Yuffie always felt a little too essential to be so easily missed. Not necessarily because of her mechanics, but because the Wutai side-quest feels kind of necessary for FFVII's story-line. It fill in some of the consequences of the Shinra-Wutai war that's an important backstory element for Aerith and Sepiroth among others, it gives you closure on Don Corneo's plot line, the Turks further on-screen development, and it really develops the themes of imperialistic capitalism with the culture and pride of the Wutai people reduced to an exotic aesthetic for rich Midgardian tourists. All while giving the player a bit of levity and breathing room in a narrative which goes from one heavy story beat to the next.
One character that really should have been an optional character is Beatrix from FF9. Honestly she is my second favorite FF character and would have been a great character to have in the game, Freya is my favorite.
I do enjoy the fact that Yuffie and Vincent have tools that either greatly increase Item Duping efficiency or can straight up break the game like Death Penalty.
vincent's game breaking needs you to kill 65k+ enemies with vincent to trigger the overflow glitch. barret's overflow glitch is easier to trigger due to the requirements of needing to load up as much high AP materia into the Missing Score then make up the differences with either pumping up strength with sources and/or with hero drinks.
I am not sure about yuffie but Vincent defintely he can go all beast mode. I am almost done with the original verison just have a lot of grinding to do
@@melissamiller4740 yuffie helps you break the game by able to farm sources(perma-stat boosters) easily once you got the conformer. as apparently that weapon overrides the normal damage computation of the morph materia, allowing you to always deal 9999 damage on morph command, that usually has a reduced damage output once used.
"I...so happy." - Quina's line in IX after the wedding of her and Vivi. This is still one of my fav FF lines of all times and makes me giggle each time still all these years later.
My favorite line in FFIX is from Quina too, it’s “Rally-ho yourself!” I thought Quina tell one of the citizen to go eff himself and was shocked and bursted out laughing.
yuffie actually did a lot more damage than people thought, her dexterity which was massive, added to her dps and actually put her around barrets dps despite having less strength, she was basically a red 13 that could sit in the back line
The characters are so well known nowadays, it's probably just easier to make them be mandatory characters, rather than bother with them still being optional. Especially since if they were optional, everybody would just go online to figure out how to get them anyway, already knowing of their existence in advance.
Balthier was an absolute monster in War of the Lions. His base job was a better version of Mustadio mixed with Thief and had ridiculously high speed. He was especially dangerous mixed with the Dragoon's Jump ability since he could use Lances and with his absurd speed would land almost instantly for huge damage.
My first playthrough of ff7 I was fighting Ultima Weapon and put Vincent in Chaos form just before my party got killed. Vincent controls himself in his chaos form so I watch a epic battle between him and Ultima Weapon. Every time Ultima used his strongest attack Vincent would heal from it due to his lighting resistance. The battle went on for a solid 3 minutes before Vincent came out on top. Vincent Valentine's the greatest.
Don't quote me but I believe that if you connect master command materia with HP absorb on Vincent all of his limit transformation attacks will heal him after damaging because they count as commands
@codeman916 Mhmmm, that'd be interesting to test out. I think I must've had Elemental matera connected with Lighting.I was really young when I first played so I didn't know how connecting materia worked. My success in that fight was purely by accident. 😅
@@AnthonyB96 also what's kinda crazy is if you max his defense he is the only character that can have even more because transforming to chaos for example adds more defense based on like 50% of your current stat. Crazy stuff. The materia combinations and calculations in the game are so deep I still learn new combos even today!
@codeman916 When I learned how much you can customize Materia combinations, I inspired me to replay the game. I only ever beat the it once, but coming in with more mechanical knowledge really bring so much more fun to the game.
@codeman916 Actually, it's a 100% boost to both defense and magic defense as chaos. I think there's a video somewhere of someone maxing Vincent then soloing ruby weapon with him without using the death penalty overflow
@@kyledabearsfan What makes his arc a little bit sadder is that on the floating continent if you're impatient you lose the chance to recruit him in the world of ruin. Unlike in Final Fantasy VII with Aerith it's not important to the plot that shadow dies, it's a choice that people may make during their first play through
I can't believe that freaking Terra and Locke are optional recruits in the finale of FF6. Who in their right mind would skip them? Terra, Locke and Celes are a MUST for the final battle imo. They are the main characters.
@@nathantripathy Celes, Edgar, and Setzer are the only strictly-required party members (since they automatically join before the World of Ruin becomes opened up by the airship), but Terra, Locke, and Celes have the most story focus out of the cast.
@@claytonsteed6767 No, Edgar. You need Edgar. Sabin is still optional. Beating the game without recruiting anyone is called the CES challenge, after Celes, Edgar, Setzer.
I miss missable optional characters, I remember missing both Yuffie and Vincent on my 1st playthrough cause back then my English was still very basic...then I spent a weekend at my friend's house and noticed he had 2 new characters in his party that i've never seen before and I was so excited to get them myself on a 2nd playthrough. I miss those days 😩
I feel also Yuffie is better in terms of people who are temped to use them at first possible chance. The next boss bottomswell Yuffie can reach...Vincent materia keeper his limit break heals him. Also fun fact you can recruit both Yiffue and Vincent when Tifa and Cid are leading and get different dialogue. Recruiting Yuffie with Tifa is especially funny. Also the Wutai sidequest can be done with Tifa or Cid as well.
I saw best girl Yuffie, automatic click. I would always prioritize picking her up ASAP. She was a Great contrast to everyone else's overly serious attitudes
Same, I missed Vincent completely on my first play through because I played on a 10 square inch TV and the room was so dark I just couldn't see his coffin.
@@ComradeGSRM13With a matéria Blade you can, to find It, use a high jump character on Bervenia Volcano With move find item and move to the top of Volcano, but limits are pretty weak and has high CT só it's still useless
@@edercrimber7642 It seems like every game had things that were insanely hard to find. How is somebody supposed to figure out those steps? Not everyone can get the player's guide -- if it even had that information.
@@ComradeGSRM13actually, if you check Cloud's name while in the party roster, he says: "It is concealed at the top of the volcano!". Still, I don't believe the game hints anywhere that you need to have a low Brave stat to get better treasure (it's easy to get Phoenix down instead of Materia blade...).
Also of note: Gilgamesh was also an optionally obtainable character in Dissidia: Duodecim. His move set is... weird... but fun! And to the question, "Which optional character do I like to recruit?" All of them! I'm kind of a completionist that way.
REIS. I would always keep Reis in her dragon form and never complete the quest for Beowulf because I always felt she was more useful as a monster unit.
@@deatho0ne587 Cloud literally has a certain 100% KO, Petrify, Stop kill that can hit 1-5 units. This unfortunately outpaces her in almost every practical situation.
Which can only hit if the enemy does not move and has a long charge time. Cloud's skills look decent on paper but that is never the full story. Then there is the point you get him in game, which makes Rafal and Malak better characters. To be fair I have only ever played the game three times and it was 20 something years ago, with first being before FF7 came to the NA.
The fact that in FF9, Quina can learn the AUTO-LIFE spell in DISK 1 (by Eating a Carrion Worm in Cleyra's trunk dungeon) is so legendary 🤣 ...Angel Snack from Ironite is also nice for the Ozma fight :) entire party cleanse from all statuses, ...guarenteed 9999 N/A damage with Frog Drop Lvl 5 Death green dragons for speed farming exp to lvl 99 Mighty Guard, self explanatory ... There is almost nothing he/she cannot do! And I feel they are so overlooked :(
I feel like that's just blue mages in general. They tend to have access to some incredible spells, sometimes with powers far exceeding the white and black magic that can be obtained at the same time. The tradeoff though is that most of their most powerful skills are extremely easy to overlook, or miss entirely without either some sort of guide, or tedious and meticulous scrounging of every enemy in the game to figure out where you can learn which spells. With some of their spells sometimes feeling like they weren't even meant to be found at all. I'm looking at you, Mighty Guard in Final Fantasy 5.
The problem with Quina, which I think turns a lot of people off, is the fact you have to have the enemy almost dead before you can eat it, AND you need to know what enemies you CAN gain abilities from. This alone wouldn't be so bad, but you absolutely cannot use Quina to weaken the enemy because of the ridiculous RNG inconsistency of Quina's forks. Sometimes you hit an enemy and you do 5 damage. You might usually do 300-400 damage... but every once in awhile you'll hit an enemy and Quina will pop it for a 1800 damage critical. You just don't know what you're getting. Zidane is just too bonkers OP, so you can't use him to weaken the enemy because he 1-shots most stuff by the time you pick Quina up, esp if you have a double blade equipped on him. You basically have to have one of the mages whittle away at the enemy first and I think a lot of players find that annoying.
Thanks for making this!! If anything, it made me miss the hunt for the unknown in the older titles. How badass would it be if they brought back optional character mechanics for FFXVII?!
@@TheRogBG As somebody who knows absolutely nothing about Final Fantasy 16 (I've pretty much ignored it since it's not on a console I have, anyway), I can only say one thing to that statement. ... What!?
Listening to this and with rebirth on its way out I’m excited at the possibility of secret being able to be found and used like this. Yui and FF seven OG was a fun find of course vincent as well. So maybe we get to discover some characters and use them Like Roche or Zach in some capacity. But I’m also hoping for summons. I love finding typhoon in the OG. Also.Kjata was a fun find when you came across him. But less than a month and will have these answers.
I missed Vincent completely on my first play through because I played on a small screen, 10 square inch TV and the room was so dark I just couldn't see his coffin.
Beowulf in FFT is mandatory. He’s arguably the second strongest character in the original game. His special job is basically Oracle but better and his stats are incredible. A potent swordsman who can use magic to devastate the enemy. And woe to those who don’t employ him in the Deep Dungeon.
He is not mandatory, not even arguably. I missed him in many of my playthroughs before knowing about him, and I finished the game and deep dungeon without any problem.
I remember back when I was first playing through Final Fantasy Tactics. I was following a strategy guide, but I wasn't actually reading the guide (it was a friend's game and guide, not mine, so I didn't exactly want to spend a bunch of time reading the guide rather than playing the game). I was just using the guide to know the recommended party for each battle, and maybe checking some strategy tips for any battles I found particularly difficult. Eventually, I hit a point where I was super confused, because suddenly the game seemed to have skipped several battles that were listed in the guide. But I just kept going, because the game was so linear that it obviously couldn't have any secrets. Eventually beating the game without ever seeing any of that optional content, despite having been following a guide that would've probably told me how to access it if I'd actually been reading it more thoroughly.
It maybe says a lot that the run of Final Fantasy 7 where I finally finished it-hell, the run where I did anything beyond Junon-was the run where I got Yuffie within two forest encounters of leaving the Mythril Mines.
The tactics advance optional recruits are also absurdly strong compared to "regular" units. The Red Mage recruit in particular just straight up does double damage or healing to other Vierra casters due to having Doublecast as an option. There's also a Sage you can get with Giga Flare that does ludicrous amounts of AoE damage (albeit for most likely all your mana).
I think I regret recruiting Yuffie more though because 1) it means you can't use her wrong warp to save Arieth later in the game and 2) she steals all your materia.
Don't forget the benefit of the frog catching game to Quinas Frog Drop spell. It's like a 4 mp spell, but you catch enough frogs, and you're dropping the frog for 9999 damage every time.
Tactics and VII are the Final Fantasy games I've played the most, so I feel like I can only comment on their recruitable characters. I'm 100% behind Yuffie being essential to FFVII, and I'm glad she's getting more spotlight in the Remake series. Vincent never clicked with my play style, I can only vaguely describe his storyline if asked, and I don't ever recall having him in my final party when facing Sepiroth. In Tactics, my final party was almost always story characters who became permanent members of the party and recruited characters, including Cloud.
I've always recruited Quina as soon as possible. I don't even like Quina, but as you said, it's best to have 4 party members going into gizamaluke's grotto. And Reis' wind is only so effective at healing.
I couldn't imagine playing FF7 without Yuffie. I only got her in the second trip to rocket town on my first play through, I quickly took a liking to her as she was a lot more chirpy than Tifa and Aerith who were too busy thirsting over Cloud. On my second play through I got her early and saw her reaction to Aerith's death and man I'd never been hit emotionally like that by a game before, It cemented her as my favourite character. Seeing someone so lighthearted and funny be reduced to crying in Clouds arms was rough it shows how much she really cares. Doesn't hurt that her ultimate weapon is busted and Doom of the Living is arguably the coolest looking limit break in the game.
My boy Golbez is always the heart of my team, no matter who else I bring. He's just the most well rounded character in the entire game in my opinon and can be used as a front line fighter or tank if you want, but also stands tall among the most capable mages because of his good variety of strong spells like Bio, Meteor, Flare or Quake. He's missing other good spells like Stop or Break among things like Tornado or Death, but from my experience most of them weren't that useful to begin with except on paper.
The Saga games (basically Final fantasy) often have a lot of these for example Barbara in RS1 and its remake Cat and the thieves in RS2 and almost anyone in RS3.
Not arguably. Yuffie is objectively the best character in FF7 as far as actual mechanics go. More varied and useful limit breaks, the highest base luck stat of the entire party, and the Conformer confers essential benefits - it only deals a single point of damage to allies, so it's perfect for knocking allies out of sleep or confusion, and it negates the damage penalty to the Morph command, which is indispensable for Source farming. Sure, in terms of personality and her personal sidequest, she's kind of annoying, but she's the best character in terms of raw function.
Shantotto II from FFXI. Her trust is hands the best magic caster in the game. All her spells are Tier 1 with their damage adjusted to whatever the highest tier at that LVL is meaning the get all the damage with the short cast time and low MP cost. She will also close Skill chains and cast the right spell to magic burst. Her HP is very poor but if your tank and healer are doing the job right that means nothing. She will make any battle a trust can be summoned easy!
For what it's worth Yuffie also had higher magic stats than everyone other than Cloud and Aeris if I am not mistaken. With Cloud being good at everything and Aeris being removed by the plot, Yuffie can be built up to be your "mage" character if you have a desire to specialize your party.
Recruiting Golbez basically requires the family to be back together again, something I find super adorable. ;3; I miss his wicked armor, though. I guess he decided to ditch it after the Zeromus incident and had that "I no longer require this, I'm starting off anew" type scenarios. (I screwed up so bad in The After Years so never reached the end, LOL, but I did unlock Golbez)
Mog's also a good one, but Shadow is easier to miss, and I feel is more reliably strong in battle. Whereas Mog's randomness with his dances probably turns some people away. I, for one, love teaming Mog (as well as Gau and Umaro) with Cyan. That way, while Cyan is charging up his skills, less of my party is bogged down by the wait due to the automated control those three characters possess.
@@CurlyFromTheSwirly That's where Mog can come into play, since Sunbath is a pretty solid healing spell throughout most of the game, so long as he uses it when you actually need it. Or you can learn Magic Pot with Gau, which I believe also casts powerful healing magic. That said, I have used that entire party before in the final dungeon. Which I wouldn't call an amazing team, but once all three of your other characters are doing their own thing, Cyan suddenly feels much stronger himself. Although I do believe you get an overall better team by having him paired with just one or two of them, so you have at least some supportive control. Since if you do need to do anything else, like heal, Cyan's magic stat makes him pretty much useless at casting anything other than status effects.
Judge Gabaranth in Dissidia was way too clutch. I remember unlocking him, and spending almost a month straight mastering him because I was fresh off my first playthrough of XII and still had the itch (XII is one of my top FFs, next to IX, X, and Tactics Advance). I didn't place him with my mains (Zidane, Warrior of Light, Onion Knight, and Tidus), but through the use of ad hoc, I was able to go online and take so many Ws with a broken EX Gauge build that had me in EX Mode pretty much the entire match without having to chase the Cores. EDIT: Thinking back, I did have two separate mains lists: Heroes and Villains. Gabaranth was certainly there on my Villains list alongside Sephiroth, Cloud of Darkness, and Kuja.
Unfair death, he leaves a big impression on me the first time that i played it...sadly i didnt know at time that There was secret characters...when i was with Celes and with a guide, i was grief with her suicide...so I started again to save Mog first...
One might not have been able to controle Umaru but his damage output was decent and he was the most fun when he started throwing partymembers at the enemy :)
@@CurlyFromTheSwirly All right, definitely! But I could never really get myself to like mimic class anyway - although I know people can do interesting stuff with it, especially in V. Adds some timing consideration to the ATB system. As for VI, although the Gogo is Daryl fan theory might add something to the character, ultimately he is just there... Umaro is at least fun - also how he gets ordered to join the party by Mog :)
@@CurlyFromTheSwirly When I was a dumb kid, I thought Gogo was pretty much the best character in the game because of his utility. Nowadays, I really don't care much for him at all because I find the lack of personality in that utility to be boring. (To put that into a bit of perspective. Even by the end of the game, I'm usually using rather weak character skills over magic whenever possible. Just because I feel like the characters wind up losing a lot of their identity when they're all just spamming the same spells as one another every fight, rather than fighting using their own talents. So even if a monster is, say, weak against fire, I'd still rather hit it with Edgar's drill than have Edgar obliterate it with Firaga). Not to mention I'm much more conscious of his utterly pitiful stats.
Not FF related, but I have to shout out Eri from Yakuza: Like a Dragon, whom you recruit after finishing the business management side story. She has no bearing on the main story, and I'm not sure if her joining the party is even canon, but it's a a great reward for what is a fun and addicting mini-game questline.
For a non Final Fantasy example, shoutout to Cream from Sonic Chronicles. Once you get Refresh to Lv 3, just sell all your items. She becomes an infinite spring of PP and can heal pretty well to boot.
I'm going to have to disagree with Cloud as a must recruit. His damage is only average, you get him at level 1, and he must have his relatively weak weapon equipped in order to do any of his Soldier skills. In fact, the charge times are so bad that basically only one of his limits is useful since it casts Stop, Petrify, or Death.
No character is optional especially in 7. Tis a criminal playthrough to go it without Vincent or Yuffie. 6 was such a gut punch though. To go through all of that to acquire Shadow; to wait those 5 minutes only for him to decide to stay behind again at the end. So very depressing more so given I knew he was a favourite from the moment I saw him.
Technically not a Final Fantasy game, but I'm just going to throw Magus from Chrono Trigger out there for an honorable mention. Most OP character in the game and completely missable if you fight him the second time.
Jecht was by far the best character in dissidia. If you knew how to do his combo, you could do an unblockable, unavoidable hp attack immediately after his brave combo. The timing was rough, but once you got it down, no one could beat you.
1 HP Quina has some potential experience points farming against strong enemies like Grand Dragon in 2 rounds with Limited Glove and then Eat Command and manageable luck in 1st disk you should let Freya win the contest so you obtain Coral ring equip it to other than Quina to increase round last also protec girls for Zadan and cover for freya to guard against physical attacks with possible less damage as a back row or dodge the attack finally equip all party with anti body against venom breath. You need Phoenix down for a dead party but you must put battle mode on active and slow battle speed at the beginning . Save the game at each win until you reached the needed level.
i feel you missed Yuffie's biggest selling points being she doesnt get dmg reduction on Morph while using Conformer which made farming easy and her 2nd level 3 Limit break Doom of the Living was almost as good as omnislash
Cloud in FF tactics has a strange final Limit. It’s called Cherry Blossom on the original PSX release. I remember as kids we all tried going back to ff7 to try to be find his true final hidden lvl 4 limit after this lol 😂 Wonder if it held any significance or if its just some samurai warrior imagery shenanigans?
My friends and I did the same thing. After seeing it in Tactics, we were always speculating how Cloud's secret second Level 4 Limit Break might be acquired in Final Fantasy 7.
There are three characters on this list I have not gotten. Golbez from TAY, because I never played that game, Gilgamesh from WoFF, because I haven't gotten far enough in that game yet to get him, and Cloud from Tactics, because I could never get far enough in thst game to get him, as I sucked at the game back on PS1, struggling with the early random encounters, and eventually getting fed up with the game.
Final Fantasy Tactics is definitely no cakewalk. I wouldn't call it extremely difficult, but it absolutely expects the player to have a firm grasp of its mechanics, and how to take full advantage of all the skills made available to you, as well as the ability to put genuine forethought and strategy into your combat decisions. Not to mention that certain story missions were considerable difficulty spikes. You can't just haphazardly move your units, attack stuff, and hope to win like you could with some other strategy RPGs of the time.
@@AzureKyle Oh yeah, that would've definitely been me if I played it at that age. I didn't even start playing RPGs until a little bit older than that though, and even then, I was terrible at applying any sort of real strategy. Although I did have some experience with tactical games by time I played Final Fantasy Tactics, but none of those were nearly so deep.
I wouldn’t have Quina on this list at all as it is required to go underground, so you cannot skip this character whatsoever like you can with the others
Shadow can't be skipped either, for that matter. He's mandatory when Locke and Terra are recruited by the Empire to go with Leo and track down the espers, and he's again a mandatory party member on the floating continent. So I felt like he was being pretty generous with the concept of optional.
As a Final Fantasy VI obsessive, I never saw Shadow as all that useful. In a game where micro-management of esper bonuses basically breaks the game completely way before the end of the World of Balance, anything else is pointless. Making sure to teach your characters decent cure spells is actually enough to make the game a cake walk to be honest.
I really want a full remake of Final Fantasy Tactics War of the Lions. When they do it I hope it is packed full of secret surprise Characters and Summons.
Gabranth wasn't just a fun character to play in Dissidia. When customizing your moveset you must have a minimum of 1 HP attack, since Grabranth could only deal damage via HP attacks in EX Mode you can remove the EX Mode HP attacks and keep the HP "attacks" that just charges his EX Gauge. By doing this you have a CPU that, almost, can never win a match. The only HP attack they can do is during a chase, but if you set the AI behavior to a more passive one it's harder to accidentally be put into this situation. What this means is you can easily power level all of your characters by going against a level 100 Gabranth with max HP since he will have a very hard time killing you. This would also allow you to farm items for BiS equipment since each item you put on has a percentage chance to be won during battle.
Yuffie #1, Gogo #2, Gogo is so much better than shadow, get the airship in WoR get bum rush from duncan then get Gogo, then recruit everyone and finish the story, Yuffie hands down #1
I feel like the bit on Cloud from FFT is a bit exaggerated. He was pretty bad. He needs his special sword to use his limits in his base job and the sword is kinda weak. If you reclass him he's not much different than anyone else.
Honestly, Vincent AND Yuffie were too important to the really skilled players, mainly due to their ultimate weapons. Yuffie's made source farming and a few other things far more trivial. And Vincent's was one of the few ways to overflow damage and basically oneshot anything that wasn't Ruby Weapon. Even then, Vincent could basically guarantee max damage on his weapon.
I'm sorry, but Cloud in FFT is hardly someone I would say that is a regret to no recruit. He's level 1 in chapter 4. That means you have to spend an ungodly amount of time to get him up to speed. Beowulf is easily the better optional character.
Cloud might be the strongest recruitable after Thunder God Cid, but he's also the most tedious to be the strongest. In fact his weapon, Materia Blade is the most problematic to find and use.
Who the heck would NOT pick up Shadow? When this video started, I didn't even think of him because of the blasphemy of not having him in the party whenever possible. Not to mention arguably one of the best character themes in the game.
Yuffie always felt a little too essential to be so easily missed. Not necessarily because of her mechanics, but because the Wutai side-quest feels kind of necessary for FFVII's story-line. It fill in some of the consequences of the Shinra-Wutai war that's an important backstory element for Aerith and Sepiroth among others, it gives you closure on Don Corneo's plot line, the Turks further on-screen development, and it really develops the themes of imperialistic capitalism with the culture and pride of the Wutai people reduced to an exotic aesthetic for rich Midgardian tourists. All while giving the player a bit of levity and breathing room in a narrative which goes from one heavy story beat to the next.
Must have been the victim of time crunch in development
But you don't have to do it which makes it.... optional
@@devarientok
I beat the game and never even heard of her
@@toxicmanbaby1069bro me too, when I found I missed her and Vincent, I was like waaaaah?
One character that really should have been an optional character is Beatrix from FF9. Honestly she is my second favorite FF character and would have been a great character to have in the game, Freya is my favorite.
I agree, there should have been a way to recruit her
Back then there is a "rumor" that if you treat garnet like crap, garnet will die and Beatrix will join.
there's a mod that allows you to recruit Beatrix. Alternate Fantasy mod
@@skalalalala how about her equipment and skill set ?
Psst...
There's a mod for that.
I do enjoy the fact that Yuffie and Vincent have tools that either greatly increase Item Duping efficiency or can straight up break the game like Death Penalty.
vincent's game breaking needs you to kill 65k+ enemies with vincent to trigger the overflow glitch. barret's overflow glitch is easier to trigger due to the requirements of needing to load up as much high AP materia into the Missing Score then make up the differences with either pumping up strength with sources and/or with hero drinks.
I am not sure about yuffie but Vincent defintely he can go all beast mode. I am almost done with the original verison just have a lot of grinding to do
@@melissamiller4740 yuffie helps you break the game by able to farm sources(perma-stat boosters) easily once you got the conformer.
as apparently that weapon overrides the normal damage computation of the morph materia, allowing you to always deal 9999 damage on morph command, that usually has a reduced damage output once used.
Nice to know that!!
It's not just the overflow, but Vincent can basically guarantee max damage against anything.
Still very useful in the Ruby Weapon fight
You forgot to say that Yuffie's ultimate weapon can do max damage with the "Morph" command making sources farm less tedious.
Is this a bug exploit?
@@notmousseit is not.. solely based on its damage calculation.. which I forget uses to calculate 😅
@@scaf_007vs3 Huh, wonder if it bypassed Morph's damage calculation.
@@notmousseI just removes the damage barrier therefore does as much damage as regular attacks
It also doesn't damage allies, even when she's confused.
"I...so happy." - Quina's line in IX after the wedding of her and Vivi. This is still one of my fav FF lines of all times and makes me giggle each time still all these years later.
My favorite line in FFIX is from Quina too, it’s “Rally-ho yourself!” I thought Quina tell one of the citizen to go eff himself and was shocked and bursted out laughing.
@dgmojojojo Rofl I will now do the same with that line going forward!
Lol poo poo o@@dgmojojojo
yuffie actually did a lot more damage than people thought, her dexterity which was massive, added to her dps and actually put her around barrets dps despite having less strength, she was basically a red 13 that could sit in the back line
I'm glad that Vincent and Yuffie are being fully integrated into the Remake Trilogy's story.
Me too!!
Spoiler Alert!! I just got to the mansion and had to fight Vincent.....holy shit he is one tough MF'r lol
The characters are so well known nowadays, it's probably just easier to make them be mandatory characters, rather than bother with them still being optional. Especially since if they were optional, everybody would just go online to figure out how to get them anyway, already knowing of their existence in advance.
Balthier was an absolute monster in War of the Lions. His base job was a better version of Mustadio mixed with Thief and had ridiculously high speed. He was especially dangerous mixed with the Dragoon's Jump ability since he could use Lances and with his absurd speed would land almost instantly for huge damage.
My first playthrough of ff7 I was fighting Ultima Weapon and put Vincent in Chaos form just before my party got killed. Vincent controls himself in his chaos form so I watch a epic battle between him and Ultima Weapon. Every time Ultima used his strongest attack Vincent would heal from it due to his lighting resistance. The battle went on for a solid 3 minutes before Vincent came out on top.
Vincent Valentine's the greatest.
Don't quote me but I believe that if you connect master command materia with HP absorb on Vincent all of his limit transformation attacks will heal him after damaging because they count as commands
@codeman916 Mhmmm, that'd be interesting to test out. I think I must've had Elemental matera connected with Lighting.I was really young when I first played so I didn't know how connecting materia worked. My success in that fight was purely by accident. 😅
@@AnthonyB96 also what's kinda crazy is if you max his defense he is the only character that can have even more because transforming to chaos for example adds more defense based on like 50% of your current stat. Crazy stuff. The materia combinations and calculations in the game are so deep I still learn new combos even today!
@codeman916 When I learned how much you can customize Materia combinations, I inspired me to replay the game. I only ever beat the it once, but coming in with more mechanical knowledge really bring so much more fun to the game.
@codeman916 Actually, it's a 100% boost to both defense and magic defense as chaos. I think there's a video somewhere of someone maxing Vincent then soloing ruby weapon with him without using the death penalty overflow
A personal favorite optional character of mine is Worker/Construct 8 from Tactics...
I don't know why, I just love the Robot.
He was awesome if not an interesting mechanics wise.
Well he is a robot and comes with 0 Faith. Meaning that magic doesn't do JACK to him.
I like Beowulf more. Turning randoms into chickens is great.
@@Brahmsonite beowulf is definitely my other favorite of side characters in fft as well.
This is who I was thinking of immediately when I saw the video title. He was way more powerful and useful than Cloud
Shadow will forever be my favorite character in FF6
For a character who says little, his arc is incredible. And he has the goodest boy.
@@kyledabearsfan What makes his arc a little bit sadder is that on the floating continent if you're impatient you lose the chance to recruit him in the world of ruin. Unlike in Final Fantasy VII with Aerith it's not important to the plot that shadow dies, it's a choice that people may make during their first play through
@ilajoie3 yeah as a kid I completely thought it was scripted to happen regardless, it wasn't until I was an adult and replayed it I really understood.
@@kyledabearsfan An entire backstory in dreams. And then, you have to still piece things together.
@powerofk yeah, I wish there where characters similar in more modern games. Best you can get is FromSoft games lol
I can't believe that freaking Terra and Locke are optional recruits in the finale of FF6. Who in their right mind would skip them? Terra, Locke and Celes are a MUST for the final battle imo. They are the main characters.
Do you need to use them or simply have them? I get everyone, but I usually rock Celes, Sabin and Edgar.
@@nathantripathy Celes, Edgar, and Setzer are the only strictly-required party members (since they automatically join before the World of Ruin becomes opened up by the airship), but Terra, Locke, and Celes have the most story focus out of the cast.
I think you mean sabin, not edgar.@ElTaitronAnim
@@claytonsteed6767 No, Edgar. You need Edgar. Sabin is still optional. Beating the game without recruiting anyone is called the CES challenge, after Celes, Edgar, Setzer.
@@PintOfMint my mistake!
I miss missable optional characters, I remember missing both Yuffie and Vincent on my 1st playthrough cause back then my English was still very basic...then I spent a weekend at my friend's house and noticed he had 2 new characters in his party that i've never seen before and I was so excited to get them myself on a 2nd playthrough.
I miss those days 😩
I feel also Yuffie is better in terms of people who are temped to use them at first possible chance. The next boss bottomswell Yuffie can reach...Vincent materia keeper his limit break heals him. Also fun fact you can recruit both Yiffue and Vincent when Tifa and Cid are leading and get different dialogue. Recruiting Yuffie with Tifa is especially funny. Also the Wutai sidequest can be done with Tifa or Cid as well.
I saw best girl Yuffie, automatic click.
I would always prioritize picking her up ASAP. She was a Great contrast to everyone else's overly serious attitudes
Missed Vincent completely first time around. Only noticed after reading the manual after and thinking “who was that?”
Really? wow
Same, I missed Vincent completely on my first play through because I played on a 10 square inch TV and the room was so dark I just couldn't see his coffin.
And THAT is why you always RTFM when it comes to older games.
I never knew quina wasn’t mandatory until disk 2. I’ve always just recruited her in the marsh. Learn something new every day.
There's so many steps to getting cloud in FFT, and when you finally do, hes level 1, so you gotta grind forever to even make him useful.
Worse, the game lists his Limit Breaks, but you can't actually use them. 💢
@@ComradeGSRM13With a matéria Blade you can, to find It, use a high jump character on Bervenia Volcano With move find item and move to the top of Volcano, but limits are pretty weak and has high CT só it's still useless
@@edercrimber7642 It seems like every game had things that were insanely hard to find. How is somebody supposed to figure out those steps? Not everyone can get the player's guide -- if it even had that information.
@@edercrimber7642Yeah, really disappointing with the long charge times. You need swiftness ability learned from time mage.
@@ComradeGSRM13actually, if you check Cloud's name while in the party roster, he says: "It is concealed at the top of the volcano!". Still, I don't believe the game hints anywhere that you need to have a low Brave stat to get better treasure (it's easy to get Phoenix down instead of Materia blade...).
Also of note: Gilgamesh was also an optionally obtainable character in Dissidia: Duodecim. His move set is... weird... but fun! And to the question, "Which optional character do I like to recruit?" All of them! I'm kind of a completionist that way.
REIS. I would always keep Reis in her dragon form and never complete the quest for Beowulf because I always felt she was more useful as a monster unit.
Everything about her is better than Cloud in FFT. Even her human form.
Honestly, her human form base stats are stupidly good, if you do the level up/down trick with her she gets extremely strong extremely quickly
@@deatho0ne587 Cloud literally has a certain 100% KO, Petrify, Stop kill that can hit 1-5 units. This unfortunately outpaces her in almost every practical situation.
Which can only hit if the enemy does not move and has a long charge time. Cloud's skills look decent on paper but that is never the full story. Then there is the point you get him in game, which makes Rafal and Malak better characters.
To be fair I have only ever played the game three times and it was 20 something years ago, with first being before FF7 came to the NA.
The fact that in FF9, Quina can learn the AUTO-LIFE spell in DISK 1 (by Eating a Carrion Worm in Cleyra's trunk dungeon) is so legendary 🤣
...Angel Snack from Ironite is also nice for the Ozma fight :) entire party cleanse from all statuses,
...guarenteed 9999 N/A damage with Frog Drop
Lvl 5 Death green dragons for speed farming exp to lvl 99
Mighty Guard, self explanatory ...
There is almost nothing he/she cannot do! And I feel they are so overlooked :(
Dont forget Limit Globe. Guarantee max damage if Quina hp exactly at 1.
I feel like that's just blue mages in general. They tend to have access to some incredible spells, sometimes with powers far exceeding the white and black magic that can be obtained at the same time. The tradeoff though is that most of their most powerful skills are extremely easy to overlook, or miss entirely without either some sort of guide, or tedious and meticulous scrounging of every enemy in the game to figure out where you can learn which spells. With some of their spells sometimes feeling like they weren't even meant to be found at all. I'm looking at you, Mighty Guard in Final Fantasy 5.
The problem with Quina, which I think turns a lot of people off, is the fact you have to have the enemy almost dead before you can eat it, AND you need to know what enemies you CAN gain abilities from. This alone wouldn't be so bad, but you absolutely cannot use Quina to weaken the enemy because of the ridiculous RNG inconsistency of Quina's forks. Sometimes you hit an enemy and you do 5 damage. You might usually do 300-400 damage... but every once in awhile you'll hit an enemy and Quina will pop it for a 1800 damage critical. You just don't know what you're getting. Zidane is just too bonkers OP, so you can't use him to weaken the enemy because he 1-shots most stuff by the time you pick Quina up, esp if you have a double blade equipped on him. You basically have to have one of the mages whittle away at the enemy first and I think a lot of players find that annoying.
cloud as a side character in tactics is skippable as hell
worker 8, boco and beowulf are more useful
Truly a sad time recruiting cloud in fft and finding out how underwhelming he was after all that work.
Thanks for making this!! If anything, it made me miss the hunt for the unknown in the older titles. How badass would it be if they brought back optional character mechanics for FFXVII?!
Definitely miss the optional characters and missable stuff
idk, what actor is gonna want to be entirely missable?
How badass would it be if they brought back RPG mechanics which were MIA in final hallway 16
@@cyanimation1605fromsoft figures out a way
@@TheRogBG As somebody who knows absolutely nothing about Final Fantasy 16 (I've pretty much ignored it since it's not on a console I have, anyway), I can only say one thing to that statement.
... What!?
Listening to this and with rebirth on its way out I’m excited at the possibility of secret being able to be found and used like this. Yui and FF seven OG was a fun find of course vincent as well. So maybe we get to discover some characters and use them Like Roche or Zach in some capacity. But I’m also hoping for summons. I love finding typhoon in the OG. Also.Kjata was a fun find when you came across him. But less than a month and will have these answers.
I missed Vincent completely on my first play through because I played on a small screen, 10 square inch TV and the room was so dark I just couldn't see his coffin.
Beowulf in FFT is mandatory. He’s arguably the second strongest character in the original game. His special job is basically Oracle but better and his stats are incredible. A potent swordsman who can use magic to devastate the enemy. And woe to those who don’t employ him in the Deep Dungeon.
He is not mandatory, not even arguably.
I missed him in many of my playthroughs before knowing about him, and I finished the game and deep dungeon without any problem.
Oh, and even nowadays that I always recruit him, I never use him in Deep dungeon.
Its Yuffie, hands down. Morphing sources is reaaon enough, but her sidequest has good rewards including Leviathan materia.
Morphing Master Tonberi's into ribbons was more fun, but highly stressful.
I remember back when I was first playing through Final Fantasy Tactics. I was following a strategy guide, but I wasn't actually reading the guide (it was a friend's game and guide, not mine, so I didn't exactly want to spend a bunch of time reading the guide rather than playing the game). I was just using the guide to know the recommended party for each battle, and maybe checking some strategy tips for any battles I found particularly difficult.
Eventually, I hit a point where I was super confused, because suddenly the game seemed to have skipped several battles that were listed in the guide. But I just kept going, because the game was so linear that it obviously couldn't have any secrets. Eventually beating the game without ever seeing any of that optional content, despite having been following a guide that would've probably told me how to access it if I'd actually been reading it more thoroughly.
Really been liking all the content lately. Thanks for the video
You should be recruited to work for the franchise. Such commitment
It maybe says a lot that the run of Final Fantasy 7 where I finally finished it-hell, the run where I did anything beyond Junon-was the run where I got Yuffie within two forest encounters of leaving the Mythril Mines.
The tactics advance optional recruits are also absurdly strong compared to "regular" units. The Red Mage recruit in particular just straight up does double damage or healing to other Vierra casters due to having Doublecast as an option. There's also a Sage you can get with Giga Flare that does ludicrous amounts of AoE damage (albeit for most likely all your mana).
I think I regret recruiting Yuffie more though because 1) it means you can't use her wrong warp to save Arieth later in the game and 2) she steals all your materia.
Don't forget the benefit of the frog catching game to Quinas Frog Drop spell. It's like a 4 mp spell, but you catch enough frogs, and you're dropping the frog for 9999 damage every time.
It's a shame cloud was pretty underwhelming in tactis though.
Tactics and VII are the Final Fantasy games I've played the most, so I feel like I can only comment on their recruitable characters. I'm 100% behind Yuffie being essential to FFVII, and I'm glad she's getting more spotlight in the Remake series. Vincent never clicked with my play style, I can only vaguely describe his storyline if asked, and I don't ever recall having him in my final party when facing Sepiroth. In Tactics, my final party was almost always story characters who became permanent members of the party and recruited characters, including Cloud.
I've always recruited Quina as soon as possible. I don't even like Quina, but as you said, it's best to have 4 party members going into gizamaluke's grotto. And Reis' wind is only so effective at healing.
Cherry blossom looks like Citan’s death blow from Xenogears!
Probably the same guy doing the animation.
I couldn't imagine playing FF7 without Yuffie. I only got her in the second trip to rocket town on my first play through, I quickly took a liking to her as she was a lot more chirpy than Tifa and Aerith who were too busy thirsting over Cloud. On my second play through I got her early and saw her reaction to Aerith's death and man I'd never been hit emotionally like that by a game before, It cemented her as my favourite character. Seeing someone so lighthearted and funny be reduced to crying in Clouds arms was rough it shows how much she really cares.
Doesn't hurt that her ultimate weapon is busted and Doom of the Living is arguably the coolest looking limit break in the game.
My boy Golbez is always the heart of my team, no matter who else I bring.
He's just the most well rounded character in the entire game in my opinon and can be used as a front line fighter or tank if you want, but also stands tall among the most capable mages because of his good variety of strong spells like Bio, Meteor, Flare or Quake. He's missing other good spells like Stop or Break among things like Tornado or Death, but from my experience most of them weren't that useful to begin with except on paper.
The Saga games (basically Final fantasy) often have a lot of these for example Barbara in RS1 and its remake Cat and the thieves in RS2 and almost anyone in RS3.
Not arguably. Yuffie is objectively the best character in FF7 as far as actual mechanics go. More varied and useful limit breaks, the highest base luck stat of the entire party, and the Conformer confers essential benefits - it only deals a single point of damage to allies, so it's perfect for knocking allies out of sleep or confusion, and it negates the damage penalty to the Morph command, which is indispensable for Source farming.
Sure, in terms of personality and her personal sidequest, she's kind of annoying, but she's the best character in terms of raw function.
Shantotto II from FFXI. Her trust is hands the best magic caster in the game. All her spells are Tier 1 with their damage adjusted to whatever the highest tier at that LVL is meaning the get all the damage with the short cast time and low MP cost. She will also close Skill chains and cast the right spell to magic burst. Her HP is very poor but if your tank and healer are doing the job right that means nothing. She will make any battle a trust can be summoned easy!
Yuffie is my number 1 favorite character in the franchise :D
For what it's worth Yuffie also had higher magic stats than everyone other than Cloud and Aeris if I am not mistaken. With Cloud being good at everything and Aeris being removed by the plot, Yuffie can be built up to be your "mage" character if you have a desire to specialize your party.
Recruiting Golbez basically requires the family to be back together again, something I find super adorable. ;3;
I miss his wicked armor, though. I guess he decided to ditch it after the Zeromus incident and had that "I no longer require this, I'm starting off anew" type scenarios.
(I screwed up so bad in The After Years so never reached the end, LOL, but I did unlock Golbez)
I would have to say me Kupo ❤️
Hello Mog!
I once changed Mogs name to Kupo. So he would say Kupo more often. 😂
Mog's also a good one, but Shadow is easier to miss, and I feel is more reliably strong in battle. Whereas Mog's randomness with his dances probably turns some people away. I, for one, love teaming Mog (as well as Gau and Umaro) with Cyan. That way, while Cyan is charging up his skills, less of my party is bogged down by the wait due to the automated control those three characters possess.
@@gurvmlk
That's actually a pretty good use for Umaro's psrty, though I would split it up with a healer or something as well.
@@CurlyFromTheSwirly That's where Mog can come into play, since Sunbath is a pretty solid healing spell throughout most of the game, so long as he uses it when you actually need it. Or you can learn Magic Pot with Gau, which I believe also casts powerful healing magic.
That said, I have used that entire party before in the final dungeon. Which I wouldn't call an amazing team, but once all three of your other characters are doing their own thing, Cyan suddenly feels much stronger himself. Although I do believe you get an overall better team by having him paired with just one or two of them, so you have at least some supportive control. Since if you do need to do anything else, like heal, Cyan's magic stat makes him pretty much useless at casting anything other than status effects.
Vincent and shadow have always been a go to recruit units for me
I'd say Mog is the one in FFVI you really don't want to miss. That moogle charm makes the cultists' tower a cake walk.
Judge Gabaranth in Dissidia was way too clutch. I remember unlocking him, and spending almost a month straight mastering him because I was fresh off my first playthrough of XII and still had the itch (XII is one of my top FFs, next to IX, X, and Tactics Advance). I didn't place him with my mains (Zidane, Warrior of Light, Onion Knight, and Tidus), but through the use of ad hoc, I was able to go online and take so many Ws with a broken EX Gauge build that had me in EX Mode pretty much the entire match without having to chase the Cores.
EDIT: Thinking back, I did have two separate mains lists: Heroes and Villains. Gabaranth was certainly there on my Villains list alongside Sephiroth, Cloud of Darkness, and Kuja.
I always made sure VINCENT was in my party ASAP.
Honestly? Gogo is a must. Shadow is awesome, and his story is way cooler, but Gogo is just BROKEN in terms of gameplay.
Ah yeah Shadow...
I chickened out when I played VI and therefore did not have him for the rest of the story.
:(
Unfair death, he leaves a big impression on me the first time that i played it...sadly i didnt know at time that There was secret characters...when i was with Celes and with a guide, i was grief with her suicide...so I started again to save Mog first...
Quina is a beast. It is a grind to gather the blue magic but it's worth the effort. IMO the best blue mage.
One might not have been able to controle Umaru but his damage output was decent and he was the most fun when he started throwing partymembers at the enemy :)
I still prefer him to Gogo 😂
@@CurlyFromTheSwirly All right, definitely! But I could never really get myself to like mimic class anyway - although I know people can do interesting stuff with it, especially in V. Adds some timing consideration to the ATB system. As for VI, although the Gogo is Daryl fan theory might add something to the character, ultimately he is just there... Umaro is at least fun - also how he gets ordered to join the party by Mog :)
@BragiTales
"I'm your boss kupo.
You're going to join us Kupo."
😅😂🤣
@@CurlyFromTheSwirly Hihi, exactly!
@@CurlyFromTheSwirly When I was a dumb kid, I thought Gogo was pretty much the best character in the game because of his utility. Nowadays, I really don't care much for him at all because I find the lack of personality in that utility to be boring. (To put that into a bit of perspective. Even by the end of the game, I'm usually using rather weak character skills over magic whenever possible. Just because I feel like the characters wind up losing a lot of their identity when they're all just spamming the same spells as one another every fight, rather than fighting using their own talents. So even if a monster is, say, weak against fire, I'd still rather hit it with Edgar's drill than have Edgar obliterate it with Firaga). Not to mention I'm much more conscious of his utterly pitiful stats.
Not FF related, but I have to shout out Eri from Yakuza: Like a Dragon, whom you recruit after finishing the business management side story. She has no bearing on the main story, and I'm not sure if her joining the party is even canon, but it's a a great reward for what is a fun and addicting mini-game questline.
For a non Final Fantasy example, shoutout to Cream from Sonic Chronicles. Once you get Refresh to Lv 3, just sell all your items. She becomes an infinite spring of PP and can heal pretty well to boot.
Infinite spring of pp
@@dangbruhskyy pause
Quina is the best optional imo
I did a ff9 replay. I put Quina in my party this time around and Quina went to town on enemies. 😮
Quina isn’t optional
Frog drop!!!!
FF's own Jar Jar
Quina isn't optional you can recruit them early but they are mandatory as you travel to the Next Continent
I'm going to have to disagree with Cloud as a must recruit. His damage is only average, you get him at level 1, and he must have his relatively weak weapon equipped in order to do any of his Soldier skills. In fact, the charge times are so bad that basically only one of his limits is useful since it casts Stop, Petrify, or Death.
No character is optional especially in 7. Tis a criminal playthrough to go it without Vincent or Yuffie.
6 was such a gut punch though. To go through all of that to acquire Shadow; to wait those 5 minutes only for him to decide to stay behind again at the end.
So very depressing more so given I knew he was a favourite from the moment I saw him.
Never needed Yuffie
I never completed the Cloud questline so I may as well revisit Tactics someday.
Technically not a Final Fantasy game, but I'm just going to throw Magus from Chrono Trigger out there for an honorable mention. Most OP character in the game and completely missable if you fight him the second time.
Yuffie was OP
Jecht was by far the best character in dissidia. If you knew how to do his combo, you could do an unblockable, unavoidable hp attack immediately after his brave combo. The timing was rough, but once you got it down, no one could beat you.
1 HP Quina has some potential experience points farming against strong enemies like Grand Dragon in 2 rounds with Limited Glove and then Eat Command and manageable luck in 1st disk you should let Freya win the contest so you obtain Coral ring equip it to other than Quina to increase round last also protec girls for Zadan and cover for freya to guard against physical attacks with possible less damage as a back row or dodge the attack finally equip all party with anti body against venom breath. You need Phoenix down for a dead party but you must put battle mode on active and slow battle speed at the beginning . Save the game at each win until you reached the needed level.
i feel you missed Yuffie's biggest selling points being she doesnt get dmg reduction on Morph while using Conformer which made farming easy and her 2nd level 3 Limit break Doom of the Living was almost as good as omnislash
Cloud in FF tactics has a strange final Limit. It’s called Cherry Blossom on the original PSX release. I remember as kids we all tried going back to ff7 to try to be find his true final hidden lvl 4 limit after this lol 😂
Wonder if it held any significance or if its just some samurai warrior imagery shenanigans?
My friends and I did the same thing. After seeing it in Tactics, we were always speculating how Cloud's secret second Level 4 Limit Break might be acquired in Final Fantasy 7.
Without Yuffie and Vincent How I was supposed to beat the game without Arieth?
Party of Cloud Cid and Barret, Cloud being your magic/healer
Healer cait 💀💀
Vincent, to fill badass meter. Shadow for power. Quina for lulz
Vincent was always my fav.... i mean, who wouldnt want a vampire on your side?
In all fairness for FF 6 most of the cast is optional in the second half, other than a handful (Celes, Setzer, and Sabin I believe weren’t).
There are three characters on this list I have not gotten. Golbez from TAY, because I never played that game, Gilgamesh from WoFF, because I haven't gotten far enough in that game yet to get him, and Cloud from Tactics, because I could never get far enough in thst game to get him, as I sucked at the game back on PS1, struggling with the early random encounters, and eventually getting fed up with the game.
Final Fantasy Tactics is definitely no cakewalk. I wouldn't call it extremely difficult, but it absolutely expects the player to have a firm grasp of its mechanics, and how to take full advantage of all the skills made available to you, as well as the ability to put genuine forethought and strategy into your combat decisions. Not to mention that certain story missions were considerable difficulty spikes. You can't just haphazardly move your units, attack stuff, and hope to win like you could with some other strategy RPGs of the time.
@@gurvmlk Yeah, which was basically the extent of my strategy as a 10-year-old trying to play it. It was also my first actual tactical game too.
@@AzureKyle Oh yeah, that would've definitely been me if I played it at that age. I didn't even start playing RPGs until a little bit older than that though, and even then, I was terrible at applying any sort of real strategy. Although I did have some experience with tactical games by time I played Final Fantasy Tactics, but none of those were nearly so deep.
Yuffie cant be gotten until after you go through the mythril mines, there isnt a forest in the midgar/kalm/grasslands area.
never played the FF7 remake, but on the original PS1 version i remember having yuffie, vincent, and red xiii as my recruited side characters 😅
Vincent hands down became my favorite ff character so far to imagine him never existing is crazy
@@user-ye4bu6xh4c a smooth criminal haha
Hell yea
@user-ye4bu6xh4c Matthew Mercer actually got to voice Vincent in FF7 Rebirth.
Recruiting ex soldiers like Zack, Genesis, Angeal.
Made Crisis core happy.
And revnant of Sephiroth recruiting.
Made Advent children happy.
I wouldn’t have Quina on this list at all as it is required to go underground, so you cannot skip this character whatsoever like you can with the others
Quina is optional in Disk 1, so I'd say it counts.
@@YurrickLamhfhada no. But not for the whole game. You can ignore Vincent and Yuffie completely in 7. That’s why they fit
🤷 they explained all of that
Shadow can't be skipped either, for that matter. He's mandatory when Locke and Terra are recruited by the Empire to go with Leo and track down the espers, and he's again a mandatory party member on the floating continent. So I felt like he was being pretty generous with the concept of optional.
@@anthonydelfino6171 except with Shadow you can let him die for good and he doesn’t make it to the end of the game
As a Final Fantasy VI obsessive, I never saw Shadow as all that useful. In a game where micro-management of esper bonuses basically breaks the game completely way before the end of the World of Balance, anything else is pointless.
Making sure to teach your characters decent cure spells is actually enough to make the game a cake walk to be honest.
Even though I hate Yuffie as a person, her skills are still decent enough.
You'd be mad to turn down T. G. Cid in Tactics, as unlike Cloud the option to get him is part of the main story.
Shadow and Vincent are non-optional. They are must have characters!
Gogo FF6, can equip all special abilities and use mimic. 1 of the best for sure
I really want a full remake of Final Fantasy Tactics War of the Lions. When they do it I hope it is packed full of secret surprise Characters and Summons.
They should remake it better.
Gabranth wasn't just a fun character to play in Dissidia. When customizing your moveset you must have a minimum of 1 HP attack, since Grabranth could only deal damage via HP attacks in EX Mode you can remove the EX Mode HP attacks and keep the HP "attacks" that just charges his EX Gauge.
By doing this you have a CPU that, almost, can never win a match. The only HP attack they can do is during a chase, but if you set the AI behavior to a more passive one it's harder to accidentally be put into this situation.
What this means is you can easily power level all of your characters by going against a level 100 Gabranth with max HP since he will have a very hard time killing you.
This would also allow you to farm items for BiS equipment since each item you put on has a percentage chance to be won during battle.
Yuffie #1, Gogo #2, Gogo is so much better than shadow, get the airship in WoR get bum rush from duncan then get Gogo, then recruit everyone and finish the story, Yuffie hands down #1
I feel like the bit on Cloud from FFT is a bit exaggerated. He was pretty bad. He needs his special sword to use his limits in his base job and the sword is kinda weak. If you reclass him he's not much different than anyone else.
Gilgamesh in FFXIV is so great. It really makes him being connect relief ring true
Doomtrain is the optional character that is always worth recruiting imo.
I always got cloud in tactics. Mandatory.
Honestly, Balthier is far more broken than Cloud. I'm surprised he didn't make #1. For me, he even out-damages TG Cid!
I never regret missing cloud in fft, still not sure why they just give you orlandu
Honestly, Vincent AND Yuffie were too important to the really skilled players, mainly due to their ultimate weapons.
Yuffie's made source farming and a few other things far more trivial. And Vincent's was one of the few ways to overflow damage and basically oneshot anything that wasn't Ruby Weapon. Even then, Vincent could basically guarantee max damage on his weapon.
Another interesting video, thanks!!
I'm sorry, but Cloud in FFT is hardly someone I would say that is a regret to no recruit. He's level 1 in chapter 4. That means you have to spend an ungodly amount of time to get him up to speed. Beowulf is easily the better optional character.
Would you count Aranea Highwind, considering you need to use a glitch to keep her in XV?
It's Gogo.
Cloud might be the strongest recruitable after Thunder God Cid, but he's also the most tedious to be the strongest. In fact his weapon, Materia Blade is the most problematic to find and use.
Who the heck would NOT pick up Shadow? When this video started, I didn't even think of him because of the blasphemy of not having him in the party whenever possible. Not to mention arguably one of the best character themes in the game.
Listening to the intro, I cwan't stop thnking that Darryl hates FF16😂