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Good soup!
Nov 2, 2010

OneEightHundred posted:

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.

Yeah, this is a good point. tbh, I was never too big on the anime realdoll look of some of the recent entries.

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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK
Sep 11, 2001



Daryl Surat posted:

"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?

I mean I played the Japanese Judgment demo already. Not sure how much I was missing out since I can't read any of the menus re: hints, upgrades, etc. I also heard some options were left out of the demo like the Wait mode for combat.

The gameplay in the demo is fun. I guess it's like Kingdom Hearts but more refined. Fighting larger enemies is a blast especially when you are warping around to get better positioning or for dodging their attacks. Defense seems to be pretty important too because if you just mindlessly mash buttons, the enemies will gang up on you and kill you really quick. Parrying is great once you get the timing down.

Eej
Jun 17, 2007

HEAVYARMS
FFX was definitely the peak expression of "Final Fantasy" and every game afterwards has gone in wildly different directions with gameplay systems. You basically have to be a grog to think that FF6 or FF7 were the beginning of the end of the series.

FFT is just a Tactics Ogre sequel in anything but name so you can't really consider it an FF aside from FFTA lending its setting to FF12.

MoaM
Dec 1, 2009

Joyous.
I think the narrative of "Tetsuya Nomura and Kazushige Nojima ruined the series" has merit, but it should be merged with: "Square-Eenix has had unrealistic sales expectations for their games since 2000". Plus, turn-based RPGs can only be innovated so many times; none of the games beyond FFX have been able to really outmatch its sphere grid and fast-paced battles.

shove me like you do
Dec 9, 2007

Real Neato

Fun Shoe
The best final fantasy is actually final fantasy Theatrhythm.



Also was I the only person who ever played The Last Remnant? Cuz the assistant director on FFIV wants to revisit it, and I really want that to happen.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!

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.

Hell yeah

OneEightHundred
Feb 28, 2008

Soon, we will be unstoppable!

Awesome Welles posted:

Yeah, this is a good point. tbh, I was never too big on the anime realdoll look of some of the recent entries.
I meant to say the series' aesthetic, oops.

I don't just mean the character designs, but also the world design, which moved away from the relatively down-to-earth styles of FF6-FF8, which mixed modern themes and heavy industry with a high-fantasy world, and FF9's Victorian influences. Apparently they only kept things simple on PS1 because they had to, thanks to technical limitations. Once those started evaporating, they started making a point of throwing obscene amounts of decorative detail at practically everything, and it quickly turned into the series that gave us this:



... and this:


Now it's really easy to tell that you're looking at a Final Fantasy title because everything looks like it was stolen out of some monarch's private collection and all of the monsters are wearing chandeliers.

OneEightHundred fucked around with this message at 05:31 on Nov 16, 2016

Captain Oblivious
Oct 12, 2007

I'm not like other posters

Coco Rodreguiz posted:

Final fantasy was always anime. It just wasn't obvious until the graphics reached a point that it became more apparent.

Also Chrono Trigger that you love? 100% anime.

The problem with statements like this is that they assume anime is static and unchanging. It isn't. The Japanese markets tastes changed and evolved and Final Fantasy hewed to that market in particular. There was a divergence in tastes for many people.

Ironically FF14 is the only game in recent memory to recapture the feel of the older games, for me.

CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK
Sep 11, 2001



OneEightHundred posted:

I meant to say the series' aesthetic, oops.

I don't just mean the character designs, but also the world design, which moved away from the relatively down-to-earth styles of FF6-FF8, which mixed modern themes and heavy industry with a high-fantasy world, and FF9's Victorian influences. Apparently they only kept things simple on PS1 because they had to, thanks to technical limitations. Once those started evaporating, they started making a point of throwing obscene amounts of detail at practically everything, it quickly turned into the series that gave us this:



... and this:


Now it's really easy to tell that you're looking at a Final Fantasy title because everything looks like it was stolen out of some monarch's private collection and all of the monsters are wearing chandeliers.

That airship sucks but that enemy design is :krad:

aegof
Mar 2, 2011

FFT is great, but it definitely had some bullshit. Enough that I can't really blame anyone who got turned off when they hit a wall. JP always felt like it came too slowly, so I was rarely willing to use a Support skill that wasn't Gained JP Up. Riovanes had a doubleboss and an absurd rescue mission one after another, where the best strategies required advance knowledge or hilarious cheese. And so on.

But I haven't found a game that where I enjoyed scrolling through skill lists and building a character nearly as much.

Eej
Jun 17, 2007

HEAVYARMS

OneEightHundred posted:

I meant to say the series' aesthetic, oops.

I don't just mean the character designs, but also the world design, which moved away from the relatively down-to-earth styles of FF6-FF8, which mixed modern themes and heavy industry with a high-fantasy world, and FF9's Victorian influences. Apparently they only kept things simple on PS1 because they had to, thanks to technical limitations. Once those started evaporating, they started making a point of throwing obscene amounts of decorative detail at practically everything, and it quickly turned into the series that gave us this:



... and this:


Now it's really easy to tell that you're looking at a Final Fantasy title because everything looks like it was stolen out of some monarch's private collection and all of the monsters are wearing chandeliers.

So what you're saying is that technology was the only thing saving us from Amano's designs?

chumbler
Mar 28, 2010

MoaM posted:

I think the narrative of "Tetsuya Nomura and Kazushige Nojima ruined the series" has merit, but it should be merged with: "Square-Eenix has had unrealistic sales expectations for their games since 2000". Plus, turn-based RPGs can only be innovated so many times; none of the games beyond FFX have been able to really outmatch its sphere grid and fast-paced battles.

Lightning Returns, friend.

OneEightHundred
Feb 28, 2008

Soon, we will be unstoppable!

MoaM posted:

Plus, turn-based RPGs can only be innovated so many times
I don't think that it's actually true. Look at something like Valkyrie Profile 2 if you want an example of how far its conventions can be stretched and still work.

The weird irony is that main-series FF was actually one of the least innovative of the formula, even compared to other RPGs that Square had worked on. Super Mario RPG added timing gimmicks to every attack, Chrono Trigger added positional elements to target selection, and later entries didn't do any of that. By FFX they had removed the active time portion of it too.

I guess there was probably a clearer path forward in just steering the whole thing towards Kingdom Hearts than there was in trying to figure out a way to make command-based combat stay interesting.

Ceyton
Oct 9, 2004

YOU'RE DEAD ARMITAGE!
YOU'RE DEAD ARMITAGE!
YOU'RE DEAD ARMITAGE!

I'll try to keep this tl;dr

  • FF6 is the best FF.
  • Key creative people started leaving Square during / after FF6.
  • FF7 was good, in spite of a few glaring flaws. It was the all-out multimedia masterpiece that Square had wanted to make since the early 90s, with pre-rendered cutscenes, dozens of hours of music, and all that stuff. It was a huge smash hit and took JRPGs from niche to mainstream. However, Square became a victim of their own success. The start of the 3-D era pushed production budgets 10+ times higher, and fans wouldn't be happy if there was any regression, if they lost the "WOW" factor. This is where the focus on pretty graphics and cutscenes over plot and characters began.
  • FF8 is where the series went off the rails. Utterly stupid premise ("these whiny teenagers are the world's most elite mercenary military force") and even stupider plot points ("our summoned monsters made us forget that the main antagonist is really our adoptive mother :downs:"). It had a few neat original ideas though, like shitloads of hidden sidequests, level scaling, and the junction system.
  • The Spirits Within was a massive flop that nearly bankrupted the company and forced them to merge with Enix to survive.
  • Vagrant Story, while critically lauded, was also a financial flop. (It had a lot in common with Dark Souls now that I think about it. Guess the market just wasn't ready yet.)
  • Due to the previous 2 points, plus spiraling production budgets, Square-Enix became extremely conservative. Gotta stick to "safe" character and story tropes, because one more failure will sink the company for good.
  • They've been stuck in this rut ever since FF10. Take for example FF12, which spent years in development hell and had a focus-group-approved teenage protagonist shoehorned in at management's order. Nomura and Kojima have a stranglehold on creative control and are perfectly happy to keep things the way they are.

Double tl;dr: they fired all the writers and became reliant on tropes and graphical bamboozlement.

OneEightHundred
Feb 28, 2008

Soon, we will be unstoppable!
Also just to give an answer to "what happened?" in a different sense of the question, a big thing that happened was that JRPGs spent the late 90s being the pinnacle of production quality by a large margin, which waned over the 2000's as games like God of War and COD4 came out. So, it's lost a lot of its prestige since it's no longer the gatekeeper of the genre that's pushing the envelope.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!

Ceyton posted:

I'll try to keep this tl;dr

  • FF6 is the best FF.
  • Key creative people started leaving Square during / after FF6.
  • FF7 was good, in spite of a few glaring flaws. It was the all-out multimedia masterpiece that Square had wanted to make since the early 90s, with pre-rendered cutscenes, dozens of hours of music, and all that stuff. It was a huge smash hit and took JRPGs from niche to mainstream. However, Square became a victim of their own success. The start of the 3-D era pushed production budgets 10+ times higher, and fans wouldn't be happy if there was any regression, if they lost the "WOW" factor. This is where the focus on pretty graphics and cutscenes over plot and characters began.
  • FF8 is where the series went off the rails. Utterly stupid premise ("these whiny teenagers are the world's most elite mercenary military force") and even stupider plot points ("our summoned monsters made us forget that the main antagonist is really our adoptive mother :downs:"). It had a few neat original ideas though, like shitloads of hidden sidequests, level scaling, and the junction system.
  • The Spirits Within was a massive flop that nearly bankrupted the company and forced them to merge with Enix to survive.
  • Vagrant Story, while critically lauded, was also a financial flop. (It had a lot in common with Dark Souls now that I think about it. Guess the market just wasn't ready yet.)
  • Due to the previous 2 points, plus spiraling production budgets, Square-Enix became extremely conservative. Gotta stick to "safe" character and story tropes, because one more failure will sink the company for good.
  • They've been stuck in this rut ever since FF10. Take for example FF12, which spent years in development hell and had a focus-group-approved teenage protagonist shoehorned in at management's order. Nomura and Kojima have a stranglehold on creative control and are perfectly happy to keep things the way they are.

Double tl;dr: they fired all the writers and became reliant on tropes and graphical bamboozlement.
14 is good. Also V is better than VI.

Ciaphas
Nov 20, 2005

> BEWARE, COWARD :ovr:


I unironically think FF14 is the second best of the lot, but I've never had a real problem with the MMO game style

First best is still FFT in my mind

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
it'd be cool if square authorized some final fantasy gaiden games in the old 16 bit style the way capcom did with mega man 9

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!

Coolguye posted:

it'd be cool if square authorized some final fantasy gaiden games in the old 16 bit style the way capcom did with mega man 9

That's what Bravely Default is, but 3D

nigga crab pollock
Mar 26, 2010

by Lowtax
the only jrpg ive liked is xenoblade and i probably have the dolphin save somewhere idk

it had a cool combat system. the world was v cool. the execution of the story was acceptable. the characters were aight

but almost every jrpg always has a weird take on items and equipment. in the final fantasy games ive played you can make your way through quite a bit of the story without getting much loot and you have all these characters w equipment slots??? same thing with xenoblade . i expected there to be a 'yo hey heres a forced tutorial' but instead u just chug along.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
i was about to say how wrong you are and then i realized i was thinking of trails in the sky and i've never played bravely default

jrpgs run together for me these days

also i will say ff6 is the best imo just because the ensemble cast worked extremely well. i think you can argue that more than just terra and celes are the leads in that game, the brothers figaro also have front row and are really the big winners in the overall narrative, being the leaders of technology in what becomes a distinctly non-magical world. locke's story also takes up almost as much screen time as terra's, despite the fact that locke is mostly just a bitch.

as much as i disliked locke though, it didn't matter, because i found my mental homie in edgar. the real beauty of the ensemble cast was that you were way, way more likely to find yourself in that game, whereas if you play ff7 and you don't like cloud you're basically boned for 85% of the game (which I'm convinced is the largest argument between people who don't like insert FF game here and those that do)

Coolguye fucked around with this message at 08:03 on Nov 16, 2016

MoaM
Dec 1, 2009

Joyous.

chumbler posted:

Lightning Returns, friend.

*cough*
...glad we'll never have to go into ~FF13 WORLD~ again.

OneEightHundred posted:

Valkyrie Profile 2


I think VP2 got it right (so did FF12 for that matter) but you're using the word 'stretch' for a reason there.

Trick Question
Apr 9, 2007


The world ends with you was really good. Lightning returns was sort of similar? Both smaller-scale more actiony games with fun abilities to find and lots of opportunity for odd strategies and customization. I hope they make more good, fun games. Or at least some with good soundtracks so I can just listen to that poo poo on youtube, X and Chrono Cross had some great tunes.

DrManiac
Feb 29, 2012

Square puts a lot of effort into making the new final fantasy settings (well, ff 13) as fantastical as possible and it did nothing for me. I don't like any of the stale anime-ish characters in 13 and 15 is looking to be about the same.



Dragon quest uses the same poo poo for 20 years but drat if the builders ending didn't get me hyped.

chumbler
Mar 28, 2010

Sazh is the best character in all of Final Fantasy because he is just a normal, decent guy with problems and also a bird that lives in his hair.

Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

Part of the problem is that Final Fantasy feels the need to reinvent the wheel with every game to the point it is hard to say what Final Fantasy actually is to people. Outside of stuff like moogles, chocobos and Cid and recently Gilgamesh there is very little in common between each game. So what appeals to you in one game is gone he next, never to return.

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

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'

edit: also jenner are you a dude

I am female.

Once you know the whole story of Cloud, once it is revealed that he is not awesome SOLDIER man McCool you can look back on Cloud's behavior and you can come to the conclusion that you have. That Cloud is a giant goob who wants everyone to think he's cool so he plays up this super nihilist edge lord shtick. Every time you play the game after this you can respond to every time Cloud says something like, "I don't care." With a chiding, "Oh Cloud, you dork."

But my first time playing this game I did not know Cloud was just putting on airs. And all throughout Midgar and for quite awhile after it he was just so, ":shrug:"

I admit, I was used to Tales of JRPG protagonists. Who are often super virtuous white knights that go off passionately about the power of friendship and poo poo. Guys that just care.

I was really put off by Cloud.

Ciaphas posted:

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

I played a bit of the game today just to see if my memory of it was accurate. My revelation? The 90s were really bad. The cross dressing portion is now much more uncomfortable for me. FF7 was made in 1997, I was 15. I thought it was funny that the dudes in the gym were sassy gay stereotypes. I nodded along with the fact that you need fancy perfume and panties to appeal to guys. Those two things? Kinda ick. But the most jarring thing is the real reason why we are dressing up as a girl in the first place. It is to rescue our friend who is in peril.

Even back then I was a bit perturbed by the fact that some dude could just kidnap unwilling women off the street and lock them up in his love mansion. If you do all the subquests right and make Cloud the prettiest girl (and honestly why wouldn't you) you're greeted with an encounter where this digusting slimeball man is trying to, at best, coerce you into sex and, at worst, force himself on you. We don't get to see things from the girls POV if we don't bother with the side quests, the team just busts in there guns blazing while things are going down. But considering how things look when you bust in it's a safe assumption that that sleaze bag is like that to every woman.

At the sheltered age of 15 I was like, "Gross, this guy is reprehensible."
Now at 34, playing this game, it's a lot more alarming. Because wow that is just a really scary and dangerous situation for a girl to be in. Feminism and the awareness of the grim reality that this terrible thing that we are playing off as a joke actually happens to people has ruined everything.

But Cloud is best girl. :sparkle:

Super No Vacancy posted:

I agree that 10 is another good final fantasy

FFX was... Okay. But wow holy poo poo that whole world is sad/depressing/tragic.

Junk posted:

Super Mario RPG was the best Final Fantasy.

I know about timed hits.

CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:

That airship sucks but that enemy design is :krad:

:yeah:

quote:

All claims that FF6 is actually bad.

Incorrect, FF6 is good. I hear your complaints about the World of Ruin but... I liked it. You really get to see the terror and destruction Kefka wrought. You get to see the price of your failure. I didn't mind flying around collecting my friends because it was all about having hope even in the darkest time. We can't undo what has been done, but we can stop it from continuing and we can make the best world and future we can from the ruins.

Also, this game touches on and doesn't play around with some really grim/mature stuff.
-Everything on the island you start on in the WoR is dying and despair and hopelessness is so profound that, under certain conditions, Celes will attempt suicide then find hope and this is the best version of those events. Saving Cid is for people who hate good stories.
-Terra is devastated, she is strong for the kids and wants to protect them. It is the realization that she can protect them better by stopping Kefka and make a better world for them that gets her out of her funk. Terra's whole WoR arc is about how life is still precious and still goes on even if everything is poo poo. Also, teen pregnancy prominently featured in a video game..
-Cyan's whole thing is him being cruel but kind to a woman who lost her partner. He writes her letters and sends her flowers because he knows what it's like to lose everything and he wants to spare her that. The world is poo poo enough. But as you do his quest he learns that loss is part of life and that you just have to move on. (This is something I am honestly still struggling with. :smith:)
-Gau has his own small mini-plot where you put him in a tux and introduce him to his dad and his dad still rejects him. And Gau is sad, until he remembers he has the FF6 crew. They want him and they are his family. The fact that you can make your own family is a mini plot in FF6 that becomes a loud prominent plot point in FF9. It was a message that personally resonated with me because I had a pretty poo poo family but my friends (my created family) were amazing.
-Shadow's back story is strongly hinted at. Interceptor likes Realm and will protect her, they are the only two who can wear the momento ring, the flash backs. And if you sleep in some inns and do some stuff you can learn all about him. You find out he left a friend to die like a coward. At the end of the game, he appears to choose to stay in the crumbling remains of Kefka's tower. Choosing to accept death and telling his friend he's coming.
-Strago feels he's lost it all and just bends the knee to the Kefka Cult because what's the loving point anymore. Realm snaps him out of it. And he's just like, "I was such an idiot, the world is worth fighting for. Please forgive me."
-Edgar is jerking a bunch of bandits around so he can reclaim his castle from a giant tentacle monster because he hasn't given up hope. He's actually planning on doing what Celes is already doing which is get the gang back together and stop this mess before it gets worse.

Also FF6 had a sex scene. FF6 acknowledges that sex exists and happens. Like, wow, how did they get away with that in the 90s? It was very tame, not like a gratuitous Bioware sex scene, but sex is depicted in a game. A man and a woman dance around together and the sparkles from their bodies form a baby. That was a big deal for me because I am a twat.

FF5 was really good, but it didn't really touch on the kind of mature issues that FF6 does. It's FF6's willingness to get down into the dirt (compared to other games of its era) and really look long and hard at it that makes it so good.

FF7 touches on such issues as corporations bad, environment good, death happens, scientists are jerks, and be honest with yourself. These are good messages! But there is just no comparison.

FF8 touches on such issues as, what is memory? And um... dads are incompetent goobs?

FF9 is great because it doesn't just say, "War is bad, mmkay." It shows you war is bad. With Burmicia, Lindblum and Alexandria. And I already talked about how its message of, "You can make your own family" is powerfully resonating.

And this post is getting real long but I really gotta give props to FF6, FF9 and FF10. There are so many, just so many games where a terrible awful event happens, often something really cataclysmic (and it's sometimes even your fault) and not only are the PCs just like, ":shrug: welp" they just move the gently caress on as if nothing happened and it sometimes has no effect or bearing on the game whatsoever. There is no fall out. You do not rifle through the rubble for survivors or run into survivors later and it's rarely, if ever, brought up again. It might as well have just not even happened! It was meaningless drama/tragedy that is not dwelled on or rolled around in. You are just numb to it.

Pork Lift and Wateyad are playing through Star Ocean # right now and some terrible poo poo has happened (their fault) and the PCs literally just shrug and move on. They aren't even chewed out. It hasn't been brought back up yet. Nobody cares. It's like they want to have all the shock of a tragedy but none of the consequences. Because consequences are uncomfortable. This is so stupid and it really pisses me off.

FF6, FF9 and FF10 are not afraid to rub your nose in the poop. A lovely thing (or things) has happened (or is happening) and it is bad and people are suffering and look at it. Look at it! This is some good poo poo.

Jenner fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Nov 16, 2016

1337kutkufan6969
Feb 13, 2010

Oh, Yian Kut Ku!
Where have you been all my life?
Let me break your head.


Grimey Drawer

Vermain posted:

... FF7 is the first FF game that is getting a remastered version because of that popularity...

Final Fantasy 7 will be the 9th mainline Final Fantasy to be remastered. There have been remasters of 1 - 6, with particularly huge graphical overhauls for 3 and 4. People weren't particularly excited about the remasters for 5 and 6, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Also, X and X-2 have gotten remasters before 7.

My guess, is that the problem is that 7 is a hot rear end mess which explains why they are having to slice it and dice it and essentially re-imagine it so that it makes sense and is fun for a modern audience.

Randarkman
Jul 18, 2011

I've never played a Final Fantasy. In fact I've never even seen one played.

Is this something I should look to correct? Would any of the old games even be at all fun for someone who has no fond memories or any memories related to them?

Four Score
Feb 27, 2014

by zen death robot
Lipstick Apathy
Actually OP, FFXIII is the best

raditts
Feb 21, 2001

The Kwanzaa Bot is here to protect me.


fivegears4reverse posted:

Traditional FF combat is dull as gently caress compared to modern videogames in general/Final Fantasy 12/Tactics so I am okay with never, ever, ever getting a Final Fantasy that plays like FF1-10 again.

The QOL improvements to battles in Bravely Default make things tolerable, even enjoyable when experimenting with job combinations, it's a shame that everything else about the BD games is a slog.

lunatikfringe posted:

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.

FF6 was exception in that it is the only FF game where you can suplex a motherfucking train.

raditts fucked around with this message at 14:55 on Nov 16, 2016

IcePhoenix
Sep 18, 2005

Take me to your Shida

Junk posted:

Super Mario RPG was the best Final Fantasy.

best post in the thread

Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

I don't get it. Why is Don Corneo being depicted as a sleazeball pimp borderline rapist and an overall awful person an attack against feminism? People like him exist in real life, sadly, and unlike Tifa and Aeris who can and do defend themselves without Cloud, are defenceless. Just because a game shows something bad doesn't mean it advocates it.

I'm with you on the Honey Bee Inn section though. That is outdated and can be seen as offensive today.

On another note, FF VII has implied sex too. One which is way less loving weird than FF VI's pseudo bestiality which was awkward as hell even when I first played it.

Selenephos fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Nov 16, 2016

Chillgamesh
Jul 29, 2014

I'm doing it, I'm going in. Hold my soylent. :spergin:

Jenner posted:

Once you know the whole story of Cloud, once it is revealed that he is not awesome SOLDIER man McCool you can look back on Cloud's behavior and you can come to the conclusion that you have. That Cloud is a giant goob who wants everyone to think he's cool so he plays up this super nihilist edge lord shtick. Every time you play the game after this you can respond to every time Cloud says something like, "I don't care." With a chiding, "Oh Cloud, you dork."

You're kind of coloring Cloud with the EU brush. The whole "Heh, I'm way too cool for whatever the gently caress this is" facade drops around the time Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie get iced. He's pretty drat near his regular self by the time you leave Midgar. The cracks in his mental health really begin to show after :siren: AERIS DIES :siren:. In Advent Children, Cloud is supposed to be really detached, because he's depressed both over Aeris's death and the fact that he is dying of anime cancer. Advent Children sucks, though, so it doesn't pull this off.


quote:

At the sheltered age of 15 I was like, "Gross, this guy is reprehensible."
Now at 34, playing this game, it's a lot more alarming. Because wow that is just a really scary and dangerous situation for a girl to be in. Feminism and the awareness of the grim reality that this terrible thing that we are playing off as a joke actually happens to people has ruined everything.

Not only is Don Corneo portrayed as a weak and pathetic individual the things he does aren't portrayed as "Ha ha isn't this funny what he is doing to women" but more "Oh god this is gross gross gross and despicable." Tifa and especially Aeris are some of the strongest female characters in the series and their handling of Don Corneo is part of that. I don't understand what, from a feminist perspective, you find so disgusting about the cross-dressing scene or Honeybee Inn. There isn't any trans hate or that sort of stuff. The gay characters are stereotypes but they aren't portrayed as bad people, and neither are the sex workers. Mukki even saves Cloud from a mental breakdown. If anything, the section normalizes sex by showing the patrons and employees at Honeybee as regular people, and showing the townsfolk of Sector 6 as all having sexual fantasies.

quote:

FF6, FF9 and FF10 are not afraid to rub your nose in the poop. A lovely thing (or things) has happened (or is happening) and it is bad and people are suffering and look at it. Look at it! This is some good poo poo.

Plenty of bad poo poo happens in FF7. Sector 7 gets crushed and Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie get killed, along with thousands of innocent people. You watch as Sephiroth goes berserk and cleans out a whole town. Hojo does all kinds of *really* hosed up poo poo. There are plenty of sidequests and story events you can fail that have dire consequences for doing so.

Also I really don't think writing teen pregnancy is something that should be spun positively even if your partner is a genie from a magic dimension.

WanderingKid
Feb 27, 2005

lives here...

OneEightHundred posted:

Also just to give an answer to "what happened?" in a different sense of the question, a big thing that happened was that JRPGs spent the late 90s being the pinnacle of production quality by a large margin, which waned over the 2000's as games like God of War and COD4 came out. So, it's lost a lot of its prestige since it's no longer the gatekeeper of the genre that's pushing the envelope.

They used to be one of the high water marks for narrative design in games where the motivation to play and the payoff for playing was finding out where the story goes next. Then it was all about the cutscenes and the spectacle of them to drive the story. Then it was about making the rest of the game as much like the cutscenes as possible (i.e. tending towards a fully immersive interactive cinema spectacle).

But in 2016 games like SOMA exist which takes the whole concept of an immersive make-believe world and experiencing a story unfolding in a videogame to a whole different level. It makes things like cutscenes seem a bit clumsy.

FF meanwhile continues to out FF the previous game in the series with its own distinctive techno fantasy melodrama except with 50% more spectacle and if you can buy into this conceit then you can still enjoy the games. I even liked FFXIII despite feeling like its method of telling a story is fundamentally flawed and can't work. The mechanics and gameplay systems have almost no connection to narrative development and actually become interruptions to it. You run down a tunnel. You start a turn based battle. You repeat this a few times until a cutscene triggers. Cue narrative exposition. Back to running down a corridor.

IcePhoenix
Sep 18, 2005

Take me to your Shida

Mr. Fortitude posted:

On another note, FF VII has implied sex too. One which is way less loving weird than FF VI's pseudo bestiality which was awkward as hell even when I first played it.

I mean, FF VII has pseudo bestiality (or at least the intent for it) as well.

I've said for a long time that the reason SE kept avoiding remaking FF VII is because they didn't want people to replay it and see how bad it actually was.

Chillgamesh
Jul 29, 2014

IcePhoenix posted:

I mean, FF VII has pseudo bestiality (or at least the intent for it) as well.

I've said for a long time that the reason SE kept avoiding remaking FF VII is because they didn't want people to replay it and see how bad it actually was.

The only thing outright bad about FF7 is what a rush job the script translation was. There are some incredibly important story elements that aren't given enough screentime, such as that in Disc 2 it is revealed to the party in a single line of dialogue that they have actually been chasing Jenova the entire game and not Sephiroth, meaning they've been being playing into Sephiroth's hands the entire game up until this point. It definitely lessens the impact a bit. FFT is also guilty of having a bad translation, but it still has a decent story. It isn't really until FF8 that Square got their poo poo together with translations. I'm honestly a bit excited to see if FF7R can capture the spirit of the game rather than the spirit of what public perception of the game is (Read: Kingdom Hearts and Advent Children Cloud).

Also in Vincent's backstory Sephiroth's origins are explained, with Hojo seducing Lucretia and getting her pregnant. Her pregnancy is directly mentioned because Hojo shoots Sephiroth up with Jenova cells while he's still in the womb.

8-Bit Scholar
Jan 23, 2016

by FactsAreUseless
I really like Final Fantasy games!

Fredrik1
Jan 22, 2005

Gopherslayer
:rock:
Fallen Rib
FF6 is clearly the best but FF4 is the second best.


FF7 was good but the game should have been like 20 hours shorter.

Fredrik1 fucked around with this message at 16:31 on Nov 16, 2016

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Selenephos
Jul 9, 2010

IcePhoenix posted:

I mean, FF VII has pseudo bestiality (or at least the intent for it) as well.

I've said for a long time that the reason SE kept avoiding remaking FF VII is because they didn't want people to replay it and see how bad it actually was.

Yeah but everyone but Hojo reacts in disgust and thinks the whole thing is hosed up. It isn't seen as a wonderful thing like in FF VI, especially when Maduin knew her for all of two days or something.

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