We’ve linked videos in this series many times before, but it’s wuite a doozy this time. Final Fantasy is known to have a number of combat bugs. Critical Hit chances are determined by the index of the weapon in the weapon table, not the stat in that table; weapon special properties just don’t work, regardless of what the Nintendo Power Strategy Guide says; and more.

This isn’t just an explication of those bugs though, it goes through all of how basic (non-magic) combat works in the game, explaining the value of all the stats. That’s one of the things about RPGs: you’re told items are “+4 better,” but often those values don’t match up to what they’d mean in D&D, where a plus is usually either a one-point increase in damage, a 5% improvement on odds for something, or both. Final Fantasy’s attack roll turns out to be a 1-in-200 die, so, a mere +1 is negligible to attack odds.

They probably didn’t elaborate on what these numbers mean in the manual because, at the time, Square and Nintendo were keen to get players hooked on Final Fantasy and other JRPGs, and nothing would dissuade them from picking up the game than to be confronted with battle formulae in the manual. Looks too much like school work! But they could have at least mentioned something about relative chances?

If you really want to know what the numbers mean, the video is there waiting for you. You can just let your eyes glaze over during the math if you want. I won’t tell the teacher!

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