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Final Fantasy V is probably the best on a sheer mechanical level.
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Nov 16, 2016 16:41
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Fredrik1 posted:FF6 is clearly the best but FF4 is the second best. I will tell you the truth I never finished FF6 or 7. But I never finished 6 because at the end I wasn't sure if I was tough enough and all this grinding was wearing me down and the drat side content meant I constantly felt like I was missing something. FF7 I did not finish because I got bored, I think. What made FF4 good again? I forget.
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Nov 16, 2016 16:42
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Mr. Fortitude posted: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 not looking at it like that. Yes, the Don is despised and he is depicted as being just the very worst and most disgusting (as he should be) and it is really good. Tifa and Aeris are strong women who can and do take care of themselves and this is a good thing. And I never said the game advocates the kinda poo poo that goes down in Honey Bee. (If I implied that, it was not intentional.) There are a lot of good things about the Honey Bee section of the game. Don being portrayed as the worst. Gays being portrayed as good, helpful, normal people. (In the 90s, when there was a lot of gay bashing going on.) The people in the region and the Honey Bee in general not being shown in a negative light. Most importantly I don't recall anyone in the section treating Cloud's desire to cross dress with any kind of disapproval or hostility. Everyone is super supportive and helpful. These are good things. In the Honey Bee section's defense it takes a really lovely situation that could actually happen to someone (getting kidnapped and trapped in some creep's sex mansion) and it handles it with quite a bit of restraint and respect (admirable for a 90s game.) It shows the community doing what they can to help you save your friend and shows the girls standing up for themselves. And, if I am going to advocate for games to touch on serious issues and handle them well I have to acknowledge it. My real issues with the section, and why it made me uncomfortable, was what I stated in my post. I'll reelaborate: When I was 15 I got the message the game was sending: This is bad, the Don is bad, Aeris and Tifa rule. Now that I'm older the situation, even though it's handled alright, squicks me out because I am being a big baby and dwelling on the fact that it would be much worse for different people rather than taking it as it is. It is me, I am the problem. I'm glad FF7 touched on an issue like this and chose to portray healthy sexuality, helpful normal gays, and a supportive community. Regarding the section needing to be changed/updated? I'm not sure what could be done on that end. Like I said, it is handled pretty well. Heaven Spacey posted: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 I played to the point when you get out of Midgar this morning and Cloud is just not really saying much or being particularly emotive. In the beginning of the game he's all shrugs and deflections and now it kinda seems, to me, that he's just gone silent/numb. So I'm not seeing this shift to a regular self you're mentioning unless this is it? I'm not sure what you think Cloud's regular self is. He still seems kind of detached at this point of the game to me. My expectations might be higher? I don't know. I really am trying to give him a chance! quote: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. The Honey Bee Inn section of FF7 is a Law and Order SVU episode with a happy ending. I don't recall saying I found the cross dressing disgusting either? There's nothing wrong with Cloud cross dressing beyond the fact that he's teased a bit and grumbles about it and even then that is acceptable. He is not cross dressing because he is a cross dresser he is cross dressing because he has to to help his friend. So he doesn't have to like it. At no point does he say, "This is disgusting and depraved." He just expresses that this is not his kind of thing, which is fine. Also at no point do the people teasing him make any kind of judgement, they're just enjoying loving with him and giving him a hard time, like friends do. And the entire community is super accepting and positive about it and beyond helpful. And I take back my original complaint, which was the impression that girls have to get perfume and fancy panties to attract guys (the pressure on women to be sexy/attractive is not something I want pushed.) Upon reflection, especially in light of this post, the helpful NPCs are saying this [panties + perfume] is something Cloud needs to do, not because it's something necessary for the approval of all men, but because it is what they know the Don likes. Cloud is trying to trick the Don and they are just helping. I100% love making Cloud a pretty girl. quote: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. I'm kinda of working my way back through the game (I'm not having fun or enjoying it but I'm not sure if that's on me or the game. I'm doing my best to be receptive.) I haven't gotten to the points where poo poo really starts hitting the fan and I don't remember them well enough from when I played this game over 15 years ago. So I can't really talk one way or another about what you're saying here (give me a few days.) I don't remember you going back to Sector 7 after it gets hosed (maybe you do though, my memory is bad.) I kinda remember there being a bit of grief about Biggs, Wedge and Jesse before everyone dries there eyes and gets back to work (I think Barrett does a little memorial/funeral thing.) Sephiroth murders and burns down whole town, tragic. Later you return to rebuilt town (is it also repopulated? I recall it being abandoned.) Only Tifa, and maybe Cloud, are like "this sucks." But still, I guess it's an acceptable level of dwelling on lovely thing. Hojo does all kinds of hosed up poo poo but other than Sephiroth I don't remember any of his madness bleeding out into the world. I remember climbing the tower and getting Barrett's ultimate weapon and killing Hojo because he's an evil jerk doing terrible things but I am struggling to think of any point where his poo poo was being problems (again, excepting Sephiroth.) I remember replaying the run away train portion like a dozen times to get it right and save the big Materia. And when you fail you know it but you can just leave that hosed up village and never return. It doesn't really stick with you. And if I remember correctly the mountain village with the mini game where you fend off the invaders, if you fail that they kill the phoenix and everyone is sad but again you can just gently caress off. Perhaps I'm demanding too much but it just seems to me there is a small difference. When you gently caress up train town and mountain town, I don't recall any proclamations that you would fix it. You just gently caress off and leave them to rot and never bother your mind with them again. When South Figaro is taken by the empire you vow to return and I think it comes up in negotiations with the emperor. At least, I have memory of Gestahl apologizing for South Figaro. (It's been awhile, I'll check an LP.) When Kefka fucks over everything it. Is. Everywhere and you cannot escape it. I recall Celes being further driven to get the crew back together after Kefka Light of Judgments the town she finds Sabin in. I don't know, it's just small little nitpicks like this. The folks in FF6 just seem to respond to and acknowledge bad poo poo better than the FF7 folks do. It might just be my bias. quote: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. Teens getting pregnant is always sad and teen pregnancy legit ruins lives. But it happens, quite a bit in fact. (Though data suggests it's getting better and it's not as bad as it used to be.  ) So, I don't think it's a topic we should avoid, though I do agree that spinning teen pregnancy into a positive thing is not okay (because teen pregnancy is terrible.)If I remember correctly the teen pregnancy in FF6 happens when world is hosed and the it is used as a symbol for enduring/continuing life. Duane actually hand wrings and expresses anxiety about how hard it's going to be and wonders how they're gonna raise a child in this world. Katarin does the same, she's hopeful but not shy about saying this was a bad time. Also, Duane is totally sticking with Katarin and not cutting and running. They talk about how they're all in this together and they're gonna make it work. It's not a sweeping condemnation, which I prefer. I'm not a big fan of vilifying teen pregnancy. Especially when it is always the mother who gets slut shamed and reviled and hardly any poo poo gets said about the father. I think, all things considered, FF6 did alright. It could have done things different but that's not the message they wanted to send. They could have done more to be really loud about how bad this was, I guess. But I like the message of making the best of things. (Obviously Katarin should have gotten a steampunk magitech abortion but that completely derails the moral of life from death that they were gunning for. Though it is a much better way of making the best of things, haha.) Not to derail but I personally wouldn't mind if more media focused on the effects of teen pregnancies beyond, "Yay babies! Life is so precious and beautiful!" Especially if it started following women seeking abortion, showed how challenging it is, and humanized the women. But... eh. I think MTV had a show about teen moms? I never watched it but I heard complaints that it was glorifying teen pregnancy. Yet other people told me the general message and sentiments the mothers in the show were sending was "This sucks. It is super hard and it is not worth it." So I don't know.
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Nov 16, 2016 17:22
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AERIS DIES
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FF6's World of Ruin was actually really good and is the main reason the game stands up at all today. It manages to take one of FF6's biggest weaknesses (sloppy mechanics) and turn it into a strength of sorts. Mechanically tighter games often struggle to incorporate open ended gameplay. If you're relying on finely tuned encounters to sell your game, letting players tackle areas in different orders and at varying levels of power and access to different abilities is a nonstarter--your only option is to preserve any type of balance is to use level scaling, which everyone hates and is still unlikely to match the quality of well designed set pieces. FF6 "solves" this problem by not having good mechanics in the first place. The balance is so fast and loose it doesn't matter all that much which order you tackle things in. The boring mechanics are redeemed, in turn, by the excellent exploration aspects of the WoR. You miss out on exploring interesting combat mechanics but instead of discovering cool job combos or whatnot you get to discover entire new characters, dungeons, and subplots.
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Nov 16, 2016 17:23
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Honestly to me final fantasy's formula comes off as dated like all the other jrpgs.
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Nov 16, 2016 17:50
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1337kutkufan6969 posted: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. there were LOTS of problems with 6's remasters the GBA one came in the final days of the GBA, when nobody cared about the unit anymore because the DS was just around the corner. surprisingly, no, not a lot of people bought new release PS2 games after the PS3 came out either. the GBA was also not actively capable of handling the game and frame rates would crash to <15 regularly. on a goddamn handheld. the iOS remaster was a serious slapdash effort and it shows. there's no fewer than 3 art styles on display between the original art style in the backgrounds, the PC sprite work (which removes things like elbows and spines and replaces them with straight iron bars), and the enemy sprite work (which was clearly done in a vacuum away from everything else because art styles between enemies don't even agree). they also struggled to shoehorn some mechanics like sabin's blitzes in and it was just awful. the iOS version got released on steam and within a day there were people replacing sprites and portraits because they looked awful, and within a week people were talking about the game's technical structure and suggesting more elaborate mods. the reality is that SE has a very clear idea of which games they care about and it's directly proportional to how much money they made them. 6 was how many generations ago now, and despite the fact that it always comes up in discussions like this, the industry was different (and a huge amount smaller) back then so the numbers just don't look as good when compared to 10, which had a much larger market to play in. i would not be surprised if 7's relative slowness getting a remake was this exact consideration - it would be very hard to do because the technology is old, and 7, as popular as it is, simply didn't make them as much money as something with tidus, yuna, or lightning on the cover. still though, the real solution is for people to stop simply talking and start seriously developing themselves so they have something to offer this space, because it's very clear that square isn't going to do it. in situations like this i like to link the advice of the greatest film director of the 20th century: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r-McmgQbee0 for those of you who don't know, Akira Kurosawa's work directly inspired fistful of dollars (and sequels), magnificent seven, the entire first half of Star Wars A New Hope, and lots more. if there's anyone who knows anything about making a great piece of art it's kurosawa. and i think his advice here is just as relevant to big fans of video games as it is to big fans of movies. if you feel passionately enough about this poo poo to write in a topic this nerdy, you should write, period. i'm not saying stop posting, never not post, but take a little bit of time each day to just write a script. it's even easier today than it is when kurosawa was asked this question, honestly - we're all on the internet and can get a free google account with google drive and a web word processor which is then available from anywhere. we needn't spend a dime and can have our work at our fingertips 24/7/365. even if your work blows, you'll refine your taste and be able to talk intelligibly about the process of work to the people you meet, and then it's just one chance encounter away from forming a nascent team to make something great - or at least something that brings joy to others.
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Nov 16, 2016 18:13
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cool so I guess I'll effortpost What makes Final Fantasy VII good is that it's the first game in the series that can withstand any level of scrutiny without immediately falling apart; previous entries in the series are either too simple to withstand any serious critical assessment or too actively bad, and while VII doesn't hold up well under scrutiny, it does hold up. Here's the greatest hits version of this dumb argument. Final Fantasy VII is actually about something Previous entries in the series have no subtext whatsoever; they're just games about saving the world, and the star of the series is supposedly the Active Time Battle (ATB) system, which is exactly like a turn-based system except you get to watch meters fill up while you wait to take your turn. The surface reading of the plot is the only reading of the plot in almost every installment of Final Fantasy, and because jRPGs are so story- and/or character-driven, this has historically lead to the complaints that follow the subgenre around even today - that they're boring, that there's really no player agency, that they'd be better served being movies, etc. In popular Western RPGs the emphasis is on making choices and owning the narrative yourself - Mass Effect, The Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, even The Witcher present themselves as open-world games where you just do as you will. The emphasis is on choice and exploration and, usually, the powerset available to you. They're usually kinda action-y, with combat done in real time, and they're usually a little simple in terms of plot. Get a medallion to save the land. Shout at a dragon to save the land. Kill some wizards to save the land. Final Fantasy VII has very, very little of those elements. The ATB system is still firmly in place, with a party of three squaring off against enemies and you, the player, waiting for your time gauges to fill up so you can take your turn. Exploration is rewarding in the sense that you know there are places you can go that you have not yet been to, but dungeons and caves are designed to be fairly linear and the overworld map is incredibly small. Content is gated in very deliberate ways to prevent you from undertaking any serious sequence-breaking without really bending/breaking the game's rules. So what makes VII good? Because the developers don't have to account for things like "what if the player just straight up never even goes to <place> before <time>?" they can more tightly control when things happen, and tell a more fully-realized story. That story is, on a surface reading, kinda bad. Spiky-haired anime teenager must save the world from, first, an evil energy conglomerate, and then later from his childhood idol; hijinks occur, but he eventually wins; The End. What makes VII good narratively is that the game is not really about that at all - the central plot is almost window dressing to the subtext of the game, and what's there isn't spectacular but it's pretty good. Final Fantasy VII is about experiencing and coping with profound loss. Every major character has had their innermost needs and desires taken away from them, or has given up on them, and each major character deals with this trauma in a distinctly different way. Cloud lost his hometown and failed to become a hero, so he literally adopted someone else's identity to hide from his own failures. Tifa wanted to have a knight in shining armor rescue her from her mundane life, and instead had that life and any hope of a stalwart hero taken away from her, so she buries her feelings and accepts the fragments of the broken dream she feels she deserves. Barret watched any hope of a prosperous Corel get literally burned away before his eyes, and now seeks violent revenge against those responsible, collateral damage be damned. Every member of the party, even the secret characters who otherwise have very little characterization, have experienced this crippling loss, and they don't all handle it very well. (Nobody handles it well.) What makes VII good is that the narrative never tries to get you to sympathize with a poor coping mechanism or a bad way of handling grief - Cloud is outright pitiful very frequently and he's the main character. What's more, through completing the main quest of the game, the party doesn't miraculously all get their dreams back - some do, but most don't, and the message of the game remains the same. "Sometimes, really bad poo poo will take away what is very important to you, but you can't just give up, roll over, and die." It's a simple message but at least it's there, and helps to alleviate the normal burdens of a Final Fantasy plot, where you have to save the world for nebulous reasons until you get attacked at the very end by a final boss who seemingly exists outside the context of the game. (Exdeath, Zeromus, even Necron - like, what the gently caress.) Final Fantasy VII has the Materia system and Limit Breaks The Materia system, for those of you who have somehow never played Final Fantasy VII, is basically the best. You have essentially three kinds of Materia, which are orbs that you can slot into weapons and armor (which all have varying amounts of slots, linked or unlinked, with which to hold Materia, and varying rates of growth for the Materia slotted into them): you have Materia that adds commands to a character's menu in battle, Materia that modifies the previous type of Materia, and Materia that awards passive effects like increasing your hit points or adding a percent chance to counterattack when struck. For a more concrete example, consider the following. 1) Cloud's weapon at the outset is the Buster Sword, which has two Materia slots that are linked, and a Materia growth rate of Normal. 2) Cloud begins the game with two Materia slotted into his weapon - a Lightning Materia and an Ice Materia. At their starting levels, these Materia provide Cloud with the magic spells Bolt and Ice. 3) During battles, Cloud has access to the Magic command in his menu pane when it is his turn to act, and can cast either Bolt or Ice. It seems easy, but soon you get a blue-colored Materia called "All" which, if slotted by itself, does nothing. However... 1) Cloud's Buster Sword has two linked Materia slots, so we'll put the "All" Materia in one, and the "Lightning" Materia in the other. The Ice Materia goes into our inventory. 2) During battles, Cloud still has access to the Magic command in his menu pane when it is his turn to act, and can cast only Lightning - except now he can cast it against the entire enemy team. There are five colors of Materia - green, blue, red, yellow, and purple - but they all generally fall into the three categories of "adds commands, modifies other Materia, adds passive benefits" laid out earlier. Materia are inventory items that can be freely hotswapped at any time that you aren't already in a battle, and you're encouraged to experiment; moreover, it adds layers of depth to choosing your weapons and armor, as some will have superior stats but a worse set of Materia slots to work with, and you will have to choose what's more important to you. Even Materia that isn't of the "passive buffs" variety impacts your character's stats, too - load down a character with a lot of Magic (green) Materia and they'll see a boost to their MP and magic attack stats, but lose some HP and physical attack. It's an incredibly simple system to pick up and really, really fun to play with and master. For my money, Materia is the only thing that makes the ATB-era FFs even playable, because otherwise you're stuck with boring Esper-based FF6 or the downright broken hilarity of FF8 or the boredom of FF9's equipment-based skill system. In a lot of ways Materia is closest to the License Board from FF12 - if you want your Cloud to be a magic-oriented wizard man or a steroid-fueled physical attacker, he can be either one of those things or both - it all depends on your Materia loadout and choice of equipment. Because Materia can be changed at any time between battles, if you decide wizard Cloud isn't your bag, you can just slot him up with a different set of Materia and presto-chango now he's a berserker. It's great. Limit Breaks offer less to talk about because they're just super moves, but they add an element of fun to the proceedings, which are otherwise just "watch bars fill up and then do moves." They're flashy and cool and some of them even have neat gimmicks attached to them, like Tifa, Cait Sith, and Vincent. Adding them gives the characters a level of individuality you might otherwise lose given how flexible the Materia system is, so it's neat to think that you're choosing characters for more than just whatever weapon is available to them at the present moment - they might have a Limit Break you like a lot or is very powerful, and that's great. In closing FF7 is twenty years old and came from Japan, so there's a ton of poo poo in it that sucks or is insensitive or seems weird now, but before Squeenix disappeared up their own rear end with the ~Compilation of FF7~ expanded universe horseshit, FF7 was a good game about losing what was important to you and finding the strength to go on anyway. Also the Materia system was the best character customization system they ever devised outside of FFT's take on the Job system. Also Limit Breaks are cool and now considered a series standard and 7 was the game that codified them. Final Fantasy VII is good and hopefully the remake is based purely on the base game instead of the flanderized nonsense that the mini-franchise of FF7 eventually became
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Nov 16, 2016 18:21
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Straight White Shark posted:FF6's World of Ruin was actually really good and is the main reason the game stands up at all today. It manages to take one of FF6's biggest weaknesses (sloppy mechanics) and turn it into a strength of sorts. Mechanically tighter games often struggle to incorporate open ended gameplay. If you're relying on finely tuned encounters to sell your game, letting players tackle areas in different orders and at varying levels of power and access to different abilities is a nonstarter--your only option is to preserve any type of balance is to use level scaling, which everyone hates and is still unlikely to match the quality of well designed set pieces. FF6 "solves" this problem by not having good mechanics in the first place. The balance is so fast and loose it doesn't matter all that much which order you tackle things in. The boring mechanics are redeemed, in turn, by the excellent exploration aspects of the WoR. You miss out on exploring interesting combat mechanics but instead of discovering cool job combos or whatnot you get to discover entire new characters, dungeons, and subplots. It's really true, and FFVI manages to nail that magic moment in every FF game, where the game world opens up to you, in a way no other title in the franchise has quite managed. I wouldn't call FFVI's mechanics boring per se, I really liked that the first half of the game has you relying on individual character strengths and weaknesses and then when the game world finally opens up, you get the freedom to really build your team however you want, after a few trials. But the moment where the World of Ruin is yours to explore and you have an airship and there's ten thousand things you can do and all of them are useful, be it tracking down a new piece of magicite or recruiting another party member or getting an ultimate weapon...that's just a loving exhilirating moment, and the series has never quite managed to capture that sensation. Actually, maybe, a little bit, with FFXIV. I think the one truth anyone can say about any Final Fantasy game is that they have the best soundtracks of all time. Especially in the PSX era, I don't think Uemetsu has or ever will top the sheer variety, energy and charm of the music in FFIX.
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Nov 16, 2016 18:31
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I liked the combat in X the best, six had a decent story and I liked the world in it better, but ATB was a horrible system and I'm glad it's dead
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Nov 16, 2016 18:32
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Final Fantasy 6 has a really simple and kind of boring plot but really fun characters and interactions. Until the halfway point where they decided to just stop having to write those and made every character option so the game just had a lot of melodramatic boring plot. It also had worse gameplay and encounter designs that FF5. All in all FF6 was a mistake so big that FF7 abandoned basically the entire roots of the franchise to that point because it was better to do that then try and fix it. It took the company til FF9 to attempt to undo the damage 6 had done.
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Nov 16, 2016 18:35
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I'm glad we agree on the Sector 6/Honeybee segment actually being positive overall. I played FF7 for the first time when I was like, ten, and I wonder if it kinda helped contribute to me being relatively tolerant today. v vJenner posted:I played to the point when you get out of Midgar this morning and Cloud is just not really saying much or being particularly emotive. In the beginning of the game he's all shrugs and deflections and now it kinda seems, to me, that he's just gone silent/numb. So I'm not seeing this shift to a regular self you're mentioning unless this is it? I'm not sure what you think Cloud's regular self is. He still seems kind of detached at this point of the game to me. My expectations might be higher? I don't know. I really am trying to give him a chance! I remember Cloud as being a big rear end in a top hat trying to impress everyone up until the plate falls, at which point he takes on the leadership role from Barret ("To me it looks like a shiny golden wire of hope!"). That's what I mean by the "real" Cloud- he cares about people and wants what's best for his friends. He's absolutely mentally unsound at this point, however - He's hearing voices, having flashbacks, his memory is full of holes, and he doesn't seem to be sure why. Due to this uncertainty, he still isn't really himself. Aeris is his rock, and she supports him. She sees through the exterior he's constructed. Aeris is the strongest, most mature and self-assured character in the game, and as soon as she's gone Cloud goes completely to poo poo. Tifa tries to help, but she's almost as broken as he is, and can't really do much. She changes a lot too, though, and both she and Cloud become much stronger people by the end. quote:I'm kinda of working my way back through the game (I'm not having fun or enjoying it but I'm not sure if that's on me or the game. I'm doing my best to be receptive.) I can identify with this, I've tried playing through FF6 like four times and the furthest I've ever gotten before getting too bored to continue is the Floating Continent. quote:I haven't gotten to the points where poo poo really starts hitting the fan and I don't remember them well enough from when I played this game over 15 years ago. So I can't really talk one way or another about what you're saying here (give me a few days.) I don't remember you going back to Sector 7 after it gets hosed (maybe you do though, my memory is bad.) I kinda remember there being a bit of grief about Biggs, Wedge and Jesse before everyone dries there eyes and gets back to work (I think Barrett does a little memorial/funeral thing. Sephiroth murders and burns down whole town, tragic. Later you return to rebuilt town (is it also repopulated? I recall it being abandoned.) Only Tifa, and maybe Cloud, are like "this sucks." But still, I guess it's an acceptable level of dwelling on lovely thing. Hojo does all kinds of hosed up poo poo but other than Sephiroth I don't remember any of his madness bleeding out into the world. I remember climbing the tower and getting Barrett's ultimate weapon and killing Hojo because he's an evil jerk doing terrible things but I am struggling to think of any point where his poo poo was being problems (again, excepting Sephiroth.) Well you never go back to Sector 7 'cause it's a pancake.  The part where you're climbing up to Shinra HQ is Cloud and co. climbing through the wreckage of the disaster. Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie are minor characters, but Barret brings them up a couple times later in the game, off the top of my head I remember for sure he does at Cosmo Canyon. Nibelheim is rebuilt after Sephiroth destroys it, yeah - as part of a cover-up operation by Shinra Corp. You can actually talk with the NPCs in town and ask them things like "why does this town exist and look exactly like it did before I saw it burnt to the ground before my very eyes". Eventually after Shinra starts losing control in disc 2 one of them just outright says it was Shinra's doing. Hojo is probably the most outright evil character in the game. He's part of a science team that discovers the dormant Jenova, and his immediate thought after they discover its potential is "I'M GONNA DO SO MUCH MENGELE poo poo WITH THIS". When his boss (Professor Gast, Aeris's father) objects, he murders him. He drugs Vincent and surgically alters his body to turn him into some kind of weird vampire. He subjects his own son, Sephiroth, to life as a child soldier and science experiment. He makes hosed up mutants out of human test subjects at the Nibelheim reactor. He tortures Cloud and Zack after the Nibelheim incident, and orders them to be killed when they escape. Zack sacrifices himself for Cloud, which causes Cloud, who already suffers from massive feelings of guilt and failure, to just reject his own identity and substitute Zack's, so Hojo is also responsible for why Cloud is so messed up. Hojo tries to crossbreed Aeris with Red XIII. He almost destroys the entire planet by running wild with the Sister Ray at the end. quote:I remember replaying the run away train portion like a dozen times to get it right and save the big Materia. And when you fail you know it but you can just leave that hosed up village and never return. It doesn't really stick with you. And if I remember correctly the mountain village with the mini game where you fend off the invaders, if you fail that they kill the phoenix and everyone is sad but again you can just gently caress off. Perhaps I'm demanding too much but it just seems to me there is a small difference. When you gently caress up train town and mountain town, I don't recall any proclamations that you would fix it. You just gently caress off and leave them to rot and never bother your mind with them again. When South Figaro is taken by the empire you vow to return and I think it comes up in negotiations with the emperor. At least, I have memory of Gestahl apologizing for South Figaro. (It's been awhile, I'll check an LP.) When Kefka fucks over everything it. Is. Everywhere and you cannot escape it. I recall Celes being further driven to get the crew back together after Kefka Light of Judgments the town she finds Sabin in. I don't know, it's just small little nitpicks like this. The folks in FF6 just seem to respond to and acknowledge bad poo poo better than the FF7 folks do. It might just be my bias. I can't really speak to FF6 vs FF7 on this part because I don't remember FF6 that well, but generally speaking I'll just have to disagree with you on this with regards to FF7, especially when it comes to North Corel. Barret's whole motivation for everything he does in the game comes from that town. quote:Teens getting pregnant is always sad and teen pregnancy legit ruins lives. But it happens, quite a bit in fact. (Though data suggests it's getting better and it's not as bad as it used to be. I think it's a little naive to say that their relationship was just kinda gonna work out because True Love!!!. But they get loving killed anyway so I guess it's a moot point. However, I have to say that portraying teen pregnancy as romantic in this way is harmful precisely because it promotes objectification of women, and specifically in the two most classical ways - young women are desirable because of their virginity, and because of their beauty. You don't "fall in love" with someone after knowing them for like a day, especially not a teenager. quote:It's not a sweeping condemnation, which I prefer. I'm not a big fan of vilifying teen pregnancy. Especially when it is always the mother who gets slut shamed and reviled and hardly any poo poo gets said about the father. I think, all things considered, FF6 did alright. It could have done things different but that's not the message they wanted to send. They could have done more to be really loud about how bad this was, I guess. But I like the message of making the best of things. I think you're kinda putting your own view on this. Like yeah, It's fine that she had sex and had a kid. But she didn't then live on her own as a single mother, so arguing that it's anti-slut shaming goes a bit far I think. I guess you could say it positively portrays premarital sex and cohabitation? idk. Chillgamesh fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Nov 16, 2016 |
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Nov 16, 2016 18:46
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chumbler posted:Lightning Returns, friend. Is it this poo poo? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zh9XDf8iSA Because jesus christ. I've been trying to get back into RPGs for awhile now, and its the above (and a huge time-sink due to grinding) that has stopped me.
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Nov 16, 2016 18:54
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guts and bolts posted:cool so I guess I'll effortpost This is a great post and I agree with 100% of it, especially on your literary analysis.. 
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Nov 16, 2016 19:11
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Mainline FF: 9 > 4 > 6 > 14 (remake) > 10 > 7 > 12 > 11 > 8 > 5 > 1 > 13 Never played 2 or 3.
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Nov 16, 2016 19:20
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what the gently caress do people see in 9 that game put me to sleep by disc 2
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Nov 16, 2016 20:13
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it's definitely got a very slow burn up until the point when the battle of alexandria happens but it's pretty ballin' from then on
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Nov 16, 2016 20:17
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I didn't read this thread, but the great Final Fantasy games are: FF6 FF4 FFT FF9 The terrible Final Fantasy games are: FF8!!!! FFX Everything else is mixed.(never played anything past FFXII)
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Nov 16, 2016 20:32
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arisu posted:Mainline FF: How does an actual living human being rank 5 that low
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Nov 16, 2016 20:40
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Countblanc posted:How does an actual living human being rank 5 that low They realize that it is actually pretty boring if you don't get off on the job system's very existence
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Nov 16, 2016 20:42
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The jrpg formula is tired. It had to be revamped, but no one knows how to do it. And Final Fantasy used to be about swords and monsters and magic. The crumbling, half-understood tech in older games was cool too. Now there are cars. FF15 has an Audi in it. That's not fantasy.
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Nov 16, 2016 20:47
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g0lbez posted:what the gently caress do people see in 9 that game put me to sleep by disc 2 FF9 is super boring and bad and trades in nostalgia that a lot of Westerners don't even actually have One of the most baffling things -- okay so I'm dating myself here but whatever, I'm almost 30 for context. People used to do this thing called "going on AOL on purpose to chat in chatrooms about video games" and it was really sad and pathetic and I did it as a kid, like a middle schooler, like a lot. And so you'd have a lot of people (even some still my age) who called themselves "old school" gamers, this was a thing that was taken very seriously on Ye Olde AOL and GameFAQs and poo poo - being old school was viewed as being more authentic, more real, less consumerist and more hobbyist. Old school gamers liked Metal Gear on MSX but not Metal Gear Solid. Old school gamers liked Final Fantasy VI but not Final Fantasy VII. Old school gamers liked CastleVania IV but not CastleVania: Symphony of the Night. Basically if it was from a current-gen console it was garbage, and all the ~good~ video games had been made already, and chances are you didn't know anything about ~real~ video games because you're too young/weren't into the hobby back then/are an idiot. If a system wasn't made by Nintendo it was exploitative poo poo made by predatory electronics companies who weren't ~real game companies for gamers.~ Final Fantasy IX was amazingly popular with this crowd because it had the trappings of a modern game while ostensibly being made "for the fans." It recreates the sensation of playing the Finals Fantasy of yesteryear and serves as a mild repudiation of the cyber-punk and teen angst elements present in both FF7 and FF8; so naturally it was the game that posers would immediately claim is the best one in a long time, oh thank God we're going back to ~FF6 and art in games,~ etc. Like, a relatively large part of why I dislike Final Fantasy is because of the fanbase and how absolutely insufferable it is, and a lot of that is owed to people who seem to be posturing more than actually expressing genuine opinions. Final Fantasy VI isn't even very good. It just isn't. It's a boring mess with too many boring characters. Kefka is a meme with no depth. If "the bad guy wins!!!" is all it takes for you to think a narrative is deep or complex, you need to expose yourself to more narratives. It isn't complete garbage, and there are characters and vignettes that FF6 does quite well, but one of the things you see repeated so often that it's nearly taken for fact is that 6 is good and 7 isn't, that 7 is overrated and 6 is the masterwork of the series, and it's... I mean, no. Just no. This is the opinion of an old-school credibility poseur. Final Fantasy IX is practically custom-made for these people. Final Fantasy IX has a bad skill learning system, a boring method of implementing the Limit Break system (which really was the best in 7), characters who range from lifeless and dull (Zidane, Dagger, Amaranth) to pointless and outright annoying (Quina, Eiko), a plot that exists more to metareference other games (remember crystals, you guys???) than to tell its own story, and a villain who is a metareference to a really stupid and bad thing from prior Finals Fantasy (the outside-context villain who appears from nowhere that you must kill because....) Full disclosure: my favorite FF games are Tactics, XII, V, and VII, in some order, so I'm obviously going to give answers biased towards those titles, but it's less that I think FF6 and FF9 are horrible and more that FF6 is largely overrated and that FF9 is disingenuous, unwilling to provide the audience with its own identity and instead content to remind you of other things you maybe liked about your past in both gaming and Finals Fantasy.
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Nov 16, 2016 20:47
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fivegears4reverse posted:They realize that it is actually pretty boring if you don't get off on the job system's very existence lmao gently caress u buddy. Here's my tier list, in chronological order within their tiers: I HAVE A BROKEN BRAIN TIER: 11  TIER:5, 7, T, 9, 12 GOOD TIER: 1, 8, 10, 10-2, 13-3, 14 I DON'T REALLY THINK THEY'RE BAD BUT DON'T ENJOY THEM MUCH IN COMPARISON TO THE REST OF THE SERIES TIER: 4, 6, 13 DIDN'T PLAY TIER: 2, 3, 13-2 Guts, I really strongly disagree with your classification of FF9's characters as lifeless. While it's true that the game doesn't do enough with Freya and Amarant, the game world as well as the characters have a great deal of love and characterization put into them. Also, you're right that the story is a fairy tale and lacks depth, but it is brimming with charm and detail. How can you not love Vivi and Steiner? Other than that, the last boss basically being The Concept of Death Out of Nowhere is dumb, but the actual villains have fine motivations for their actions. Chillgamesh fucked around with this message at 21:05 on Nov 16, 2016 |
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Nov 16, 2016 20:51
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Fitzy Fitz posted:The jrpg formula is tired. It had to be revamped, but no one knows how to do it. For most gamers it might be The jrpg formula is tired, sure, but I don't know if I can level the blame on FF alone. One of the biggest complaints people have of ANY Final Fantasy is that it "isn't like the game I really adore!" It's basically the premise behind this entire ridiculous thread, it was the core of the other Final Fantasy thread whose title basically mocked fans' penchant for claiming that all the games suck except for the one they really like. Final Fantasy has been changing things up on one level or another pretty much from game to game, and has dabbled in genres outside of the 'traditional' jrpg. Not always well or successfully, but I feel that part of the franchise' overall charm IS that the games differ in many ways, sometimes dramatically. There is literally something for anyone who likes jrpgs in general. I can respect not liking the setting for FFXV, but I do think the idea of a Final Fantasy world that moved well beyond steampunk/generic-western-fantasy-as-viewed-through-Japanese-culture to be pretty interesting on paper. It's an even bigger leap than FF7 and 8 having essentially a couple megacities/a few super schools, with the rest of the world essentially being wasteland dotted by caves, dungeons, and small towns. I wanna see how it all gets portrayed outside of the demos I've played and the little footage I've decided to watch for myself.
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Nov 16, 2016 20:58
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Heaven Spacey posted:I HAVE A BROKEN BRAIN TIER: This is a pretty good list - I don't like 11 because I don't like MMOs, and I don't like 9 for reasons I've mostly already explicated, but otherwise this is pretty close to my own Better Than Good Tactics, XII, VII, V Good I, X, XIV2.0 Middling X-2, XIII-3, VI, VIII, III Less Good IX, XI, XIV1.0, IV, II Significantly Worse Than Good XIII, XIII-2 If Bravely Default games count as FFs, put Bravely 1st next to FFV and Bravely 2nd next to XIV2.0 and that's that
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Nov 16, 2016 21:03
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g0lbez posted:what the gently caress do people see in 9 that game put me to sleep by disc 2 It's the best one? I can start by addressing some dumb poo poo up there that was said: guts and bolts posted:the boredom of FF9's equipment-based skill system. The entire narrative of FF9 is a series of characters asking the same question in different ways: What is a weapon? Zidane, admittedly not asking this question until much later than most others in the game, wants to know whether he can choose to be a weapon for good or for evil, or if just being a weapon means he will cause destruction and death no matter what he does. Steiner wants to understand what it really means to defend someone else with your life, and how duty and honor are bound up in the whole mess. Vivi is a literal mass produced weapon and wants to know whether he can ever have a normal, peaceful life. Garnet wants to know what it means to wield these super powerful summons as weapons, and how she can reconcile that destruction with being a leader. Amarant follows Zidane around because he's spent his whole life honing himself into a weapon, and he wants to understand why Zidane is better than him at fighting, and to find out what he's missing as a weapon. Freya is trying to come to terms with losing the entire reason she even became a warrior in her storyline, and Eiko is coming to grips with having suffered massively from the large scale weapons that she both is and can use and learning that sometimes, even though it can be a terrible power, fighting is necessary. The only character that doesn't really ask this question in your party is Quina, but Quina is a fat Qu wandering around and dividing the world into things that they can eat vs things they can't, and in the process is becoming a better weapon, and the end of their story has them realizing that there's more to the world than just food, which is kind of interesting given than Quina fights by eating things, so food is a quasi weapon to them. Now, FF9's equipment system is a little more boring than most others, I'll grant you, but it's the only one that ties directly back into the overall narrative of the game. You can equip weapons or accessories, and if you use them long enough you will learn their abilities. This very simple mechanic is blurring the lines between the weapons and the characters. Materia is cool and all, but it has nothing to do with the narrative of dealing with loss in terms of how they mechanically work. Basically 9 was the best, 7 was okay, 6 is okay but way rose tinted goggles, and it's been nearly 19 years since you've played ff7, it's an easily 100 hour game, you're forgetting some poo poo, and 10 was the one that created this new visual style in FF games, although arguably ff8 was the primordial version of it, and you're wrong about everything. LITERALLY MY FETISH fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Nov 16, 2016 |
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Nov 16, 2016 21:04
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Heaven Spacey posted:Guts, I really strongly disagree with your classification of FF9's characters as lifeless. While it's true that the game doesn't do enough with Freya and Amarant, the game world as well as the characters have a great deal of love and characterization put into them. While the story is a fairy tale and lacks depth, it is brimming with charm and detail. How can you not love Vivi and Steiner? Other than that, the last boss basically being The Concept of Death Out of Nowhere is dumb, but the actual villains have fine motivations for their actions. I actually do love Vivi and Steiner, and they're the unquestionable high point of the game for me. Freya is more compelling than the rest, making her basically the best of the worst, but otherwise FF9's characters are kinda lifeless and trade in nostalgia more than offering anything for you to engage with on the level. Vivi is the heart and soul of the game. If you took him out of it, FF9 would probably rank among the worst games in the series for me. Kuja and Garland are uninspired but inoffensive; the decision to bring back the Outside Context Villain in Necron was baffling and frankly kinda insulting. One of the only things about Sephiroth that remains compelling on a replay of 7 is how integral he feels to the plot from an early point, specifically when you see the Midgar Zolom he murders. It's a moment with some gravity to it, considering the Midgar Zolom annihilates you on your first play through the game if you try to fight it. Having the final boss also be the guy you've been pitted against from the jump is rewarding and cool, and even though much of Sephiroth doesn't stand the test of time per se, that element holds up very well. Necron is loving stupid. edit: And it should also be said that I'm fully willing to concede that some of my dislike of FF9 is rooted to how it was received by people I did not respect at the time. I have since replayed it several times, and I should also be clear in stating that I don't think FF9 has nothing good about it. I just think it frequently gets touted as the best of the series when it's almost not even its own game, and relies so heavily on metareferencing others that it doesn't function effectively on its own. guts and bolts fucked around with this message at 21:15 on Nov 16, 2016 |
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Nov 16, 2016 21:09
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LITERALLY MY FETISH posted:It's the best one? Thanks now I remember why I always get to the iifa tree boss and give up out of boredom and despair
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Nov 16, 2016 21:21
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Heaven Spacey posted:Well you never go back to Sector 7 'cause it's a pancake. I guess it's different. Pancaking a whole sector is monstrous but what can the party do about it but move on and try to avenge it. I don't recall if anyone was particularly aghast or horrified at the Sector 7 thing. I'll find out when I get there. I'm more pissed with the video games that have meteors crash into the planet or mass genocides or the complete destruction of a place and nothing comes of it. Just yawns and shrugs. In my very favorite game series, Lunar, the villain shoots down the floating city and it is terrible. You can go to the ruins and everything is hosed and the PC in your party with a connection to the city (Mia) is a mess. You really feel it. And Mia is just like, "I am going to gently caress that bastard's poo poo up!" I liked it. (In the sequel game, set like 1-2000 years into the future, that fallen floating city is still having a rough time. So props to Lunar's villain for leaving a legacy.) Anyway, I'm a little sad that I recalled a memorial service/funeral that might not have happened. But I'm glad Barrett mentions the fallen from time to time. That's just like him. I hate when they just red shirt minor characters and no one cares. It's a pet peeve of mine. I thought Tifa's reactions to the town were really good. It showed proper trauma and reaction to a hosed up thing. I guess it's a pretty good connection to the plot and sets tone and such. I don't know what I want. I'm the sort that has a hard time letting grief and loss go and getting over it. So when that happens (the victim/sufferer getting over it) and the whole event is just completely forgotten and seemingly inconsequential it bothers me. Just a me thing, I think. quote:Hojo is probably the most outright evil character in the game. He's part of a science team that discovers the dormant Jenova, and his immediate thought after they discover its potential is "I'M GONNA DO SO MUCH MENGELE poo poo WITH THIS". When his boss (Professor Gast, Aeris's father) objects, he murders him. He drugs Vincent and surgically alters his body to turn him into some kind of weird vampire. He subjects his own son, Sephiroth, to life as a child soldier and science experiment. He makes hosed up mutants out of human test subjects at the Nibelheim reactor. He tries to crossbreed Aeris with Red XIII. He almost destroys the entire planet by running wild with the Sister Ray at the end. I forgot about the Sister Ray! Also yes, Hojo is 100% the evilist character in the entire game. And you're right, my thought that his poo poo didn't really bleed out (sans Sephiroth) appears to be wrong. Almost everything that goes wrong in this game is linked to him or directly his fault. gently caress that guy. quote:I can't really speak to FF6 vs FF7 on this part because I don't remember FF6 that well, but generally speaking I'll just have to disagree with you on this with regards to FF7, especially when it comes to North Corel. Barret's whole motivation for everything he does in the game comes from that town. Barrett is an alright character. He put me off at first because he is so loudly Mr. T but then they give him some layers. I respect that. I consider him one of the few good characters in this game. But in my opinion this game only has four good characters (out of nine) and one of them dies. Barrett, Tifa, Red 13, and Aeris being good is not enough to win me over or redeem the game for me. Especially with Cid in the game. I really don't like Cid. quote:I think it's a little naive to say that their relationship was just kinda gonna work out because True Love!!!. But they get loving killed anyway so I guess it's a moot point. However, I have to say that portraying teen pregnancy as romantic in this way is harmful precisely because it promotes objectification of women, and specifically in the two most classical ways - young women are desirable because of their virginity, and because of their beauty. You don't "fall in love" with someone after knowing them for like a day, especially not a teenager. I don't think I ever mentioned true love in defense of Duane and Katarin though? Also I don't remember them getting killed. I'm pretty sure Terra defeats Humbaba and saves the town and then you defeat Kefka and they're still okay. I also don't think this was a particularly romantic portrayal of teen pregnancy. What makes you think it was? And I'm not sure how romanticising teen pregnancy (or pregnancy in general tbh) objectifies women in the way you claim (by their virginity and beauty.) Pregnant women are no longer virgins but they do often remain beautiful. It is my opinion that the romanticising of pregnancy objectifies women in the way that it diminishes them, reducing them to having value and being respected solely for their ability to bear life. In regards to how long Duane and Katarin have known each other? I honestly don't know. All we're ever told is that they are teenagers and that they are in love. I forget how much time Cid says has passed since the Statue Incident when you wake up in the WoR. Regardless, it doesn't matter how long they've known each other because I never argued that their love/length of association was going to be the decider. If the couple are not killed (I honestly don't think they are, I would have remembered that because it would have pissed me off.) We have no way of knowing whether or not they make it work. All we know is that we leave them fully intending to give it the old college try and when we beat the game it is with a message of hope. quote:I think you're kinda putting your own view on this. Like yeah, It's fine that she had sex and had a kid. But she didn't then live on her own as a single mother, so arguing that it's anti-slut shaming goes a bit far I think. I guess you could say it positively portrays premarital sex and cohabitation? idk. It is anti-slut shaming only in that there is no judgment or shaming of her. The absence of slut shaming, however, does not equal a denouncement of slut shaming. I will agree that it positively portrays premarital sex and cohabitation, so to speak. But that is not it's primary agenda. It is my opinion that the depiction of teenage pregnancy in FF6 is that it was a poorly timed accident that they are going to make the best of. And I must repeat that a wicked steam punk magitech abortion would have been freaking sweet. Ultimately the person or people who wrote this storyline wanted it to be about new life in the face of overwhelming adversity. I respect that. guts and bolts posted:FF7 was good for Reasons. You make some really good points but I just... disagree. However, I am willing to agree that there are things about FF7 that are good. And you listed some good examples. Let's look at each one. quote:FF7 is actually about something [more than just saving the planet] Okay first of all no it's not. The game literally starts with you joining a terrorist organization to oppose an evil corporation to save the planet. And ultimately ends with you defeating the big bad (who I agree, does not come out of nowhere) to save the planet. Second I fail to see how FF7 is more about something than FF4, which is about opposing an evil empire and seeking redemption from your sins before ultimately becoming about saving the world from a big bad that comes out of nowhere. Or FF5 where you are sent off right away to protect the orbs/crystals to keep the world safe ultimately leading to a battle with a big bad that came out of nowhere to save the planet. Literally the only difference between these two and FF7 is that you know who Sephiroth is before you fight him. So again, FF6. Which is about opposing an evil empire and finding out about yourself and ultimately leads to you liberating a post-apocalypse world from a mad god (a villain you knew about) because you failed to stop him and he won. loving phenomenal. So no, FF7 is not more about something in comparison to many other FFs. quote:Linearity and driven story. You can definitely tell the story you wanna tell the best if you don't have to account for player choices, agree. But if you are going to commit your players to a story you should do your best to make sure it's a good one.  quote:FF7 is about experiencing profound loss. And not everyone gets a happy ending deal with it chumps. First off, I give mad props to FF7 for not giving everyone a happy ending. Because it's true, they didn't and that takes some loving balls. But the characters in FF7 are not the only ones who dealt with profound loss. Rydia (FF4) dealt with profound loss, Cyan, Mog, Locke, Edgar, Sabin and Setzer (FF6) dealt with profound loss and later, everyone, all 14 characters (well, maybe not Gogo) deal with profound loss that they are responsible for when Kefka burns the world. In short profound loss is not special not unique to FF7. The only thing that really sets the suffering characters in FF7 apart from the suffering characters in other FFs is thst the characters in FF7 handle their angst poorly, which is cool--flawed characters are cool. This is a point in FF7's favor, not that they deal with loss but that they suck at it. It's good. quote:The Materia system rules!  Though I hated needing to junction the all materia to be able to hit multiple targets. quote:Limit breaks! Super fun and their mainstreaming into the full series meant I got to shoot a dog at my enemies in the next game. 🖒 I think that was all of them? Having a couple good things does not make a game good. Metal Gear Solid 4 had fun stealth and custom armor and fun guns and it was real bad. The good things about FF7 are good but the game is, on a whole, not good. Jenner fucked around with this message at 21:45 on Nov 16, 2016 |
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Nov 16, 2016 21:25
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9 is slow and boring. It would improved to a middling game if the combat wasn't slow as gently caress.
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Nov 16, 2016 21:29
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:9 is slow and boring. It would improved to a middling game if the combat wasn't slow as gently caress. It has the same combat as every sub 10 FF, though? It's all ATB all the way down.
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Nov 16, 2016 21:34
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LITERALLY MY FETISH posted:It has the same combat as every sub 10 FF, though? It's all ATB all the way down. *BATTLE SWIRL* Rockin guitar kicks in while you stare at a black screen for ten seconds! A blank field appears! Epic camera swooping across the battlefield!! Compare that to like FF7 where you get a battle swirl and you're inputting commands no more than five seconds later
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Nov 16, 2016 21:38
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barret was pretty despondant after sector 7 got owned because he lost his team, but that was it (and he largely perked up afterward when he realized he had to get his poo poo together for his daughter). aeris probably felt for it but she wasn't around for us to see that i don't think, wasn't it her who was yelling 'don't worry she's ok'?CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:9 is slow and boring. It would improved to a middling game if the combat wasn't slow as gently caress. this was largely my complaint as well. the early mini-games and dialog have their own life to them because the tantalus boys are hustlers and players in their own respect, and everything is pretty punchy and well done. the game definitely knows how to get going fast because the game's plot starts quick and stays quick until after the evil forest but the pacing ends up getting really wrecked by the combat taking forever to resolve. it's hard to keep the urgent feeling summoned up by the hard driving soundtrack when there's like 8 seconds of intro to each fight.
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Nov 16, 2016 21:41
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Also actions delaying other actions(or maybe it was just spells?) so everything is queued up and backlogging stuff. This makes things like Regen super powerful because it keeps ticking while all these abilities are slowly animating or queued up to go.
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Nov 16, 2016 21:43
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g0lbez posted:Thanks now I remember why I always get to the iifa tree boss and give up out of boredom and despair You give up on FF9 because the game is mechanically lifeless and has nothing fun about it whatsoever except watching Vivi turn colors in Trance mode Jenner posted:Okay first of all no it's not. The game literally starts with you joining a terrorist organization to oppose an evil corporation to save the planet. And ultimately ends with you defeating the big bad (who I agree, does not come out of nowhere) to save the planet. FF7 is "about" more than its surface-reading of the plot because it can actually withstand that level of analysis, and there is a lot of evidence to lend credibility to that interpretation (that 7 is about loss and coping with loss more than it is about saving the Planet). Obviously the text of the game is "pick up a sword and cut everything with it until your numbers are big enough to cut the biggest bad guy" - and that text is trite. FF4 is a good example of this - the game is just about a redemption arc, basically. There's not a lot of room allowed for subtext, and we get the dumb Outside Context Villain here with Zeromus, which robs the story of its own effective climax. It's hard to argue that FF4 is about anything other than what it explicitly tells you it is about. FF7, on the other hand, handles its themes of loss and trauma with (only marginal amounts of ) subtlety. The game never states in text THIS WHOLE THING IS REALLY ABOUT COPING WITH THE DEATHS OF YOUR DREAMS, but that's the gist of it. Cloud can't function until he's made peace with his past traumas and accepted that his ideals and dreams failed him and were failed by him; he literally leaves the party until you/Tifa find a way to fix his broken coping mechanisms. Everyone in the cast is suffering as a result of having lost what was most precious to them - their dreams of spaceflight, their cultural identity, the desire to be a hero, their goal of making their town prosperous, whatever - and it is only this shared sense of loss that unites the party in the first place. In a weird way, saving the world almost comes secondary to the mission of finding closure by facing Sephiroth - at least to Cloud it does. It makes him an interesting protagonist in ways that a lot of other FF mainguys are boring. quote:First off, I give mad props to FF7 for not giving everyone a happy ending. Because it's true, they didn't and that takes some loving balls. It's more that loss is what the entire game is actually about. Other characters in the franchise obviously handle grievous losses, often more maturely but sometimes in even worse manners than those in FF7 do, but only in FF7 is loss the sole driving force of the narrative. It is loss that motivates every character. It is loss that informs the decisions they make. It is loss that explains why they do things that are otherwise baffling. The sense of profound loss permeates FF7 in a way that just doesn't happen in most jRPGs, and especially in many Finals Fantasy. It's especially poignant given how things do not just fix themselves at the end. Cloud didn't get Nibelheim back. Aerith wasn't miraculously resurrected. Tifa doesn't really have her romantic shining knight - probably. Barret's home is still hosed and Dyne is still dead. Wutai is still a tourist trap and Lucretia is still frozen in a crystal. Sephiroth's dead and disaster is averted, but instead of solving your problems by eliminating them, FF7 forces the characters to deal with their problems by seeking closure and coping with them instead. quote:
FF7 is good because the plot is pretty good, the characters are good, the Materia system is amazing, and Limit Breaks are good. Good narrative elements + great mechanical elements = a good game, generally, but 7 also has a really good score and had, at the time, groundbreaking graphics. It's a Good Game™
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Nov 16, 2016 21:44
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:Also actions delaying other actions(or maybe it was just spells?) so everything is queued up and backlogging stuff. This makes things like Regen super powerful because it keeps ticking while all these abilities are slowly animating or queued up to go. spells were really the biggest offender. the 'i'm casting' animations in 9 are as long as the entire spell animations in many earlier titles, and it really doesn't help that over half of the enemies had spells or spell-like abilities that were focal to their threat, so they were doing it even more than you were. at least with your squad you could clap a good weapon on zidane and steiner, link up auto haste, and just press x through a lot of fights. but the loving goblin mages are never going to stop wasting 7 seconds of your time per goblin per round to show you goblin punch.
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Nov 16, 2016 21:45
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Just kind of glanced through the thread, but they still make awesome retro style final fantasy games- they just started calling them bravely default. World of Final Fantasy is fantastic too.
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Nov 16, 2016 21:47
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Bravely Default isn't a good game though so it's kind of a stretch to call it awesome
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Nov 16, 2016 21:49
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Coolguye posted:barret was pretty despondant after sector 7 got owned because he lost his team, but that was it (and he largely perked up afterward when he realized he had to get his poo poo together for his daughter). aeris probably felt for it but she wasn't around for us to see that i don't think, wasn't it her who was yelling 'don't worry she's ok'? CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:Also actions delaying other actions(or maybe it was just spells?) so everything is queued up and backlogging stuff. This makes things like Regen super powerful because it keeps ticking while all these abilities are slowly animating or queued up to go. I know the pacing of the story gets weird, but no FF has decent story pacing. I don't think you guys really remember what ff7's combat was like, though, because it was pretty much the same poo poo. Combat didn't really get faster until X, and then they played around a lot with making everything faster in more ways that "faster animations" like ffx's swap function and especially ffxiii's stance swapping and AI control of other party members.
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Nov 16, 2016 21:50
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Eej posted:Bravely Default isn't a good game though so it's kind of a stretch to call it awesome I really liked Bravely Default and I am thoroughly enjoying Bravely Second, although I'm almost done with it (and don't like it as much as BD)
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Nov 16, 2016 21:50
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LITERALLY MY FETISH posted:I know the pacing of the story gets weird, but no FF has decent story pacing. I don't think you guys really remember what ff7's combat was like, though, because it was pretty much the same poo poo. Combat didn't really get faster until X, and then they played around a lot with making everything faster in more ways that "faster animations" like ffx's swap function and especially ffxiii's stance swapping and AI control of other party members. You really need to watch some comparison videos of 7 and 9 then because I think you're forgetting what an enormous slog trash mobs are in 9. The biggest offender that 7 had in that regard were enemies that would occasionally stop the entire battle so you can watch their weird polygon models flail wildly for no reason but it was pretty rare.
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Nov 16, 2016 21:53
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