is really gonna rip through enemies. Oh man, just got this like sprint, sprint wave push that is really gonna take dudes out.

• 57:47Kirk Hamilton?

  Watching your build kind of come together in a way that you couldn't have predicted, it's very cool.

• 57:50Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, that was, I mean, yeah, this is bringing me back to 2020 of just playing a shitload of Hades 1, which we all just really dug into. Maddie, what's your one more thing?

• 58:01Speaker 01

  My one more thing is a book that I read this week that's called Moral Combat: Why the War on Violent Video Games is Wrong. It's from 2017 and it's by two researchers, scientific researchers, named Christopher Ferguson and Patrick M. Markey. And they're both gamers, both Gen Xers, and they really have a political axe to grind with this book. It's like extremely explicitly political in a way that was really hit or miss for me. So I don't know if I recommend it because there were some chapters that I thought were really well done, in the sense that they reflect that there's not a lot of particularly

• 58:43Speaker 01

  good research about whether video games affect like aggression, for example. There's a lot of studies on this and many of the authors of those studies, at least according to Ferguson and Markey, have their own political aims that influence the outcomes of the studies. And I think they do a really good job of explaining that whereby if you go into a study and you want to see a certain result... Then you might be inclined to see it or find it. And you can also manipulate data pretty successfully in order to incur a certain result. And because it's so hard to measure something like quote unquote aggression as compared to say, just somebody playing a video game and getting frustrated with it if it's difficult. Like, what's the difference

• 59:27Speaker 01

  between those two things? And is that actually measurable in the short time period that a scientific study takes place in? I think they really do a great job of casting a lot of doubt on those studies. There are some that indicate that like violence in games doesn't really matter, but like a competitive game, for example, is like the defining factor there. I think those studies are really fascinating for obvious reasons. I love competitive games and I've always been kind of curious, like, does playing competitive games for my entire life, has that changed my personality? Or how has that impacted me? So it's part of why I gravitated towards this book. But I think because Ferguson and Markey, and they've been like interviewed on news programs about violent games, they're often like the first port of call if like CNN

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  or what have you is like, was this school shooter into doom, etc. Like, we've all seen, like, very misleading news programs about this kind of thing with

• 1:00:16Kirk Hamilton?

  Well, and the Helldivers reference in the Charlie Kirk assassination.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  Part of why I was thinking about this topic this past week.

• 1:00:21Kirk Hamilton?

  It's a recent, yeah.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Precisely. So these guys have been on the news and have been often kind of guys that have been cited as good examples of people who can kind of lay out the research really clearly. And this book does that well. But I think because they have such a really specific political project, they neglect to get into some of the specific reasons why this is even a debate. Like, I was kind of shocked that at no point in this book, did they talk about, like, gun lobbyists, for example, and like, the fact that so much of the American government, and like senators and so on, will focus on video games and not, for example, talk about, like, gun proliferation in America, and just how popular guns are here, and how easy they are to get. Like, for some reason, that isn't a topic of conversation, but video games are.

• 1:01:08Speaker 01

  There's no chapter in this book about that, for example. I think, I'm not sure why that is, but also, there's other parts of the book that really gloss over some of the things about Video games that I think we can agree are concerning. Like, there's a huge part of the book about addiction that was, like, weirdly facile, in my opinion, and kind of dismissed a lot of the claims about it. And it might be because the book came out in 2017. And I was kind of like, oh, maybe like, gotcha games and loot boxes and battle passes and all of those things weren't quite as popular then, but they definitely existed. And I think that because these authors were so focused on defending games from what they perceive as, like, a true attack on them, and like, a lot of misinformation about them that the three of us are really familiar with,

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  they just really were hesitant to include any nuance in the book. Do you know what I mean? Like, they just really were like, we're only going to include these super ironclad arguments, and we're gonna just make them and leave. And I don't know, that disappointed me a little bit, but I also think some of the chapters were pretty good. So I have mixed feelings about it. It definitely made me think, and I appreciated the chapters about how the video game aggression studies aren't always that great. But it also made me feel like, maybe it's worth writing more about this topic, which maybe I'll do someday. It's part of why I read this book was because I was interested in it. And I just think it's a fascinating topic, and we're learning more about it all the time.

• 1:02:32Kirk Hamilton?

  You know, speaking of Kotaku in 2013, I'm remembering a story that Jason wrote called, "From Halo to Hot Sauce: What 25 Years of Violent Video Game Research Looks Like." Jason, can you talk about that article a little bit?

• 1:02:45Jason Schreier?

  Yeah, I did a big story back in the day, and I found that there are these kind of two schools of thought, and Christopher Ferguson is in one of them, and then there are other people in another. The other, like, Brad Bushman is a good example. And on Ferguson's side is very much, "Video games do not cause aggression. Video games do not cause violence. All the data is inconclusive, yada, yada, yada." So essentially, you are reading, like, one side of an argument. On the other side is this guy Brad Bushman and some others, who are like, "We found in our studies that video games do, in fact, cause aggression." And some of their methods for testing this stuff is kind of strange. Like, one of their studies was, like, having people play games and then, like, write the ending to a short story.

• 1:03:26Jason Schreier?

  Another was the hot sauce test, which is one of the most bizarre.

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  Ferguson describes this in the book. Go ahead. It's very funny.

• 1:03:34Jason Schreier?

  Which is you have someone play video games and then they decide how hot, how spicy to the hot sauce that they are forced to give to a partner. As a way of punishing them should be. And all of this is very strange. And the conclusion that I came to in the story is that like, there isn't nearly enough research and studying on this subject. But Chris Ferguson, I mean, one of the reasons he's brought out a lot is because he's like staking, he's put a stake in the ground. He's like, video games do not cause aggression, do not cause violence. Well, really, I mean, another thing I found in that 2013 story is that like, nobody out there, nobody serious is saying video games lead to violence.

• 1:04:15Jason Schreier?

  The question is more do video games lead to aggression? As you said, aggression studies is the big question here. And I think anyone who's played a video game might have like knows the feeling of like frustration afterwards. And it probably wonders like, am I feeling more aggressive, especially a competitive multiplayer game? Are you feeling more aggressive in the context of that? And so I think that's a really interesting question. And yeah, it's too, always too bad when you read the work of like a scientist who is just kind of like, putting their thumb on the scale really, really hard.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, there were some moments in this book where I was like, I agree with you. And yet I feel like you are putting the thumb too far on the scale and making me question some of the things you're saying. But I think that can be kind of interesting to like, read a book that you think you're going to agree with and then be like, do I though? Like sometimes that can be kind of a good mental exercise.

• 1:05:05Jason Schreier?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:05Kirk Hamilton?

  It is kind of like that time period was much more focused on violence. And I think you're right to notice the lack of depth in some of the discussion of addiction. Because I do think that addiction, and in particular, the rise of gambling everywhere. There are a lot of books about that, about how to design addictive games, about how to design casinos and how casinos work. So there is a large body of scholarship about that. And I think that is really relevant and honestly like.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  A bigger concern in some ways.

• 1:05:36Kirk Hamilton?

  And at least for me, that's something I'm more interested in these days is is that subject is like, because I think that that effect, the effect of video games, you know, channeling, using the tricks of casinos and tricking people into gambling and actually like literally having people gamble, like that seems to me just a much larger and more easily studied and easily understood issue. And it's, and I guess more clearly a problem.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  And easily identifiable as a problem, for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:06:05Jason Schreier?

  Man.

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  Agreed.

• 1:06:06Jason Schreier?

  Neither of you are big sports fans, but over the last like three years, it has become impossible to watch sports without just being like completely barraged with gambling.

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  Those ads are everywhere.

• 1:06:17Kirk Hamilton?

  It's not even in sports. It's everywhere. Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm well aware of it.

• 1:06:20Speaker 01

  We aren't escaping them either.

• 1:06:22Jason Schreier?

  But it's not, no, but it's not even just the ads. It's like during the broadcast, you'll have the lines, you'll have like odds for who will score a touchdown. Like someone will score and it'll be like, this person, here's the section presented by FanDuel. This person was plus 600 to score a touchdown. It's really crazy.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Maybe bad.

• 1:06:38Jason Schreier?

  Maybe bad. We should talk about this more one day. Future, future episode topic, gambling, the, the way that it affects people, the gamification of gambling and so on and so forth. Gambling and games.

• 1:06:50Kirk Hamilton?

  Gambling everywhere.

• 1:06:51Jason Schreier?

  Um, my one more thing is also a video game called Rise of the Golden Idol, a game that came out last year and has kind of quietly been getting DLC all of this year. I've talked about this a couple of times before, but this week, the fourth and final DLC for Rise of the Golden Idol came out and it is spectacular. And like taken with all of the others, it's basically a whole new Golden Idol game. I cannot recommend it highly enough. So for those people who are not aware, the Golden Idol series, which we've talked a lot before, is a deductive mystery game where like you are given this kind of screen or set of screens and this omniscient view and you have a bunch of people and some crazy stuff is going on and you have to poke around and click on people's inventories, see what they're holding,

• 1:07:35Jason Schreier?

  see what they're saying and try to figure out what happened. Um, it is a really cool uh, series. I really love it. I could play these. Things forever and Rise of the Golden Idol was the second game in the series. Case of the Golden Idol was the first and then Rise of the Golden Idol has gotten these huge substantial DLC packs. This most recent one is incredibly fun and fantastic and a very cool way to end this kind of season of DLC on. You guys will both appreciate that one of the kind of scenarios in it, I think there are four scenarios in it. One of them takes place on a pirate ship in the 1700s or 18, early 1800s, late 1700s.

• 1:08:19Jason Schreier?

  And you have to kind of figure out jobs of different people in true Oh, man. True Oberdin style. This game is heavily inspired by Return of the Oberdin and That's fun. That is fun. Very much a homage to that. You gotta figure out That's awesome. Who the riggers are and who the, the helmsmen are and so on and so forth. Really cool game, a really cool scenario. And yeah, this DLC just rules. All the DLC this year. I mean, now, if you've been waiting, if you're a fan of these games and you've been waiting, or if you're not a fan of these games and you want to try them, Rise of the Golden Idol now has just so much stuff to it. If you include all this DLC, I friggin' love it. I don't even want to talk about what's in this DLC

• 1:08:59Jason Schreier?

  or how it links to the main game, but I will say that this new, this new DLC that came out for Rise has a connection to the Case of the Golden Idol that kind of like concludes some character fates. And it's, it's really cool to see play out. All of the DLCs for Rise have like been connected in some way to the overarching story and the world in which this is set and it's super cool. Sadly though, there's no more and I think the, the developers at Color Gray Games, which is primarily these two brothers, the Cleavins Brothers, I believe they are moving on to work on something else entirely. Like they're experimenting with other ideas entirely. That's exciting too, though.

• 1:09:42Jason Schreier?

  Games. It is, but I also, I feel like they might just do like totally different genres and just like, I feel like I will not be pleased unless I get more of these. So, but I guess the good news is that like these games, I think have inspired a lot of other detective games and there will be other cool stuff to come. But yeah, it's, it's kind of a, it's a bittersweet end, but a phenomenal one. And this new DLC is really, really good. Highly recommend it.

• 1:10:09Kirk Hamilton?

  Nice.

• 1:10:09Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:10:10Kirk Hamilton?

  I've been waiting for them all to be out to play them. And I mean, the timing couldn't be better because I have nothing else to play.

• 1:10:14Jason Schreier?

  That's the thing, right? September, yeah, particularly slow month. Yeah, every time their PR person emails me and is like, hey, I got a code for you for the DLC and I'll be like, god damn it.

• 1:10:26Speaker 01

  Well, that's my entire day now.

• 1:10:27Jason Schreier?

  It's like, imagine me is that meme of like, the cheerleader dancing while crying with like tears smudged over her face, but she's still doing her cheerleading dance. That's me being like-

• 1:10:37Kirk Hamilton?

  You're finishing Final Fantasy Tactics with one hand.

• 1:10:39Jason Schreier?

  Yeah. Well, no, it's me crying, dropping everything I'm doing to just play three hours and finish the Rise of the Golden Idol DLC. But yeah, really good. Highly recommend it. Highly recommend all of the DLCs and all of these games.

• 1:10:52Speaker 01

  All the games.

• 1:10:52Jason Schreier?

  They're all incredible. I wish I could wipe my mind clean so I could just like replay them all from the beginning. And if you have not had an opportunity to do that, you're in for a treat. All right. That is that for this week's episode. We will be back next week with a main episode and then also soon a Beans Cast on Hollow Knight Silksong where we spoil the heck out of that. So become a member and you'll get that. Otherwise, see you both next week.

• 1:11:19Kirk Hamilton?

  Yeah, see you both next week.

• 1:11:20Speaker 01

  Bye.

• 1:11:23Kirk Hamilton?

  Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddy Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music. Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network. And if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at maximumfun.org/join. Find us on Twitter at TripleClickPod, send email to [email protected], and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

• 1:12:21Jason Schreier?

  Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.