Naming Conventions for Magic
 

This may seem completely random, but I do have hidden motives for popping this question.

Mainly for the Final Fantasy aspect, what kind of naming conventions do you prefer? Which do you like most? Not necessarily regarding the specific FF GAME they appeared in, but the naming convention in general?

Bluntly, do you prefer the classic Fire, Fire 2, Fire 3, or the newer Fire, Fira, Firaga. Note: Forgive me, I haven't played every Final Fantasy and therefore haven't necessarily seen all naming conventions.

Opinions would be great, thanks. :bmage:

I still like the old fire1 fire2. The first time i heard some one of my friends talking about the new magic system I said "What the hell is thundoga? Some type of elemental?"

I think all the names are pretty bland and/or, in the case of such naming systems as Fira and Firaga, etc, a pretty....dumb sounding play on words. It might work well in other languages that use common suffixes to words to create added meanings, but in English it sounds quite akward.

I'd much prefer a system of naming spells with unique names. A base spell could be called 'Fire'. That's fine. But let's not call an evolved form of Fire 'Fire 2'.....or 'Fira'. How about a unique name. Suikoden does it. Lunar does it. Even Dungeons and Dragons. Square just seems to be rather lazy on that aspect. -_-

Yeah, I liked Suikoden's magic names. They always came up with pretty good ones.

Yeah, but consider, Square was the first company to make a legitimate RPG that our "western" audience fell in love with. I say let 'em have their way with it. Because for some people (Like me) remembering ueber-large amounts of spells for just one element makes my brain hurt. And besides, the names just let you know that it is a bigger spell. The spell will have the same effect whether it's are named Fira or Fire 2.

Aside from that, it was a very basic game. They wanted people to be able to understand the levels of the spells. So that when the cast FIR2(as it was called in FF1) that it was a higher level spell than FIRE. Sometimes, though, if spell names in games are too different, then it can get confusing.

Well, I think the fact that all spell names had to be 4 letters long was a bit restrictive in the first game. But now they have no excuse. I wouldn't mind seeing some other spell names. The Grandia series had some good ones, as I recall.

Well, I can understand why they did it on the NES, but when the SNES came, they continued it, right up to Chrono Trigger and FFVI. I mean, why couldn't they have at least called it maybe Ice, Sleet and Blizzard (still cheezy, but brings diversity to the names)?

I don't want to put Suikoden on a pedestal (ok, so I actually ALWAYS do :P), but they did do the name thing and it works fine. 'Flaming Arrows' is in all 4 Suikodens the base Fire Spell. It has the same effect as a 'Fire 1' (except it looks a lot more cool), but I'm not going to have to look at a 'Flaming Arrows 2' or 'Flaming Arrows 3' and go 'well that's dumb...' The other spells have other names. And they generally reflect their power. Such as Thor's Hammer or Water Dragon would sound likemassive spells, right? And they are the massive spells when you use two Runes simotaniously (Lightening + Earth and Water + Wind respectively).

Anyway....just more on my view...

Thanks for the replies everyone. My personal view was that the old system was meant for simplicity, and while the newer FF versions (Fire, Fira, etc) ARE an improvement, they still have the same general idea. I tried to stay within the FF realm, because I know by all means that the spell names in (for example) Dungeons and Dragons are far more sophisticated than any FF game. I tried to steer that way because I'm working on something with a heavy Final Fantasy feel, and I wanted to get some opinions. It looks like the general feeling is that people prefer things like 'Blaze, Fire Storm, Incendiary Sphere' to 'Fire, Fire 2, Fire 3' and 'Fire, Fira, Firaga.'

Well, in Skies of Arcadia, they had spells like "Pyros, Pyrum, Pyrulen" for the fire spells each time you upgraded.