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Super No Vacancy
Jul 26, 2012

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Final Fantasy V has the most customization with it's job system. That one has Faris.

Final Fantasy Tactics is also good, but completely different from regular Final Fantasys. That's the one with Ramza.

EDIT: Is is Final Fantasys or Final Fantasies?

finals fantasy

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Mandatory Assembly
May 25, 2008

it's time to get juche
Lipstick Apathy

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

Final Fantasy V has the most customization with it's job system. That one has Faris.

Final Fantasy Tactics is also good, but completely different from regular Final Fantasys. That's the one with Ramza.

EDIT: Is is Final Fantasys or Final Fantasies?

It's pronounced ah-nee-may, friend goku

lunatikfringe
Jan 22, 2003
FF6 was exceptional in that it had many characters and you could play as any of them being the main character. The game invested you into each one of their storylines in the present, while feeding you critical background details about each one via exploration of their past.

Along with an immersive twisting storyline, minigames to break the tedium, and a dramatic soundtrack, it was the perfect storm for a really epic saga.

In my opinion, few FF games since have been able to match this despite drastically improving the visuals.

jokes
Dec 20, 2012

Uh... Kupo?

Sixfools posted:

When I was a child and had birthday money to buy a videogame for my new playstation, I was all set to get FF7, I got FFT instead as a last minute impulse and have been happy with that choice in life ever since.

Same except i got both and didn't play ff7 until i was too old to think it was a good video game.

metallicaeg
Nov 28, 2005

Evil Red Wings Owner Wario Lemieux Steals Stanley Cup
The best RPG of the PS3/360 generation was Lost Odyssey

Peddle2thaMetal
Apr 17, 2012

ooooooooo yeaaaahhh
6 is my favorite/the best I think. 4, 5, and 7 are all very good imo. 8 was decent, didn't play enough 9 though it was good... and 10 seems to be good though I didn't play it. That's my story.

edit- *anime* happened I guess

guts and bolts
May 16, 2015

Have you heard the Good News?
FF6 is overrated and cited because it builds credibility to say it's the best or a personal favorite. Graphics don't matter and the score is pretty good, but the cast is unwieldy and boring and bad, the gameplay lacks FF5's crazy customization options in terms of character classing and is generally boring and bad, the writing is overwrought and boring and bad, the central antagonist is little more than a meme (and is boring and bad) - basically FF6 is kinda boring, and kinda bad. It's not the worst game in the series, but most

Super No Vacancy posted:

finals fantasy

Finals Fantasy are pretty bad themselves and so FF6 has a relatively low bar to clear. FF7 is not without problems, but nine out of ten times, if someone is talking about how great 6 is while decrying how bad 7 is, they're being contrarians for the sake of appearing more enlightened than the brainless masses that consumed 7 in such volumes. If only those cretins could appreciate ~true art~ like the opera house scene, then maybe videogames would be better

FF7 actually holds up pretty well, warts and all, and is both dramatically more fun to play with the Materia and Limit Break systems and is able to focus more on the characters, some of whom are really great.

Here's a quick list of Finals Fantasy you should like if you want to like good Finals Fantasy and good video games writ large:
Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy XII
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy V

Sixfools
Aug 27, 2005

You be the Moon,
I'll be the Earth
And when we burst
Start over, oh, darling
It makes me sad the artist who worked on FFT last gig was drawing cards for a lovely mobile game called Fantasica

Accordion Man
Nov 7, 2012


Buglord

metallicaeg posted:

The best RPG of the PS3/360 generation was Lost Odyssey
That was Nier though.

seiferguy
Jun 9, 2005

FLAWED
INTUITION



Toilet Rascal
For what it's worth, S-E still makes a ton of money on FFXIV, it retains a lot of core elements of Final Fantasy games, is fun, and it hasn't succumbed to FTP like other MMOs. But the last word of that sentence is probably why not a lot of people in this thread would want to play it!

Ms Adequate
Oct 30, 2011

Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling



Coco Rodreguiz posted:

The biggest tragedy is Square never got behind Triple Triad like they should have. They struck gold on that mini game and have never come close to topping it.

Bliztball :colbert:

Coco Rodreguiz
Jan 12, 2007

Peckerhead isn't used enough as an insult if you ask me.

Coco Rodreguiz posted:

The biggest tragedy is Square never got behind Triple Triad like they should have. They struck gold on that mini game and have never come close to topping it.

Mandatory Assembly
May 25, 2008

it's time to get juche
Lipstick Apathy
I played Final Fantasy Tactics for the first time a couple of years ago and found it to be an utterly tedious grind fest for autists. If that's the best game in the series then they should burn it all down.

Jenner
Jun 5, 2011
Lowtax banned me because he thought I was trolling by acting really stupid. I wasn't acting.

Vermain posted:

Could you please explain this in more detail? What about the story, plot, and characters were "obviously an afterthought"? I question this specifically because the fondest memories people have about this particular game are the story and characters. All of the FF7 core cast remain highly recognizable and marketable to this day, to the extent that FF7 is the first FF game that is getting a remastered version because of that popularity. That would indicate to me that the story and characters both had broad appeal to the target audience of the FF series.

Well, first I have to acknowledge that for many, FF7 was not only their first Final Fantasy it was their first RPG period. It might even have been their first game. There is a lot of nostalgia, a lot of rose-tinted glasses, a lot of fondness for this game. Many people love FF7. It is considered by many to be one of the greatest games ever. It ranks among the lists of top ten games of many people and reviewers and such. All these people are wrong.

I mentioned in my OP that FF7 was huge commercial success that influenced almost the entire video game industry for the worse so I won't rehash that. This is gonna be long but I'm gonna talk about the game and why it is not good. To set an unfair environment I am going to be comparing it to FF6 which, I remind you, is the best game in the series. (I can talk about this too in a later post if you want.)

FF7 starts off with a beautiful cutscene crawl into Midgar but doesn't tell you anything about what's going on. You begin by exiting a train and killing some mooks without any idea of why. In FF6 you are given a lovely snowy march and a blurb about the world. Two NPCs explain that Terra is a witch but they are safe because of the slave crown and you set off to gently caress Narshe. In one game you know why you are doing what you're doing, in the other you're flailing about.

Eventually you learn you're siding with AVALANCHE (caps necessary) but Cloud does not seem particularly passionate about this. He's pretty apathetic. Shrugging and saying, "I don't care." Am I supposed to be interested and excited in the terrorisms when my POV character can't be hosed? Why is he even doing this if he does not give a poo poo? It's especially jarring when Barrett is super rousing and passionate and Cloud is just meh. In FF6 Terra is asked to join the Returners and she is very conflicted. She doesn't want to be used for war any more. She talks about her insecurities and concerns. She's genuinely worried that the Returners might be no more ethical than the empire. (Showing quite a bit of political insight imo.) A talk with Bannon convinces her and she is pretty resolved afterwards despite her insecurities. In one game the POV character cares about what they're doing (and thus I care and am interested) in the other the POV character couldn't care less.

In general the whole pre-Aeris part of the game seemed to lack drive. Sure you do a terrorism and fight a boss and that's fun but Cloud just doesn't seem into it.

Once you meet Aeris things pick up. Cloud still doesn't care about anything but Aeris is charming and emotive so you care about Aeris. It helps that she's in danger and poo poo. In FF6 Terra is kind of brought along but she asks questions and seems engaged and interested. The game evokes a sense of caring, especially after Kefka lights Figaro on fire in search of Terra.

Once you get outside of Migar the world isn't particularly interesting (except for the giant snake, that thing rules.) You go to cities but few of them really stand out. (Junon, the Golden Saucer, the city with the minigame where you have to fend off invaders, and the city with the loving runaway train come to mind.) There are few interesting areas (I guess the dome was cool but...) the NPCs have their opinions but few express any anxiety about Shinra or the planet. In FF6 South Figaro alone is pretty much "gently caress the empire." Several other NPCs in other towns expressed concerns about or support of the empire. Zozo was really fun and interesting. Thamasa had a dark secret, Vector was cool. And one village was storing Locke's comatose/dying girlfriend in it. Also the Veldt, the haunted forest (suplex the train!) And haunted Doma and Owser's house in the World of Ruin were all really fun areas.

I am being incredibly forgiving when I say that the story is "okay." I really don't want to go too deep into detail but Cloud is an unreliable narrator and Hojo is the evilist character in the game and somehow we're supposed to learn that Jenova is Sephiroth's mother and also a calamity from outer space but I don't remember learning that from the game so much as reading it on Internet forums. Aeris acts as the exposition, telling you about the old race she's a member of and about Holy, Meteor, and the life stream. Rather than trickle information out to you, slowly revealing it to you as you naturally learn about it, broad swaths of story are dumped on you from time to time in one giant plot sandwich. Information that could have been revealed to you when you interacted with related things often didn't come up until far later and some plot just came out of nowhere. In FF6 you learn about the Espers and the War of the Magi (and the magic users left after the war) and the Goddesses as you either encounter them or are told about them. Plots are hinted at and the only things that technically come out of nowhere are Kefka killing Leo, betraying Gestahl, and messing with the statues on the floating continent (loving up the world.) And those are not only meant to be twists and surprises but everyone could see Kefka was gonna backstab the emperor.

Those aspects alone make for a pretty meh game but the worst offender in FF7 is the characters. I cannot stress this enough, almost every character in this game is either unlikable or uninteresting. If they are lucky, they have something deeper going on beneath the surface but that is very rare. You might remember liking them but they were not that good. Let me show you:
Out of nine characters only six of them have any reason to continue adventuring with the group after their plot line, if they even have one, is resolved. One of them is the main character, one of them is killed, one seeks only revenge, one has a noble but kind of sad reason (loyalty and unrequited love,) and two just really care about the planet. The rest could have been temporary characters and one's whole arc, if it could even be considered as such, could be completely removed from the game with absolutely no effect on it.

Compare to FF6 where only Umaro and Gogo had no reason to adventure with you and of those two only Gogo had no plot or point in the game. (Also Umaro technically has a reason to adventure with you, it's just lovely. Mog orders him to. And Gogo has no plot or point because they're a secret character.)

Come on, Jenner the characters are not that bad.
Cid is an alcoholic failure of a pilot who emotionally and physically abuses his romantic partner and just wants to go to space.
Cait Sith has absolutely no character or point whatsoever until he reveals he's really in league with Shinra and betrays you. (Does he even face any consequences for that? I honestly don't remember.)
Yuffie is a ninja who steals all your magic and literally has no other plot or purpose. (She's the one you could remove entirely from the game.)
Vincent has the most plot and back story, as he has been endlessly hosed over by Shinra, but he is unengaging and uninteresting.
Tifa is only there because she loves Cloud. (Also tits.)
Cloud has no personality. He is ambivalent and just does not give a gently caress about anything. (Fan boys and future media will make him so dark and brooding and conflicted but imo there really isn't much justification for it. He only really gets emo when he meets the shades at the dome, learns he's a sham, and wheelchairs it up in life stream village. And even then I don't think he really dwells or agonizes over it for particularly long.)

That's 6/9 where one dies.

The left over characters are:
Barrett, who is basically Mr. T but with a gun arm and an adoptive daughter. However he has layers because his daughter belonged to his former friend and there's a lot of angst there.
Red XIII, a lion-dog turned lab experiment who is the son of a hero who saved his community (but who he believes was a coward until shown otherwise.)
And Aeris/Aerith, who is literally the plot hook of the game. She's the last surviving member of the old people of the planet and it's a big deal. She has the only way of stopping the end of the world. Who even knows what would have happened in this game if Cloud never encountered her as he has no impetus to do anything more than gently caress around with AVALANCHE (caps necessary) and would not have seen the greater threat to the planet (Sephiroth and meteor) without Aeris showing it to him. She's the one that dies.

That's 4 "good" characters (because I like Tifa) and one of them is killed.

FF6 has 9/14 good characters (assuming you don't like Mog, Gau, Realm, Umaro and Gogo.)


TL;DR: FF7 is bad. Its story is meh, its world is mostly meh, and its characters are pretty ick. But it's okay, you can like a bad thing.

Jenner fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Nov 16, 2016

Chair In A Basket
Aug 6, 2005

I'm basically Jesus.

Nap Ghost
Never mind I don't want to play any final fantasy games ever.

Ms Adequate
Oct 30, 2011

Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling



Mandatory Assembly posted:

I played Final Fantasy Tactics for the first time a couple of years ago and found it to be an utterly tedious grind fest for autists. If that's the best game in the series then they should burn it all down.

No it's a big bag of poo poo, there are many other games in the series which are actually good, even the Tactics Advance games (which are as good as Tacticspergs insist FFT is)

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009
ff15 looks like it'll be fun, op, and ff6 is bad

chumbler
Mar 28, 2010

Final Fantasy is still good is what happened op.

Though Prompto fans need to get some fuckin taste.

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009
anyway the actually good jrpg franchise is tales of

fivegears4reverse
Apr 4, 2007

by R. Guyovich

chumbler posted:

Final Fantasy is still good is what happened op.

Though Prompto fans need to get some fuckin taste.

I will fight you

i bet you like GLADIO or even IGNIS

Jenner
Jun 5, 2011
Lowtax banned me because he thought I was trolling by acting really stupid. I wasn't acting.

Neron posted:

I'm the one guy who actually liked 8.

8 is better than 7 (fight me) and Rinoa is Ultimecia.

Hitlers Gay Secret posted:

I'm replaying FFX-2 right now and I have to say I like it a lot more now than I did when it first came out. Sure, having to follow along with a guide so I don't miss anything for 100% is stupid as hell, but other than that it's fun.

I originally didn't like X-2 but Brainweasel's LP changed my mind. It's surprisingly feminist. It's now a guilty pleasure of mine.

Mister Adequate posted:

FF12 is a literal soporific to me. When I sat down to play it I would find myself falling asleep. Consistently. It's the most boring-rear end poo poo since FFIX. Which is also bad. Like Tactics.

Woah get a load of this guy. I bet he likes Chrono Cross.
I also kinda liked Chrono Cross. :ssh:

guts and bolts posted:

Final Fantasy 7 is good though and if you disagree you're wrong

Final Fantasy 6 on the other hand is in fact kinda bad, as is Final Fantasy 9, whereas Tactics is probably the high point of the entire franchise

Um, no. FF7 was just not good. Cloud was just a big uncaring nobody and Sephiroth was garbage. Meanwhile, FF6's main protagonists were both female (and rad as hell) and the villain actually achieved his goal. :iia:

FF9 takes everything good about every Final Fantasy and puts it in one game. It also features the only Dragoon to not betray you (I think.) It's okay, wrong opinions are welcome here.

guts and bolts posted:

FF6 is overrated and cited because it builds credibility to say it's the best or a personal favorite. Graphics don't matter and the score is pretty good, but the cast is unwieldy and boring and bad, the gameplay lacks FF5's crazy customization options in terms of character classing and is generally boring and bad, the writing is overwrought and boring and bad, the central antagonist is little more than a meme (and is boring and bad) - basically FF6 is kinda boring, and kinda bad. It's not the worst game in the series, but most Finals Fantasy are pretty bad themselves and so FF6 has a relatively low bar to clear. FF7 is not without problems, but nine out of ten times, if someone is talking about how great 6 is while decrying how bad 7 is, they're being contrarians for the sake of appearing more enlightened than the brainless masses that consumed 7 in such volumes. If only those cretins could appreciate ~true art~ like the opera house scene, then maybe videogames would be better

FF7 actually holds up pretty well, warts and all, and is both dramatically more fun to play with the Materia and Limit Break systems and is able to focus more on the characters, some of whom are really great.

Here's a quick list of Finals Fantasy you should like if you want to like good Finals Fantasy and good video games writ large:
Final Fantasy Tactics
Final Fantasy XII
Final Fantasy VII
Final Fantasy V

Wouldn't pretentious jagoffs who just want to seem enlightened and superior cite FF4 as the best game then? You know, since it's the first game in the series that has any significant quality. Check mate.

FF6...is good. Most of the characters are good. On the surface Kefka is just a psycho clown who just wants to watch the world burn but if you talk to Cid and Leo they tell you he was experimented on and had a pretty poo poo life. You might even feel for the guy until you remember he is a remorseless war criminal who does not even have the defense of 'just following orders.'

And again, two female protagonists and the villain actually succeeds.

FF5 is also good though! And I liked FF12 but holy gently caress Vaan was literal poison. He was just such a lovely character that the rest of the good characters suffered for it. Also it's the game where the time wasting started. I still remember hours long quests where nothing of value was done.

And FFT is art.

Sixfools posted:

It makes me sad the artist who worked on FFT last gig was drawing cards for a lovely mobile game called Fantasica

Maybe if they could draw noses this wouldn't have happened. :colbert:

chumbler posted:

Final Fantasy is still good is what happened op.

Though Prompto fans need to get some fuckin taste.

Lies.
I am not going to buy or play FF XV unless it has some gay kissing. I have standards!

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009
cloud isn't a big uncaring nobody, he's an awkward goofy hick who's trying way too hard to be cool but winds up saying poo poo like 'let's mosey'

edit: also jenner are you a dude

Ms Adequate
Oct 30, 2011

Baby even when I'm dead and gone
You will always be my only one, my only one
When the night is calling
No matter who I become
You will always be my only one, my only one, my only one
When the night is calling



Jenner posted:

Woah get a load of this guy. I bet he likes Chrono Cross.
I also kinda liked Chrono Cross. :ssh:

I... I kind of do :negative:

Eej
Jun 17, 2007

HEAVYARMS
FFX is actually the best FF and it took me going through it again a couple years ago to really appreciate the plot of "kid is a terrible human being at the start because he idolized his drunk piece of garbage dad who eventually became a good person too late to fix anything"

Super No Vacancy
Jul 26, 2012

I agree that 10 is another good final fantasy

chumbler
Mar 28, 2010

I liked what I played of X-2, but when I found out I had missed some stuff like dresspheres permanently I lost the desire to keep going, and restarting would be a chore. Yuna is alright.

Justin Godscock
Oct 12, 2004

Listen here, funnyman!

Mandatory Assembly posted:

I played Final Fantasy Tactics for the first time a couple of years ago and found it to be an utterly tedious grind fest for autists. If that's the best game in the series then they should burn it all down.

This is why I never got into it even though I was a colossal FF fan as a teenager. It threw up stone-walls in difficulty meaning you had to grind just to move on.

Eej
Jun 17, 2007

HEAVYARMS
Also it had the most unique setting of any of the FFs and it juxtaposed the chillness of the Okinawan/Polynesian vibe with Spira being a world where death was just a daily fact of life and just an incredibly sad world to exist in.

Coco Rodreguiz
Jan 12, 2007

Peckerhead isn't used enough as an insult if you ask me.
FF6 is good but the second half of the game is hamstrung because you were only required to have 3 specific characters to beat the game. So the dialogue becomes generic since they can't know for sure which characters you'll have for each scene.

Good soup!
Nov 2, 2010

Endorph posted:

cloud isn't a big uncaring nobody, he's an awkward goofy hick who's trying way too hard to be cool but winds up saying poo poo like 'let's mosey'

This is something that stuck out the most for me when I went back and beat it for the first time in years last year. Cloud is a pretty upbeat, weird, goofy dude who uses disguises like dresses, makeup, different uniforms, etc. to bamboozle people and gets made fun of by everyone throughout the game.. It's weird that the sequel stuff made him this creepy, brooding dude, given he's actually pretty endearing throughout most of 7 IMO.

Also, drat I had forgotten how great the opening music is for 5 and 6. 5 in particular, while not my favorite, has such a great opening with the Chocobo\Bartz running as the credits scroll. :allears:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3ej58BlDwM

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


I've wanted to give FF7 a replay for a while, haven't beaten it since shortly after its release, but doofy translation/writing issues in games bug me like just nothing else can, like chewing tinfoil

jokes
Dec 20, 2012

Uh... Kupo?

FF6 would be cooler if they had a proper job system since most of the characters were dumb. In order of coolest to dumbest (if a character is not on this list it's because they're forgettable and I forgot them):

Stratego
Setzer
Celes
Terra
Locke
Mog
Uhhh Relm

Daryl Surat
Apr 6, 2002

I don't care what you say about this post, but if anyone steps on my bunion, I'll kill them!
The answer to the question of "what happened to Final Fantasy such that there's such a divide between FF6 and FF7?" is extremely simple: Tetsuya Nomura and Kazushige Nojima. Once these guys got to have say over the story and characters, that was when Final Fantasy changed forever. That's their fingerprints you're seeing from Final Fantasy 7 through 15 which you weren't seeing prior to that because they either didn't work on those games or were just doing artwork. They're also the ones behind Kingdom Hearts. Final Fantasy 7, Advent Children, and Kingdom Hearts are among the single most successful Japanese works in the world, such that everyone just thinks "that's how Japan does things!" But really, it's just these two guys (and well, a legion of people who grew up on their stuff and/or want to copy their success).

I'm going to be very interested to see who precisely buys Final Fantasy 15. It's a game engineered from the ground up to appeal to the sort of fans who create derivative works from established material in which the male characters are romantically/sexually involved with one another. That's a gigantic pastime that has only gotten bigger with the advent of the Internet, but FF 15 just might be taking those hooks so far that it alienates drat near everybody who isn't into that stuff. The Conan O'Brien video is a key example of this. All of those things he found so utterly exasperating are red meat to that audience. Therein lies the gamble: how many of those fans are out there? Final Fantasy 15 has been in development for over a decade now, and the last estimates I heard said that it needs to sell 10 million copies just to break even. That's a lot, seeing as the combined shipped copies of Final Fantasy XIII, XIII-2, and Lightning Returns combined was "over 11 million." (No idea how many of those were left unsold.)

Honestly, it's a good thing Final Fantasy XIV is doing so well for them now, because I feel like it's going to be a very difficult thing for 15 to sell that well. But no matter what happens, Nomura and Nojima will remain in charge since Kingdom Hearts is a license to print money and they can always just remake Final Fantasy VII, since the kids who grew up on that are now grown up with kids of their own (that they named Sephiroth).

Junk
Dec 20, 2003

Listen to reason, man. Why make your job difficult?
Super Mario RPG was the best Final Fantasy.

Chillgamesh
Jul 29, 2014

Um, actually, FF7 owns and is good, FF6 is yawn-inducing nostalgiaware.

Mandatory Assembly posted:

I played Final Fantasy Tactics for the first time a couple of years ago and found it to be an utterly tedious grind fest for autists. If that's the best game in the series then they should burn it all down.

It's kinda hard for a first-timer but if you just experiment with the classes and have coherent team compositions you shouldn't really ever lose. Like, just take "Beefy guy, beefy guy, healer, guy who can hit at long range, support guy with status effects". You shouldn't really ever need to grind unless you get stonewalled by a certain boss at the end of ch3. And by "shouldn't need to grind" I mean "I save before I move anywhere on the map when I play this game because I don't wanna do any random encounters, and I don't take any unnecessary actions in story fights to grind for XP/JP". Just make sure all your guys have Gained JP UP and that covers it.

RealityWarCriminal
Aug 10, 2016

:o:

Coco Rodreguiz posted:

FF6 is good but the second half of the game is hamstrung because you were only required to have 3 specific characters to beat the game. So the dialogue becomes generic since they can't know for sure which characters you'll have for each scene.

It also loses all sense of pacing. The first half really pushes you through the story. The second half is mostly just flying around trying to find your friends.

RealityWarCriminal
Aug 10, 2016

:o:
I was never good at finding friends ergo I hated ff6

CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK
Sep 11, 2001



Daryl Surat posted:

The answer to the question of "what happened to Final Fantasy such that there's such a divide between FF6 and FF7?" is extremely simple: Tetsuya Nomura and Kazushige Nojima. Once these guys got to have say over the story and characters, that was when Final Fantasy changed forever. That's their fingerprints you're seeing from Final Fantasy 7 through 15 which you weren't seeing prior to that because they either didn't work on those games or were just doing artwork. They're also the ones behind Kingdom Hearts. Final Fantasy 7, Advent Children, and Kingdom Hearts are among the single most successful Japanese works in the world, such that everyone just thinks "that's how Japan does things!" But really, it's just these two guys (and well, a legion of people who grew up on their stuff and/or want to copy their success).

I'm going to be very interested to see who precisely buys Final Fantasy 15. It's a game engineered from the ground up to appeal to the sort of fans who create derivative works from established material in which the male characters are romantically/sexually involved with one another. That's a gigantic pastime that has only gotten bigger with the advent of the Internet, but FF 15 just might be taking those hooks so far that it alienates drat near everybody who isn't into that stuff. The Conan O'Brien video is a key example of this. All of those things he found so utterly exasperating are red meat to that audience. Therein lies the gamble: how many of those fans are out there? Final Fantasy 15 has been in development for over a decade now, and the last estimates I heard said that it needs to sell 10 million copies just to break even. That's a lot, seeing as the combined shipped copies of Final Fantasy XIII, XIII-2, and Lightning Returns combined was "over 11 million." (No idea how many of those were left unsold.)

Honestly, it's a good thing Final Fantasy XIV is doing so well for them now, because I feel like it's going to be a very difficult thing for 15 to sell that well. But no matter what happens, Nomura and Nojima will remain in charge since Kingdom Hearts is a license to print money and they can always just remake Final Fantasy VII, since the kids who grew up on that are now grown up with kids of their own (that they named Sephiroth).

The gameplay in FF15 looks fun.

Daryl Surat
Apr 6, 2002

I don't care what you say about this post, but if anyone steps on my bunion, I'll kill them!

CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:

The gameplay in FF15 looks fun.

"Looks" fun? Can't you just go download the demo and play it yourself, then report back what you liked or didn't like about it?

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OneEightHundred
Feb 28, 2008

Soon, we will be unstoppable!
I think FFX is much more of what happened to the series than FF7 is. It's really the entry that defines the genre's aesthetic going forward and also solidified the tone that had been fairly inconsistent in the preceding titles.

Justin Godscock posted:

This is why I never got into it even though I was a colossal FF fan as a teenager. It threw up stone-walls in difficulty meaning you had to grind just to move on.
FFT's difficulty was goofy because it was so unbalanced. It's easy as hell if you know the good strategy: Put Basic Skill on everyone and spam Accumulate for a boatload of free XP/JP, roll monks with high Brave and pump that to permanent 97 with a mediator, rush Two Swords, and then spend the rest of the game one-shotting everything.

It's much harder if you actually grind it because then all of your martial job guys wind up as geomancers which are worthless, or lancers that have a bad job skill and bad weapon choices, and all of your casters are either squishy summoners that are out of mana after 2 spells, or time mages that do no damage. God help you if you grind it all out and wind up as a dancer or bard.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 04:43 on Nov 16, 2016

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