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ApplesandOranges posted:Are there any other characters with the differences in reception between JP and Global like with Caius? I know FF4 was much more popular in JP but it's still pretty well received in Global, so. Zenos is much more liked in Japan than in America. He beat out Basch, Penelo, Fran, Fang, Nanamo, Tataru, Snow, Prishe, Rosa, Iroha, Vayne, Krile, Tseng, Terra, Hien, and Barret. Not no. 6 most popular FF character ever like Emet-Selch, but still surprising. On a related note, Tseng, Terra, and Barret are fan favorites in the Western FF fandom, but were near the bottom of the rankings. Other characters failed to chart. In the West, the most popular games are 7 and 9, and sometimes 6. In Japan, 10 is the most popular. 5 (criminally underrated in the West) is also very popular in Japan, moreso than 8 or 4 or Tactics. Tactics is treated as a golden cow in the West, but it only ranked 11th in Japan. 13 is more popular than 12 in Japan. Hades is the 3rd most popular boss/summon. Prior to FF14, Hades was just some optional summon from FF7 and he certainly wasn't many people's favorite, so make of that what you will. In contrast, bahamut is only 8, and Sephiroth is 10. Most popular tracks. Interestingly, you have to scroll down to no. 24 before the first XIV track shows up (Shadowbringers). The no. 1 most popular track is "To Zanarkand", and the second is "Battle on the Big Bridge". NikkolasKing posted:But Vaan is the obvious choice. He completely outshines the actual main character of XII in Japanese popularity polls, while everyone I know here thinks Ashe was definitely the best character in XII. Because she was. I thought that the main 6 playable characters of FFXII were quite dull and uninteresting. They have cool backstories, but they're just a bore to watch in cutscenes. 12 is the game where I wish I was playing as anyone except the main cast, which I think is indicative of a failure of the devs' part to make me care about the main cast. Then again, I've never liked any of the main characters in Matsuno's games. I think he just sucks at right compelling main characters. I wish Larsa and Reddas were permanent playables. I smiled whenever they were onscreen. They are actually expressive, not dry and dull like everyone else. Al-Cid was also great (is a playable character in FFTA2 as a secret agent with a pistol! Imagine if he was playable like that in FF12!). Dr. Cid is bloody amazing. NikkolasKing posted:It's hard to measure these things but I always got the impression Lightning is way more popular in Japan than elsewhere. She is. She's the number 8. most popular FF character in Japan. Moofia Boss Val fucked around with this message at 09:03 on May 22, 2021 |
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May 22, 2021 08:55
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NikkolasKing posted:Larsa 100% deserved to be a real party member instead of somebody like Fran or Penelo. He's both more interesting and far more plot relevant. I sorta liked Ashe too. I think one of FFXII's problems is that it is hard to care about the loss Ash, Basch, Vaan, and Balthier have suffered. We only saw Rasler for 1 minute before he died. We only get to see Rasler and Ashe's love for each other... in a prequel manga that didn't come over to the West. Basch's reputation has ostensibly stained with him being framed as a kingslayer, but during the game we never really see his bad public reputation bite him. No one on the street recognizes him as he passes by and goes "holy crap, that's him! The traitor who led my father to death and sold out our country! Come on guys let's throw mud at him!". We never really got to see Vaan and Reks together, nor Baltheir trying to reach out to his father, only to be abandoned by him. So it sorta undermines the emotional climax of FF12 at the Pharos (which is already a fantastic scene, and probably where FF12 should have ended). I think it would have helped FF12 a lot if the prologue FMV was a full act. Give us at least 10 hours of story here. Show us Ashe and Rasler falling in love and getting married, with Rasler as the apparent main character. Show us Reks taking care of Vaan. Have us fight for a defend Rabanastre while it's still free, but as the act goes on, we lose territory bit by bit and the situation becomes more dire, until at last the tutorial mission happens where everything goes to poo poo, and Basch apparently betrays you. That way, seeing Rabanastre under occupation is more crushing, and the Resistance feels more like underdogs you are sympathizing with. Twelve by Pies posted:I love FFXII but my biggest complaint will always be that in a world full of different cool races, your main party is five humans and a bunny lady. Yeah, this is another one of my complaints. I don't really care for Fran. She's a nothing character. If you're going to include a character based on their character design appeal alone, I would've gone for something really unique, like a bangaa, not a just "slightly tall sexy human". Or a Seeq. Or a Nu Mou (though I don't quite like the orangutan look of the Nu Mou in FF12. I like the cute dog wizards FFTA2 came up with that was adopted by FFXIV) Moofia Boss Val fucked around with this message at 09:29 on May 22, 2021 |
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May 22, 2021 09:26
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Lightning sorta comes off as cold and boring. She doesn't get even a little sympathetic until the flashback with Serah and Snow, but I still never really liked her. I wanted to like Hope at first, given that it's rare to get a young-ish teenage boy in JRPGs. But he was really unreasonable at first and spent the first half of the game staring at Snow with his psychotic smile, imagining different ways to kill him. He gets better as the game goes on, though. Fang was meh the whole game. Vanille, Snow, and Sazh were great from the beginning.
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May 23, 2021 06:39
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They're almost always high schoolers at least. If you get a party member any younger than that, it's always a girl. Vivi and the Ni No Kuni protagonists are the only "younger than highschool age" playable boy party members in JRPGs off of the top of my head.
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May 23, 2021 06:57
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I never did Ozma or the optional FFX bosses. By the time that they are accessible and you can start doing the hours long grind and prep work to fight them, you're at the end of the game and the plot is climaxing. The story is urgent and the end of the world is nigh. It'd feel wrong to stop and go "hey guys, I know the end of the world is nigh and we're the only ones who can stop it, but... I'm going to go spend several hours doing non-important side stuff". To me, optional superbosses only really work if they are positioned during a non-urgent part of the story. Ie, the postgame dungeon of FFIV after you beat the game. The hunts of FFXII were great but they made no sense in the context of the story. You're men out for revenge, closure, and the liberation of your kingdom with an impending war looming over your head, and you're also at the top of the Empire's most wanted list, but... nah, let's go talk to some farmers out on the steppe and take care of their cockatrice problem!
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May 24, 2021 02:37
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jokes posted:it’s hard to do a good console RTS. Halo wars? Pikmin did it best. The usual Starcraft style cursor control scheme just doesn't work well for consoles. Supreme Commander 2 and Halo Wars tried but botched it. The designers of Pikmin understood that a thumbstick just isn't good for moving a cursor around. So instead of a cursor, you instead move the main character, Olimar, around with the thumbstick. Nearby Pikmin will follow him, and you can fling Pikmin in a direction. jokes posted:I mean, every single FF game has a wider conflict between two or more distinct factions either before or during the game itself, it’s very strange they’ve never thrown money at a third party to turn some art assets into a spin-off RTS. One requirement of an RTS is that you need unit variety. Lots and lots of distinct units. FFVII's Shinra corporation has a lot of different magitek robots and bio engineered creatures, but there isn't any other faction in the FFVII setting with the same unit variety. FFXII's unit variety is mainly concentrated in its airships. As far as infantry forces goes, it's just regular soldiers and then the judges. Unless you're making a game focused on airship combat, no. FFXIV probably has the most unit variety out of all of the FF games. The Empire has generic grunt conscripts (fighters, mages, and healers), Garlean officers who wield gunblades, different Garean centurions and legatuses, a ton of different magitek robots and bio engineered beasts. You have different Imperial Legions with an emphasis on different tactics. For example, the XIIth Legion focuses on magitek and bio engineered beasts. The VIth Legion focuses on Cerleuam summons. The IVth Legion focuses on beastmasters and summoning espers. The VIIth Legion loves giant mechas. Etc. And the Eorzean Alliance is also quite well developed. Gridania has bowmen, lancers, conjurers, and Pad'jal (pretty well balanced). Ul'dah is melee heavy with Sultansworn, Brass Blades, gladiators, and thamaturges. Limsa has half a dozen different varieties of pirates (pirates with 2 handed axes, pirates with guns, secret police pirates). Ishgard has warriors, bowmen, priests, machinists, and 14 awesome dragoons. Ala Mhigo has monks and red mages, as well as guys with swords and boys (also, Griffon cavalry!). Hingashi has your samurai with swords, samurai with bows, conscript footsoldiers with spears, shinto priests, and ninjas. Fister Roboto posted:They should make an RTS set in Eorzea. Can you imagine that? An RTS set in the world of a popular MMORPG? Yes!
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May 24, 2021 22:37
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Cleretic posted:Less war criminals? I respect that they have a wider pool of games to pull from than Blizzard and not all of those games had wars to do war crimes in, but you're still gonna have a lot of them. ^^^ You're not going to see a FF crossover without people like Kefka (aka the guy who poisoned a castle's well, killing everyone in the castle, including noncombatants like maids and chefs). Or Kuja, who bombed cities and wiped out an entire planet. Or Zenos. Or Emet-Selch. Etc. Mass murderers are among the most iconic and popular FF characters and if there is a MOBA, they're going to be included.
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May 25, 2021 03:59
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Mustached Demon posted:Don't most of the FF games reference some great, cataclysmic war that forever shaped their respective worlds? As mentioned before, FF1 is post apocalyptic. Don't remember if FF2, FF3, FF4, or FF5 were. FF6 had the War of the Magi but we don't know how devastating it was. In FF7, the Ceta race/nation were wiped out, but no evidence of a devastating war that ravaged the world. FF8's world was fine up until about 20 years ago. In FF9, there Summons were more frequently used in the past, wiping out armies and cities during wartime, but it doesn't seem to have been cataclysmic. Wars seem to have been more localized, no huge devastating world war. Terra (the second planet) was completely screwed, though. FF10 yes there was a total war between Bevelle and Zanarkand, and then there were the 5 periods when Sin was going around wiping out densely populated cities. It seems that small villages and farmsteads spread out across the countryside are fine, though. FF11 yes, a few times. There was a war between the gods and the races they created. The Zilart race were near completely wiped out. In more recent times, the Beastmen formed a huge horde and wiped out an entire country (you see this massacre in the opening cinematic of the base game, and get to travel to the ruins of it in the CoP questline). FF12 not really. Conflict is more localized. The war between Occuria and the Espers may or may not have been devastating. Also, if you include the out-of-game ultimania stuff that insists that this game is a prequel to FFT, then after FF12 there is an apocalypse which wipes out all non-human races, and none of the current nations survive. FF13 no major wars in the backstory of the base game. If you include Type-0, then there has been an untold number of complete planetary genocides. FF14: has the most mass death of any FF game bar Type-0. You wouldn't know it though because the tone of the game is very optimistic and downplays all of the mass death. 9 planets have been completely wiped out (7 calamities, Void, Midgardsomr's homeworld). Each time a calamity happens, civilization on the Source is also near completely wiped out. There is also the world of Norvrandt, which was 90% wiped out, the survivors of which were whittled during a 100 year long apocalypse. There was also (5.0 ending spoilers) the original timeline in which an 8th calamity happened, completely wiping out Norvrandt and plunging the Source into an age of might (warlordism). Also, lots of nation wide genocide. Ul'dah crafted a zombie plague and dumped it on their rival city of Ul'dah. The Garleans were very nearly driven to extinction in the past.
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May 25, 2021 04:22
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I was mostly counting stuff that happened in the past, hence not counting Kuja wiping out most of civilization during FF9, or almost all of humanity being killed during the zombie/demon apocalypse of FF15, etc.
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May 25, 2021 04:26
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The moon invasion was hyped up as being this huge world ending apocalypse but then when it actually happens and it's just... you don't even feel that there is an invasion supposed to be happening.
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May 25, 2021 04:59
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ApplesandOranges posted:If Vayne had stayed out of it, and Ashe just rose to Queen as was planned, she would still have to deal with the political system in Arcadia, and while Larsa was too wily for them to actually control, it would have made brokering actual peace a lot more difficult and drawn-out. Another thing too is that the Rozarian Empire exists, and is competing with Archadia, as superpowers/empires are wont to do. Even if Vayne hadn't intervened in Dalmasca, Ashe and Dalmsaca are still screwed, be it by the Archadian senate or by Rozaria. If Vayne hadn't annexed Dalmasca then there is a good chance it would have been by Rozaria. Also, during the events of the game, after Ghis blew his own fleet up, Rozaria immediately began moving into position for war with Archadia. Evidently capturing Dalmasca was a part of their plans as that is the very first thing they go for, and Rozaria didn't seem to be concerned about waging a war over Dalmasca, which would mean that burning airships would be falling out of the sky onto the populace.
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May 25, 2021 06:14
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My understanding is that Al-Cid is a good guy. He doesn't seem to be very crafty and seems to be pretty honest about what he wants and how much power he actually has. His visit to the sacred mountain seems to be unofficial, as he only has his most trusted attendant with him. No guards, no big airship outside (he seems to have been injured during Bergan's massacre, with no soldiers protecting him) He doesn't try tricking or manipulating anyone, instead he's just very earnest. He seems to be similar to Larsa: a good guy with some power and is in the know and just wants what's best for everyone, but doesn't have enough power to make it a reality, so he tries to seek out like minded people in the other camp and see if they can come up with something. Given how Matsuno dropped out of the project and it was apparently unfinished, I wonder if Rozaria would have played a more prominent role in Matsuno's intended game. Maybe we would have visited a few of their settlements. Perhaps Al-Cid might have even been a guest character. ApplesandOranges posted:Al-Cid is a nice political figure, but he's still a political figure. Maybe I'm a cynic but I can't really take his offer to Ashe to hide in Rozarria for safety at face value. She'd be way more susceptible to manipulation there, and I think they all know it, but hey, he's gonna try anyway. I think he found Ashe attractive and invited her to a date. The man is bold. I don't think he had any nefarious motives. He seemed pretty upfront about what he was thinking.
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May 25, 2021 07:22
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Super No Vacancy posted:does it have a decent story at all i feel like you never hear anything about it Base game through CoP is one story arc. It's generally agreed that the payoff in CoP is worth it. Rhapsodies was a good fanservice storyline. The writing is good but the presentation is terrible. There is no voice acting, and cutscenes from the most part are just two characters standing still while text happens in the chatbox. Cutscenes get a little fancy in later expansions. The game is soloable now with trust party members, but you still need to spend a huge amount of time navigating wikis and gamefaqs in order to figure out where to go next. If you're expecting a high production value JRPG experience like FFXIV, you won't really find it here.
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May 27, 2021 22:25
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Gologle posted:Bro no voice acting is a positive, not a downside. The funny thing is, it seems that FFXI could have gotten voice acting. Square brought in A-list voice actors and had them voice a few cutscenes for a test reel. Apparently Square decided that they weren't going to invest the money in actually going ahead with recording voices for the game. Test reel voiced cutscene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7i8grgDnDs&t=518s The cutscene as it is in the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRl3wM4NKz0&t=221s Also, to reemphasize: FFXI's cutscenes usually aren't this fancy, and this is from the last expansion. Don't go in expecting the rest of the game to be like this.
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May 27, 2021 23:55
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NikkolasKing posted:But anyway, maybe FFXII is just too huge. FFXII HD is bigger than both FFX and X-2 HD combined. FF12 pushed the PS2 to its limits. It was the highest fidelity game on the console, but there was just too many polygons onscreen that on the PS2, the game is rendered at a lower resolution to maintain a high framerate. It also does what The Order 1886 did and used blackbars during cutscenes to shave off polygons that need to be rendered to maintain framerate (since the cutscenes use the higher polygon character models). According to the Lorerunner during one of his playthroughs of FF12, you were supposed to be able to control more than 3 party members at once, but having too many character models onscreen would have led to a huge framerate drop, so it was capped at 3. stev posted:I wish they'd re-recorded some of it. Vaan in particular sounds pretty bad, like he recorded his lines on a cassette player. It actually reminds me of the way some characters sound in the original Spyro games but I don't know enough about audio to know why. The video game industry had terrible project archiving back then. I doubt they have the original voice files. High quality voice lines take up a lot of space, and that adds up when you have a lot of voice acting. The voice lines for FF12 were heavily compressed to save space on the game disc. That loving Sned posted:The Zodiac Age has better quality audio for voices than the PS2 versions, right? But they still sound pretty muffled. Maybe they couldn’t record in a proper sound studio with decent mics. MGS1 had to be re-recorded for the Twin Snakes because you could hear cars passing by in the uncompressed audio. No, the voice quality is the same as the original PS2 release. The "muffled voices" you're hearing isn't the quality of the mics. It's how they recorded the voice actor's takes in the booth. They add the mic right next to the mouth of the voice actors, hence why the unique sound of the voice lines. Normally voice actors are further away from the mics. stev posted:The remaster is really nice visually. The textures are like brushstrokes rather than the usual uprezzed mess of pixels and it all feels very warm, especially in Rabanastre. The remastered textures washed out the color of the original game.
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May 30, 2021 23:15
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Mr. Locke posted:Yeah, the regular play pattern early in the game is to kidnap Larsa as part of the Dalmascian Big Brothers/Big Sisters program and take him on an extended camping trip while he helps out in many of the early hunts with his bottomless potion stash. IIRC that trick only worked in the PS2 version. In the rereleases he uses potions from your inventory.
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May 31, 2021 01:38
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Why would you want to replace an already stellar English dub?
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Jun 1, 2021 07:23
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CharlieFoxtrot posted:I was out of the console world for the PS360 era so I don't know how much of that narrative that "Japanese devs struggled because it was either develop for the PS3's weird architecture or develop for nothing since no one in Japan owned a 360" was true It was a combination of different factors that raised the expense of developing a game, namely consumer expectations for what a $60 game should be:
So all of these factors eventually led to the Japanese deciding to just not even trying to bother with the big consoles, and instead move on over to portable development on the DS and the PSP. It helped that portable consoles became insanely popular in Japan. It was okay to not have voice acting. It was okay not to have the bestest Uncharted graphics. It was okay to be 2D. Also notably, at this time pretty much every Japanese dev not named Nintendo or Square Enix abandoned all hope of breaking into the Western market and just concentrated and their fans already in Japan. Localization costs also went up (inflation, need for English voice actors because original Japanese voices were stigmatized in the West for a long time outside of really niche communities, need to hire localizers based in LA or Austin so their salaries will be high, etc), so the West simply just didn't get most of the games made over there. JRPGs didn't start making a come back in the West until Dark Souls' PC port went viral. With the release of the Switch, the Western mainstream are now getting a taste of what Japanese games coming out on handheld were like. Pokemon Sword & Shield came out on Switch, but rather than living up to the grand dreams of Westerners... it instead just turned out to be another "budget" handheld Japanese game. The Japanese were apparently okay with it but the backlash in the West was huge. Similarly, people seem to be surprised when they try out Atelier, or Trails, and find them "lacking" compared to your usual Western AAA production. Moofia Boss Val fucked around with this message at 03:04 on Jun 2, 2021 |
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Jun 2, 2021 02:59
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I personally don't like the milky filters over the pixel sprites, and the pixel sprite artstyle clashes with how the rest of the scenes are lit. Either go full pixelart, or if you're going to try that 2.5D look of Octopath, then ditch the pixelart character sprites.
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Jun 8, 2021 00:04
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I quite liked Stormblood, much more than Heavensward. I thought that the HW trailer was extremely misleading (promised me an epic war that never happened), that the cast was meh, and the plot was rather boring. Also wasn't fond of the setting and aesthetics of grey, generic, gothic, medieval european castles and knights and dragons. The villains were also forgettable. But Stormblood hit the right notes for me. It was a fun adventure romp through Scottish Turkey and Japan. I quite like the cast. The villains were fun. It didn't overpromise and underdeliver like HW did. I like the colorful aesthetics. Music was pretty great. My one disappointment about Stormblood is that Ala Mhigo is neglected in the post patch content.
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Jun 19, 2021 06:27
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No... https://twitter.com/Wario64/status/1405803861441347586 Noooo! I was right. Kingdom Hearts being an EGS exclusive was a dark omen of things to come. Hopefully this turns out to be timed EGS exclusivity, like how Metro Exodus and Shenmue 3 came to Steam a year after their EGS release. This bodes ill for FF16. It will be a PS5 exclusive for at least 6 months to a year. Then it will go onto EGS, and it might be another year before it comes to Steam. 2 years of trying to dodge spoilers. Moofia Boss Val fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Jun 19, 2021 |
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Jun 19, 2021 14:47
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