Schala you're doing the FF2 vs FF4 thing again.
I think this is where we have to agree to disagree again because we have had this discussion countless times and I know exactly where you're coming from, lol.
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 :/
(Thanks) Final Fantasy V just doesn't seem to waste my time like some of the other class-based games, and it's refined and sometimes balanced enough to have fun. The GBA dialogue is fun and the PS1 dialogue is a hilarious nightmare. But overall, it's always fun to come back to and play it with its many combinations and permutations in terms of party setup.
LR... doesn't really have that amount of flexibility, which is kind of a shame, and it feels easy to figure out what the world-ending tactics are at a certain span of time, provided you have the abilities to do it. Bravely Default, despite being able to equip a job, a subcommand from another job, and passives from other jobs (a max of 5 points, depending on how many points the passives take up), isn't as balanced as FF5, but it works. I will warn that there is a fair stretch in BD that makes it feel like it wastes your time. It is not a perfect game by any stretch of the word.
I will say that just watching LR streams won't give you a good idea of how the game handles. Hell, that's why if I think a GB Quick Look looks interesting, I'll just get the game and see what i think of it depending on my budget. But a lot of what I thought from watching a bit of Kagari's stream seemed to ring true in my assessment of it. Battle-wise, my experience is a little different, but more or less I feel like it truly is 1-person Party FF13 with a little more flexibility but you're still essentially doing the things you would have in the first two games but with less buffs/debuffs. You do have stuff like Regen Guard, a physical counter, a magic counter, etc. But at the same time, I still feel incredibly restricted. Even watching the initial battle footage of the game, I knew that was going to happen because that's exactly how the game looked--some flexibility but not enough. And when I got to play the full game I was kinda right.
You even have combination spells like ファイア+サンダー (fire and thunder), which... seem interesting. But overall, I feel like the best part of the game is customization. The battles are unrefined and I feel like I'm doing the same button presses quite a bit albeit with different abilities.
Granted, and I've been told this countless times on GAF, I seem to play games differently from a lot of folks, or I might be thinking "too hard" about things and not just "accepting things at face value because they just work and you shouldn't think about things any more than that".
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!
Thanks. It's nice that someone gets something out of those lately. I usually seem to ruffle feathers more often than not these days.
We talk about FFIV because Corvo can't stop bringing up his FFIV fanfiction.
I feel like everything I know about FF1's story has been muddied by 8-bit Theatre a little.
Anyway: Do I pick up FFIV Complete Collection in the FF PSN Sale?
I'd honestly go with the DS version, but since the CC has the Interlude, TAY (which doesn't have the same RNG rates as the Wii version), and auto-battle, why not. If it's cheap, you might get more bang for your buck.
I'm currently practicing the
Piano Collections version of Eye's On Me, so beautiful.
I sang that for a recital when I was a teenager, and I had to transpose the whole thing + rewrite the lyrics with better prose. It was interesting.
