C-Euro posted:

To start us off- I've heard it mention in a few places that oftentimes one's favorite Final Fantasy is the first one they ever played. How many of you are guilty of this? FF6 was the first one I played and it remains one of my favorite games of all time, so I've fallen into that trap.

Safari Disco Lion posted:

I just dicked around with FF4 DS again after it sat in my shelf for a few months, I've never played it before. Is it just me or is this game way harder than others in the series? I'm only a couple hours in and the underground waterway was a huge pain in the rear end. Then I got to the boss and it nearly oneshot Rydia, who died and missed out on fight exp because I ran out of pheonix downs. Now she's even further behind at 15 while Cecil is 19 and Tellah was 18. I also had a really hard time when I first got her and she was way underlevelled, I had to grind for a good 45 minutes to get comfortable with fights and I was still having to use magic all the time in the waterway on random mobs. Now I have Edward in the same situation.

And what's with this game and terrifying boss monsters? The octomammoth and antlion are both horrible.

Evil Fluffy posted:

Then you get back to the moon, give Rosa Omnicast, and breeze through the rest of the game because half the enemies on the moon will kill themselves with magic (due to omnicasted wall) while they others just flail away at Cecil who you kept on perma-guard with counter on top of it.

Augments are both cool and terrible in the game, and all the good ones you won't get unless you're looking for them (in a walkthrough) because nobody's going to normally use augments on temporary characters. Then again they might if NG+ didn't have a cap on the number of runs.

der juicen posted:

But but but I love cutscenes. I kinda really do though.

der juicen posted:

I will take heed if the title. People telling me to play X, I am unemployed, disabled and despise the PS2 controller, so XIII it is!

Azure_Horizon posted:

It would if Disc 2 wasn't a total abortion.

Azure_Horizon posted:

But then replaced it with the worst plot!

microwave casserole posted:

I'm still generally enjoying the hell out of FF9, but what is up with the random encounters? I literally can't take more than ten steps without triggering one. Is there something wrong with the PS3's emulation? I cannot believe it is supposed to be like this.

Rueish posted:

There aren't enough psyducks in the world for this. What? Unmemorable? FF9 has the best soundtrack in the series, one of the best in gaming. It's even Uematsu's favorite score! It has countless amazing tracks and there are some that are fantastic homages to past games as well.

DeathBySpoon posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUNLwlenkh0&t=74s

Teddie Kefka is the best Dissidia character.

I actually agree about FF9's music not being as memorable, though- I'm playing through it RIGHT NOW, at about 30 hours in on Disc 3, and I couldn't remember the boss theme at all. I usually pay a lot of attention to game music, too. Its good music, it just doesn't stand out to me the same way as something like The Landing, Force Your Way, or Terra's Theme. Also, this is the best ATE in FF9 because of the music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IwDkM5uDSs&t=8s

Facepalm Ranger posted:

How come VIII has a much better soundtrack than VII?

I can't think of a single tune from VII except "SEPHIROTH!"

Beef Waifu posted:

No voice actress cares about sexual poo poo they work on. Hell, one of Tara Strong's favorite roles is Toot from Drawn Together and that is something of a role. The only time I've heard a voice actress struggle with a scene because of the content was a scene in Death Note that is REALLY showing how dissonant the values of Japan are when it comes to a married couple.

NikkolasKing posted:

You know in all my searches for JRPG recs, Dragon Quest games never come up. I always had them pictured in my mind, and this is based on practically nothing, as these rather bare-bones stock fantasy things. Maybe fun to play but nothing else of note. I tend to prefer JRPGs with a lot of story emphasis and I don't think I've ever had a DQ game suggested to me on the basis of its story. I also never hear the soundtracks for the games listed as particularly amazing either. (and I spend a lot of time looking up music lists for games on YT since OSTs matter a lot to me)

That loving Sned posted:

The best game to start with is the remake of Dragon Quest III for the SNES. It's got a fan translation now, and the pacing is better than any other game in the series. For one, your character sprints around towns and dungeons, and it's also the only game where you start off with four party members, with jobs you can assign to them.

Being the last Dragon Quest game on the SNES, it looks absolutely gorgeous. It uses a 4MB cartridge like Dragon Quest VI, but since the game isn't as long they managed to pack the game with detail and fluid animations for the enemies. The animations are much faster in the game than they are in these gifs, though.

Beef Waifu posted:

I know you like to act like 13 doesn't exist, but it has a father in it.

Sunning posted:

A large reason you see Japanese game developers target this young audience is because those demographics are most likely to purchase console games and become engaged by them. By engagement, I mean consumers who not only purchase the game but also take part in the community surrounding the game and trans-media promotion (merchandising!) of the game. When Japanese gamers enter college and the workforce, the level of engagement typically declines and many of them stop playing games altogether. This is okay for games aimed towards a niche audience but big budget games need to attract a large and active audience.

In a past interview, Kitase talked about the Final Fantasy audience is sort of a moving target. Their target demographic eventually age out and will they have to target younger consumers with newer games. It's why they pay attention to latest trends, such as in fashion and music, so they can incorporate these elements into their games. So there is a divide between younger Japanese audience and older Western audiences in what they expect from an RPG.

Jerry Steinfeld posted:

I've never played a Final Fantasy before, which one is the best? Where should I start?

The White Dragon posted:

The GBA has the best translation and a bonus dungeon, but like all the GBA ports, the ATB is a little buggy and the music port is kinda lovely. The SNES translation is the most accurate experience you'll get relative to the original release, but it has a little bit of Internet Translation Team syndrome. No bonus dungeon.

The PS1 port is just crap and has loading times for the menus because it's basically running a proprietary SNES emulator on a Playstation, but the translation is also the most entertaining in the wrong way.

Mega64 posted:

Mega64 posted:

Now have a Blue Mage learn it so you can do the same bullshit to a surprising amount of enemies.

TommyGun85 posted:

I found I had to grind more for money than for levels but whatever, thats just me.

Nihilarian posted:

It's almost as though you're not supposed to melee monsters on that side of the tower.

Looper posted:

One of the guards in that first castle straight up tells you to stay the hell out of the basement

Pureauthor posted:

I'm pretty sure the game tells you before you set out that one side is Magic-only and the other is Physical-only.

bloodychill posted:

The stark contrast between silly but fun FF5 gameplay discussion and FF13's mind-numbing mythology over the past two pages is the best example I've seen of why it's so hard to give a poo poo about where FF is going these days.

Evil Fluffy posted:

The game's pretty explicit about the whole "on this side use magic, on the other side use physical" and so yeah when you break the rules fork tower breaks you. It's like complaining that you can't beat Whelk in FF6 because once he goes in his shell his counter attacks keep killing you.

J-Spot posted:

For popular series reviewers tend to temper their scores based on general gamer sentiment, so public opinion on the series has to turn before they can give it poor reviews. The next game in the series then has points deducted for being associated to the previous game.

Kaubocks posted:

I've been playing a lot of Theatrhythm this weekend. It's putting me in a serious Final Fantasy mood. In the grand scheme of things I've played very few Final Fantasy games-- pretty much just 7, 10, and 10-2. I hear some of them are dated and some of them are just plain bad, but I really kinda want to just... play them all. From 1 to whatever the gently caress 13 is at, from start to finish. Likely skip 11 and 14 because I don't even remotely care about MMOs.

I've had a number of people tell me that 1-3 are objectively kinda trash these days with barely any story. Should I really just not bother with those and start at 4? I feel like that kinda defeats the purpose of exploring all the Final Fantasies I never played but if they're just kinda junky barebones "go here and kill this guy then go kill another guy" stories then I could probably live with skipping them.

Kaubocks posted:

Wait hmm I just remembered poo poo like Crystal Chronicles exists and suddenly the idea of playing all the FF games seems tedious as gently caress. I might just have to pick and choose which spinoff games I play alongside the mainline games.

Nihilarian posted:

Chrono Cross is the quite possibly the most beautiful game on the PS1 and it has exactly one song on it's OST that isn't The Best. Play it.

Boten Anna posted:

Remember that a lot of conventional wisdom to us as to what the "good" or "popular" Final Fantasies are are totally different in Japan; IV is a huge developer favorite and VI's reception was lukewarm, whereas here VI tends to be revered as one of the best games ever and IV as pretty good but in few fans' top 3. Lo and behold, IV got a thorough and beautiful remake and remaster, while VI got an OK GBA port and a lovely mobile port. I totally didn't know how much Mass Effect borrowed from Spirits Within but it makes complete sense, as does western devs in general taking cue from the things in the series that didn't resonate with Japanese players but are huge in the Western fanbase and running with them.

Gammatron 64 posted:

The best Final Fantasy game is Final Fantasy ___X____. The worst one is Final Fantasy ____V____. This is an objective fact and if you disagree you are literally retarded and human trash

Nihilarian posted:

they're probably really excited for it in the Nier thread

We play Final Fantasy here.

HD DAD posted:

After re-reading this past page, I remember that they really did have some fairly nuanced characters for a video game in 1997. Whether that was intentional or just pure dumb luck is whole other question.

Also, second only to people forgetting Cloud was actually kind of a goofball is everyone forgetting that Aerith was kind of a sassy tomboy weirdo. Somehow over the years in the collective memory she got turned into the "pure-hearted magical girl". If anything, that was more Tifa.

fronz posted:

is Nier fun

Golden Goat posted:

Nier is a thing. I love it but I can't honestly suggest it to somebody cause the gameplay is insanely boring and the first half of the game is kind of a slog at points.

Also it's a completionist trap. Never attempt to do all the sidequests.