Makoto Yuki
Banned
Thanks, looks like a fun read.
Fanfiction? I thought he was playing some kind of FFIV H-game.
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FINAL FANTASY Community Thread: XV Mainline Entries and Counting
- Thread starter Kagari
- Start date
Thanks, looks like a fun read.
Fanfiction? I thought he was playing some kind of FFIV H-game.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
Where is this character development? When he went on the mountain and class changed and then stayed stuck in limbo while he became the worst leader in history? And he demonstrated he actually got shit done when he was DKnight and not when he was a Sailor Venus wannabe? Instead of this namby-pamby Paladin bullshit where he's a complete misogynist and bitch-slaps women off his ship? :V
Sailor Venus Cecil sucks as a leader.
Cast Exit! Someone. Three of you know it! What are you standing there for? DO IT.
Sailor Venus Cecil sucks as a leader.
Sailor Venus Cecil sucks as a leader.
Even when he’s not even present, Golbez wins. Has anyone been keeping count on this? I swear that there hasn’t been a single time Batman and his party won anything and Golbez always won.
Batman sucks. How many times has this game proven to you that Batman is terrible? Even with the power of Light, he’s terrible. He seemed to get more done when he was a DKnight.
Worst protag.
Kain knows when to swoop in for the kill while Cecil indulges in porno and Troian floozies.
Well, we all know that John Cena sucks.
I know you hate the game but you're focusing on Cecil's ability as a leader and ignoring his transition from someone seeking to be forgiven to someone who has to forgive. Cecil has to forgive Kain and that's preparatory to his forgiveness of Golbez, which in turn, is part of Golbez' own need to forgive Cecil in The After Years.
Y'can't just skip over the character development that's there, even if it was an SNES game.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
At least I gave the game some credit in the end.
The bit where I talk about The Red Wings' theme is where I at least acknowledged Cecil somewhat grew as a person in terms of redemption. I just feel like that redemption fell short because it happened so darn quickly after he class changed.
Dark Schala said:
...I should just do a playthrough of The After Years. :/
But God, I just hate The After Years. It reeks of bad game design all over the place and having gone through it twice... I dunno. I have streaming devices so I could just record the stupid thing, but ehhhhhhhh.
Edit: Holy shit, I just checked the page for that post, and it reminds me that GAF used to talk about playing games for others back then. That was the time when someone was playing Super Metroid for everyone, iirc.
Well, I mean, it's a Super Nintendo RPG and the first one to really bother making an attempt at developing its characters. Nowadays sure, Cecil's development comes across as bare bones, but compared to the three previous games it was a big difference and a bold step for the franchise in a new direction. 4's cast is largely archetypes and plays a fair bit of stuff completely straight, but I'll always love it for that. There didn't need to be gray. It wasn't the nonsense of recent Kingdom Hearts where light is bad and dark is good and blah blah blah. The good guys were the ones who forgave each other and the bad guys were the ones who couldn't let go of their hate. It was simple, sure, but it also avoided the pitfalls of convoluted plots and stuck to its simple themes.
I don't think FF4 is the greatest RPG ever made, but I think it is a whole lot better than people give it credit for.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
You know where my argument for that comes from, though.
If FF2 and Phantasy Star 2 can have far better development than that with less dialogue and they were released before FF4, why couldn't FF4? To be fair, PS2 seems to be credited for adding some of the drama and character-driven storylines to FF games after it was released.
I guess it's more disappointment. Other games within the genre came far even before it (and even within the same series), yet FF4's the one that gets the credit from a lot of people for injecting more drama-driven storylines within the genre when that isn't even remotely true from a historical standpoint.
If FF2 and Phantasy Star 2 can have far better development than that with less dialogue and they were released before FF4, why couldn't FF4? To be fair, PS2 seems to be credited for adding some of the drama and character-driven storylines to FF games after it was released.
I guess it's more disappointment. Other games within the genre came far even before it (and even within the same series), yet FF4's the one that gets the credit from a lot of people for injecting more drama-driven storylines within the genre when that isn't even remotely true from a historical standpoint.
tiggerkiddo
Member
This is from the same game that won't you even use a Soft on some characters even though they used the same sort of spell to petrify themselves. You expect them to cast Exit and get out of the mess that easily?
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
Yes. This is also the same game where the Elder finally decided to unpetrify them himself when he clearly could have done it at any time so clearly he just wanted them dead until he realized it'd look bad for his image if he came to the Gundam fight without the twins.
And you guys, never mind. I found a worse character than Cecil.
Ceodore sucks.
And you guys, never mind. I found a worse character than Cecil.
Ceodore sucks.
Makoto Yuki
Banned
Yes. This is also the same game where the Elder finally decided to unpetrify them himself when he clearly could have done it at any time so clearly he just wanted them dead until he realized it'd look bad for his image if he came to the Gundam fight without the twins.
And you guys, never mind. I found a worse character than Cecil.
Ceodore sucks.
Like father like son. The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. Etc etc.
Edit: Honestly though, was a sequel to FFIV even needed?
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
Nooooo.
Storywise, no. Unless you wanted a game about Golbez or Kain, only then I could consider it because their stories weren't over. But FF4's ending had a kind of finality to it for the majority of the cast members at least.
That Interlude did nothing for me, too.
Storywise, no. Unless you wanted a game about Golbez or Kain, only then I could consider it because their stories weren't over. But FF4's ending had a kind of finality to it for the majority of the cast members at least.
That Interlude did nothing for me, too.
Makoto Yuki
Banned
Anything about what happens to Golbez and Kain after FFIV sounds more interesting than the adventures of Cecil's offspring. Those two were probably the most compelling characters in the original game.
A sequel to FFIV just sounds dumb for the reason you mention. The game ends with some semblance of finality to the main cast. I can't bring myself to even trying Interlude/After Years because FFIV was just so done in my book.
FFIV overall was a neat adventure. I don't hate it, but I don't love it. I'm not a of it fan, nor am I an opponent of it. Guess I feel very indifferent about it. You won't see me arguing that it's the best FF. Well it's better than XIII...
It didn't bother me so much when I played it first years ago, but when I replayed the game on PSP, I realized just how stupid it is. And not funny stupid like Mystic Quest (Legend), just plain stupid.
Here you go:
Edit: Oops, I just now realized Schala already linked that earlier. Well, at least I got to use this in some way.
Edit: Oops, I just now realized Schala already linked that earlier. Well, at least I got to use this in some way.
Meccanical
Member
I try not to give FFIV slack because it kind of pioneered the modern JRPG and many of it's tropes/traditions.
Besides I don't find it offensively stupid
.
Besides I don't find it offensively stupid
like XIII
I still don't agree that FF2 has better character development than FF4. Firion barely even has character, and Maria and Guy flat out don't develop.
Thought I'd finally give FF XII Zodiac Job whatever version a try. It's been too long I last replay XII anyway.
The job system seems pretty cool, should make for more interesting gameplay. I admit I've got a cheat to change jobs tho if I happen to royally fuck something up later on.
e: walkthrough wise, is it only chests that are different between the original and izjs? thinking about using a guide for the original game, but i want to try to get all the marks and rare monsters and summons and such. if there are glaring differences in locations or requirements or whatever, i'm fucked
The job system seems pretty cool, should make for more interesting gameplay. I admit I've got a cheat to change jobs tho if I happen to royally fuck something up later on.
e: walkthrough wise, is it only chests that are different between the original and izjs? thinking about using a guide for the original game, but i want to try to get all the marks and rare monsters and summons and such. if there are glaring differences in locations or requirements or whatever, i'm fucked
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
I neglected to mention that a copy of Lightning Returns fell into my possession for a few days as I'd mentioned to someone that I'd gotten the free trial of it and I still have a save on my PS3. I have some good things to say about it and some not so good things.
Yes, the dialogue is dumb. It's just dumb. It's dumb. The battle one-liners are kinda cheesy.
Yes, the framerate is really bad in the towns and especially in the wildlands to the point of giving me motion sickness and I have to sit down and rest for a bit. It also affects performance in battle by actually kind of making it easier because it's much easier to judge enemy animation frames and get your timing down to do a dodge/perfect guard and come out of battles unscathed. I really do feel like framerate affects battle progress, and this is why you generally want, in action games or ARPG, the highest framerate as possible. Lower framerates can affect timing and if slow enough, makes attack animation frames really easy to judge.
Yes, I find the stamina meter for running through towns limiting. I don't like it.
Yes, Perfect Guards are really really easy to pull off after a while.
Yes, the game's battles feel like they're on semi-auto like in Tales, so basically the only movement you seem to get is left/right/up/down movement while you're facing an enemy. And Lightning moves really slowly that it's kind of disappointing since she was always a speedster. With that said, I've checked, and I don't think there's any haste in the game. There are some interesting spells/abilities, but not haste.
I think the battle UI gets in the way. It's too big. The GP meter doesn't have to be that big, or even there in the first place. Sometimes I can't see enemies coming up from that corner and have to last-minute block or run really slowly out of the way.
I find the battle camera limiting. It doesn't really zoom out, I guess, when I'm fighting more than one enemy (and even hitting R3 doesn't help). I find it too dynamic when I want to look at enemies to judge when they're going to hit me to guard, so I'm usually fighting the camera with the R-stick again like I usually did with the FF13 games.
I think the best part of the game is the game's customization. You get ability drops from enemies, so you could always customize your garments with whatever you want. So for some of the game's first battles, you can get Deshell and Deprotect dropped and augment your attacks that way. I honestly think that trying to customize the garments' abilities that you can use I do feel like it's a little limiting. Like, you don't have access to a plethora of skills like you would an average ARPG, Kingdom Hearts, or even FFX-2 (or even Bravely Default, for that matter). So you have access to four skills each garment, for a total of 12 + garment passives and accessories per garment. You can tweak each garment to either be balanced wrt magic and physicals or make them the best they can be in either direction. Different weapons give you different animation frame timing, and different finishers. I find that the finishers take far too much time, so what I generally do is that I know in my head when I'm approaching a finisher and just switch the type of attack I'm doing, or switch the garment I'm using and use a different type of attack from the one I was using previously.
Attack Cancelling will get you pretty far, but the hindrance is that you're confined to the ATB meter, so the best thing to do is get abilities that quickly fill up your meter like ATB Charge, or equip garments that have wear abilities ATB Charge or passives like ATB Speed Up. Some garments have ATB initial values, too. So some have 100, 50, etc.
I think the game's customization tool is really neat and if you're going to boast about the game, honestly focus on that. And that's what SE did. It's the most polished part of the game and it works well. It's easy to break things with it, absolutely, but it's the best aspect of the game by far to me.
I think battles can be kind of boring because sometimes they're easy to figure out when you figure out how to knock out enemies (like sometimes you can knock them out on the first strike of the sword if that's their weakness). I'm playing on Normal, and some of the enemies' AI are kind of a pain, the camera can be a pain, sometimes things feel unbalanced, etc. But if you kinda know what you're doing and if you're customized well (and honestly, that's the biggest asset: it's not always coming down to what you're doing in battle; a lot of the time, it's what you're customized with in terms of base garment, passives, accessories, and attacks that makes a whole lot of difference, you'll be ok. If you can read enemies well, you'll be okay for the most part.
I haven't gotten to the dungeon that's like one of the worst designed dungeons I've ever seen yet.
The towns remind me a lot of Assassin's Creed. A lot of this game reminds me of Assassin's Creed, tbh (even some of the earlier missions). The restaurants and healing places remind me of the doctors a lot, lol. You can even whip your sword out in the middle of town and people will run away from you. I can also see why they didn't stick a ton of people into the towns. That'd make the game run worse. The quasi-parkour can be like Mirror's Edge, but it isn't as intense or satisfying because your platforming is basically average physics and it's just as meaningless as FFXIII-2's (whose platforming I also took issues with). I feel like they stuck poles and stuff everywhere without consequence. You can see a pole and just fall off the edge of the area and Lightning won't take fall damage. Give me an incentive to use them otherwise I won't use them at all. I also feel like Lightning's animations can be iffy and half-baked. Especially in cutscenes/dialogue scenes where the camera direction is weird (I get that they let you move the camera, but the scene direction is off). Edit: Some of her attack animations also look reused from previous games.
Um, quests are basically that "quests for the sake of quests" stuff I really dislike. Get my stuffed animal, pay me money so you can hear my story over a few days, go get this dude and make him follow you back to the quest giver, buy me this stuff from the store, get me this item, go fight this thing, etc. A lot of the quest objectives are timed, or you can get the quest items from areas that are barred off at certain times of day, so it's best to wait around for those areas to open up so you can get them. I don't really feel the Majora's Mask comparison outside of quest timing. That's it. And maybe getting you extra karma so you can extend days. I would honestly advise doing the sidequests because that's how you upgrade your stats in the game, and you get accessories.
The thing about Majora's Mask is that a lot of the quests are intertwined with each other. The majority of them taking place in and around Clock Town. There's nothing that really seems to link some of them outside of some quests that seem to unlock other quests provided you do or do not do something in one quest (which affects what rewards you get/if you fail the quest from what I read in the JP wiki). None of the rewards you get from one quest seem to affect another quest. I don't particularly feel like the quests have a lot of meaning or gravity like the MM quests, nor do I feel like I'm getting to know the NPCs by doing their quests. Even on a NG+, I don't think I'd feel inclined to say, "This game is about healing like MM was, and it's just interesting to see these people go about their day to day lives because they have feelings and are invested in this world but you know they're going to die three days later". I don't feel like the quests illustrate a need for me to get to know everyone's routines or understand why they asked me what they did, or why I should heal them and take their souls with respect to doing this quest. That's why I feel like the MM comparisons are fairly lofty--and I might be a little unfair. Majora's Mask is one of my favourite games, ever. So any comparison to that game, and I feel that is what is to be expected.
I suppose that while MM's quests felt fairly connected to each other (ex: Guru-Guru gives you the Bremen Mask --> Use Bremen Mask to make Grog feel better at the Romani Ranch when you've opened it and you get a Bunny Hood; Get Kamaro's Mask by playing the Song of Healing --> Make the Rosa Sisters feel better by using Kamaro's Mask and you get a Heart Piece), outside of a few quest in LR, they don't necessarily feel linked together.
I think the message was that they wanted to go with the premise of healing like Majora's Mask, but it isn't communicated well throughout the game. The main quests certainly feel like they're attempting to do that, and in some cases, it succeeds. The sidequests, though? Not so much. Especially with the tasks being the way they are.
Um. I thought the atmosphere in some of the towns was nicely-done. Especially when the game first starts up in Luxerion and the atmosphere is really great (obvious slowdown notwithstanding). Music use is better in-game, but there are a lot of weird choices, as though maybe they didn't play the previous games before. A lot the old music use is just really weird and jarring. Unfitting.
The thing about LR is that they have a lot of good ideas, but they don't necessarily feel like they go all the way, or that some concepts are half-baked. It feels a lot of like an interesting experiment where some improvements could be made to be an interesting thing, or some things just don't work at all.
tl;dr: I don't hate it, but it's not the second coming either. It's middle-ground so far, which I'd expected since that's how I felt about the previous games. It's a little underneath that because it does make me nauseous in some spots and I usually need to take a break to regain my composure.
I'm not done yet. I have spreadsheets and midterms to do for a while, so I'm not even sure when I'll finish the game off.
And it has a better sense of camaraderie than that game you'd mentioned.
FF2 has the better narrative by virtue of not being as stupid for a game written up in 1988 and having non-fake deaths within the same series. And it had better political intrigue than FF4 ever did.
Yes, the dialogue is dumb. It's just dumb. It's dumb. The battle one-liners are kinda cheesy.
Yes, the framerate is really bad in the towns and especially in the wildlands to the point of giving me motion sickness and I have to sit down and rest for a bit. It also affects performance in battle by actually kind of making it easier because it's much easier to judge enemy animation frames and get your timing down to do a dodge/perfect guard and come out of battles unscathed. I really do feel like framerate affects battle progress, and this is why you generally want, in action games or ARPG, the highest framerate as possible. Lower framerates can affect timing and if slow enough, makes attack animation frames really easy to judge.
Yes, I find the stamina meter for running through towns limiting. I don't like it.
Yes, Perfect Guards are really really easy to pull off after a while.
Yes, the game's battles feel like they're on semi-auto like in Tales, so basically the only movement you seem to get is left/right/up/down movement while you're facing an enemy. And Lightning moves really slowly that it's kind of disappointing since she was always a speedster. With that said, I've checked, and I don't think there's any haste in the game. There are some interesting spells/abilities, but not haste.
I think the battle UI gets in the way. It's too big. The GP meter doesn't have to be that big, or even there in the first place. Sometimes I can't see enemies coming up from that corner and have to last-minute block or run really slowly out of the way.
I find the battle camera limiting. It doesn't really zoom out, I guess, when I'm fighting more than one enemy (and even hitting R3 doesn't help). I find it too dynamic when I want to look at enemies to judge when they're going to hit me to guard, so I'm usually fighting the camera with the R-stick again like I usually did with the FF13 games.
I think the best part of the game is the game's customization. You get ability drops from enemies, so you could always customize your garments with whatever you want. So for some of the game's first battles, you can get Deshell and Deprotect dropped and augment your attacks that way. I honestly think that trying to customize the garments' abilities that you can use I do feel like it's a little limiting. Like, you don't have access to a plethora of skills like you would an average ARPG, Kingdom Hearts, or even FFX-2 (or even Bravely Default, for that matter). So you have access to four skills each garment, for a total of 12 + garment passives and accessories per garment. You can tweak each garment to either be balanced wrt magic and physicals or make them the best they can be in either direction. Different weapons give you different animation frame timing, and different finishers. I find that the finishers take far too much time, so what I generally do is that I know in my head when I'm approaching a finisher and just switch the type of attack I'm doing, or switch the garment I'm using and use a different type of attack from the one I was using previously.
Attack Cancelling will get you pretty far, but the hindrance is that you're confined to the ATB meter, so the best thing to do is get abilities that quickly fill up your meter like ATB Charge, or equip garments that have wear abilities ATB Charge or passives like ATB Speed Up. Some garments have ATB initial values, too. So some have 100, 50, etc.
I think the game's customization tool is really neat and if you're going to boast about the game, honestly focus on that. And that's what SE did. It's the most polished part of the game and it works well. It's easy to break things with it, absolutely, but it's the best aspect of the game by far to me.
I think battles can be kind of boring because sometimes they're easy to figure out when you figure out how to knock out enemies (like sometimes you can knock them out on the first strike of the sword if that's their weakness). I'm playing on Normal, and some of the enemies' AI are kind of a pain, the camera can be a pain, sometimes things feel unbalanced, etc. But if you kinda know what you're doing and if you're customized well (and honestly, that's the biggest asset: it's not always coming down to what you're doing in battle; a lot of the time, it's what you're customized with in terms of base garment, passives, accessories, and attacks that makes a whole lot of difference, you'll be ok. If you can read enemies well, you'll be okay for the most part.
I haven't gotten to the dungeon that's like one of the worst designed dungeons I've ever seen yet.
The towns remind me a lot of Assassin's Creed. A lot of this game reminds me of Assassin's Creed, tbh (even some of the earlier missions). The restaurants and healing places remind me of the doctors a lot, lol. You can even whip your sword out in the middle of town and people will run away from you. I can also see why they didn't stick a ton of people into the towns. That'd make the game run worse. The quasi-parkour can be like Mirror's Edge, but it isn't as intense or satisfying because your platforming is basically average physics and it's just as meaningless as FFXIII-2's (whose platforming I also took issues with). I feel like they stuck poles and stuff everywhere without consequence. You can see a pole and just fall off the edge of the area and Lightning won't take fall damage. Give me an incentive to use them otherwise I won't use them at all. I also feel like Lightning's animations can be iffy and half-baked. Especially in cutscenes/dialogue scenes where the camera direction is weird (I get that they let you move the camera, but the scene direction is off). Edit: Some of her attack animations also look reused from previous games.
Um, quests are basically that "quests for the sake of quests" stuff I really dislike. Get my stuffed animal, pay me money so you can hear my story over a few days, go get this dude and make him follow you back to the quest giver, buy me this stuff from the store, get me this item, go fight this thing, etc. A lot of the quest objectives are timed, or you can get the quest items from areas that are barred off at certain times of day, so it's best to wait around for those areas to open up so you can get them. I don't really feel the Majora's Mask comparison outside of quest timing. That's it. And maybe getting you extra karma so you can extend days. I would honestly advise doing the sidequests because that's how you upgrade your stats in the game, and you get accessories.
The thing about Majora's Mask is that a lot of the quests are intertwined with each other. The majority of them taking place in and around Clock Town. There's nothing that really seems to link some of them outside of some quests that seem to unlock other quests provided you do or do not do something in one quest (which affects what rewards you get/if you fail the quest from what I read in the JP wiki). None of the rewards you get from one quest seem to affect another quest. I don't particularly feel like the quests have a lot of meaning or gravity like the MM quests, nor do I feel like I'm getting to know the NPCs by doing their quests. Even on a NG+, I don't think I'd feel inclined to say, "This game is about healing like MM was, and it's just interesting to see these people go about their day to day lives because they have feelings and are invested in this world but you know they're going to die three days later". I don't feel like the quests illustrate a need for me to get to know everyone's routines or understand why they asked me what they did, or why I should heal them and take their souls with respect to doing this quest. That's why I feel like the MM comparisons are fairly lofty--and I might be a little unfair. Majora's Mask is one of my favourite games, ever. So any comparison to that game, and I feel that is what is to be expected.
I suppose that while MM's quests felt fairly connected to each other (ex: Guru-Guru gives you the Bremen Mask --> Use Bremen Mask to make Grog feel better at the Romani Ranch when you've opened it and you get a Bunny Hood; Get Kamaro's Mask by playing the Song of Healing --> Make the Rosa Sisters feel better by using Kamaro's Mask and you get a Heart Piece), outside of a few quest in LR, they don't necessarily feel linked together.
I think the message was that they wanted to go with the premise of healing like Majora's Mask, but it isn't communicated well throughout the game. The main quests certainly feel like they're attempting to do that, and in some cases, it succeeds. The sidequests, though? Not so much. Especially with the tasks being the way they are.
Um. I thought the atmosphere in some of the towns was nicely-done. Especially when the game first starts up in Luxerion and the atmosphere is really great (obvious slowdown notwithstanding). Music use is better in-game, but there are a lot of weird choices, as though maybe they didn't play the previous games before. A lot the old music use is just really weird and jarring. Unfitting.
The thing about LR is that they have a lot of good ideas, but they don't necessarily feel like they go all the way, or that some concepts are half-baked. It feels a lot of like an interesting experiment where some improvements could be made to be an interesting thing, or some things just don't work at all.
tl;dr: I don't hate it, but it's not the second coming either. It's middle-ground so far, which I'd expected since that's how I felt about the previous games. It's a little underneath that because it does make me nauseous in some spots and I usually need to take a break to regain my composure.
I'm not done yet. I have spreadsheets and midterms to do for a while, so I'm not even sure when I'll finish the game off.
FF4 has better dungeon design, and dungeon progression tied to level progression. At least thought went into the game's overall structure despite being bones easy at the time. For all the flak I give FF4, I've gone into the reasons why the game was so palatable to players, and rightfully so. Graphically, design-wise, and quest-wise, it's actually kind of decent since it doesn't overstay its welcome. You could clear it in just a few hours if you wanted to because it's that easy to do it.
And it has a better sense of camaraderie than that game you'd mentioned.
Oh wow, I just noticed that it's missing this part, but oh well. It's been two years so it doesn't matter, lol. I'm surprised I never caught that.
No, no. PS2 has the better character development and should be viewed as pioneering concepts in console RPGs such as a character-driven storylines, drama, serious subject matter, and death. It did the notion of self-discovery before FF4 even desired to. It was the one that helped to pioneer the modern console Japanese-developed RPG, not FF4.
FF2 has the better narrative by virtue of not being as stupid for a game written up in 1988 and having non-fake deaths within the same series. And it had better political intrigue than FF4 ever did.
Makoto Yuki
Banned
Been meaning to try FF XII Zodiac Job blah blah blah edition. Sounds like it fixed my greatest problem with that game's character progression system. All your characters are the same, minus different stats, and different power levels for their Quickenings in the original version if I'm not mistaken. You chose your jobs in this version correct? I can make Vaan the theif he was meant to be, Penelo a caring white mage, etc etc. Does limiting each character to a single job make the game harder?
It's not missing, that's part 4.
Yeah, you got 12 jobs to pick from. I made Vaan a dagger/katana wielding ninja-thief and Penelo an archer, yet to get the other characters. I actually have no idea what jobs I'm gonna assign them.
I'd assume the job system would make the game a bit harder, if nothing else, you can consciously make it harder by assigning everyone as a white mage or something to that effect. I'm only a couple of hours in so I can't really say yet.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
I don't feel like IZJS feels that much difficult to the player at all, but of course it depends on your choices and what you do to plan ahead and adjust your party accordingly. You aren't wasting LP just to get certain skills on multiple license boards either. A lot of what IZJS does makes the game fundamentally work better. Skill sets are more interesting to play around with than the original incarnation of the game, I guess. I just like the flexibility and variety.
Taking control of guest members was neat, imo.
Taking control of guest members was neat, imo.
Derp, I guess I missed it when I was opening up a bunch of tabs. Sorry about that!
Makoto Yuki
Banned
Flexibility and variety was what the original version was lacking. The whole party felt like carbon copies of each other by the end of the game if you cared to level them up and max out their License Boards.
No problem. If you should find something else missing, make sure to tell me, it's pretty easy to fix it. I'm just glad someone's even using that post.
Professor Beef
Banned
I like FF6 more than FF4, which already says a lot.
It's always a pleasure reading your insightful impressions, Schala.
I sometimes use it when I feel a bit of nostalgia.
Now about imporant matters, why do we end up talking about FFIV always? We could talk about the FFI's story for example!
I sometimes use it when I feel a bit of nostalgia.
Now about imporant matters, why do we end up talking about FFIV always? We could talk about the FFI's story for example!
Meccanical
Member
Remember that time you traveled back in time and shit got really crazy?
Why does shit always get really crazy towards the end in FF games.
Why does shit always get really crazy towards the end in FF games.
Having recently played FFV, I think I liked it more than any of the other SNES titles and PSX titles. I really enjoyed it a lot. Tons of tinkering available to the player in managing your party.
I haven't played Lightning Returns, but I've chatted with Kagari quite a bit on it (as well as watching a few of her streams) and garment/skill customization does seem to be the strong point. Schala's impressions echo most of the things I've heard (nice write up). Maybe I'll try out that demo today but I probably won't be able to get around to it. I still have the Bravely Default demo waiting to be played :/
I haven't played Lightning Returns, but I've chatted with Kagari quite a bit on it (as well as watching a few of her streams) and garment/skill customization does seem to be the strong point. Schala's impressions echo most of the things I've heard (nice write up). Maybe I'll try out that demo today but I probably won't be able to get around to it. I still have the Bravely Default demo waiting to be played :/
Makoto Yuki
Banned
FFV probably has my favorite Job System in the entire series, FFT is up there also. I never had the chance to try FFXI's or FFXIV's Job systems, my PC sucks
How complex are the Job Systems in the MMO Final Fantasy games?
Being MMOs I would imagine they can get pretty complex.The only MMO I have experience in is WOW almost 4 years ago, pre- Wrath of the Lich King. How I miss the forests of Westfall and the resplendent beauty of Nagrand.
I think you misunderstood my claim. I don't think FF4 revolutionized JRPG storytelling. I can't claim to know enough about JRPGs to say that. But within the Final Fantasy series it certain did.
And FF2, while not having as many fake deaths as FF4, certainly has its share of stupidity. Political intrigue was also not really a goal of FF4. Your comparison between 4 and 2 doesn't hold up for that very reason. 4's narrative never set out to weave a political story because that wasn't what 4 was about. 4 was about Cecil's journey from being a slave of hatred to literally striking it down. That's one of 4's driving themes. Tellah's confrontation with Golbez has nothing to do with whether or not Tellah is a representation of the Whigs and the Torries and everything to do with the fact that Tellah has a serious problem with not letting go of his hate and it ultimately
drives him to his death.
FF2 has no such driving themes. It may have something resembling a political narrative, but the game hasn't any thematic focus to speak of, and its cast is inarguably weaker than 4's. There is no room for saying that FF2 is better than FF4. Especially given how terrible FF2 NES' gameplay was. At best FF2 came up with many notions which would be seen again throughout the series.
But 2> 4? That's not even mathematically sound.
FFV probably has my favorite Job System in the entire series, FFT is up there also. I never had the chance to try FFXI's or FFXIV's Job systems, my PC sucks
How complex are the Job Systems in the MMO Final Fantasy games?
Being MMOs I would imagine they can get pretty complex.The only MMO I have experience in is WOW almost 4 years ago, pre- Wrath of the Lich King. How I miss the forests of Westfall and the resplendent beauty of Nagrand.
I'm not really an expert on FF XI, since I haven't played it, but it uses a system where you have your main job and a sub-job (which is reduced to half your current level). So if you are playing a level 70 Paladin with Ninja as your Sub-job, you have all of the abilities of a level 35 Ninja in addition to your Paladin abilities. All classes have completely independent levels, so you can be level 75 as a Warrior and level 6 as a Black Mage.
Final Fantasy XIV works a bit differently. The game makes a distinction between the base classes: the Disciples of War and Magic, and Jobs. The base classes reflect the weapon the player is using: Gladiators use swords, Conjurers use wooden canes, and so on. Once you get a base class to level 30, you can unlock a Job such as Paladin and White Mage, which grants additional abilities on top of the associated base class. Currently, only one class, the Arcanist, has multiple Jobs, the Summoner and Scholar, of which you can only use one at a time.
Now, you can also equip cross-class skills from other classes you have leveled up. For example, a Gladiator can equip the Cure spell of the Conjurer. However, only certain skills can be transferred, and you only get a few slots. This is further restricted when you equip a Job, since Jobs allow you to only transfers skills from specific other classes, and have fewer slots for equipping them. So while a base class can have up to ten skills from every other class, Jobs can only equip up to 5 from two other specific classes. This means that if you are using a Job, there is no real choice in what cross-class skills you are using. And there is little reason to not use a Job since their stat-gains, unique skills, and class-specific equipment are too good to pass up except for in very niche circumstances. So, FF XIV has a long way to go to improve its character customization.
And yet never crazy enough to go back in time and delete the XIII trilogy.
I propose VIII-2 be about Squall and co. travelling back in time to destroy their worst enemy yet, Lightning and her series. It will be hard, Toriyama will be there as her staunch defender but we all can hope they'll succeed. Maybe the gutch will help.
Because it's not Final Fantasy if the stakes don't raise exponentially in the last 3 hours of the game.
Makoto Yuki
Banned
All of that sounds pretty neat honestly.Cool to see MMOs where you can juggle jobs. Really gotta try FFXIV out sometime.
tiggerkiddo
Member
But remember to take your time, the fate of the world can wait while you breed birds like a mad Hojo.
Except for VIII where you're blocked from every town haha ^ ^
This is the one and only time I'll give a gigantic fuck you to VIII. I so badly wanted an explorable furute with Ultimecia's reign and Seifer's redemption arc but nooooooo they had to more than likely run out of money
I'm kidding. I still love you VIII <3
tiggerkiddo
Member
Makoto Yuki
Banned
You said it, what a bummer of an end game world.
(FFVIII cast flying around in the Ragnarok)
Selphie: Lets go to FH and do some fishing!
Zell: Lets go get some hot dogs!
blah blah blah
Quistis: We can't go anywhere, these barriers are in the way
Squall: Whatever...
What was up with those barriers anyways? I don't remember an explanation, something to do with time travel?
tiggerkiddo
Member
Time Kompression
Or also get really weird. Like Time Compression in VIII or Necron in IX.
I'll bet you by the end of XV you'll be fighting some giant god thing that's suddenly revealed as the big boss.
F XIV 1.0, I think. Though it is more like they ran out of money just as the package/bomb ring opened in FF IV. The original cutscenes for 1.0 are absolutely brilliant. They are probably the best cutscene direction and story-telling in the series. But they don't even have the first story arc of the three starting towns fully realized.
Makoto Yuki
Banned
Lame... I forgot how dumb VIII got near the end with all the time nonsense.
I would be into a bare knuckle fist fight between Noctis and Big Boss as the final battle.
It's not that the idea was bad really as that it kind of came out of nowhere. At least Necron was only there to be a random final boss for a few minutes.
I've actually been feeling we might see a few of these in the game and they could also be used for great dramatic effect. Like you have to fight Stella one on one and there's sad music playing the whole time.
Giant bosses are fine, but I do like smaller encounters too.
Final Fantasy XIII? I mean:
1) Return to the tubes after the wide open space.
2) LOL
CID IS BACK
3) Surprise the thing that Hope's never explained revelation lead us to was
jack shit
4) It took an entire second game to try and explain the ending's deus ex pile up.
Also Type-0 would be another contender. Especially since
The endgame begins with a lengthy narration of things that happened off screen before dumping you into the final dungeon.
Makoto Yuki
Banned
Time compression really did come out of nowhere, still wish I could visit towns though. Yup Necron was just boom, here I am, fight me.
That scenario you described that I put in bold sounds awesome. Smaller encounters were always really cool. Really liked that one-on-one fight between Squall and Seifer near the end of disk one of FFVIII.
MagiusNecros
Gilgamesh Fan Annoyance
Implication that even with the delay the game was rushed out the door.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
FFXII was the only one where something felt "missing". I have no doubt more was intended to happen around the locations of Arcadia, Draulau Laboratory and Balfonheim, as well as the characters of Al Cid and Reddas. When Matsuno left, they took these areas and greatly minimized their ultimate importance (in my opinion).
And I love XII, but it was incomplete.
XIII seemed to anticipate their lack of available time by crafting a modest game design (linearity), but it did fulfill that game design. Though it was unambitious in its level layout, it was indeed polished to a shine.
I do think many of the characters were concieved of as being more important when they were put on paper during the long art pre-production phase before the engine was ready (Jihl, Cid Raines, etc), but I believe once they got to that last 18 months of actual game development, they scaled their plans way back, and ultimately delivered on those modest plans.