Final Fantasy XV - A New Hope?

[ErusPrime]

They're not necessarily bad. Just not as good as the first two. I played the shit out of the third one but only once or twice. I've repeatedly never completed Star Ocean 2. It's friggin huge.

[Jay?]

They're not necessarily bad. Just not as good as the first two. I played the shit out of the third one but only once or twice. I've repeatedly never completed Star Ocean 2. It's friggin huge.

I'm a glutton for punishment, and try to always beat each game i start, but Till the End of Time was too big for me, when coupled with its badness. The combat system was unintuitive and varied wildly between out of balance in your favor, and out of balance in the enemies favor. i think i was pretty close to the end, at about 160 hours in, i encountered a boss with an attack i couldn't seem to survive or dodge at all.

EDIT: Munaus, I'm still ready and willing to go at it, the ball is in your court.

[Munaus]

EDIT: Munaus, I'm still ready and willing to go at it, the ball is in your court.

I'm stubborn...

The battle system COULD have been fun if there were a single difficult fight in the entire game. However, almost every fight throughout the game could be beaten by setting cursor memory and holding circle.

Yes all enemies, even a few bosses were terribly easy, but only if you trained/leveled up/ grinding before a tough boss battle. (never heard of grinding before).

If you were one of those impatient or speedrunning folk, you might had a bit of challenge.

I said "Fun" earlier, because it was fun with the materia combinations and enemy skill usage. To see that Ice3+All was pleasing to the eye. To put Deathblow+Preemptive with Cloud was thrilling. It wasn't how easy you killed a monster, but HOW you killed the monster.

Final Fantasy 7 was cliche ridden, poorly written, and the villain, Sephiroth, was only intimidating because of his theme music. The fact that the sum of his character growth through the series was "I miss mommy" puts him leagues behind Kefka and Seymour in particular.

The only reason Seph wasn't more threatening than the earlier versions of FF's villains was due to his imprisonment by the planet. The way I see it, he could have ripped apart the world if he could. But his crystal prison/Mako comatose made him seem almost docile while we were adventuring with Cloud.

It might be the fan in me, but I see Sephiroth the most dangerous one of all villains. His lack of action was what partly made him dangerous, [bad analogy] you would say that a inactive volcano is not-so-dangerous as well, right? [bad analogy].

Character growth? What are you asking for?

Seph is the bad guy. We started with him as the bad guy, and he continued to be like that until the end. He's not like Seifer from 8! Once good, then bad, then in the end good again?

Then there's the ending, which was one of the most haphazard, slapdash finales in gaming history.

I agree with that. I was sorely disappointed, I was expecting an uber fight of galactic proportions...

But again, the way I see it: Seph was imprisoned by Planet for years, he might had grown weaker while Cloud had grown a bit stronger with his adventuring.

Let's put this aside...

the FF7 soundtrack

It is his best, but there will always be new music that can beat it.

I'm quite fond of FF8's soundtrack...

if you want a great story you need to go back to FF6

I'm considering it...

None of them progressed as people, and were defined exclusively by their "unique" backstory.

Didn't they?

Didn't Barret see his errors in his raging and blowing up reactors, the many deaths he caused?

Didn't Cait Sith aka Reeves see that what Avalanche stood for?

And finally, did we not go through Cloud's childhood and saw him change after his lifestream - experience?

They did change Jay, perhaps we couldn't see it due to the poor graphical facial expression. (blocky face)

I'm gonna stop here before this turns into a P.A.I.N.S. battle, you are well beyond my FF-experience and I'm sorely handicapped here. The only way I could beat you in this is if I had played as many versions as you have had.

Let's call it a draw :P

[Jay?]

Yes all enemies, even a few bosses were terribly easy, but only if you trained/leveled up/ grinding before a tough boss battle. (never heard of grinding before).

If you were one of those impatient or speedrunning folk, you might had a bit of challenge.

I said "Fun" earlier, because it was fun with the materia combinations and enemy skill usage. To see that Ice3+All was pleasing to the eye. To put Deathblow+Preemptive with Cloud was thrilling. It wasn't how easy you killed a monster, but HOW you killed the monster.

That's not what i'm talking about, that was basic materia combo stuff. I'm talking about the in-depth stuff.

For instance, if you have multiple linked slots on the same equipment, you can apply multiple linked-materia effects to the same spell. for instance: lets say you have a weapon with three sets of linked slots

In the first you have Lightning and MP Absorb, in the second you have Lightning and Quadra Magic, and in the last you have Lightning an All.

Every lightning spell you cast will drain MP, hit all enemies AND hit four times. Unfortunately, the only fight i ever needed more than just physical attacks for was Emerald Weapon. BTW, i didn't grind much in FF7, i just followed the subplots as they were handed to me.

The only reason Seph wasn't more threatening than the earlier versions of FF's villains was due to his imprisonment by the planet. The way I see it, he could have ripped apart the world if he could. But his crystal prison/Mako comatose made him seem almost docile while we were adventuring with Cloud.

It might be the fan in me, but I see Sephiroth the most dangerous one of all villains. His lack of action was what partly made him dangerous, [bad analogy] you would say that a inactive volcano is not-so-dangerous as well, right? [bad analogy].

I never said he was docile, just ineffectual. The only things he ever killed were the weaktastic. Remember that big snake thing in the swamp, that everybody made a big deal of? did you ever go back and fight it? I did. it wasn't even worth the five minutes it took. Whenever an actual challenging enemy confronted him he ran off monologue-ing, and whining about mother.

Character growth? What are you asking for?

Seph is the bad guy. We started with him as the bad guy, and he continued to be like that until the end. He's not like Seifer from 8! Once good, then bad, then in the end good again?

Seifer is a terrible example, and realistically 8 wasn't a particularly great game either. I have huge fantastic bedazzled nostalgia goggles for it, because i only got through disc one as a kid, and the desire to beat that game tortured me for nearly five years before i managed to play it again. That doesn't make it good though. The villains in that game did more flip-flopping than an american politician at the beach.

It is his best, but there will always be new music that can beat it.

I'm quite fond of FF8's soundtrack...

FF8 had a few gems in its soundtrack as well, but the thing about the FF7 soundtrack was that it fit the world SO well, and managed to convey the right emotions for every scene, on top of being quite well done on a composition level. While it's technically possible that a new RPG will surface with better music, the odds are getting slimmer and slimmer as graphics get better. FFX only had two songs i found memorable, and FFXII didn't have any. Other games are also seeing a decline in musical quality, simply because music used to be necessary for setting the mood, and had to be well composed due to limitations in how consoles could output that music. With better graphics the mood can be set through dramatic visuals, with only light background incidental music.

I'm considering it...

You should do it. Kefka was a wonderful villain, and FFVI is one of my favorite RPGs.

Didn't they?

Didn't Barret see his errors in his raging and blowing up reactors, the many deaths he caused?

Didn't Cait Sith aka Reeves see that what Avalanche stood for?

And finally, did we not go through Cloud's childhood and saw him change after his lifestream - experience?

They did change Jay, perhaps we couldn't see it due to the poor graphical facial expression. (blocky face)

Not really? It's difficult to take anything Cait Sith says as any more than just telling us what we want to hear. Barret never really liked blowing up reactors, but he did it through necessity. The only thing that changed was that he had bigger fish to fry. There's no real evidence to suggest that he wouldn't have gone straight back to bombing Mako plants.

Changes in Cloud's demeanor are hard to gauge because of the stupid "im not really me" subplot.

FFX had a lot of good character driven plot. the only really unchanging character was Kihmari, everyone else grew in some way particularly the main character, Sir Dickington the 3rd.

I'm gonna stop here before this turns into a P.A.I.N.S. battle, you are well beyond my FF-experience and I'm sorely handicapped here. The only way I could beat you in this is if I had played as many versions as you have had.

I don't think i'm eligible to be part of a PAINS brawl, but even if i were, those are reserved for people who are angrily flailing about. This is just a good natured debate.

Let's call it a draw

If you insist.

[The_DarthMoogle]

I just smacked someone for trying to get me to play one of these infernal games, because of his reasoning

'It gets good about six hours in'

Fuck that.

Which one of these games is genuinely worth my time, and won't have me sweating in a battle because I'm worried it'll be a waste of time if I lose.

[Jay?]

I just smacked someone for trying to get me to play one of these infernal games, because of his reasoning

'It gets good about six hours in'

Fuck that.

Which one of these games is genuinely worth my time, and won't have me sweating in a battle because I'm worried it'll be a waste of time if I lose.

6 was pretty magnificent if you're after story. 8 had some good bits, but was mediocre overall (i have huge ridiculous nostalgia goggles for it though), 9 was apparently really good if you can ignore the intense cartoonishness. I happen to really like 10, for the story and the battle system, and the level system, but it's an unpopular opinion. The popular opinion says that 7 was the greatest game ever made. Fuck the popular opinion.

When it gets right down to it, though, there are better RPG franchises to go with if you want to break in with a good game. Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga, despite sounding horrid and being a mouthful, is one of my all time favorite games of any genre, has a good mix of gameplay, story, and visuals, and is challenging enough to keep a gamer involved. Also from the SMT franchise, Nocturne is equally as good.

.hack//quartet (.hack//infection, .hack//mutation, .hack//outbreak, and .hack//quarantine) are a little more hands on, and have an interesting enough story, but some of the voiceacting is silly as fuck. I also have huge nostalgia goggles for those games.

[Jay?]

To elabroate further on the final fantasy games of note, I shall do a few pro/con comparisons.

FFVI

Pro- Great story

Con- ancient graphics. Welcome to spritesville.

Pro- Great soundtrack

Con- You might need to listen to remixes to notice it. Chiptunes everywhere.

Pro- Great villain

Con- He's a clown.

FFVII

Pro- Amazing soundtrack

Con- hold O = Win Game.

Pro- Cinematography in the cutscenes was great

con- CGI backgrounds were beautiful, which made the awful CGI characters look incredibad.

Pro- decent story

Con- Terrible dialogue

Con- If you like it, Jay? will call you a fanboy.

Con- If you don't like it, everyone else will call you an idiot.

FFVIII

Pro- Another hit soundtrack, because Nobuo Uematsu knows his shit.

Con- Relatively bland story

Pro- A few very vibrant characters, and a complete lack of the token "silly" character.

con- ingame sprites were pretty bad.

Pro- cutscenes were fantastic!

con- SUBMENUS: THE GAME

Pro- Combat system was pretty slick.

Con- Leveling and stat raising was silly.

FFX

Pro- Good dialogue, except for one particular scene.

Con- Linear as fuck.

Pro- finally have access to your whole party during a battle.

Con- makes even less sense that only 3 can fight at a time.

Pro- Leveling system was very flexible, you won't be forced to use a character you don't like, just because they have a spell that you do.

Con- Summons tend to feel a bit crap until more than halfway through the game

Pro- Good story

Con- HAA HAA HAA HAA HAA. HAA HAA HAA HAA HAA.

FFXII

Con- not very fun

Pro- There's a system built in that allows you to NOT EVEN PLAY THE GAME.

Con- the fact that you don't have to play it is a pro, come on now.

[flamingsalad]

FFX

Con- HAA HAA HAA HAA HAA. HAA HAA HAA HAA HAA.

This is possibly the biggest con.

[Munaus]

FFVII

Con- If you like it, Jay? will call you a fanboy.

Con- If you don't like it, everyone else will call you an idiot.

mmm... I'm getting owned by Jay here...

FFVIII

Pro- Another hit soundtrack, because Nobuo Uematsu knows his shit.

Con- Relatively bland story

Pro- A few very vibrant characters, and a complete lack of the token "silly" character.

con- ingame sprites were pretty bad.

Pro- cutscenes were fantastic!

Pro- Combat system was pretty slick.

Con- Leveling and stat raising was silly.

8 had the most confused story... Time traveling-theme will do that. And I hear even today they (fans) argue about Squall being dead ever since the failed assassination attempt at Edea. I wont take any sides in that theory...

[Jay?]

This is possibly the biggest con.

I will admit, i play a patched Un-Dub version, specifically because of that scene.

8 had the most confused story... Time traveling-theme will do that. And I hear even today they (fans) argue about Squall being dead ever since the failed assassination attempt at Edea. I wont take any sides in that theory...

Eh. The story wasn't really all that confusing. There were a couple of neat "aha" moments, but overall it didn't have the emotional power or the richness that we expect from RPG worlds.

[Munaus]

Snip

Apparently someone else seems to like FF6.

Is it accurate?

[Jay?]

Apparently someone else seems to like FF6.

Is it accurate?

It is. It's fucking fantastic. That skin is pretty bitchin too. Thanks for that.

[RadioHasNoFuture]

i liked rings of fate though. but it wasnt a real final fantacy game to my opinions.