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ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



PaletteSwappedNinja posted:

The SaGa series is the complete polar opposite of FF in terms of design and player agency, but whenever they try releasing them outside of Japan they're met with near-unanimous derision. I hate you, general public.

Hey, SaGa Frontier was good. You know, the one third of a game that we actually got.

Someday they'll go back to it. Someday we'll get HD Alkaiser. :negative:

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ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Tempo 119 posted:

The guy writing it though, no offense, but I'm pretty sure FF8 killed his dog or something. What other impression could you possibly get through that kind of lens?

That is the impression that I get. I mean, he did start the thread for the express purpose of making GBS threads on the game, so there's that. Not to mention he feels like coming in and derailing every thread that mentions it for no good reason.

Edit:

Mrs. Badcrumble posted:

If you like good game balance then get the gently caress out of the final fantasy thread because the entire point of the series is to find ways utterly break the gameplay.

Seriously, that's some of the most fun the series has to offer. Taking it out and replacing it with 'balance' just makes the experience as a whole so much less fun.

ACES CURE PLANES fucked around with this message at 20:06 on May 25, 2012

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Fister Roboto posted:

It would be really cool if I could watch these without having to also watch a room full of fat balding neckbeards picking their noses. I guess I could shrink the window down to hide it, but god drat the concept annoys me.

You are getting really mad over a thing where people are taking time out of their lives to meet up and raise money for cancer research. Really shows the quality of your character when watching people do good deeds really annoys you because it isn't being done by supermodels.

ACES CURE PLANES fucked around with this message at 04:22 on Jan 13, 2013

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Zombies' Downfall posted:

I'll counter this by saying a lot of that 415k they raised for cancer research came from other unattractive weirdo nerds (y'know, the kind of people who'd watch a five day videogame marathon) and being on-camera and having names and faces and personalities even if you think they're gross or dorky or whatever probably helped them raise more money than a faceless videogame window would've. People kept giving shout-outs or asking one of them to do a funny thing or whatever along with their donation note. People like to interact with people, even nerds they don't know.

I mean, I urge anyone who thinks they did it wrong to organize their own charitable videogame marathon. It's not like having another one could hurt.

EDIT: Basically what I'm saying is it benefitted the donation side and the nearly half-a-million dollars in charitable donations is what's important, not doing a high-quality let's play you loving dorks

You put it better here than I ever could've. I mean, look at BlueGlass, he almost ended up becoming the 'face' for the marathon despite, and kinda due to, his goofy appearance, silly laugh, and goony appearance. I bet if you tallied up all the cash just attributed to him, either in shoutouts, or asking him to do something, say something, or assign money to a given goal, he himself pulled in at least $10k. And he comes off as a really cool guy to be around, and that's really what a lot of it is about, a lot of these guys are pretty fun, and seeing them having fun is pretty fun in itself.

And more on topic, every year that passes, the less and less I believe that Versus will ever come out. What was the most recent actual thing we've seen from it? That trailer from a few years ago that barely had more than the original trailer? I'm thinking they've just got one guy on it doing random poo poo just so they can say they're "working on it" still. :smith:

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



ImpAtom posted:

Don't be ridiculous. That would mean the important plot is delivered entirely in random lengthy dialogues near the end of the... oh my god.

But it didn't retcon the gently caress out of its original game did--Oh godfuckingdammit.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBfc0-KuDGE

Wait, what're we doing?

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Aw man, if Wild Arms is gonna be brought into this, then I'm gonna have to post the best drat song from that series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JfCYgxrQ_M

I don't care about 'the original', that trumpet loving MAKES the song.

Edit: vvv That is another good one. One day I need to finish those drat games. :smith:

ACES CURE PLANES fucked around with this message at 06:02 on Jan 25, 2013

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Azure_Horizon posted:

There IS no other Wild ARMs music as far as I'm concerned except this track. It defines the series.

Oh, yeah, it's definitely a definitive track for the series, and it's great. However, I prefer the WA2 opening song because, despite my love for spaghetti western whistling themes, a juicy wailing trumpet center wrapped up by a delicious acoustic guitar and brass accoutrement just beats it hands down for me.

Goddamn that series has great music.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Honest Thief posted:

Can anyone post a pic on how PAL psx FF games look on Vita? They're cheap on psn right now buuuut they're 50hz, and if they still got black borders I'm gonna take a pass on them

On default settings, there are still black borders on all four sides, but now there's a new option to resize the screen manually as you see fit, so you can just get rid of the top and bottom ones easily enough. It looks passable on mine, at the very least.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



CottonWolf posted:

If I didn't like 3 is there a chance I'd like 1 or 2? The weird pervyness was just too much for me. Undressing to power up... really? Did they tone it up as the series progressed or was it always like that?

3 is considered to be flat-out the worst. The other games did absolutely everything better, except for the fact that 3 had marginally better music than 1. Two is considered the best, and has the best of everything. The first had the most hilariously exploitable battle system, in a series full of them, but had a pretty awful MC.

Really, from where you are, there's nowhere to go but up.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Ross posted:

Other than that every SaGa game I've tried is terrible and I don't know how anybody enjoys playing them.

The SaGa Frontier games are the height of quality and I will hear nothing else, despite the hilariously unfinished state of the first one. :colbert:

I've never played Romancing SaGa 2/3 though, since last I checked neither one was fully translated. :smith:

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Bellmaker posted:

Never played Frontier 1, but Frontier 2 had a great story and worldbuilding (if you like political shenangians), albeit the same opaque bullshit gameplay. Also the final boss is a kick in the eggs :rimshot:

Frontier 1 is great, if just for the fact that it straight up lets you play as a sentai hero, complete with your own unique theme music, special attacks, weapons, and all that. The mechanics behind everything are dense as poo poo, to the point of being flat-out obtuse, but drat if the game doesn't have style at times, like finishing off a boss with a long combo attack string that does five digit damage.

I just wish they'd actually had the chance to finish the bloody game instead of leaving it half finished and putting everything they were planning on doing into a Japan-only resource book. :smith:

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



ImpAtom posted:

Hey, Wild Arms 2 let you do that too.

I've only just gotten around to playing that in the last month. :shobon: You are right, though, it does own. But I like the whole thing they did with Alkaiser in that the game actually had a mechanic around protecting your secret identity, which was cool.

And despite its more infuriating aspects, I actually liked the Sparking mechanic. It does pretty much exemplify the whole 'obtuse as poo poo' side of the SaGa games though.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



victrix posted:

We need to set up a Kawazu challenge week.

Everyone plays one of Saga Frontier 1 or 2, Unlimited Saga, Romancing Saga: Minstrel Song, or The Last Remnant.

Winner is the last one still playing in a month or so :v:

This sounds fun as hell. If people actually signed up to do so, I'd get in on it. I've been meaning to play The Last Remnant for a while now too.

And that Type-0 thing is something I'll keep an eye on, hopefully they don't get C&D'd.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Azure_Horizon posted:

It will take a lot more than gameplay retooling to make FF8 worth returning to.

Yeah, S-E wouldn't really need to return to it. It's perfect as is. :colbert:

Also, back when I was a kid going through FFVII for the first time, Demon Wall, the Materia Keeper, and the two-headed dragon on the mountain were my big roadblocks. I was bad at RPGs :smith:

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Coughing Hobo posted:

Who needs to catch monsters when you have Sazh, Snow, and two different Lightnings via DLC :getin:

Because the DLC expects you to be at a stupidly high level to win those battles. :negative:

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



NonzeroCircle posted:

Genius. I'm determined to beat those other Ronso first time, handsomely. I've had enough of their poo poo.

You don't need to worry about that, that was as close to a scripted fight as FFX gets. They scale to your level, you get just short of infinite overdrives and can get all the ronso overdrives you may have missed out on.

That being said, I still managed to lose the first time, because I didn't know how much Lancet broke that fight in two. :downs:

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Defiance Industries posted:

And it's easily the worst thing about FF7. When you can't use characters in your party, you should care, but FF7 makes it so you don't have to. When you lose Aeris, you just take all her materia and slap it on any other character in the game and they do all the same stuff in less than a second.

And thank Christ for that. I want to use characters I like in a game, not use characters because I have to in order to survive. I'm playing Tales of Xillia right now, and it's really infuriating that I have to use the awful little girl character just because she's the Designated Healbot. If I don't like a character, I should be able to chuck them out of the party but still be able to cover all necessary bases for an effective team.

Edit: vv I haven't gotten to her yet, but putting Jude in my party is just as infuriating, so I don't know what I want at this point. :negative:

ACES CURE PLANES fucked around with this message at 02:37 on Aug 18, 2013

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Mordiceius posted:

FF14:ARR is just a legitimately awesome game. The writing is loving amazing, the gameplay is fun, and it is filled with amazing nostalgia.

I keep hearing this, but whenever I take a look at gameplay, it just looks like your typical theme park MMORPG where you just pick a class and get a samey, homogenized career path. Is there any room to make your own experiences, or is it just another MMO where you play the game how the devs want you to?

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Barudak posted:

What does make your own experiences mean? Every character can be every class and you can add abilities from other classes you've leveled up so mechanically it steals from the best FF games.

It's still an MMO though so if you don't like them don't waste your time. Don't, like, think it isn't.

I personally play EVE with other goons, and even though it's fun enough, the game it's built around is still bad. I want to find an MMO with some actual gameplay, but with the same sort of depth to it all. Something where you can grief, scam, steal, manipulate, and still have a fair amount of player-created content too. Theme park MMOs are really boring, but I love the sandbox experience, something where you aren't locked into just PvE/PvP/Quests/Story.

I'm mainly basing this off of playing WoW for a little bit, and that was all just "pick race, pick class, and go on our ride and receive the same exact gameplay experience everyone else does", with no space for unique experiences.

ACES CURE PLANES fucked around with this message at 15:55 on Oct 22, 2013

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Paracelsus posted:

So is Zell intentionally stupid?

See, I always thought that Zell was secretly smarter than he let on. More often than not, he's the only party member who knows things about where they are/are going, and what the deal with said place is. When heading to/in Timber, the Underwater Research Facility, the prison (though that was more Ward's doing but hey), and Esthar too I think, he's the one who gets the monologue about the place and how it relates to the rest of the world. And his spiel at the research facility kinda makes it seem like he's legitimately interested in that sort of stuff, to the point where I can kind of imagine him reading up on the place.

I think his problem as a character is just his brashness and temper, and like Cid said, if he'd learn to control his emotions better, he'd probably come off a lot better.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Barudak posted:

He chokes on a pile of hotdogs during the end credits. The man is literally stupid enough to choke on his favorite food.

Further proving my point that his brashness and enthusiasm is his downfall. :colbert:

Krad posted:

Zell literally forgets he can punch people in the prison. That's all you need to draw your own conclusions about him.

That part, however, I totally forgot about. Stupid FFVIII, and it's inconsistent characterization.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



At this point, I'm perfectly happy to keep my pre-order for FFX HD, partially because of the new International poo poo (seeing as I can't hope to run PCSX2 on this machine), but mostly because doing the tedious postgame poo poo on a portable sounds infinitely more bearable. A few minutes every now and again catching monsters or farming coliseum monsters for AP is far less tedious than plopping down and going for a marathon session that takes up my entire entertainment center.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Look, these -a and -aga spells are cool and all, but none of it is as cool as FFII's magic system.* Let's see folks develop names up to a sixteenth tier for that game.

*Note: Not actually true

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Starhawk64 posted:

FF8 is such a stupid game gameplay and story wise. Stealing magic from enemies and then junctioning them to your stats? Having to scavenge random crap to upgrade weapons? Enemies leveling up with you and making grinding pointless? A retarded card game? HAVING TO TAKE A TEST TO INCREASE THE AMOUNT OF MONEY YOU EARN?

You're gonna have to come clean as to which one of these is a bad idea, because they all sound more interesting than boring generic steampunk fantasy #382,427.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Starhawk64 posted:

Well, taking the test was pretty stupid, was that really necessary? I can forgive the other stuff if they were gameplay mechanics for a completely different game. Not being able to buy new armor and equipment, treating magic as one-time use items, and all the other conventions of the series were pretty much chucked out the window pretty much left a sour taste in my mouth. I did like the setting of the game but the mechanics made it a chore to play.

See, I kinda disagree. I liked the tests, they were pretty cool. Linking them to your current level was dumb but, hey, whatever.

Everything else you're talking about regards legacy mechanics. How would have having shops gradually get another tier of equipment improved the experience on the whole? Is that why you like the series? Is an MP system for magic what makes Final Fantasy Final Fantasy? What about FFI then, with its set amount of casts? Or XIII with free magic?

I dunno, being too attached to legacy mechanics seems like a bad idea, and a little bit of experimentation with it is pretty cool. I mean, X didn't have an ATB, normal levelling, or standard weapon shops, and it was great. It's cool to try new poo poo.

ACES CURE PLANES fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Jan 16, 2014

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



NikkolasKing posted:

I kinda wanna see someone try to do Xenogears. It was going to be Final Fantasy at one time. (flimsy justification but hell, I relly wanna read this)

A little kid gets lost on a spaceship and finds himself in front of God. God proceeds to make the universe bend over backwards so he can hook up with the captain's daughter.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Pesky Splinter posted:

Ha! You weren't kidding:


How bad was it?

In short, the game revolved around playing 'connect the dots' with enemy weakpoints. Enemies would have dozens of randomly-arranged weakpoints like their left/right upper arms, ears, eyes, points on their torso, etc. There were absolutely no hints on what order they should be attacked in, and each attack eats up one AP, which you usually need to stockpile to hit all the points.

So, what the game wanted you to do was you hit the right weakpoint with the right attack (like the seventh weakpoint with your seventh attack), and hopefully chain weakpoints so you could get extra damage/AP/whatnot. And if that isn't enough of a dumb slog, after grinding down the dozens of turns worth of HP enemies have, there's another whole system for finishing off enemies that's just as dumb as grinding them down - you can't just kill them.

It's stupid, boring, awful, and absolutely irredeemable.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Majorian posted:

Sephiroth is the worst FF antagonist because people still mistakenly think he's cool.

I wouldn't say he's cool, but he is a pretty effective villain in the sense that the game actually does a good job making you fear him, which is more than I can say for folks like Kefka and Kuja. I still get chills during his big scenes, despite having replayed the game however many times. Too bad that didn't really survive into the EU, but not much from the original game did.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Mak0rz posted:

I'm liking this. S-Alpha brought up how effectively the game's writing makes you fear Sephiroth. I didn't fear Hojo, but I loving hated him. I hated his crazy guts.

NikkolasKing posted:

Whatever other flaws it may have had, I hope we can all agree FFVII had some amazing cinematic direction.

Yeah, I'm not really talking about how successful he was as a villain or whatnot, but as a character, they sure as hell make you afraid of him. The first time you see him, he slices down poo poo you couldn't possibly fight even at your party's current level, and he - or what you're lead to think is him - has a tendency to leave bloodied corpses and destruction all around, and I have to laud Square for establishing a tone so well.

It's too bad that I never had a chance to play Crisis Core, though. After Excels' post, I'm really curious to see how the game handled him now.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Aurain posted:

My favourite FF7 mod, which I don't think is released yet, is the one that re-translates it to be faithful to the original. I believe it offers an option to replace Cait Sith with a self insert because CS is dumb. That is kind of true, but I love the whole "we need accuracy in this thing, but bits I dislike? meh" part of that.

Isn't that the one with the copious swearing in basically every other line? Or the stupid honorifics everywhere? Or randomly untranslated words?

Wait, poo poo, that's every dumb weeb "faithful retranslation" ever isn't it?

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Somewhere between VII, VIII, and X, for some very dumb reasons for each.

VII: My 5-person dorm room back in college had a dumb idea: To get to level 99 in the first Mako reactor. So we'd each rotate time with the game so that we pretty much had a constant run of people in our living room playing the game while watching other shows/playing other games. Exciting life in the engineer dorms.

VIII: I've done the whole disc one Lionheart thing too many times for it to really be understandable. Or forgivable.

X: Doing all the stupid arena, ultimate weapons, and secret bosses nonsense. It's only gonna get worse once X HD drops.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Renoistic posted:

I was really disappointed when Lightning turned Snow back to normal with some healing spell instead of continuing hitting him until she'd beaten the Cie'th out of him. That would have been amazing. At least the scene was so overwrought it still made me laugh.

Wait, what? From when I played it, it totally looked like that's what happened. I didn't notice any healing spell thing at all, maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention.

Either way, it's cooler without it.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Dragonatrix posted:

It's quicker to use Don Tonberry; one person (with a ton of kills of course) set to Stoic, the others set to Comrade. That way in the amount of time it takes 1 person to get smacked, everyone gains 99 and it can be controlled to get that on account of Karma being a counterattack. Cactuar is a ton of waiting, and hoping. Good for the earlier stuff but falls behind pretty soon too.

I thought the usual method was set the entire party to Comrade and attack with everyone until you ran out of Phoenix Downs for Auto-Phoenix to chug? Or did it get changed in the International version like a bunch of other things did?

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010




I'm just thinking of this in the realm of maximum overdrive points for passive play. So assuming that, using your method, you'd get 300 + (200 * 2) = 700 OD points in a turn with one person attacking and the others defending/healing/whatever. However, with the more passive "set everyone to Comrade" style, and accounting for a variation in kills between the party, you'd get something like (150 * 2) * 3 = 900 with two characters gaining 150 OD points every time anyone attacked, and you could just mash X and watch something interesting.

I dunno, that's just what makes sense to me, does it make sense to you? I don't pretend to know what's optimal, I'm just going off your numbers.

ACES CURE PLANES fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Mar 18, 2014

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Dragonatrix posted:

(100 * 2) * 3 = 600, so... :v:

GODDAMMIT THAT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE 150.

Just imagine it was 150. Honest. :downs:

But yeah, it just kinda makes sense that even if you cut the amount that you gain in half, you're more than making up for it by getting three attacks per turn than one and having two blokes defend. It just eats up Phoenix Downs faster.

ACES CURE PLANES fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Mar 18, 2014

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



I love the game too, and I've always liked its setting a lot, probably one of my favorite settings (I still don't like the steampunk setting most of the series has).

Something that bothers me with the HD port though is the weird faces. Sure, the old textures were fuzzy and low-res, but I dunno, something seems wrong with the faces in this version. They don't seem anywhere near as expressive as they used to be, and things like subtle frowns or grins are straight and stony-faced now.

Of course, I'm not sure if my memory is playing tricks on me and I'm remembering things that weren't there.

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Doesn't the Advanced grid also have a bunch of new abilities that weren't in the original, or were those added to the standard sphere grid in the International version too? I'm just running with the Advanced grid for my current run, since it's something different that I haven't tried before.

Edit: vv Well, drat. Oh well, I always wanted to dump Wakka and Rikku into different grids ASAP anyways, so I guess that's one plus to the new version. Dark Aeons are gonna suck, though.

ACES CURE PLANES fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Mar 19, 2014

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Ibram Gaunt posted:

When does the option to backtrack in X come up? I just noticed that I forgot the besaid destruction sphere puzzle thing. I'm just a little past the blitzball tourney. I don't even remember being able to backtrack when I played it a decade ago...Shows how much I retained. :v:

You can walk all the way back to Besaid at any point you want, really. If you're gonna run all the way back to Besaid, you might want to wait until you're through Macalania woods, since you may want to run back to get one of Auron's spheres at the same time.

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ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Oxygen Deficiency posted:

Just wanted to chime in and say that you can pick up Valefors second overdrive pretty much straight away. Just walk up the hill after first leaving the village and watch the cutscene near the pillar/savesphere, turn around and head back to the village, girl in shop, dog etc. You can get it before you ever use Valefor in battle.

You don't even need to go all that way. When the cutscene dumps you outside the village, you can just waltz the two steps back in, talk to the shop girl, and get it.

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