Meeple's Final Fantasy Class (and others) Analysis

[Meeplelard]

Yes, I'm later than usual, no I will not apologize, this is entirely the fault of that person over there.  Without further ado, let's move onto another FF1 Job because really, what do you expect?



Monk

Originally called Black Belt, then promoted to Master, made it "Karate" for Yang, eventually retranslated as Monk and has been that ever since...except FF3DS where they made Black Belt the "improved' variation but you know what? I'll cover THAT when i get to it!  Monks are identified as that job that punches thing.  Really, not much else to say about that!  Ok, fine, generally there's other features.  They often have above average speed, high HP, wear light armor making them not as durable as you'd expect, limited equipment selection, high physical stats, and that's about it.  They also generally have a recurring aspect of being fairly Low Maitenance Jobs in the sense that you don't have to put a lot of extra effort into them, just general usage.  This of course could be me speaking out of my ass, so let's get going!  Oh yeah, they usually use Claws too...just saying...

Final Fantasy 1 (NES/Origins): Monks were the single most 1 dimensional class in the game, to the point where the Master (their promoted form) didn't actually IMPROVE anything...I think they technically got worse actually due to lower Magic Defense growth?  I'll get to that oddity in a bit.  They start the game using crappy Nunchakus, because Nunchakus are inaccurate, then they punch things and generally have good offense the entire game...unless there's high defense then their damage falls because they were highly hit dependent (contrast to Fighter/Knight which was a combination of Hits and Power.)  Oddly, their HP was kind of middling in this game, since they weren't Knight.  The big things about Monk were that they had the highest damage potential at levels "too high to care" I believe, and you didn't really have to spend any money on them making it easier to support other jobs.  In what is absolutely bizarre considering later renditions, Monks also had the best Magic Defense in the game due to their growth.  They're also the only job that doesn't get Magic even post promotion.  Basically, the only reason to use one is because they're cheap to maintain...on the otherhand, they're a physical job that "isn't Fighter" so you're at a losing trade already!

Final Fantasy 1 (Dawn of Souls/PSP): Monks get way better here.  Their Nunchaku era is shorter lived since level growth is much faster so they get to the "Punch things hard" era faster.  They now have bad Magic Defense since they're a Physical class and that's basically how FF1 distinguished Magic Defense scores and their HP...is weird.  They start the game having fairly bad HP for a long while, then their HP growth mid-game skyrockets and they end the game top tier.  Yeah, I don't get it either.  What I do know is that they're legitimately the best physical Power House in the game thanks to the rebalancing, Temper working properly, Knights being nerfed, etc., so there's a far more desire-able reason to use them now since any team without one does take a notable loss on ST offense.  So yes, they're better, pity this version of the game is too easy to care in most cases.

Final Fantasy 2 (NES/Origins): Another oddity, Josef is clearly built as a Monk.  He joins with Fist levels and practically nothing else, and he hits harder than characters using other weapons as a result.  He really exists to emphasize that yes, Unarmed does damage...but you'll never want to use it because it means no shield, which is not obvious this early granted, and then Josef disappears forever!!!

Final Fantasy 2 (Dawn of Souls/PSP): ...until this aftergame where you play as him dead.  He still punches things, gets a unique accessory, NOT weapon, which is a losing trade since you can't use fists with Shields and the others get "better than Excalibur!" level weapons (Masamune not in aftermgame), so while he hits hard, he's also your frailest.   And now that boringness is discussed....

Final Fantasy 3 (NES): So when you start the game, you need to pick jobs.  There's actually very little reason to choose Monk over Fighter at all in the early game, since Fighter is basically straight up better, except for one detail, and that goes back to the "low maintenance" deal.  Monk is competent as a physical fighter, but requires way less to maintain and doesn't mean there's competition for good weapons, nor do you have to buy more.  In FF3, saving money is a big deal, and Monk generally gets most of it's gear through chests and items, and after a point, just uses it's fists anyway.  For this reason alone, you'll probably field a Monk on the Floating Continent (at least, most of it) arc as a second fighter, since the other options are Mages or forcing competition among equips.  Also Nunchakus do kind of suck because of accuracy and you can't wait til fists compete just for consistency purposes.  There is an upgrade to Monk as well in Karateka/Master/whatever you wanna call it, I'm going to call it Bob.  Bobs can use Claws, which are like Nunchakus except they can actually hit things, making Bobs during their pre-Unarmed section way better than Monks are.  Bobs also introduce for the first time the ability Build Up which in this version, lets you skip up to 2 turns (3rd and you explode) for increased damage.  This would be great except Bobs get their defense lowered to 0 while building up, so only really useful against splitting enemies.  They also have high HP Growth.  They're a solid job, but tend to be a bit overrated as many tend to make them sound like a must have, when really so many other jobs can perform similarly, and on the long term!

Final Fantasy 3 (DS): Monks are somewhat better here than in the NES version for two reasons.  First off, crappy Nunchakus are replaced with early game claws, so Monks don't lag on offense.  Secondly, Monks are actually decent the entire game now, or at least until close to endgame.  A quirk Monks have in this game is if you are  job Level grinder, they can become really good...but I never did bother grinding Job Levels so claws basically always outdamaged them so that factor never kicked in for me, hence why I specify "Grinder."  See, in this game, Monks unarmed damage was based on their Job level, not standard level, and the game also lies outright about attack stat, giving you a completely useless Attack Stat for unarmed damage that seems ludicrously high but is not reflective of damage at all; yes, that stat is completely useless.  It'd be understandable if it was a way to get a sense for Claws vs. Unarmed, but nope, doesn't reflect even reflect damage, much less get used in the formula.  Monks still get their upgrade job in this game, called Black Belts...which are outright awful.  Black Belts have higher stats than Monks and Build Up (Monks have a counter stance), so on paper they should be better!  They're not; Job levels make a big deal in this game, ESPECIALLY for Black Belt.  Black Belt's thing was doing ridiculous damage with lot's of Job levels...on a Job gotten in the Earth Crystal.  "But Meeple, ninja is too and you said that was good!"  Ninja, unlike Black Belt, actually had advantages over Thief and Dark Knight (the two Jobs it's essentially a hybrid of), combining the speed of Thief with the gear of a Dark Knight, allowing it to actually function well in-spite of it's lack of JLevels.  Black Belt does none of that; it has nothing to offset it's JLevel deficit on a job very dependent on it.  It does, however, have GAME BEST HP GROWTH!!!!  ...again, on a job gotten as late as it is.

Final Fantasy 4 (2D): Yang is the game's Monk here, and basically has all the standard traits, though they gut the crappy weapon phase entirely and just make his unarmed damage solid throughout, instead giving him Claws that allow various properties to his weapon.  He also brings a non-fail version of Build Up, which is great in the advance version for beating down Behemoths due to avoiding counters.  He gets Kick which seems cool at first but it's not long til you realize the MT damage just really isn't worth bothering with, and lastly, he gets Endure which lets him...buff defense of himself...to be fair, this is decently potent early on due to additive nature, but still completely arbitrary.   Yang's effectiveness somewhat hinges on one factor, that being how much you're willing to micromanage his equips.  He can hit a lot of weaknesses, elemental and species, and hit them really hard, but you have to pay attention.  Without that, Yang's passable but nothing special, at least until Endgame where his late game equips kick in and he's got by far the highest DPS for a physical character thanks to the raw speed + damage combo.

Final Fantasy 4 (3D): Honestly, I think Yang's basically the same here.  Kick's better but now has a charge time, making it not as good at least in Yang's hands.  Now on Cecil with Draw Attacks, Counter and replacing Attack with Kick? Much different story! But we're talking about Monks, not moves derived from Monks.  One thing that really hurts Yang is how they completely gutted weaknesses.  In 2D versions, they were either 2x damage for elementals, or 4x damage for species or "Major" weaknesses that a handful of enemies have; no weaknesses are 1.5x damage regardless and often just aren't worth bothering with.  One thing that does help Yang indirectly is how Paladin Cecil is really gimped on damage during this section making Yang's physical damage all the more meaningful, and Cecil really won't catch up on damage until about Tower of Bab-il.  All in all, yang is forgettable in this game!

Final Fantasy 5: Monk's are big physical powerhouses out of the gate and murder things really fast for the early game.  This doesn't last the entire game and eventually they fall behind, so that makes them kind of Jeiganesque.  Given their lack of variety and the way their structured, Monks need some incentive to use later on and they actually do have a few! Namely they have game best Strength, game best Stamina (which by extension means game best HP), and Counter, all which can be passed onto Freelancers and Mimes if you master them, so that makes them a job worth considering.  Another thing they have going for them is Brawler, a skill that just about any job can benefit from early game.  Even jobs that get good weapons benefit since it boosts their strength to Monk level, so it's certainly a viable option for something like Ninja or Dragoon, whom can't make use of Double Grip (though, the boost may not be worth using over just handing another skillset and increasing variety, but I digress.)  So what we have is a strong class out of the gate that gets progressively less good, but has a few quirks that give you a reason to continue investing in one in the long run.  As an interesting factor, Monk's I think are the only job with a completely unique skill, in that no other job can use it under any circumstance (...Mimic not withstanding), that being Kick.  I didn't say it was a GOOD skill mind you!

Final Fantasy 6: Sabin is...very unconventional for a Monk.  Ok, at first glance he has all the tell-tale signs of a Monk.  High physical stats, solid speed, low Magic stats, top tier in Extra HP (...which is meaningless granted but shhh!), gets light armor, uses Claws as his weapon though the game lacks an unarmed Mechanic so they just made claws a more conventional weapon here, and that's about it.  So what's different?  Blitz gives Sabin an actual skillset of sorts, and in truth, despite how he appears, Sabin's really a Mage in disguise, since most of his major Blitzes are magical.  This makes me want to punch TOSE further for the God Hand fiasco making it a PURELY PHYSICAL WEAPON with no real special qualities to make caring about ON THE CHARACTER WITH HIGH FREE OFFENSE.  Which ties into Sabin's point: Raw damage.  Sabin starts the game top tier for ST damage (albeit not as meaningful as it sounds since many can ST OHKO, most obviously during the Phantom Train arc where it's 3 guys OHKOing enemies), gets Fire Dance a few dungeons later and becomes one of your best MT damage dealers, then people start learning Magic, a Fire Dungeon kicks in, and Sabin stops standing out.  Early WoR kicks in and the entire segment feels tailored for Sabin's purposes, and I mean that kind of seriously since it feels balanced around "this part is intended to not be too difficult for a potentially underdeveloped Celes and Sabin, so here's a bunch of enemies who are murdered by Fire Dance."   Getting Bum Rush and Air Blade basically makes Sabin a raw powerhouse, but he hits his cap, others catch up, and when they do, Sabin doesn't have much going for him other than a probably beefy spell set due to lots of usage.  All in all, Sabin's a decent character, and has obvious uses, but he's far from an overpowered monster.   He also gets 2 Healing Blitzes that no one ever uses because Mantra is situational only and Spiraler is both high leveled AND kills Sabin. Also he suplexes trains.

Final Fantasy 7: Yep, for once I'm actually addressing this with a straight face!  See, unlike Yuffie who is "Ninja in flavoring only", Tifa actually feels like a legitimate Monk in as much as FF7 can make one.  Notably, she's capable of being an amazing physical powerhouse as early as Nibelheim, and before that, she has Limit damage a clear step up compared to everyone else...at least once she gets to her level 2s, as her level 1's are clearly weaker than others.  The Powersoul nonetheless hits way harder than basically everything in the game until Ultimate Weapons kick in and even then, it competes, and she upgrades that to Master Fist too, and Cursed Ring only makes them crazier.  To further demonstrate this, Tifa also has game worst magic by a long shot come end game.  Her best magic weapon is +34 Magic; the 2nd worst "best Magic" weapons for characters are a tie between Yuffie and Cid at +42 and on weapons with more Materia to boot.  On the flipside, Premium Heart is actually one of the best Ultimates in the game if used properly.  Basically, Tifa's the one character in FF7 who can be truly treated as a physical powerhouse through a large part of the game, which is about as close to Monk as a game like this can get...also she punches things, and can suplex walls.  Ok, she does have low HP for a Monk, but she's also the first female Monk so uhh...something?

Final Fantasy 8: While Tifa feels like she actually fits the Monk, I'm struggling to justify Zell beyond "he punches things" and "his Duels are inspired by Sabin's Blitzes, which in turn were inspired by Street Fighter."   His stats are completely un-noteworthy (like most FF8 characters), he lacks any identifying features beyond his limits and...you get the idea; basically, he's a Monk in as much as Yuffie is a Ninja, it's mostly a flavoring thing.  He'd be better if his weapon was a hot Dog cannon that he used to kill enemies for having them choke on them.

Final Fantasy 9: As I said, Armarant is a Monk w/ Throw as a secondary and here I'll explain why!  First off, his weapon is claws.  Secondly, his stats.  He gets #2 in speed (#3 in practice due to FF9's wonky stat system often puts Garnet above him), though you could argue "Thief > Ninja" is about as common as "Ninja > Thief" in this regard, but I digress, he also has good HP, something Ninjas generally don't have but Monks do.  Flair is a skillset that kind of fits Monk, with Chakra being just like the FFT Variant, No Mercy being basically a Ki Blast and you get the idea.  Ok, so that justification aside, HOW IS ARMARANT!?  ...he falls under the classification of "Fighters" which as I said there's only 4 character classifications in FF9.  Armarant looks varied on paper but his variety is superficial outside of Trance  He gets a lot of cool stuff UNDER Trance, but it's hard to respect Trance given how unreliable it is in FF9, so while Power Up MT Chakra is actually kind of neat, the chance of you getting it at a moment where it's useful is not something I'd bank on.  Also Throw is pretty strong I suppose.

Final Fantasy 10: Mostly addressing that no, I don't think Rikku qualifies as a Monk.  She uses fist weapons, but her skillset, stats, etc. are reminiscent of a hybrid between Chemist and Thief.  As a result, I'm moving on!

Final Fantasy 11: Monks are a thing and I know nothing about them here.  Don't know why I even bothered!

Final Fantasy 12 International Zodiac Job System: Monks are in this game, and I can only hope they improved Bare Handed mechanics because they sucked here.  They can also use Poles, which ok, that's a big plus I guess!  They also get some a lot of White Magic meaning they can work as healers if I'm reading this right, crap ton of HP Augments (all of them I think), and...yeah, look, I'm not really sure beyond that.  They seem to be Pole Users who can fight Unarmed or something and has healing. I guess Bravely Default was using something as a base!

Final Fantasy 13: Like with Rikku, mostly noting that Snow really doesn't fit the Monk mold outside of "he punches things."  I addressed this earlier.

Final Fantasy 14 A Realm reborn: Monks are a DPS Job taken from Pugilists.  From what I can tell, they are a very involved DPS Job, being reliant on positioning, a lot of stance changing, and a bunch of micromanaging and are a counter-point to "DPS are just fool proof role!" because near as I can tell, maximizing Monk takes a lot of work.  I do know they were ideal for DPS but rebalancing has altered this and don't know where they stand now.  It's also a job I have 0 experience in so...

Final Fantasy 4 The After Years: Yang returns and is basically the same as he was in FF4a, which is not a bad thing.  He has competition however in his daughter, Ursula, who is similar to him, with less damage but higher Speed, and more importantly is Female, which means she can use the Minerva Bustier, a far better supplement for Brave Suit (which a lot of characters want) than anything Yang can use.  Using either one of these characters is very plausible and not a bad idea either way, though both might not be the best of ideas.  Yang also gets Counter Cover as a new trick that you don't see much use of but hey it's there!

Final Fantasy Tactics:  You know when I first played FFT, I thought Monk wasn't very good because it punched something and did little damage...it was also a female and I don't remember her brave.  Ignoring that instance, Male Monks with good Brave hit things very hard with their fists, and Two Swords makes them hit harder!  Unfortunately, they can't use Helmets which compromises twinking, and by extension makes Ninjas better at the whole twink thing but that doesn't make Monks bad!  Martial Arts has a fair number of interesting skills, ranging from some Ranged damage in Wave Fist and Earth Slash, Chakra for limited HP/MP Healing, and Revive for...well, take a wild guess!  One of the better jobs on the Physical side of things in any event.

Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light: "Fighters" are Monks in this game and they kind of suck; I remember trying to show it off in stream and they were notably under-performing that everyone agreed it was a "screw that!" moment.  Note there is a Monk in this game except it's not like Monk at all; it's a Mage job based on Undead Slaying or some such, "Fighter" is the Monk analog here because FF4HoL is stupid.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance:  There are Monk analogs in this game but my lack of knowledge of this game is failing me yet again, screw it, not bothering.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: ...see above...as usual, feel free to field this for me.

Bravely Default: Monk is the first physical job you get (FREELANCER DOESN'T COUNT!)  The Unarmed aspect is...not that prevalent for a few reasons, most notably, Claws are usually stronger, and there's usually a Physical Staff which combined with Two Handed is better than both, and Monks have an S in staves.  Monk is, honestly, not a very good job in this game.  The difference between it and Knight is immediately apparently, and the moves it gets along the way are not very special.   For example, Qiqong Wave sounds cool but Ranger already has that and requires no effort to raise, and gives higher damage buffing moves in the Slayer Skills.  It gets a whole bunch of HP+% skills, and does have Phys Attack +10% for a 1 slot ability which are alright, but honestly there's so much better stuff to invest in, feels like a waste.  Natural Talent has some builds it can be useful in I'm sure, but you get it late and at a point where there's so many other offensive builds that require you to sacrifice way less, I am not impressed.  It's not useless, but it's not exactly very good either.

[Reiska]

I can add a bit on IZJS Monk: It's basically a tank job.  They have the highest HP of any job in the game, Poles have solid evasion stats, and as mentioned they get some healing (and in FF12, having your tank be the main healer isn't a terrible strategy because you can set them up to gambit MT healing on their own HP being low and stuff).  Unarmed is almost never worth using, but it's there.  IIRC they have nearly the best damage of the Light Armor jobs in IZJS, though they still lose to Heavy Armor jobs in damage output because of lacking Heavy Armor's +STR.

[Captain K]

FFRK:  Those characters that you said are kind of like monks get monk skills here.  Josef, Sabin, Tifa, Snow out of the ones released so far.  Josef is the best of the lot with second highest attack stat in the game after Sephiroth and two useful record materia compared to most characters having 0 useful.

[hinode]

Also DeNA loses points for making Snow a generic monk and only very recently in JP giving him heavy armor + knight skills so he can tank like he's supposed to.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Is this still happening? I liked this.

[Meeplelard]

So we have done all the jobs from Final Fantasy 1 with the exception of one job.  There's a very clear angle to take for the next job, and that is definitely...



DRAGOON

...yes, I'm skipping Red Mage, and before someone comes after me with a rusty spork and a sharpened tin can (yes, I'm referring to YOU), let me explain why:

Red Mage, despite what you may think, is not as common a recurring job.  in fact, many games you'd think it'd show up it actually hasn't; to give you an idea, there's not a single Red Mage character in the franchise yet (there are ones who come close like Terra/Celes or Lightning, but no actual Red Mage), which is why I'm skipping that and going onto the most emo of jobs...you'd think that'd be Dark Knight but this job tends to attract the emo freaks, so we're going to it!

Dragoon is best defined by being the Lance wielding guys who can use Jump and...honestly, that's about the extent of them!  They usually are Dragon themed, sometimes have some move that effects MP, and generally use Heavy Armor making them sort of tanky.  How do they hold up through the games? LET'S FIND OUT!

Final Fantasy 2: Ok, technically, Ricard was the first one and it started here, so I feel obligated to at least acknowledge him.  Thing is, besides design and plot, he has nothing that really suggests Dragoon.  Heck, in older versions, his primary weapon is a Sword, not a spear though in Dawn of Souls and later, he has a bunch of spear levels, joins with a spear, and Wyvern Lance is his ultimate aftergame.  Not much else to say; he's an FF2 character after-all.

Final Fantasy 3 (NES): Dragoons are garbage until Saronia; this is intentional since you get no gear until then.  At Saronia, you either use 4 Dragoons or die a horrible death to Garuda.  After Saronia, Dragoons are...actually not half bad.  They have low Vitality so they're not as tanky as you'd expect, but with Blood Lance (which is really good here!), and Jump (which is 3x damage), Dragoons are definitely a viable choice, and some bosses can be cheesed with multiple Jump shenanigans.  They're workable the entire game once they get gear, which is a win for a game like this.

Final Fantasy 3 (DS): Well, Dragoons are useful out of the gate thanks to Thunder Spears being available immediately.  They still get Blood Lance which is still good, but otherwise, outside of Garuda and the ability to murder things weak to Wind, they're not all that great...unless you get Gungnir which is really damned good of course, but that's a big "if" seeing as it's either grind Thief, hold off on Odin, or pray the RNG Gods are nice to you.  To Dragoon's credit, in the final dungeon, they can item cast Holy through the Holy Lance (something unique to them due to how Item casting works), which while not usually good, is handy for that physical immune tentacle and does big damage.  Otherwise?  Dragoons mostly exist for Blood Lance jump cheese and little else here.  Also, they retain their "frail by armored class standards" distinction here.

Final Fantasy 4 (2D): Ok, so I have to talk about this in 2 parts, because the Advance version made significant changes here.  First off, the original!  Talking about Kain anytime before he rejoins is pointless; the early game is basically "Enemies suck" so Kain vs. Cecil is pointless here.  Between Zot and the Sealed Gate, Kain's not that bad actually; elemental weapons can be used to exploit weaknesses, he's a 2nd character who can take a damned hit which is rare in FF4, gets elemental resistances which is nice for the likes of Rubicante, and overall just works as a warm body.  Then he leaves, and rejoins and he's...pretty bad.  See, one major thing that changes between leaving and rejoining?  Damage standards.  Cecil has gotten some major upgrades (Excalibur) and is still got one more coming, Rydia is starting to get her high level spells, Edge finally is getting store-bought shurikens and his weapons are stronger combined with better speed (thus more hits), Kain...rejoins with a weapon that is worse than potentially what he left with (namely Defender).  Avenger, which is a damn nice weapon mid-game, is suddenly not going to cut it anymore, since you're basically forcing Kain to act in a way that compromises his tanking just to be subpar.  Then he gets Holy Lance, a weapon that is barely stronger than the Defender, a weapon available before he leaves that gives a stat boost, and even with Jump, Cecil w/ Ragnarok out damages him. The only good things about Kain there are his ability to take a hit, but now Rosa's healing is way better, Edge is not as frail as before, so Kain's really just there for a 5th slot...

...and this stands out way more in the Advance version where suddenly competition exists and just about all 5 of them are cleanly better, as are the other 3 of the original final 5 (Cecil is forced.)  His failings are just more obvious and you really have no reason to use him other than unlocking his challenge in the aftergame dungeon.

"But Meeple, Abel's Lance is super awesome!"

You're right, it is really good, but it's not saving Kain for all of the following reasons:
-Kain's Trial is one of the later trials in the dungeon, which means you're stuck with Kain not using that weapons until then.
-To get Kain's Trial, you need to beat Zeromus with Kain in your team.  This means either being forced to use Holy Lance/Defender Kain, which we just established is pretty bad, or get a weapon like Piggy Stick or Gigant Axe which makes him passable but still-worse than every other character, and then beat the final dungeon a 2nd time, which kind of defeats the purpose.
-Even if you get a Piggy Stick or Gigant Axe, there's still a non-negligible part of the dungeon you're required to use Kain with pre-aftergame weapons

And to make all this worse, there's nothing Kain can really get in terms of RNG to save him.  Yes, there's the Dragon Lance which helps against Dragon opponents but that's final dungeon only and against enemies that only really appear in the latter half of the dungeon, when you don't fight many Dragons anymore.

Basically, Kain's solid in the mid-game, and pretty bad in the late game, with a saving grace that comes too late to really do him any good.

Final Fantasy 4 (3D): ...and unfortunately for him, he's not really much better here, but for different reasons.  They did fix his weapon issue such that Holy Lance is now only marginally worse than Ragnarok instead of laughably worse, so his damage is better, but different problems arise, namely new algorithms.  On paper, he should still be a tank, but his vitality is way worse than Cecil's that it's notice-able how much worse he is at taking hits.  On top of that, you only need one tank in the game thanks to Draw Attacks and Cecil is a hell of a lot better at that.  Weaknesses are much worse so having that Ice Lance vs. Rubicante won't mean much, nor that Ogre Axe for the occasional Ogre enemy.  Add in how his low magic defense is now obviously notice-able and he's not really reliable on durability.  He can use the Onion Equips which is cool, but good luck getting them, and to his credit, he can get a lot of elemental resistance to pair with a Cursed Ring for the final dungeon, so I guess he's not all bad in that regard, but my point is basically "no they didn't really fix him."  I'll give points to the fact that he has plenty of room for a combination of the double item effectiveness + Salve combo making him a makeshift healer off his decent speed, but otherwise, there's little to really argue on his behalf.  What should be a 2nd tank to alleviate Cecil's job just doesn't pan out.

Final Fantasy 5: ...and just when you think I couldn't make Dragoons seem worse than Kain, THESE GUYS pop up.  At least Kain had windows of moments where he was good and was a better warm body than most of your team at most points, but here?  Dragoons are just bad.  So first let's talk about the good!  Javelin is a damn good weapon available early that if you can get 2 of them and Equip Lance OR Dual Wield early, (...yes, I'm being unreasonable, shut up), you can make a lot of use of them.  Also, Dragon Sword is a free action to restore MP on Mages, that's a thing!  Otherwise?  We have a Job that relies on a weapon that can't be double gripped, has no real statistical advantage (worst Vitality and Strength of armored jobs save Mystic Knight with no passives to pass to Freelancer/Mime, so literally no reason to master it other than completion), and skillset that is utterly limited.  The only reason this isn't the "Worst Job in the game" is because Berserker exists, and Berserker is only arguably worse than Dragoon.  Let that sink in!

Final Fantasy 6: I probably shouldn't count this since it's more a set up used by Mog, Edgar or Imps, but it's there so I feel I should acknowledge it.  Basically, it's a decent physical set up end game and little else to say about it.

Final Fantasy 7: Just like FF6, probably not worth mentioning but Cid is clearly inspired by Dragoons, using a Lance, getting *3* Jump based skills, and Dragon is even reminiscent of Dragon Sword from FF5.  I wouldn't say Cid is a Dragoon but he's clearly Dragoon inspired, and thus feel I should at least give him the HM.

Final Fantasy 9: Freya is the Dragoon here and falls under the "Fighter" classification.  She does have some odd quirks like Reis' Wind for early MT Regen (during an arc where you have no dedicated healer to boot), and Luna is basically an Auto-Battle skill if you just want to finish things fast.  Also, Dragon's Crest is overhyped, I cannot emphasize this enough.  You get it when you get the Holy Lance, a late game weapon that is actually Freya's real Ultimate if you can get Strength Holy (which yes, she can get, if limited options), and she can plug out pretty sick numbers with her physical set up properly.  Dragon Crest requires 100 Dragon kills to get 9999, but hey, you don't need 9999, just some high damage right?  Well, the thing is, the high damage only comes when you get close to that 100 kill; at 50 kills, you only do 2500, which Freya has absolutely no problem beating out at that point with MP Attack.  So no, I don't want to hear hype about this if we're not talking challenges.  That said, FF9 has 4 classifications of characters still, and Freya is still the "fighter" class.  Ok, FINE, she also has White Draw for MP Healing but I never got a lot of use out of it.

Final Fantasy 10: Like Cid, Kimhari definitely takes cues from Dragoons despite not being one himself.  He has Lancet, spears, and Jump is his starting Ronso Rage.  Call this an Honorable Mention.

Final Fantasy 11: Dragoons are a job in this game and hell if I can say anything about this; it's FF11, I know jack and all.

Final Fantasy 12 ZIJS:  Ulhan's are Dragoons without Jump...which is seriously why they're called Ulhans.  As a result, I am not mentioning much beyond that!

Final Fantasy 13: And again, another Dragoon INSPIRED character in Fang, so...yeah, leave it at that!

Final Fantasy 14: Dragoons are a DPS Job that can use Middle Armor giving them higher physical defense and lower magic defense than non-Tanks.  They do a lot of positional damage, Jump and variants exist for extra OGCD damage that often gets you killed more than dodges damage so screw defensive measures, they use a lot of Heavy Thrust to get their damage up and generally are one of the highest DPS' in the game.  Apparently they use to be really damned awful but lots of balance tweaks have since fixed it.

Final Fantasy Tactics: Lancers are Dragoons under a different name because Daravon.  Jump is one of the few 8 Range abilities in the game, and works as a nice utility if you know how to use it.  Lack of clothing sucks though and they can't get any real way to make use of Robes save Holy Lance random Holy castings with Wizard RObe...yes I'm reaching, SHUT UP.  Javelin II is pretty fantastic if you get your hands on it, but that's another "if".  They also have one of the higher PA Growths, and Lances do have 2 Range letting them avoid counters in most cases.  They also have Ignore Height, which would be more meaningful if Teleport didn't exist but to Lancer's credit, Teleport is on the opposite side of the tree so very reasonable that you could access it on that character before Teleport (and Fly is naturally much later so that never counts).  While not a fantastic job, they don't embarrass themselves and can have some uses.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: They exist and are a Banga Job but again, I don't know enough about this, I will just acknowledge their existence here...

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: ...and here too!!!

Final Fantasy 4 The After Years: Evil Kain is a pretty stock Dragoon and he's OP because overleveled for like the 10 minutes you have him.  Kain himself when he becomes a Holy Dragoon is...actually pretty darn good.  Notably, he's physical character who has good enough equipment in terms of quality and flexibility (though missing Lunar gear does suck), gets Haste and Blink allowing him to help the White Mage in supporting, gets some key Bands.  His main competition is Ceodore who sacrifices the physical stats in favor of more White Magic, which is a fair argument for who is better at that slot, and he's pretty cleanly better than Cecil.
There's also a Ninja who pretends to be a Dragoon in Zangetsu...he sucks, and you should never use him outside of Edge's story.

Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy: I've been bad and not been acknowledging this game in previous jobs and need to make up lost ground.  As a result, the first person to respond to this post will be set on fire for the joy of the rest of the topic!  Anyway, Kain is one of the last characters you'll unlock, and he's clearly meant to be this SUPER AWESOME PHYSICAL CHARACTER!  ...and he's not.  On paper, he looks awesome because near Maxed Strength and Speed? YAY!  Then you remember Strength Up lowers Speed, so that combination of both is wasted.  Then you remember that if you get him, you probably are mostly finished with Dark Notes, and he's underleveled anyway, so not doing much help there.  AND THEN you realize he has 2 Reactive and 1 Proactive meaning you can only use 1 Strength Up on him, while Firion, Cloud and WoL can use Level 2 and 3 together, and Cloud also has a Limit, as well as Squall using Level 1/2 combined gets a similar boost and Lionheart more than makes up for the rest (Focus kind of sucks.)  So basically, Kain is intended to be awesome and is demonstrably average, with a huge "joins too late to give a crap" penalty.

Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy Curtain Call: Kain's a more normal character here so it's less hilarious that he's not nearly as good as the game wanted to pretend he was in the previous game.  Ultimately, Kain is utterly generic; he gets a Limit which is something, but he's otherwise a fighter who misses out on key abilities like Added Cut with no real gimmick whatsoever. 

Bravely Default: Valkyrie are the Dragoon Stand-in; they're basically Dragoons without the Dragon association and with a clearly gender specific name that can be used by the opposite gender...yeah, they really needed a better job name for it, but I digress.  Valkyries are pretty good, having an MT attack that costs 1 Brave with a weapon class that increases damage of MT attacks, so it's even better in practice.  Jump is a neat skill because it's apparently 3x damage, so it does in fact do more damage, Piece Default can be useful against specific bosses that abuse Default a lot, Spirit Barrier is a nifty defensive trick seeing as they don't use MP much, and...basically, the point I'm getting at is Valkyrie is a good job to invest in and one of the higher points of Dragoons despite not being a Dragoon.


I feel like I'm forgetting stuff but whatever.  And yes, the next job will also be something not FF1-related.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Final Fantasy Dimensions has a named Red Mage character! So... there's at least one!

[Meeplelard]

FINALLY moving on.  This entire post's delay is the fault of the FFRK crew! You know who you are, and thus it is only natural that I use THIS for the next image!



SUMMONER

Summoner, the job that...well...summons things.  This one I will handle a little differently.  Summoner is a fairly frequent class, but the aspect of Summons themselves is all over the place and sometimes not isolated to a class.  As a result, I will be covering summons as a whole in any games they appear in, on top of the job.  Don't like it? TOUGH!

Final Fantasy 3 (NES):  The first game with summons, two jobs being discussed here!  First off, let me note that Summons are stupid good; big MT damage that is better than ST damage in most cases and ignores split damage.  Which is why Summoner (and Sage) is a late game job, whose only real flaw is MP is a bit limited.  Anything Ramuh or higher pretty much sweeps enemies, Sage turns that into Shiva and turns even Chocobo into half-decent damage for randoms.  The MP is a bit limiting but only for Eureka.  They did make a lesser version of Summoner in Conjurer.  Conjurer has the same MP issues as Summoner, but clearly less effective, since it's effects on Ramuh and Shiva are either "something gets killed" or "entire enemy field disabled."  Ifrit's healing is pretty though the damage is good, Titan is really good for ST damage, and Odin+ you don't really use much.  It works until Summoner, in any event, and keeps Summons balanced.

Final Fantasy 3 (DS):  Ok, so Summons are similar to the original version but worse in practice for a few reasons.  First off, that near perfect status rates by Ramuh and Shiva?  Now are pretty bad.  Titan's damage got nerfed considerably, being the weakest summon (but 100% chance of damage) instead of the strongest of the initial set.  Reflect works like typical reflect thus gets healing too instead of being straight up positive, so Odin is nerfed.  One thing FF3DS does have is Bahamut and Leviathan's conjurer effects being meaningful thanks to Sage, though that's not much of a bright side (especially since Bahamut's Rend has crap accuracy.)  Another major nerf is the 3 enemy cap.  This makes MT damage far less meaningful, especially in the final dungeon where fights focus much more heavily on high HP single enemies, making MT matter even less, turning summoner into a cannon with limited resources, contrast to fighters which can do similar damage for no MP and take physical hits way better.  As a result, Summoner is overall mediocre; Evoker is alright for a stretch, but nothing special.

Final Fantasy 4 (2D):  Rydia is the summoner.  She starts the game with one Summon which is her best ST damage so I guess that's fine, then she rejoins later and Summons are...the polar opposite of Chocobo: Rydia's best source of MT damage (save Quake...no, Meteor doesn't count.)  Generally, they're more expensive, higher charge times, and not stronger enough than Black Magic to be worth it on bosses, so she's better off using her Aras despite being weaker there, and using summons for crowd control.  Leviathan of course exists for a big middle-finger to large groups until you get Bahamut, whom exists to be shear awesome that makes Meteor completely pointless (Yes, Meteor is stronger, but when Bahamut can hit 9999 regularly under the right set up, who cares?)  She also has some shaky support in Asura and Sylph.  All things considered, Summons are one of your best sources of offense, matched only by Black Magic...which is also used by Rydia...

Final Fantasy 4 (DS): Summons are first seem somewhat better than they are in the 2D version.  Same power as Aga spells gotten earlier, ignore reflect, and Rydia even joins with better gear!  Then you slowly learn that Magic has been nerfed, and summons are no exception, such that their time in the sun is pretty low.  On to of that, charge times are significantly worse, down to Bahamut now being a Meteor clone in every-way, making it go from effectively Rydia's ultimate attack to a big novelty with little practical use.  Sylph's heal for less now due to worse damage, Mist Dragon is just another element instead of having a gimmick of ITD damage based on Rydia's HP.  Overall, Summons have a good initial impression when Rydia joins but overall they're worse and Rydia ends up unimpressive as a result.

Final Fantasy 5: So...Summoner at first isn't very good...and by at first I mean about 5 minutes after getting it.  Then it gets the 3 big elementals (Ifrit, Shiva and Ramuh) and suddenly it makes you question why Black Mage is there, with elementals being stronger than Aras and split-damage ignoring...and reflect ignoring...and on a job that has higher Magic.  Look, I'll just be straight forward: Summoner is stupid good and one of the best jobs in the game.  On top of good damage, it also has a few other tricks like Golem and Carbuncle.  I could go on about all the things it has so instead I'll just mention the one thing it doesn't have: A worthwhile mastery skill in !Conjure.  Granted, with game best magic (save Oracle), you'll probably master it anyway.

Final Fantasy 6: Summons in FF6 were regulated to once per battle (GOGO DOESN'T COUNT!) and generally were unimpressive on offense.  I feel like that was intentional though; summons were meant to be hold over actions until you learned the spell, so they were weaker moves you had immediate access too.  Exceptions exist, like Alexandr and Bahamut are clearly better than their spells, but otherwise you won't use Summons at at all for damage.  The support ones, meanwhile, are actually neat.  Zoneseek, Kirin, Phantom and Carbuncle are MT effects of spells that are ST only, Fenrir and Golem are good anti-physical tricks, Starlet and Seraphim are healing that ignores Reflect (and Runic), while Siren and Stray are MT status moves.  So summons are still handy (if easily overlooked), just more for support purposes for once than shear offense.

Final Fantasy 7: Summons are pretty much awesome MT damage that just gets progressively better throughout (with weaker spells getting obsoleted).  A few have alternative uses like Choco/Mog's paralysis.  The only other note-able thing is they are limited of castings, so they don't obsolete offensive magic like in some other games, particularly on bosses which can survive summon onslaught.

Final Fantasy 8: FF8 has a bajillion ways to break the game, GFs are probably one of the more obvious ways that even a casual can stumble upon.  Big MT damage that lasts the entire game that either is draw-back free damage, OR has a long charge time that isn't as bad as it sounds because it offers an HP buffer for the character.  On top of that, there's also ones like Cerberus for MT Double/Triple, Carbuncle for MT Reflect, and Doomtrain to insure you have access to Vit-0 at anytime without using your Meltdown stock.  To be fair, for FF8 game breaking, GFs are on the lower end, but they still break the game so they're obviously still very potent, and that's more a testament to just how much ridiculous stuff FF8 has.  FF8 also has Auto-Summons in Odin for "everything dies before you act",  Phoenix for MT Resurrection that saves you, and Gilgamesh for random damage/instant death/hilarity, because that's exactly what the game needed!

Final Fantasy 9: As I keep saying, FF9 has only 4 kinds of characters; in this case, both White Mages are also summoners.  Garnet's in particular have the effect of making Vivi seem less meaningful for most points, since she can do the same kind of damage but also heal, and has more health.  Eiko more relies on Madeen for her summon damage, but also gets MT positive status through various versions of Carbuncle, and MT Resurrection in Phoenix.  I wouldn't call them broken but they're potent enough and being put on your white mages, you'll probably be using them at least somewhat.

Final Fantasy 10: Yuna is broken because she has summons.  That's really all it comes down to.  Big meat shields that protect your entire team capable of good damage with absurd finishers (Overdrives have too much recharge time to be much else), there really isn't much else to say. 

Final Fantasy 11: Summoner exists in this game, don't know anything about it, I think they get adorable carbuncles...so here's an FF11 Carbuncle Picture!


Final Fantasy 12: Summons exist in the form of summoning the FFT Zodiacs, FF1-5 Final Bosses, and some pointless newcomer who no one cares about.  This sounds cool on paper but in practice it's not worth much, the issue being that you lose everyone but the summoner, and the big attack being used isn't as strong as you'd like.  You generally blow too much resources on it as well.  I hear IZJS buffed summons notably and removed the damage cap making their big final attack actually meaningful.

Final Fantasy 13: So Summons are a thing you can do that cost 3 CP and the closest thing the game has to Limit Breaks I guess.  It leads to getting a temporary ally who is really good at insuring your point PC doesn't die, then you have the option of going into a super form that is basically invincible and free damage.  I honestly rarely used them outside of Adamantoise hunting with Vanille because of the automatic toppling, but someone with more experience to FF13 may beg to differ!

Final Fantasy 14: Summoner is one of two jobs offered by Arcanist, the pet class that gets adorable Carbuncles.  Summoner's case, they can summon mini-versions of Ifrit, Titan and Garuda for extra damage, tanking or support (which is just ranged damage) respectively.  This makes summoners quite good at the whole "DPS" thing on top of Summoners having a lot of Damage over Time skills, a resurrection spell handy for getting your healers back if you lose them, more Damage over Time skills, and moves that assist your pet Summon like telling them to use a big awesome move once every few minutes!  From what I understand, because of all the variables, Summoner has some of the highest DPS since Heavenward.

Final Fantasy Tactics: Summoners are really good here, with Summon being one of the best skillsets in the game.  3 Pane damage that is cheap, effective AND lacks friendly fire, some healing, a full screen anti-physical move, status, even a boss buster in Lich, Summon has everything!  It also gets some 4 panel attacks later on like Bahamut, because why not. Summoners themselves are alright, but unlike FF5, there's a bigger reason to care about the Black Mage analog and that's because they do the whole summoning thing better than Summoners due to higher MA.  Granted, this still means you'll be using Summoner a lot just to learn skills and Summoner isn't exactly a slouch at it, and unlike Black Mage, they can run something like Summon, Math Skill AND still have adequate stats on top of that.  Basically, it's a repeat in the other direction of what I said for Black Mage in FFT:  Similar to the FF5 scenario only not as nearly one sided since Wizard has it's niches over Summoner.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance:  Summoner in this game appears to be a toned down version of the FFT one...and also has Phoenix which is Holy elemental (as opposed to the usual Fire) because why not?  I forget if they have friendly fire but the range of the attacks seem pretty crazy if I'm looking at this right.  They also have a number of positive status moves on top of that...and only Viera can use them because reasons.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: ...seems pretty much a repeat of FFTA1, which honestly isn't really shocking, so moving on!

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7: So sometimes during a Modulating Phase, Zack's Limit will be replaced with Summon mode, letting him summon Ifrit, Bahamut, Bahamut's Fury (...seriously, Kitase and Toriyama, stop making up Bahamuts and just use the ones that already exist!  FF7 ALREADY HAD 3 FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, THEN YOU ADD A BUNCH MORE IN THE COMPILATION AND FF13-2! STOP THAT!!!  And that's not even factoring in Lunar and Dark Bahamut of FF4...), Odin and Phoenix.  The first 3 are just raw damage, MT damage at that, which is free so cool unless Ifrit is summoned on something that resists Fire.  Odin is instant death, which you don't want against bosses because that means he interrupted ANOTHER potential limit, and Phoenix is fire damage (see Ifrit) but with adding Reraise which is awesome.

Final Fantasy 12 Revenant Wings:  Shouldn't bring this up but the entire game is about summoning espers and sending them out as an army and...yeah, kind of integral here, is what I'm saying!

Final Fantasy 4 The After Years: So Rydia loses her summons like immediately, doesn't get them back until halfway into the game at which point I believe she learns Quake soonish and summons kind of are uninspired as a result.  Leviathan's her best overall for power and MTness, as you won't get Bahamut until stupid late.  Seeing as how limited you are to using them, there's not much else to say about them and it's very possible to miss summons outright since you have to not kill them.

Dissidia and Duodecim: Lumping these together because it's easier!  Summons in this game mostly exist as a Brave fluctuating action that can have varying effects.  Everyone can use it once per battle, and the effects vary from "random chance to break" to "swap brave' to "lock brave" to "Ultros comes out and inks the field making Brave invisible because he's a freaking troll."

Theatrhythm and Curtain Call: Summoners in this game I guess are defined by those who get Boost.  The problem is you don't care because Boost is generally strong enough to one shot any enemy anyway, so it's a waste of a slot.  Summons are really strong when they activate (once per BMS) but they have the downside of capping damage to one enemy, so any overflow is ended, which can suck at higher levels.  Curtain Call had an extra gimmick where stronger summons were more strict to summon and failures were chocobos.  So yes, KotR is stronger than everything but if you hit a single "Good" during the highlight phase, you've failed.  Conversely, Ifrit isn't special but you can fail a few notes and still get him.

Record Keeper: Summons are big MT damage, sounds good...until you realize how hard getting the good ones are and how they have half the charges of like every other attack.  On top of that, Black Mages with 4* or higher get access to potent MT damage anyway, so the Summons here don't mean much.  The best use of Summons tend to be from what I can tell stuff like Carbuncle for MT Buffs that can be handy against particular fights.

Bravely Default: So you get this big expensive awesome looking attack that is MT in the game...only to find out that it's not as strong as you'd like and clearly overpriced.  That's BD summons in a nutshell.  They're not horrible but they do tend to disappoint and there are a bunch of other avenues to do big damage, and unlike Black Mage, they don't really have MP flexibility unless you sacrifice their skill-set specifically to something else, at which point I feel you might as well use that base job and put something more conventionally useful.  Of course, there's a 2nd summoning job, CONJURER! ...which is gotten REALLY late and all it does is big buffs on self and isn't really good enough to justify being gotten late.  Not exactly Summoner's finest performance here...


I think that should cover them all!

[DjinnAndTonic]

That is a lot of games... no wonder this update took forever.

FF Dimensions: Summoner is 'other option for healing' class. If you don't want a White Mage for whatever, Summoner is basically your only choice. Works nicely as a secondary healer. Has a solid damage skillset, though the cast times are kind of a downer. Best use of the Summoner seems to be to get awesome mid-game F-Abilities.

[hinode]

I feel like FF5 Golem deserves some extra love for being the clear king of anti-physical options in a game that has a ton available. It absorbs (Lvl + 20)*50 HP worth of physical damage, which is way more than squishier classes will have for pretty much the entire game, plus it means you won't suffer from any status effects attached to the physical so you basically auto-win vs the Dragon Pod boss. It singlehandedly invalidates pretty much any boss that relies on physical damage, as well as anything vulnerable to berserk (except Shinryu, and Golem can even work there with some planning).

FF6 and FFT Golem are quite good in their own right, but the former is OPB and the latter is more limited on what it can absorb compared to its FF5 counterpart. FF5 Golem is one of the best support moves ever, the sort of thing that could singlehandedly salvage a mediocre skillset by itself. Instead, it's attached to the single best offensive skillset in FF5.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Yeah Golem is pretty amazing. I also feel the need to point out that even the pre-elemental stage of Summoner isn't that bad, Chocobo is a 30-power move which outdamages L1 spells and all-pre-fire-crystal weapons usable by non-freelancers, and Remora is the best way to inflict paralysis until World 3.

FFD summoner is the best source of MT damage in that game, but actually balanced about this unlike FF5 (via charge times and enemies having more HP). I'm a bit less sold on it as a healer because of its higher charge times than white magic (dragoon and dancer cover the alternate healer role better because they lack these), but it does help round out the skillset certainly. BD probably a went too far in the FF5ish attempt to balance Summoner, although at least its MP costs aren't as bad in practice as they first appear because you start getting Chemist/other sources of MP healing soon after.

[Cotigo]

FF5 summoner is like the only class you ever need. I'm not even entirely sure you need healing up until you get Golem and Carbuncle, if you were doing an SCC, and after that you really don't need healing.

You keep saying that FF9 has only 4 classes. Can you elaborate on that? I mean I get that Garnet and Eiko are basically the same character, but I thought there was some variation in the skills the physical characters got at least?

[Meeplelard]

It's because the 4 Fighters all ultimately end up being very similar and their differences are minor.  When all is said and done, they all end up having their optimal damage be fight.  Yes, Steiner has Shock, but who cares about 9999 damage off an expensive move when he does almost as much damage with his basic physical set up properly?  Yes, Armarant has a healing move...which kind of sucks and doesn't see use.  Freya has MT Regen that doesn't last long and obsoleted by Auto Regen, etc.

All the perks people bring ultimately end up being very minor and when all is said and done, Garnet and Eiko had similar differences as the fighters had: they're both healers who can use summons for damage but Garnet has more summons/status and less support, Eiko otherway around, but they are very minor factors overall; you're using them, it's for the healing + summon damage combo.

Vivi and Quina are the only 2 characters who really stand out.  Vivi's a primary source of Elemental damage for a large part of the game, and has things like stop and Break, ways to get AP without EXP IOWs should that matter.  Quina has a whole bunch moves ranging from actually useful (White Wind and Angel Snack some MT Healing tricks), sounds great but really isn't (Mighty Guard, for example, sounds amazing but given the MP Cost and the duration, you almost never find a practical use for it) to gimmicky (L5 Death as an obvious example) to flat out bad.  Nonetheless, the two actually stand out.  The 4 Fighters all end up being very similar in the grand scheme of things with minor gimmicks that don't really make a whole lot of difference, and I think Garnet vs. Eiko is pretty self explanatory.

The variation is bigger in challenge playthroughs I suppose, things like LLGs where suddenly Dragon's Crest is meaningful because it's damage is independent stats and levels, when in a normal game it's absolute garbage.  The DL also makes some bigger deviation since a lot of quirks about FF9's skill system are ignored, such like how all fighters are really running off 2.25x the physical damage listed in the topic due to MP Attack + Beast/Bird/Demon Slayer covering almost every enemy in the game.

[Meeplelard]

TIME FOR AN OVERDUE UPDATE!  Call this a Happy Halloween thing, which actually fits given one of the classes we will be talking about!  Which one you ask?  Why, none other than...



BLUE MAGE

Like Summoner, I'll actually be handling not just the job, the corresponding skillsets.  Blue Mage isn't that common of a class in the franchise, but Blue Magic itself very much is, so I'll be jumping between the class and the skillset based off the situation.

In any event, Blue Mage or Blue Magic is defined by that skill-set learned from monsters in a way.  The traditional method is being hit by it, and being all "hey, I got nuked by a spell, I KNOW THIS SPELL NOW!"  How this works, I don't know, it's fantasy logic, and the first person who tries to explain it in a rational way WILL be subjected to the pit of Eternal Brahne...and yes, that still exists.

There are some mainstay spells, or themes throughout the series, like L# Spells, White Wind, Goblin Punch (aka a spell that sucks but does ludicrous damage if target's level = caster's level), etc.  Frankly, a lot of these moves are so oddball they'd fit into Pokemon...which actually makes a lot of sense now that I think about it.  Without further ado...THE ANALYSIS!!!

Final Fantasy 4: ...what?  Yeah, ok, no traditional Blue Magic, but I felt like I should bring it up since there was very much a precursor to it.  Rydia's Monster Summons do show shades of ideas that would become Blue Magic, for example, the Goblin Summon functions pretty much the same way as Goblin Punch, and Bomb is basically Proto-Exploder/Self Destruct/Sacrifice...without the downside.  Not much to say, this is more an honorable mention than anything else.

Final Fantasy 5: And this is where the concept really began! Blue Mage is an early obtained job that is decent at first glance, and downright absurd with knowledge of the game.  Enemy spells were clearly not built with fighting enemies with immunities in mind, but geared towards PCs with limited amounts, and it shows.  This is part of why I believe Blue Magic is so crazy.  The number of ways around bosses and holes in their resistances and tricks you can exploit thanks to Blue Magic is outright ludicrous, such like Dark Shock + L# Spells being one of the trademarks.  It also has the Aero series which while Aeroga is a little weaker than the Agas, it's got the advantage of being boostable by just about every Job thanks to Air Knives, and is still passable enough on damage to get away with it, White Wind for MT Healing that's legitimately good (circumstances permitting), which is a big deal given the stretch between Cura and Curaga has limited healing,  even 1000 Needles sees some use due to it's early access. 
But it's not just Blue Magic that's strong (...understatement...), Blue Mage itself is fairly competent itself, being a rather well rounded job.  First off, it gets Rods, so it can sling Black Magic and Summons just fine thanks to strengthening them, as well as break Rods for big damage early.  Next off, Shields, so it's tankier thank it appears at first glance, and to top it off, Swords.  Yeah, crappy strength, but a legitimate weapon means it's damage at last registers for randoms instead of being laughable, giving it a free option (also, it can make use of Excalipoor's attack with Goblin Punch as a bonus perk, so it can have a legit weapon in World 3 even if you don't sequence break for Enhancer.) 
All in all, Blue Mage is ridiculously good; it very much reminds me of Knight in that it's initial showing is arguably it's best...oh yeah, I didn't mention Mighty Guard did I?  Because that's totally awesome too!

Final Fantasy 6: ...pity that they recognized how unfairly good Blue Magic was balanced in FF5 and thus hit it with major nerf sticks across the board.  Ok, I'll be fair to Strago, in that Lores in and of themselves aren't actually that bad.  Aqua Rake is stronger than Level 2's, and hits 2 harder to apply elements, Aero is an Aga level spell that can be obtained early, Big Guard is MT Shell and Protect, two spells you struggle to MT, and Grand Train is actually not half bad as an ultimate.  So what's Lores problems?  Magic skillset exists.  Lores compete directly with Magic, and generally lose in most areas, more so than other skillsets at that.  At least with abilities like Blitz and Tools, they are free or use a different resource, but Lores really are just "alternative to Magic" and in most cases not a good one, since Magic does most of what Lores can do but better.  That wouldn't be so bad for Strago if Strago himself was a better Mage, but he's shockingly kind of iffy at it.  Magic isn't as high as you'd expect and he joins late, and isn't an early recruit for most people in the WoR, lacking an incentive the way Cyan or Umaro do (awesome rewards along the way) nor being trivially easy the way Gau or Terra are.  Strago and Lores ultimately are a case of "they look fine on paper, but are just kind of outclassed notably." 
As for why Lores are unimpressive?  Well, for starters, L5 Death now hits resistance so it has to make both a level check and instant death check, L3 Muddle is a more restrictive version of one of Edgar's Tools AND one of your Espers, both available earlier.  Exploder and Pep Up are laughable, Revenger is bad too, Blow Fish gotten well after 1000 damage is worth something, Force Field gotten too late to matter, and Quasar is literally worse than Grand Train in every-way that matters just adding a redundant skill to a skillset that needs stand out abilities.  I could go on; that's really Lores problems.  Too many catches on moves, and the ones without them are just kind of ok, and it compares unfavorably to a universal skillset that stronger characters can use.  To strago's credit, it is easier for him to learn Blue Magic, since he simply has to be alive without a handful of a specific status when the spell is cast.  Doesn't even have to survive the encounter!

And let me address the elephant in the room: GAU IS NOT A BLUE MAGE!! Yes, he uses Monster attacks but it functions completely differently than how every other Blue Mage or Blue Magic in the series.  He is his own thing and is not being covered here for that reason.

Final Fantasy 7: Enemy Skill Materia is the stand in for Blue Magic, and goes back to the "Must be hit by the attack!" standard, as well as going back to being stupidly good.  Unlike FF5, FF7's variation is more straight forward in how good it is, being more about "wow, these spells are strong" or "that effect will be handy!" instead of obtuse tricks the game wasn't prepared for.  The real kicker though is it's all placed on ONE MATERIA.  You get the same variety you would from the Magic Skillset, and in many ways superior tricks (Big Guard obsoletes the Barrier Materia save for Reflect for example), but you only need one Materia slot.  To add insult to injury, it's a Materia that doesn't use AP, so shoving it on a Growthless Slot has no negative impact, and it's not like it caps out early or anything either.  Beta and Aqualung compete with the level 3's (Trine to a lesser extent too), Magic Breath is even better, and Pandora's Box competes well with Ultima, albeit gotten somewhat later, as does Shadow Flare with the ST spells.  White Wind is an MT Healing spell that also heals status, only catch of course is can't be used by low HP characters (well, the Esuna aspect can be!)  Magic Hammer for limited MP Healing, Dragon Force for Defense twinking...really, the list goes on!  It's like they felt they went too far in FF5, so nerfed it in FF6 and realized they went too far there, and then tried to rebalance it...forgetting WHY they nerfed it in the first place.  I'm not sure it's BETTER than the FF5 version, but how it's good is a lot easier to demonstrate and a lot more obvious about it's strength.

Final Fantasy 8: I feel like Square threw their arms up at Enemy Skill after making them too strong in one game and not strong enough in another and just decided to balance it by making it a Limit Break now.  I guess it worked though it's also unmemorable.  It's functional, has some gimmick tricks like Disintegrator and is generally consistent, even has a good ultimate attack in Shockwave Pulsar which has BDL (granted, most Limits can BDL due to multi-hits, so not as big as it sounds.)  Not much else to say other than it exists.  I guess I should note you get it via items.

Final Fantasy 9: Quina has probably the most annoying method for getting Blue Magic, namely Pokemon style on a character whose damage is random and often sucks.  That aside, Blue Magic to me always felt underwhelming.  As I explained in the previous post, Quina has a handful of good moves, but a lot of things ranging from "good on paper but not really", "only good in challenges" and "outright bad" so refer to my previous post about a lot of that.  Quina him/herself doesn't really have much going for him/her either; Gillionaire is a quirk I suppose, but as a whole, Quina lacks damage unless you build up Frog Squash rather high and conditional damage in FF9 tends to be the slowest form of damage building (Thievery and Dragon's Crest aren't much different in this regard.)

Final Fantasy 10: Kimhari is your Blue Mage here.  Kimhari's an interesting character in that he can be whatever you want and how good he is depends really on what path you take him down and how quickly you break him down there.  As a result, he's a pretty damn big wild card.  His Ronso Rages are...kind of underwhelming I feel?  Sacrifice is legitimately really strong but has the obvious downside, so it's a "use sparingly" move not that FF10 Overdrives can be spammed (ENTRUST DOESN'T COUNT!)  His method learning is pretty simple and straight forward: Use Lancet on an enemy that has the move, get it, and even gives him a full gauge to practice the move right after!  As an added perk, FF10 is generally very good at the whole "KIMHARI CAN LEARN THIS!" thanks to Scan.

Final Fantasy 11: Blue Mages...are...a thing...that exists.  Looking at the game, it seems Blue Mages have a hell of a lot of spells and I don't know how someone can keep up with that nonsense.  I don't know much about FF11, but I do know Blue Mages in this game have a very unique aesthetic at least?




Final Fantasy Tactics: Mostly noting that yes, there are ways to learn spells Blue Mage style, and Ultima is one of them, but no, Blue Mages as we conventionally know them or Blue Magic doesn't exist.  I personally blame that guy.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Lookinga t Blue Mage, they have a lot of the usual skills you expect them too, like White Wind, Bad Breath, Mighty Guard, etc.  I can't speak for how effective they are, but apparently it's worth noting that to learn some of these skills, you must have a Beast Master to make monsters use them on them.  Worth noting that a number of Blue Mage moves are physical as well as magical on damage, so that "mixed fighter" vibe is there.  Weapon wise, they're similar to FF5 except no Shields, and they have a specific kind of sword in "Sabre."  Also, they're isolated to Humes.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: pretty much the same as FFTA1, since the games didn't really change much!

Final Fantasy 10-2: Gun Mage is the Blue Mage, even down to learning moves the old "Get hit by" it method.  They have your standard "weird gimmicky moveset" a Blue Mage has but also can do 4x damage vs. various species with their Non-Blue Magic.  I seem to recall them being effective so yeah.

Bravely Default: Vampire is a Blue Mage...though really more of a "Blue Fighter" because everything they have is physical, but the idea is very clearly there.  Vampire is a pretty damn strong job, only thing holding it back is you get Dark Knight before it and Vampire is a pain to get, so you might be turned off, but as a late game job, Vampire does have a lot going for it.  High MT damage, lots of Debuffs, parasitic healing for HP and MP, among other things.   Interesting to note that Vampires have an S in Rods despite being clearly a physical job (though they do have an S in Knives and an A in Swords, so it's not like they're totally gimped), stats are fairly middling overall too.  They learn magic in the traditional "get hit from move" way.  It's a very solid job in it's own right and as I said, the one thing really holding it back is the existence of Dark Knight, a job that is stupid good and yeah you get the idea.


And that, as they say, is that </Maechan>

[Grefter]

This is all you need to know about why Quistis is the best blue mage and why she is the best character in FF8.

[Captain K]

[Meeplelard]

I realize I left off Gun Mage from FF10-2, which is very much 10-2's Blue Mage; I'll add that in when I have time, but for now noting "yes, I screwed up."

[superaielman]

Re Yang in FF4: One thing he really deserves credit for (And Edge to a much lesser extent) is trivializing Evil Masks. I think he's better than even Cecil at the end in 4a/PSP just for the evil things he does to some of the top tier randoms in the final dungeon.

*Stare* That FF 8 comic... actually that explains way, way too much about Squall and the game in general. Dear god.

[SnowFire]

Bravely Default: Vampire is a Blue Mage...though really more of a "Blue Fighter" because everything they have is physical, but the idea is very clearly there.  Vampire is a pretty damn strong job, only thing holding it back is you get Dark Knight before it and Vampire is a pain to get, so you might be turned off, but as a late game job, Vampire does have a lot going for it.  High MT damage, lots of Debuffs, parasitic healing for HP and MP, among other things.   Interesting to note that Vampires have an S in Rods despite being clearly a physical job (though they do have an S in Knives and an A in Swords, so it's not like they're totally gimped), stats are fairly middling overall too.  They learn magic in the traditional "get hit from move" way.  It's a very solid job in it's own right and as I said, the one thing really holding it back is the existence of Dark Knight, a job that is stupid good and yeah you get the idea.

Vamps -can- learn Magic-based Vampirism skills off wandering Norende Nemesises, who have the best Black Magic inexplicably reclassified as Vampirism - Firaja, etc.  One of the Nemesies that slings this isn't a grossly overlevel aftergame enemy, too (like ~L30 or L40 or so?).  If you can grab it, then Vampirism suddenly becomes the best Magic skillset and obsoletes Black Magic & Summon (Firaja is forced MT, no split damage penalty, and better than Dark / Firaga), and is probably better than Time Magic too, off just 1-2 totally broken spells.  Balance!

[DragonKnight Zero]

Random scattered thoughts:

FF4 Dragoon: Much as I enjoyed jumping with Blood Lance for draining and self sustaining attributes, it gives up damage and durability.  So it may not help reduce Rosa's MP consumption in the end.  Oh well.

FF6 Jump: Has command priority which at least has some unique defensive gimmicks like sending someone in the air while Nerapa is Condemning the party.  Or is all command input disabled before he's done; been so long since I played unmodded FF6 that I forget.

FF8 Blue Mage: Players are unlikely to have Shockwave Pulsar unless they specifically grind for it due to the requirements (Lv 100! Siren and 100 Curse Spikes).  Ray Bomb is FAQ bait and White Wind is out of the way and easily missed by someone not deliberately seeking it out.  Chocobo World can get around this though how many people have access to that?

[Meeplelard]

Late, but the Blood Lance doesn't even heal Kain a good amount given how much damage he does.  It kills his stats, accuracy, and well...just about everything all so he can break Flan defense IF the thing decides to hit (Blood Lance is one of the very few fighter-weapons that can actually whiff entirely without Blind status.  You may have noticed that a "miss" only comes up when using a Bow, or a Rod or some such.  Blood Lance is kind of really special in this regard), it's an abysmal weapon and probably one of the worst non-joke weapons (eg Excalipoor doesn't count) ever created in the franchise.  No surprise the weapon has very limited appearances after FF4, if ever appearing again (Blood Sword by contrast keeps popping up)

Anyway, I'll have an update for tomorrow.  Sorry I've been lagging but work and such.

[Meeplelard]

I'm going in a completely different direction in this update...it's a one time thing but damn it, I wanna do it because reasons!  Anyway, today we are talking about...



...pretty much exactly what the image says...well more focusing on the parent thing.  Anyway, I'm looking at the protagonists in the series, and their parental situation and basically assessing how good/bad (usually the latter!) they had it.  I will factor in adopted parents, not sure about orphanage situations...shut up FF8...

Final Fantasy 1:  These characters are made on an assembly line, therefor doesn't count, NEXT!!!

Final Fantasy 2: Apparently, backstory factors of FF2 from the Novella are canon even though the novella changes the story directly...yeah, I dunno, but this is FF2 so I have nothing to work with so damn it I'm going with it!  Anyway, Firion apparently had actual parents and grew up with them...then they died in a plague when he was like 10, so old enough to actually care, lived on the streets, got found by Maria/Leon's family, and was adopted by them, and lived happily with his adopted family (which eventually included some crazy wild boy who can talk to animals because apparently that's totally safe...it actually worked out here but shut up)...until they were brutally slaughtered by the Emperor and they ran to Fynn.  Luckily, he was 18 by then, so old enough to take care of himself!  Yeah, I dunno; on one hand, he lost *2* sets of parents so it's pretty shitty, but then what jRPG character lacks tragedy?  Outside of that, he had a pretty ok-life; losing his birth parents sucks, but he managed to move on and form a second family with Maria's, and apparently was content there, so he's probably one of the better ones off in this regard.

Final Fantasy 3: Whether it's the Onion Knights or Luneth, it doesn't matter; they have the same backstory...well, no, because the Onion Knights were brothers and Luneth is an only child, but I digress, we're going to simplify this to Luneth.  Luneth lost his family at an age "too young to remember anything" and was adopted by people in Ur.  Considering this, he's got it pretty well off; it's sad he doesn't remember his real birth parents because he was too young, but he was raised by a loving mother and father, and worth noting BOTH SURVIVE to the end of the game, with not a single ounce of tragedy.  Simply says "bye mom, going on an adventure!" and then comes back "hey mom, guess what? I saved the world! Also I befriended a princess...no, we're just friends, and she's totally going out with her body guard anyway."

Final Fantasy 4: I'm assuming the DS version backstory here because FF4 2D gives us very little to work with.  I'll just note what it does tell us is KluYa existed, he was from the moon and Cecil SOMEHOW ended up in Baron...don't you love total lack of information?  Anyway, FF4DS tells us that Cecil's mom died giving birth to him, and his father died on the same day by an angry mob.  Well, isn't that pleasant?  Oh, it's ok though, he has a brother, who totally wants what's best for him...oh wait, Zemus is telling him to be bad and fucking everything up, god damn it Zemus you're bad and I don't mean in the evil villain sense!
Anyway, as much shit as this sounds, it's nowhere near that bad, because despite Zemus trying to be all BE EVIL!!! to Theodore (aka Golbez), Teddie Harvey (...wait, is that his last name?) does actually do the responsible thing of putting Cecil under a tree but in a way that's in PUBLIC NOTICE so someone will find him, and watches until someone does find him!  ...look, this is FF4's world logic, so this is totally responsible because baby Cecil could get mauled by a giant bird and he'd "get better" from dying, since that's a thing in FF4 if you are below the age of 60. 

ANYWAY, jokes aside, Cecil does get found by THE KING OF THE BIGGEST NATION IN THE WORLD who immediately adopts him and raises him as his own son.  Oddly, while Cecil does view King Baron as a father figure, I don't think he ever calls him father, and the game makes it clear that he basically is "Prince in all but name" since talking to soldiers are all going "hey Cecil, you're totally the only one qualified to take the throne now that the king is dead!" (which is why Cecil does take the throne.)  So Cecil gets practically adopted by a king, raised as a prince, lives in a castle, and the only angst about his family comes up when a disembodied voice calls him "my son"...yeah, I think Cecil had is pretty damn well despite both his parents literally dying on the same day from completely unrelated incidents.

Final Fantasy 5: Bartz grew up with his birth parents until he was like 10....that's pretty novel!  Then his mother died of something completely random and he then goes ADVENTURING!!! with his father until he was 17, when his father dies of an illness (I think he's 17 anyway; wanna say the incident happened 3 years prior FF5, and Bartz is suppose to be 20.)  All things considered, by jRPG Main standards, Bartz had it pretty ok.  Death in the family sucks, but he at least got to know his mom, and his father still took care of him throughout the rest of his childhood, and when he died, Bartz was of an age (by RPG standards) that he could deal with it and take care of himself.  On top of this, Dorgan was shown to be a pretty upstanding man, so Bartz probably was raised with proper values too...unfortunately, it seems "basic education" was not on Dorgan's agenda is Bartz's intellect is any indicator.

Final Fantasy 6: ...and here's where things start getting really depressing.  Terra's born to a human mother and an esper father, we all know the drill.  At 2 years old, her mother is killed, her father is shoved into a glass tube, and she's brought to a lab where she's experimented on for...pretty much her entire life until Kefka decides to mind control her.  Hey, it took 2 years before all the horrible stuff happened, that's something right!?  ...no, not really, Terra's basically got it as bad as you can get.  I mean, yes, her father did survive all those years...only to be killed right before reuniting.  The one remotely positive spin to Terra's parental situation is despite her father dying, an esper dying still means apparently they can talk, so Terra could still talk to her dad...for about a year, then he disappears from existence permanently...and that implies Terra held onto Maduin's Magicite when the world exploded, which given her emotional status, I assume she didn't since I get the feeling if she had her father to bounce off of, she'd have come to a realization much faster, but now that's just speculation.  POINT IS, Terra's parental situation is really damned depressing and full of tragedy.

Final Fantasy 7: At first glance, you'd think Cloud's is awful, because Cloud strikes you as someone who'd have a really bad childhood...and he kind of did!  The thing is, it wasn't related to his parents; it was related to young Cloud being the awkward little kid who had no friends...but that's an aside.  On the parent side of things, though?  Cloud says his father died when he was "very young" and doesn't remember him, so ok, sad, but Cloud doesn't seem bothered by it.  This is normal for someone to not form emotional connections with someone they barely remember.  His mother, however, raised him as a single parent until he was 14, and they seemed to have had a decent relationship.  I think it's not unfair to assume the one part of the Nibelheim Flashback that WASN'T completely wrong was the flashback stuff with Cloud's mother (and maybe Cloud going into Tifa's house, into her room, playing her piano, finding her orthopedic underwear...LOOK THIS IS ALL IMPORTANT TO RECAP OK!?), and based off that, she seems like a pretty normal mother in that regard.  She stopped raising him at 14 for positive reasons too, namely Cloud decided to move to Midgar and try to live out his dreams...didn't go as planned granted, but point is she didn't die...immediately.  No, she died 2 years later because a crazy bishie burned down Nibelheim, which while sad, Cloud did go into a coma for 5 years after, so didn't really mourn the death too much, he was too much built with rage trying to MURDER THE OVERPOWERED SUPER SOLDIER WHO BURNED DOWN HIS TOWN IN SECONDS...and somehow succeeded too...

Final Fantasy 8: If there's anything to sum up Squall's parental situation, it'd be "complicated."  I think Squall is like the only character I can think of who is an orphan despite his father being fully alive, well, and capable of raising him.  Then again, his father is Laguna, and nothing logical works there, so "orphan with a single father" somehow makes twisted sense for his son's bio.  Squall's mother, Raine, is stated to have died in childbirth...how sad.  To Squall's luck, he did get to see his mother through Ellone flashbacks at least!  That's something right?  Ok, not really, because I'm not sure Squall ever actually learns that his father is Laguna, or at least the game never addresses it, just gives the player details so they know.  I'm sure it doesn't help the situation that Squall views Laguna as a complete and total idiot, and he'd probably be outright embarrassed his father is Laguna...despite Laguna being PRESIDENT FOR LIFE OF THE BIGGEST CITY IN THE WORLD...on shear dumb luck granted...
On another note, Squall was raised by Edea in an orphanage because reasons, then at 10 I think it was, he went to Balamb Garden where he had a shonen rivalry with Seifer.  Yeah, this part sucks because seriously, it's related to the FF8 Orphanage.

Final Fantasy 9: Zidane doesn't have actual birth father; he's a test-tube baby NO GARLAND DOESN'T COUNT.  He does have a functional adopted father in Baku, which based off the "Totally not a story about my past!", Zidane does actually view as a father even though he doesn't say it to Baku's face.  Baku does seem to raise Zidane based on the logic of "tough love" granted and Zidane generally responds in-kind, but hey, it's not like he's abusive...or tries to attack Zidane and his 3 best friends wearing a dragon mask wielding a HUGE FREAKING SWORD!!! ...I should probably move on...

Final Fantasy 10: Oh god, what have I gotten myself into!?  Yeah, this is the one people were waiting for...the relationship of Tidus and Jecht, aka the one Father/Son relationship the franchise gives a large amount of focus.  Ok, so Tidus hates Jecht, I don't have to say this; a thing to note that I don't think Tidus ever calls Jecht "Dad" or "Father" until the very end of the game, always referring to him as his "old man."  From what I can tell, this is the game's way of telling us that Tidus is not in denial about his father, but at the same time, can't bring himself to call him something remotely positive so uses a stand-in that could be considered insulting.  Maybe the line used in Japan is somewhat harsher, and "Old man" was just the best english equivalent they have that still got the relationship point across.  To Tidus' credit, a lot of the Jecht hatred is somewhat deserved; Jecht was a borderline abusive father afterall, emotionally anyway.  He would drink, come on, go on about how awesome he was, didn't respect his son's opinions, and then put him down at other moments.  On the otherhand, it's also implied that Tidus may have overblown some of it due to his (somewhat admitted) Oedipus Complex as a kid.  According to Tidus, his mother was fine until Jecht got home, then the two were inseperable, and he felt ignored.  This suggests that his mother was pretty bad too, not properly balancing her husband and her son, but again, we only see it from Tidus'PoV, so we don't know how true things were, and Tidus even admits there's bias on his end, as he eventually reaches an epiphany that Jecht may have in fact cared about him more than he thought, evidenced by how Jecht would tell his mother to pay attention to him, albeit in a backhanded way ("Oh go to him, he'll just cry if you don't!")

The end result is they wanted to display that Jecht WANTED to be a good father, but didn't know the first thing about parenting and his ego kept getting the better of him.  Spira happens and we see Jecht say things like "I'm proud of you, son" and Tidus of course by the end finally recognizes that maybe Jecht deserves some credit, finally calling him "Dad" right before he has to KILL HIM, finally saying to Jecht "I hate you" when ironically, he's come to the understanding that he DOESN'T hate him, and can actually forgive him, followed by a "For the first time, I'm proud to be your son" and then it ends with a undead High Five!

...oh yeah, Jecht also leaves Tidus at age 7, but this wasn't Jecht being irresponsible so much as fate decided to dick Jecht over and shove him into Spira, whoops!  To Jecht's credit, he did have the forethought to send Auron to Zanarkand so Tidus could have at least one positive male figure in his life (and Auron is a pretty good choice for this all things considered)...and then he becomes a KILLER FLYING WHALE MURDERING EVERYONE!!! But hey, because his son is trying to save the world, it gave him all the more reason to try and NOT kill everyone in Spira. 

All in all, Tidus and Jecht have a completely batshit insane relationship, that in the end becomes positive.  Not much to say about the mother since we only see so much of her and it's entirely from Tidus' perspective, who is completely biased and even admits things are going to be skewed to fit his needs (he is only human, after all...well, ok, he technically doesn't exist, but shut up.)

Really, there's only ONE WAY I can end this description of Tidus and Jecht's relationship...



...so let's move onto something FAR SIMPLER!!!

Final Fantasy 11: ...don't know, don't care, fuck the Chebbuki-trio of Chains of Promathia.  No, they're not protagonists, but they do have a father-substory involved and they're awful characters, and damn it, I need a reason to randomly tell them to flip off!



Final Fantasy 12: So vaan apparently had parents who died in a plague, was adopted by Penelo's Parents alongside his brother Reks, those parents then died in a war or another plague or something and they got raised by Miguelo who was a kind hearted Banga that owns a shop...uh, yeah, see what I said about Firion?  It's that only with less "your home town is set on fire" involved.


Final Fantasy 13: Reading the wiki to refresh myself, Lightning lost her father at a young age due to plot, basiaclly, and her mother at 15 due to unknown illness, and she raised Serah from there.  That's really all we learn about their parents...I guess Lightning was hit emotionally hard enough to change her name to Lightning because "It's a strong name!" and she later realizes that was a mistake but nope, too late to go back now!  Yeah, don't got much else to go off of, it's another "parents died in backstory" thing.  I guess she's on par with Bartz since she was mostly old enough by then and was able to take care of herself, but whatever.

Final Fantasy 14: Godbert Manderville is the greatest being of all time and Hildibrand should be honored to have a father like that!  ...what? Hildibrand is totally the protagonist of his sub-story, and damn it, THIS COUNTS!!!!  ALL HAIL THE MANDERVILLES!!!

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest: Benjamin lost his parents in a random catastrophe we never see.  Also his allowance is only 2G a month.  This is literally the entirety of his familial backstory we get...

Final Fantasy Tactics: Ramza was raised by his father for most of his life, his father dying shortly before Ramza left to the academy, and Ramza had 2 adult brothers who could take care of him anyway (even if one of them is Dycedarg's Elder Brother, and we all know what an upstanding person HE is.)  Based off what FFT demonstrates, Balbanes (or "Barbaneth" for those who prefer FFTWotL's translation GOD DAMN IT WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THE LETTER S!?) was probably a good father and actually a noble figure, since he's best buds with Orlandu and we all know TG Cid is actually a pretty cool fellow when he's not slaughtering armies opposing him.

Final Fantasy 4 The After Years: I guess Ceodore is the stand-in protagonist?  His dad is Cecil, who is king and he's raised by him like a normal prince!  The one thing the game implies is that Ceodore does have that inferiority complex of "my dad is a legendary hero that everyone loves, how can I ever hope to live up to THAT standard!?" but I don't feel they explored that well enough and it doesn't help that Cecil is mind-controlled for most of the game, then mute for the next large part.  I guess it implies they have a positive relationship outside of Ceodore's inferiority complex...
...oh right, he has a mother too in Rosa doesn't he? Ok, screw it, I take back what I said, because Rosa is a worthless human being who can't live without another man!  What I'm saying is if Ceodore were a daughter and not a son, Rosa would have killed herself on the spot because she couldn't refocus her neediness onto her child since Rosa needs a MAN!!!
That last part is a joke.

...you could argue Ceodore's real father is Kain and...ok, I'm stopping here...


Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7: Both of Zack's parents are alive, well, and eagerly waiting him to come back!  Yeah, Zack's pretty much got it all, in this regard.  I think he might be the only jRPG Protagonist I can think of who is survived by his parents...

Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy 7: Vincent's Father's name is Grimoire Valentine and we have...no idea what kind of relationship they have.  We just know that Grimoire was Lucrecia's mentor and as a result, she hates Vincent since she was responsible for killing Grimoire because he...decided to protect her from something that would have killed her.  God damn it, Lucrecia, even in an analysis not about you, your Shion-tastic self manages to ooze out. Anyway, ignoring Lucrecia...yeah, really can't say much...other than his name is still Grimoire Valentine.

Final Fantasy 10-2: Ok, we spent forever talking about Tidus' dad, so now let's talk about Yuna's!  Ok, Yuna's dad plays almost no role in FF10-2, but he was kind of important in FF10, and it's still the same character so MUST BE ADDRESSED!  Yuna's dad apparently was a good father until Yuna was 7, when he went off and decided to KILL A GIANT WHALE...and succeeded...with the help of a douche warrior monk and a drunkard.  Her mother apparently died via a Sin attack on the way to Home IIRC, but she knew her well enough to learn that Cid was her uncle or something.  Sounds like they had a good familial relationship when it happened.  After her parents died, Yuna was mostly raised by Kimhari, who was her guardian...this is actually a rare case where a character loses their parents and the caretaker has the term "Guardian" like in real-life.  Of course, it wasn't just Kimhari, as she was raised in Besaid alongside Wakka, Lulu and Chappu, so she basically created a 2nd family for herself and seems pretty content with her life, as well as content with her father's death knowing that he died for a good cause AND the entire world respects his deeds.  It's a nice contrast to Tidus really where-in Tidus is the son of a world-class Celebrity and hates every moment of it, while Yuna is in the same situation and couldn't be more proud of her father's accomplishments.  Did I mention FF10 was great at this kind of stuff?
...yes, this is the FF10-2 part, but FF10-2 gives us nothing to work with.


Final Fantasy 13-2: ...this is pretty much a direct repeat of FF13's scenario since Serah is Lightning's sister; really the only change is Serah was taken care of by Lightning instead of having to fend for herself.  There's really no point in repeating it, so I'll just go "see Lightning."

Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light: Brandt has a mom or something...and she turns to stone because...wait, what the hell am I doing analyzing this game!?

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Marche has a brother, but we never see his parents...wait the hell am I doing analyzing this game?

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: Ok, Luso doesn't have parents and is raised by his grandmother.  It sounds like the grandmother is one of those annoying, loud, angry authoritarian style ones, given that Luso's response to his Wizard of Oz scenario is basically "...yeah, I'm in no rush to get home, getting nearly killed sounds way more fun!"  That's about all I got...

Bravely Default: Tiz had a completely normal life with a completely normal family with a completely normal OH GOD IS THAT A GIANT HOLE IN THE GROUND EATING HIS ENTIRE VILLAGE NO ;_;

Final Fantasy Record Keeper: His parents are a Loading Screen and a bunch of corperate jerks who refuse to let the RNG give me an Enhancer or a Minerva Bustier.  I think that says EVERYTHING about Tyro's parenting!

Final Fantasy Type-0: I havent' beaten this but I did read every character's bio and it's basically all summed up as "the entirety of Class Zero are orphans who were taken in by 'Mother' and raised as a pseudo-family in the Academy."  IOWs, it's FF8's plot but less stupid since the game comes out and tells you that's the scenario AND it's framed in an environment where it MAKES SENSE, since it's logical that a military academy would grab children of similar backgrounds like that because no one else is going to care about them...and there's none of this "we forgot it because plot convenience."

[Dark Holy Elf]

...you could argue Ceodore's real father is Kain and...ok, I'm stopping here...

That's incest bro

[Cotigo]

refuse to let the RNG give me an Enhancer Rosetta Stone or a Minerva Bustier. 

FTFY

[Yakumo]

Blue Mages in FF11 are weird.  They learn like a billion skills but they have to pick and choose which ones they're going to equip at any given time.  There's a point system for it or something, I never actually played that class.  The point is, they don't actually have to juggle everything they know how to do, they pick skills depending on what type of role they're going for.  They have a lot of flexibility overall but can't just do everything all the time.