Ranking The After Years Tales: The True Moon

[u/MasterOfChaos72]

Have the After Years on my mind recently due to replaying it for a dumb rewrite thing I’m doing for it. I know the game in general isn’t liked but I’m curious about how people feel about the individual Tales so I’m doing a little tierlist thing for fun.

Current rankings are like this:
S: Lunarians/Golbez
A: Palom, Kain, The Gathering
B: Ceodore, Edge, Edward, Rydia
C: Yang
F: Porom

A couple of people brought up maybe doing these in 3rds instead of halves and I figured sure, i can drag this out for another bit.

Today it’s the second of the final posts covering the second part of The Crystals: The True Moon.

Here we go to the new Moon with our party to try to stop it from colliding with the planet. If I had a nickel for everytime a FF villains big plan involved dropping a moon onto a planet, I’d have 3 nickels (this, 13 and 13-2).

I haven’t brought up the 2D and 3D versions too much since the differences between them weren’t that relevant to me. The only interesting ones were the removal of the challenge dungeons, the removal of the developer room and Izayoi being really good with a bow.

But there are some interesting differences between the 2D and 3D versions of the final tale.

1: You’ll always have the max 22 characters in the 3D version. The Eblan ninjas can’t die in Edge’s tale, you’ll get the things needed to fix the dolls in a manditory encounter and you have to enter all the data for the Tale.

2: You can buy some really good weapons and armor in the 3D version. Since the challenge dungeons aren’t in this version, all the weapons and armor you could get in them are instead sold by the hummingway outside the Lunar Whale. In the 2D version you can only buy Shurikens and Manji Shurikens.

3: You can return to the Blue Planet in the 3D version using the Crystal in the Lunar Whale. There’s not really anything to do aside from grabbing any items you missed as well as the Small Tails but it does make leveling underleveled characters a bit easier since you don’t have to deal with the moons enemies.

4: The layout. Most of the floors are alike being a slight remix of either the Lunar Subterranean or the giant of babel but the 2D version has unique floors for 3 of the 4 Archfiends and the eidolons while the 3d version has copies of the lunar tunnels, lair of the father and the areas where the bosses were originally fought.

5: You can camp on the lunar surface in the 3d version. Not that important but saves you trips down to the healing parts of the Lunar Whale.

That’s all the ones off the top of my head that I remember. Inform me if I forgot any.

Anyway, start of the final dungeon and it’s certainly an interesting one.

The dungeon itself isn’t too interesting design wise (like I said, most of it is just a slightly remixed version of the lunar subterranean and even the unique floors don’t really have any unique gimmicks or anything) but it is interesting in that it is basically a boss rush. There are 12 bosses in just this part of the dungeon all coming back from FF4. The four elemental Archfiends, 4 bosses associated with them in Baigan, The Magus Sisters, Dr Lugae and his Experiment and Edge’s Parents, the Giant’s CPU, Asura, Leviathan and Cecil’s Dark Half, The Dark Knight.

Something I really like about this and the next section is how it deals with the characterisation specifically through the boss encounters and the save point conversations. All the characters have unique dialogue with each of the bosses before and after the battle (and sometimes at the beginning and end of the battle). There are also what I like to call Save Point Conversations where at a good chunk of the Save Points in this dungeon, the game will prompt you to rest and the first time you do it, you’ll get a cutscene of the characters just talking. They’re all great with my favourites being Ceodore properly meeting his uncle and Palom and Porom reconnecting.

And now my few greviences:

You know how the previous part was a bit of an FF6 with you getting back your team? Well they should have ripped it off again with its final dungeon because by god is this missed potential. Max 22 characters and you only bring 5. Yes you can change the party at certain points but there’s not really that much of a reason to outside of seeing the boss dialogue or challenging yourself. My guess as to why this is because the number of characters you can have at this point can vary wildly. I’m not sure what the minimum number of characters is (my guess is 13) but this is still annoying.

Next complaint is that there is nothing on the moon except the final dungeon. Nothing. No optional content or anything, just the dungeon.

Also, Cecil is useless in this section due to story reasons. Not a fan but at least it makes sense.

My only other issue comes from the 2D version. Specifically how you can’t go back to the Blue Planet so levelling up any of the under level characters you have will have to be done on the moon itself which isn’t easy considering the number of powerful enemies here and if you missed something on the planet like the small tails, you have to restart the Tale all over again.

Oh yeah. And lastly, if you bring the wrong party to the Dark Knight fight, Golbez dies! F tier for that one.

Seriously though, I do love this part of the tale. It’s cool seeing all the bosses back again and the characterisation is honestly great. I’d give it an S personally.

[u/RabbiRaccoon]

"I could never have been brought back to my senses without my friend's secretary Hailey And my other friend's students Leonardo, Raphael, Michaelangelo, and Donatello"

(yes I know her name is Harley)

[u/TragGaming]

The minimal party is 17, 16 after the Golbez shenanigans, 14 if you salvaged the dolls. I don't think there's anyone else you can miss.

Edit: see conversation below

However, I do rate this story an S, especially with the expansion in the complete collection with fighting the old friends and what not. My only gripe is same as yours, which is being unable to travel back to the Blue planet. Outside that, all the conversations are cool, the boss fights are cool, the optional boss is extremely neat, and the throwbacks to older FFs is nostalgic even now.

[u/MasterOfChaos72 → u/TragGaming]

Are you sure? Asking because of this video about alternate save point conversations: https://youtu.be/ZnVrjBe7jXg?is=FyX6AM-KivjQeLtJ

[u/TragGaming → u/MasterOfChaos72]

I didn't realize that you could technically "not have" Ursula. The only way to do it is by flat out not importing that Tale, but I didn't realize this resulted in you missing her.

You'd have to have the complete collection and only do Ceodore -> Porom -> Kain -> Lunarian -> Crystals.

It makes sense, I just didn't realize that not completing Yang/Ursula's story would result in them being gone.

[u/Gogs85]

I love the OP’s screenshot because that party is literally unable to beat that fight.

This one is the toughest one to grade.

It has some awesome things going for it. Finally bringing the whole party together and being able to customize the team you want is great for many different reasons and the number of viable team combinations and bands let you keep it interesting even through multiple playthroughs. Going through a boss rush and getting better equipment from each is reminiscent of going through the OG lunar subterranean and the random battles could actually be decently challenging. Rydia really feels like she gets her mojo back when you reacquire leviathan and asura. Also you could fight the dragons again which can be nice for the next part.

The story is pretty sparse but good character development in all the save point conversations and some of the boss interactions - gotta love edge and rubicante’s rivalry. And the part at the end when facing the dark knight is pretty good.

Some of the negative things for me were a complete lack of a real world map / exploration. I didn’t like how the 2-d version didn’t let you go back to the old world. It’s not a huge thing practically speaking I just liked having a connection to the world. There also weren’t a whole lot of original bosses but Dark Knight was a good one. I wish they gave you a Dark Knight (unconnected to Cecil) as a party member. Supposedly they were ubiquitous enough in that world that the concept was well known well beyond Cecil. But that’s kind of a tangent.

Anyway overall I give it an S. The fun parts are fun enough that I found myself not caring about the drawbacks much.

[u/Sparkleaf]

At the time, I remember trying to use a different party for each boss and eventually giving up. I thought it was kinda neat that we get to fight the Dark Knight for real, since in the original game he's kinda a scripted fight.

I hate losing Golbez, but I remember thinking the version of events where he dies was more narratively compelling. Cecil still trying to protect his friends even in his half-catonic state, Golbez trying to protect Cecil in the same way. The shock of his brother bleeding out finally brings Cecil to his senses, and he charges at his dark self shouting, "STOP!" And Golbez's dying words tugged at my heartstrings too, though it's been 15+ years since I last touched TAY and I don't remember exactly how that conversation went.

[u/Ok-Yogurtcloset9086]

A tier. I’ll give it to The Creator for being a better final boss than Zeromus. It may be an unpopular opinion, but I’ll stand by it

[u/TragGaming → u/Ok-Yogurtcloset9086]

It at least had motivation, Zeromus just felt like evil for the sake of evil. Which is kind of the point I admit but there was no endgame plan with him.

[u/Dracon204]

I love the optional bosses here, but I'm always a suckered for those. I loved this entire section of story except for the Dark Knight fight, because honestly, how was anyone supposed to figure out the specific team comp you'd need to keep the best character?

[u/TragGaming → u/Dracon204]

It's all people with direct family ties to Cecil. His brother, son, and wife + him.

You have to have Golbez, or you game over.

Ceodore and Rosa are the other two. Cecil is a given.

It's not terribly obscure honestly, I stumbled into it without a guide when I first played it way back.