#I trialed using the sprites in some free coding website

[evilhorse936]

Omgg like two years ago I had a whole RPG maker game plotted out and pages and pages of sprites then never got round to downloading RPG maker to make it

[miloscat]

[Review] Pictlogica Final Fantasy (3DS)

It’s been an epic 8-month journey but I finally solved a bunch of logic puzzles.

I first became familiar with Pictlogica Final Fantasy thanks to its artwork: characters from across the whole of Square’s long-running RPG franchise in a cute unified chibi style, standing on cubes, and newly created SNES-style sprites for them all as well. Then I found its internationally available (albeit still in Japanese language) smartphone version; this had lots of content updates, rendering more and more obscure characters in said art style, but sadly was a fundamentally disappointing experience as it consisted solely of the “battle mode”, quick-fire mini-Picrosses that trigger attacks in turn-based battles. It was dull, repetitive, and reflex-based, a far cry from what I actually enjoyed about solving nonograms.

Learning about the Japanese 3DS release (with its pretentious use of the "≓” symbol in its name) was a further cause of annoyance, as it had traditional-style Picross puzzles covering Final Fantasy subject matter, but much like Club Nintendo Picross and Club Nintendo Picross Plus, it was never localised on the region-locked handheld. And so when I got to finally borrow a JP region console (a long-term loan that is now concluded) this was the first thing I checked out.

Turns out it was a free-to-play release like Pokemon Picross, only the gating for a non-paying player is to wait in between each “world” (a set of 10 puzzles). The waits start at a few hours but quickly rocket up to two week delays. I decided that rather than pay, I could wait. A fortnightly dose of puzzling was nice, compared to my usual binging pace with these games. I’m still not able to complete the game though, as two bonus worlds were only unlockable through codes given from the official website and by connecting to the app version, both of which were discontinued a mere 18 months after this version’s release. What a mess. There’s a physical release as well; I assume it just has everything unlocked, but I don’t know about the bonus puzzles.

Anyway, I was quite pleased with the offering here. This is an official Jupiter Picross product, just under a different name, and it has all the quality and features that you’d expect with their output (and the lovely 3DS touch screen play experience). In all there’s 310 available puzzles (of which one in each world is in Mega Picross style) minus the inaccessible bonus worlds, and three Micross montage puzzles. That’s plenty to do even if you get them all at once.

On top of that, the battle mode is included here. About half the puzzles give you a chance to recruit a character, which you do by fighting some monster waves and a boss through the rapid-solving process of the mobile game. Getting better characters and levelling them up lets you fight harder battles, and there’s lots of freedom to mix and match your team of five. A lot of the nuance of this mode was lost on me due to the language barrier, and towards the end it just gets too inscrutably punishing; the fights are puzzles of another kind, except you’re slowly trying to figure out which team composition is best for a given fight by trial and error. It’s not what I was here for and I found it tedious and irritating by the end, but I liked building a team of my favourite all-stars from the first six instalments (plus Mystic Quest!) and seeing everyone lined up together in a consistent art style.

If I could pick a nit with the puzzles, most of them have you rendering a small part of a sprite from the games, or a newly created close-up portrait for all the post-VI characters. Upon solving it, the view then zooms out to show you the full picture that you just partially depicted. I found it slightly unsatisfying in the same way the pixel grids in Pokemon Picross (GBC) didn’t really correspond to the subject of the pixel art.

Other than that, this is a perfectly cromulent Picross game, and a wonderful fan-service fest for Final Fantasy followers. (To be clear, it covers the main games from 1 to 15, plus Advent Children, X-2, XIII-2, Type-0, Mystic Quest, Tactics, Tactics Advance, Tactics A2, the Crystal Chronicles games, and World of.) I feel a perverse pride at having cleared it for free, a quiet satisfaction at having solved all the grids without hints, and a baseline annoyance that the game remains region-locked, that some puzzles are now locked forever, and that the mobile game had a whole ton of extra characters that aren’t in this version. Oh well!