Okay, I'll help you first. Fooled you, huh? Final Battle is essentially based on Final Fantasy, although the names were generated ENTIRELY independently. Thus, the HP values and levels are based on Final Fantasy. Whoever has not played a Final Fantasy game of any sort, even the less-than-perfect ones (i.e. NOT the norm), is missing out on a huge section of RPGs. In Final Fantasy, you get the bonus of a easy game to play with the down side of less flexibility. Characters start out at a level somewhat like 10, 3, something; depends on which Final Fantasy you're playing(remember, they have 8 games just with the words Final Fantasy and the number following, so there are lots of differences). Your maximum level is 99. Your maximum health and your maximum damage is 9999. Some bosses have 100,000 HP, though. These bosses are usually the typical universe-destroyer type. There are many spells, summons like the mighty dragon king Bahamut, the master sea serpent Leviathan, the god warrior Odin, the protecting Golem, and yada yada yada.

But I have noticed something essentially wrong with most Final Fantasy games: one thing in the game is mucho better than the other stuff. In Final Fantasy 2/4j (I don't want to get into the huge explanation about the numbers and why there are only 5 in the U.S. but 8 in Japan), the physical attacks except for Kain's Jump always seem to suck. In FF7, the Materia unbalance the game, what with the infamous combo of Knights of the Round, which summons 10+ knights which do 5000+ damage (50,000 damage), and Mime, which lets you copy any attack preceding it for free. In addition, in FF7 Limit Breaks (which are basically explosions of anger; a bar fills up as the person gets damage, then when the bar is full, they can do a powerful attack) are unbalanced because Cloud's Omnislash does 20 attacks, all doing 9999 damage, and Red XIII's Cosmo Memory does 9999 once. In FF8, the Guardian Forces, which are summons that your party members transform into, can be done indefinitely assuming the Guardian Forces themselves are not killed, and then you can revive them. And so on and so forth.

Ah, but Final Battle is different. If I were to make any force (technology, psionics, physical strength, magic, or anything else) unbalanced, then that would alienate people. Some people just like having their party composed of guys with miniguns and chainsaws. While this description seems to show that they're stupid, they're not. These same people will come up with very ingenious uses of their weapons: bullets that drain magic, bullets that pierce forcefields, etc. It's just that their approach is different. Not better, not worse, just different. A person who likes magic much more is on a level playing field. However, there is are two points of play where battle becomes unbalanced: the very balance of the dueling forces and the strategy of both. A person like me who respects and likes all approaches will do the best most often. These are the people who equip their characters with miniguns loaded with nuclear bullets and then, on the second turn, cast a spell that summons fiery meteors. A well-balanced party is, in the sense of game balance, the unbalanced party. And that is the point of the game. There are many different approaches, but ozne should always have at least a few characters that follow a less-than-favorite approach in order to combat others.

You might say Final Battle is like Pokemon, but is not. I labor often to find a rock-paper-scissors approach at looking at things, and I only end up unaccurate generalizations. What I mean by that: someone could make a case that magic defeats technology, physical attacks beat magic, and technology beats physical. But this is untrue. I will make a case for each. First of all, many technological characters are to some extent physical, by which I mean that they have something for hand to hand combat. A pickaxe, a chainsaw, a combat knife, all are common soldier garb. A robot, while certainly sometimes being vulnerable to the magic control of lightning, can get upgrades like electromagnetic dispersal shielding. Actually, I hate that. Part of my success in FB is that I always try to use my opponent's attacks to my advantage. A robot should actually get a lightning rod that channels into it's laser. Thus, a cocky magician may soon find himself starting under the barrel of a reloaded gun. A magician, while certainly being vulnerable to close, physical attacks, is far from helpless. He can conjure weapons, slow time to his advantage, cause the enemy severe agony or sickness, cause them to fall into a deep pit, teleport, put up forcefields, and countless other things. And a physical warrior often has things that they can do to defeat technology, like high HP, quick dodges, etc. Fred can be considered a brawler, and yet he could slaughter a technologist without even using his teleport by charging and doing his quick dodges or by flying. Physical warriors include such warriors as Gokuh, who would probably have a good chance of beating a technology man. Or you could make a case for slow beats medium, medium beats fast, fast beats slow. I know from personal experience that the medium vs. fast thing is not true.

So, anyway, about helping me... When you come up with a new character or a new rule or option or review, you can send it to me. I will give you full author credit. This applies to everything on this page.