Final Fantasy Megathread - People here, it sounds like sickness

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Final Fantasy Megathread - People here, it sounds like sickness

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exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Cardboard Fox posted:

VGchartz just released an article detailing Square's video game sales. I don't know how credible they are, but I found the article to be interesting nonetheless. Sorry if this has been posted before.

http://www.vgchartz.com/article/250282/top-10-in-sales-square-enix-games/

Makes me a little nostalgic. It sure was a great time to play this series in the late 90s.

I'm kind of surprised IX sold so much less than VII and VIII. Could it have been because they released it so close to the launch of the PS2?

There are lots of reasons I can think of that may have combined to give FFIX lower comparative sales. Coming at the end of the PSX's life cycle is a big factor, and there were some really strong concurrent RPGs in 1999 that probably leeched off a few sales. The PS2 was backwards though, so that can't be the only reason. FFIX is also so different in tone from what the FF series was turning into at that time. The plot was relatively light-hearted, there was no strong individual protagonist/villain in the mold of 7/8/10, and the mechanics were definitively old-school. I think this was around the time that the series was beginning to become more popular with women than with men also.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2012 15:45

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:47

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Honey Badger posted:

I'm probably going to pick up the Steam FFVII if it goes on sale at any point just because I haven't played it in like 10 years and I don't mind downloading a better soundtrack. I agree that VII got hyped to hell and back, but it is definitely in my top 3 along with 6 and 9. I think VII has my favorite setting with the dystopian techno-punk feel (6 had this too but the pre-rendered backgrounds in VII just make it feel more alive) and I actually like the story even though it's pretty complicated. I'm a fan of stories that don't get explained point-by-point, though, and I think the fact that there are multiple valid explanations of some story elements that exist without contradicting each other are kind of neat.

The art direction in VI is actually kind of a turnoff for me now. Upon revisiting it you're aware of how all over the place it is, like in the same universe where you have medieval dudes in castles you also have robot walkers and steam trains. That was all cool and permissible when I was 10, but it just comes off as really uneven in retrospect, especially in subsequent titles like 7/9/10 that did a much better job at designing a consistent look for the world.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2013 00:35

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I don't think the SA Games forum is really representative of the gaming community as a whole, for better or for worse. The impression that I get is that everybody loves Lightning.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2013 13:33

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Overbite posted:

I don't know why. Lightning is one of the most boring FF protagonists in the series. It's like if we got a ton of FF8 spinoffs staring Squall. I can't think of a single interesting thing about Lightning aside from her navel ring. It doesn't seem like something she would be into.

Didn't the project director straight-up say he wanted to make a Female Cloud? I think that sums up Lightning's appeal for the FF faithful, they love those dark brooding archetypes with an untold destiny. It also can't be overlooked that she is the first uncontested female main character in the series, although I guess you could make an argument for Terra in VI.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2013 14:00

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

theonlypie314SA posted:

Not sure if this was posted yet but here is a trailer of FFX/X-2 HD Remaster trailer which shows the comparison of SD vs HD

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA6TshHFtJ4

How does the HD version compare to what you can do with emulation?

# ¿ Jul 12, 2013 13:18

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Zombies' Downfall posted:

Final Fantasy 6 is one of my favorite games of all time and I readily admit that the characters aren't well-constructed three-dimensional characters and that the gameplay is massively flawed, imbalanced, and in the original SFAM/SNES version buggy as poo poo.

Aside from nostalgia, the love comes from the fact that it was one of the first console games ever made that - to my sight - had aesthetic aspirations and a cohesive theme and an artistic purpose. The two-dimensional characters work because they aren't people, they're characters, even in the context of the story. Look at the way the ending is directed (with the LOCKE as Locke Cole things), the way the characters gesticulate in a 16-bit game and treat the backdrop like a backdrop and not a real world, the way they bound onto the battlefield dramatically as every fight begins. It's not a coincidence that the centerpiece of the game is an opera - you're performing. Videogames mostly went from emulating simple tabletop games like chess to emulating films; it's emulating a theatrical play.

Nobody else was doing poo poo like that at the time, including the prior Final Fantasy games. I guess maybe I'd put Earthbound and Yoshi's Story in the same category of 16-bit games that are definitely trying to evoke something and not just entertain the player or challenge their abilities.

I never really enjoyed playing FFVI that much, but I recognize that it had tremendous ambition and attempted to maintain a cohesive narrative across time, an important part of storytelling that many video games still struggle to achieve. Characters had motifs and motivations, however rudimentary, and its themes were far-reaching and non-accidental. In retrospect though, I think FFVI suffers from being all over the place in both tone and aesthetics. It wears its influences proudly but I feel that many of those aspects never entirely gelled -- like you have a knight-errant dude speaking in chivalric language up teamed up with a girl in a mecha-suit and some kind of jokey cat thing. A lot of it can be overlooked because it's the first time this kind of cinematic narrative was ever attempted in many respects, but some of the contrasts are still jarring. But there's no doubt that FFVI definitely set the metric for what people could expect from all future Final Fantasies and JRPGs in general. The idea of setting, characters, and story all superseding gameplay considerations truly began with FFVI, I'd argue.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2013 01:36

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

FFXIII was so poorly received that S/E keeps making sequels for it and it's the third best-selling FF title of all time. That's just anecdotal, though.

# ¿ Jul 21, 2013 21:13

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Whenever you use an apostrophe in English, that counts for 4x the amount of confusion and processing time any other term would. Somebody on the localization team just didn't know when to stop and FFXIII is the result of their mad streak.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2013 21:39

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I completely glossed over the explanation for everything in the Besaid Cloister so for half the game I just stuck orbs into the wall until it made the door open. Then I wanted to be a completionist and go back to use the destruction spheres for the secret items. Hell yeah, a level 8 Yuna Wand. :krad:

# ¿ Aug 3, 2013 23:04

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Austrian mook posted:

FFX

FFX had the fortunate storytelling crutch of a stranger in a strange land, which made it relevant and necessary to frequently explain what things were.

Edit: Every JRPG should do this.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2013 19:13

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Azure_Horizon posted:

How dare they be a little inventive! They should have just called Mako Magic Super Soldier Juice!

Pointless apostrophes are like cancer to my eyeballs and FFXIII is a worse offender than even my dumbest Facebook friends.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2013 19:39

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

X-2 felt like one big extended New Game+ for FFX. It was like, "okay, you got through the standard RPG hero's journey thing, now let's take this poo poo completely off the rails." And I mean that in the best way possible.

# ¿ Aug 5, 2013 12:11

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Yeah that all sounds really horrible. At least the original FFVI is quaint with its odd word choice in places and not desperately trying to make an R-rated game.

# ¿ Aug 6, 2013 22:11

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

ShadowedFlames posted:

No pleasing everyone. Even if they kept the original translation, it would then be "why can't I make Sabin a dual-Ultima wielding Suplex machine?" Some people refuse to accept change, plain and simple. These are the people who cry blasphemy when the OST is remixed or other things come to ruin their memories.

I don't really even like FFVI enough to play through it again, I just think dialogue like that in a kid's game sounds really offputting to me. It would be like replaying Ducktales except now Scrooge McDuck interjects with "I'm gonna get that fucker who stole me diamonds." I imagine most of us here were probably 8-12 the first time we loaded up FFVI and while there were some serious parts, none of it really warranted the GTA dialogue treatment. Much of it is rather silly and humorous.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2013 00:31

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I've kind of ignored Final Fantasy XIII entirely but I hear Lightning Returns is Actually Pretty Good and the previous two games are on the Steam holiday sale...how stupid is the plot, exactly? I can handle standard Blizzard plot levels of stupid, but not Xenosaga levels of stupid, if that makes any sense. Would I be wasting my time on the first two? For reference, FFX is my favorite game in the entire series and of the modern ones, I probably liked FF8 the least minus the MMOs, which don't count.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 01:00

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Yeah chaos is where I have to draw the line, magical immortal teenagers are too much for me.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 01:25

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Cake Attack posted:

that's a very arbitrary line

I accept that any RPG is going to have some obnoxious characters, but Chaos and all types in that same mold are the most grating to me. Even Dragon Age Inquisition has a magical immortal teenager companion, and I hate him there, too.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 01:31

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

CuddlyZombie posted:

how do you feel about Kaos?

He was my favorite character in Primal Rage.

# ¿ Dec 19, 2014 01:34

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Hear my story. Or hear another character's story, I guess it really doesn't matter -- Tidus, Final Fantasy X (2001)

# ¿ Dec 22, 2014 04:56

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Grizzled Patriarch posted:

I'm really enjoying FFX more than I thought I would. Terrible VAs aside, it's such a nice looking game, and I think it's legitimately the only FF that I could say has any "difficulty" if you aren't looking at a guide. The fight with Seymour on Gagazet is a goddamn ballbuster if you didn't go out of your way to grind levels / spend a bunch of gil customize gear in advance. Probably the hardest storyline boss of any FF, at least that I can recall.

I felt like FFX had the best art direction and visual consistency out of any Final Fantasy, like "this is an actual world where some thought has been put into its people and history" over "this is just a hodgepodge of various RPG tropes thrown together," even though it's got plenty of those going on, too. The combat was really smooth and intuitive, though also difficult in some places if you didn't have the right approach. The voice acting is heinously bad of course but when I was seventeen I was just blown away that a game as huge as FFX even had fully voiced characters.

# ¿ Mar 23, 2015 00:52

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

One of the things I appreciate about FFX is how quickly the plot moves in the beginning. Within the first 6 hours of starting a new game you've already gone from Dream Zanarkand --> Baaj Temple --> Ruined Airship --> Besaid --> Kilika --> Luca. It's a very replayable Final Fantasy in the sense that nothing ever drags.

# ¿ May 15, 2016 13:00

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I think it took me literally five minutes to get out of Dream Zanarkand minus the cutscene.

# ¿ May 15, 2016 13:22

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

THE AWESOME GHOST posted:

Oh yeah another thing is that I remember FFX-2 being way better than FFX because I love job systems but guess what it turns out FFX2 was made in like a week and has terrible balance

That's what made FFX-2 so great though, easy ways to break the system if you think a little bit and no overwrought storyline. Just playing dress-up with my gurlz.

# ¿ May 15, 2016 13:30

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Sakurazuka posted:

Like, what actually isn't possible on consoles other than fps/resolution increases?

Memory limitations causing assets to be split between multiple discs.

# ¿ May 15, 2016 17:24

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Higher end GPUs are pretty cool right now with all the post-processing + physics tricks they can do that consoles won't offer because they'd be selling their machines at a huge loss.

# ¿ May 15, 2016 17:30

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Sakurazuka posted:

lol I have like 300 games on Steam dude. So far no-one has come up with anything other than more fps and comparing things to last gen consoles.

It's not just FPS though, everything related to visual quality will be better on PC and what's more, you can push its graphical limits past what's commonly available on the market right now so that it will look even better in the future. Not a lot of people were rocking 1440p monitors back when Skyrim was released but that doesn't stop it from looking incredible on systems that can handle it today at SSAAx4.

# ¿ May 15, 2016 17:39

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Linnaeus posted:

Have fun waiting three years for miniscule graphics improvements, I'll be playing the game in september

Have fun rebuying the superior International Version in three years anyway, I'll be waiting for minuscule graphics improvements.

# ¿ May 15, 2016 18:01

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

gigglefeimer posted:

There aren't any useless jobs in X-2 though.

If Trump is elected, I'm moving to Spira.

# ¿ May 15, 2016 21:59

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Sakurazuka posted:

Yeah, sorry, I'm not convinced there's anything there that requires them to completely rebuild the game from the ground up for PC, it sounds more like a line and the PC version (if it ever exists) will be a nicer looking port of the game.

He didn't say anything about rebuilding the entire engine, that was you. He only said that it would be more than "just a simple port" which I think given some of SE's recent Steam port efforts was damage control more than anything.

# ¿ May 16, 2016 08:35

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I'll believe it when I see it.

# ¿ May 16, 2016 08:46

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Remember to pick up Valefor's second much better Overdrive before leaving Besaid from that stupid dog. I mean how does a dog even bury a limit break attack?

# ¿ May 16, 2016 23:28

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

The destruction sphere in Besaid leads to a weapon for Yuna that's good until like Mi'Hen Highroads, it's nothing to go crazy over.

# ¿ May 16, 2016 23:35

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Ibram Gaunt posted:

The point is not locking yourself out of Anima without having to deal with an extra level of crap (dark valefor)

Mom locked me out of my anime and now I have to deal with an extra level of crap (parental controls)

# ¿ May 16, 2016 23:53

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Not a Children posted:

Playing FFX for the first time and I'm a little overwhelmed by the leveling system. Any pitfalls to watch out for, or should I just go for the skills/abilities I like and level 'em willy-nilly?

You can play through the entire game just following every character's natural progression through the grid. That being said try to pay attention to where the locked spheres are and resist the urge to blow the first unlock sphere you find on whatever is closest. Look ahead on the grid a little bit and save your unlocks for a path that looks fun (for example, taking Tidus down Rikku's path). Khimari ends up being a very flexible character because of his placement on the grid, with easy access to almost every character's path.

# ¿ May 17, 2016 18:11

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

FFX gets a pass because it was really the first time a game of that scale and scope had a fully voiced cast. Completely voiced games are ubiquitous now but it's easy to forget that at the time FFX was made they really weren't, and the game's success contributed to the inevitability and expectation that every mainstream AAA release thereafter would be voiced 100%.

# ¿ May 17, 2016 19:01

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

The second Tidus opened his baka mouth in the inferior American dub I unsheathed my katana and sliced my monitor in two. Lucky for me, I have dual monitors.

# ¿ May 18, 2016 00:09

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

In a world free from sin, everything is permitted.

# ¿ May 18, 2016 09:33

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

I liked pretty much all the costume design in FFX and it was cool that at least some thought was put into how the different populations of Spira might dress. The only questionable choice to me is Lulu, who on a tropical island of colorful inhabitants looks like a dominatrix complete with leather straps and chains. I know she's a black mage and everything but I always thought they could have chosen a more tasteful way of representing that.

# ¿ May 18, 2016 13:23

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Something I noticed replaying FFX is that even without the final summoning, Spira was already getting pretty good at kicking Sin's rear end. The first summoner to defeat Sin was Yunalesca some 1,000 years ago, then there's a gap of 500+ years before anybody kills Sin again, but Sin has been killed three times within the last 50 years by the time you reach the end of the game. Maybe even without Jecht/Tidus' intervention Sin would have eventually become something that flares up every now and again, like the flu.

# ¿ May 18, 2016 13:44

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 09:47

exquisite tea: Apr 21, 2007; Carly shook her glass, willing the ice to melt. "You still haven't told me what the mission is."

She leaned forward. "We are going to assassinate the bad men of Hollywood."

Knowing what we know now about high fantasy terrorism and Jecht being Sin, maybe the Crusaders should have built a giant Blitzball mine that even Sin couldn't resist kicking.

# ¿ May 18, 2016 15:01

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Final Fantasy Megathread - People here, it sounds like sickness

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