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The White Dragon posted:Otherwise, just pretty much never attack with Zidane, and only have him steal, even from regular monsters. It's the only way you'll bearably get Thievery to do max damage. I am absolutely loathe to toot my own horn but you can trust me with FF9 poo poo, I did the spergin' ultracompletionist LP of it Or you could just ignore Thievery. I mean, 9999 for basically no MP from the back row is cool and all, but MP Attack and the right Killer ability do so much damage anyway in the endgame that grinding those steals up has never been worthwhile, IMO.
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Aug 30, 2012 07:42
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BobFossil posted:I recently scanned a 'making of' ff7 article for the retro games thread and thought i'd share it here too http://www.wurwaldesign.com/retro%20gamer%20-%20making%20of%20ffvii.pdf (hosting mine) Thanks for this. My introduction to the series was VIII, not VII, and as a result I've never had the love for it that most folks do. But this was still a great read.
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Aug 30, 2012 07:52
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Feral posted:Thanks for this. My introduction to the series was VIII, not VII, and as a result I've never had the love for it that most folks do. But this was still a great read. 
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Aug 30, 2012 07:55
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I love Quistis' witchy-rear end face and Squall's sunflower Griever. They should hire a western caricature artist to do the character design for FF15.
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Aug 30, 2012 07:57
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Zombies' Downfall posted:That's 20 or 25 levels above when most people beat the normal game, what's the endgame on the hack anyway? Is there a bottom floor, and what's on it?  Serious spoiler warning.Do not mouse over unless you want the surprise ruined: The 99th floor features the 'final' boss, Zeromus, complete with music. The 100th and final floor features a battle against Shinryu and Omega at the same time which is basically the laziest and lamest way to end the hack. And a few hot tips for the above spoiler: He spams dispel like crazy. Mighty Guard, Haste, Reflect? Hope you have a someone dedicated to casting those every round. He's composed of a shitton of dummy targets, too. Most of the time, I couldn't even get Meteor to damage him. !Rapidfire is similarly useless. He loves blue magic to pieces, so carbunkle or wall rings are your best friend here, unless you like getting hit with Dark Shock until you can't even deal damage. One of the dummy targets is the part that actually attacks, while the part you damage doesn't do anything, so you can't Chemist your way out of the fight. In short, he's a big fat jerk. I've yet to legitimately win, though I did see the ending through flagrant abuse of the Quick/Bio bug. Edit: VVVVV Bio, Mind Blast, and probably a few other things I'm forgetting inflict HP Leak. (That status effect where your HP gradually ticks down.) HP Leak wears off based on the ATB bar, but deals damage based on time. If you cast quick, then have the first of your two actions inflict HP Leak on a target, you can kill anything in one hit if you wait around long enough. The best part? Nothing's immune to HP Leak. If you hit something with Bio, even if it absorbs poison, it still inflicts HP Leak. 0080F0 fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Aug 30, 2012 |
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Aug 30, 2012 09:33
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What's the quick/bio bug? I don't think I've heard of that one. Do you cast bio and then spam quick so his health drops but he doesn't get a turn or something?
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Aug 30, 2012 09:40
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One tip nobody else seems to have posted re grinding in FF2: don't really wear armor until late in the game when you have access to lightweight stuff with useful amounts of defense (or stuff with a flat out +10 Agility bonus that makes it give more dodge than the weight takes away). Wearing a bunch of mithril armor early on will reduce the damage you take quite a bit, but also effectively floor your dodge chance. You only gain Agility/dodge levels from dodging, so the higher those stats are, the faster they'll go up. If you keep your dudes in heavy armor through the whole game, their Agility and thus their dodge will basically never increase. You won't even realize you've hosed yourself until the final dungeons, at which point you'll have to backtrack and powergrind your Agility and dodge level. Summary: wearing armor actually decreases your longterm survivability. Yes, that is counter-intuitive as poo poo. It's one of the many reasons FF2 is such a crazy shitshow.
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Aug 30, 2012 09:48
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Yeah, I agree.
Mister Roboto fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Oct 23, 2014 |
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Aug 30, 2012 10:08
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It really is. I've ranted about it in the thread before, and while I don't regret playing through it if only because I don't value my time and it's a wonderful curiosity to be able to talk about, I find it almost completely indefensible. When people say the DoS version is the good version, they really do mean in a relative sense. Final Fantasy 1 is also both buggy and mechanically busted as hell, but it's just nowhere near as unpleasant. Playing the DoS version of it these days is almost like a pleasant refresher course on the genre's roots. The one thing I will say for FF2 is that the keyword system and all that jazz is pretty ambitious and nice for an NES JRPG; it almost adds a little adventure-game style puzzle solving element and helps make the story better than most 8-bit games. But even that has some serious mechanical trouble and rapidly develops the adventure game problem of "oh dunno what to do now, guess I'll go talk to everyone about every keyword and key item until I trip a flag".
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Aug 30, 2012 10:26
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I love that in the year 2012, FFV ended up being the game we are having the most fun and singing the most praise for, between ancient cave and the 4JF. I kinda regret not going for Shinryuu and Omega but after finally beating the story for the first time I was way too keen to start another one I've not yet finished (FFXII ZJS, 20 hours in and loving it). Also I quite enjoyed FFII on GBA gently caress the police
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Aug 30, 2012 10:36
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The White Dragon posted:Alternatively, find some super strong monsters and do this. There's a glitch in Dawn of Souls where you gather weapon EXP for whichever piece of equipment you ended the battle with. Grind up EXP with Shields in both hands, then switch everyone to weapons and finish the fight. The CR of the monster mobs is what determines your max skill level, but the power peninsula just south of the starting city boasts Mantises of a high enough CR that you'll be able to master anything to 16. Keep in mind that lovely Bows will take twice as long with this method since you're dual-wielding Shields and would normally switch to any other dual-wielded weapon so the EXP would count twice, but bows are two-handed so it can only ever count once. I'll actually say that unless you're going to fight Ozma, it takes far too much effort to get Thievery to anything decent. Even if you Steal from everything and never attack, by the time you first get Thievery you're likely only doing 1-2k damage. Basically, Stealing is good, especially against Bosses and some enemies (Grand Dragons are good for free Tents/Ethers), but I wouldn't specifically go out of your way just to power up an attack that you need to dedicate yourself to using when Zidane is a perfectly competent physical attacker (has the second highest attack power in a weapon after Excalibur II, and has MP Attack and almost all the Killer abilites). The game is never so difficult that you'll end up as a disadvantage if you want to dedicate Zidane to Stealing, so if that floats your boat go ahead. Synthesis is always good, and Chocobo Hot and Cold can get you some great and often unique items. (For one, it's the only way for Steiner to get Shock unless you're rushing to get Excalibur II)
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Aug 30, 2012 12:01
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" what they don't tell you is that those towns are hours off.
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I will defend FF2 over FF1 until my dying breath. If you don't sperg out about grinding or getting poo poo early, and treat dungeons as multiple run events (go in once to get treasure, exit, go in again to accomplish the goal), I've found it's got a surprisingly balanced difficulty curve. Well, until the Jade Passage. Then it really turns to poo poo, like all Final Fantasy last dungeons before FF5.
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Aug 30, 2012 14:19
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ApplesandOranges posted:I'll actually say that unless you're going to fight Ozma, it takes far too much effort to get Thievery to anything decent. Even if you Steal from everything and never attack, by the time you first get Thievery you're likely only doing 1-2k damage. What? I stole once from each enemy I fought and when I got Thievery it was already doing 7000+ damage. Plus I had a bottomless supply of potions and ethers, which was nice.
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Aug 30, 2012 16:37
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BobFossil posted:I recently scanned a 'making of' ff7 article for the retro games thread and thought i'd share it here too http://www.wurwaldesign.com/retro%20gamer%20-%20making%20of%20ffvii.pdf (hosting mine) Hmm... quote:Aeris is the most innocent character in the story, and remains massively popular among fans. Clearly the writer has not been following Elentor's FF7 LP. [edit] Also, the point in which you leave Midgar and realize that the game was just beginning not making the list of "Greatest Moments" is a travesty. testtubebaby fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Aug 30, 2012 |
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Aug 30, 2012 16:41
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:Bosses have multiple items?! poo poo. Yup. Since the main character is a Thief they made Steal really awesome in this game.
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Aug 30, 2012 17:03
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Finally leaving Midgar in FFVII is one of the best feelings in the world. The game gets so good from there 
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Aug 30, 2012 17:30
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Zombies' Downfall posted:It really is. I've ranted about it in the thread before, and while I don't regret playing through it if only because I don't value my time and it's a wonderful curiosity to be able to talk about, I find it almost completely indefensible. When people say the DoS version is the good version, they really do mean in a relative sense. Bingo. The level-up system's a very cool idea in theory, but in practice it's an unrelenting shitshow, designed solely to make you hate video games. At least the SaGa games did right by it. I liked the keyword system a lot and I'd love for a revamped version of it to show up in a newer game, but everything else can just gently caress right off
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Aug 30, 2012 17:32
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zenintrude posted:Clearly the writer has not been following Elentor's FF7 LP. I wonder if there is any other game out there that people misremember as badly as FF7.
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Aug 30, 2012 17:33
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Suaimhneas posted:What? I stole once from each enemy I fought and when I got Thievery it was already doing 7000+ damage. It could also depend on stat raising, since the formula is "(Anyone's) Steals * (Zidane's) Speed / 2". At a low level, or after having levelled up with equipment that doesn't give much +speed, it would take more steals to compensate. At endgame speed you're typically looking at around 600 steals to max out Thievery. Before endgame, you should still see some very decent numbers so long as you steal once or twice per battle.
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Aug 30, 2012 17:36
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ApplesandOranges posted:I'll actually say that unless you're going to fight Ozma, it takes far too much effort to get Thievery to anything decent. Even if you Steal from everything and never attack, by the time you first get Thievery you're likely only doing 1-2k damage. You steal from absolutely every little enemy you come across, you'll easily be doing 5k+ by the time you actually get the ability. Plus you won't be greedy with consumables since you'll replenish them at a pretty healthy rate. At that point, it's up to you whether you want to keep stealing, or if you want to try leveling your speed since the formula is (#ofSuccessfulSteals * Speed) or something similar, which goes up naturally as you gain levels but can be forced up too. Stealing is just the preferred way to go about it since pumping up your Speed stat, while not necessarily hard, is pretty drat arcane. You only need the 600 steals if you're doing a Level 1 Challenge. If you can manage to get 50 speed, you only need about 230 steals, and you'll get into a lot more than 230 encounters throughout the game. You'll probably get Thievery around... hmm, 35-45 range, and your speed will likely be in the mid 20s by that point, and you barely need 400 steals once you're that high and you'll probably have gotten into maybe 300, 400 encounters by then. ^ Whoops, Speed/2, so I guess you do double those numbers. It's not tough to steal twice in one random encounter, though. Also be sure to set your ATB to Wait and sit in your Item menu whenever your own actions animate in order to minimize the enemies' ATB charge and maximize your party's. Never enter in your entire party's actions at once, always keep someone free to do this. ImpAtom posted:I wonder if there is any other game out there that people misremember as badly as FF7. Fur20 fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Aug 30, 2012 |
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Aug 30, 2012 18:03
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If you're a spergy stat-maxing goon like I am, then you prioritize strength and even magic (for MP) over speed, given the way ATB works in this game. (Prioritizing spirit over everything for everyone is of course a given.) So 50 speed may not be in the cards, but even mid-30s speed only adds another ~200 steals. Either way, point is that you'll get pleeeeeenty if you actually do steal regularly. Thievery probably won't be fully maxed out when you first get it, but it'll certainly hit drat hard.
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Aug 30, 2012 18:53
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The White Dragon posted:And I will say you're full of it Maybe it's just me then. And Speed is absolutely useless in FF9 outside of Thievery. FF9's ATB system is set up that there will never be a case where a character gets double the turns of another barring counterattacks/Ozma. So if you're min-maxing, you should focus on Spirit first, then Strength/Magic. Speed is only for Zidane and you could be spending better points elsewhere. Even if you want to max out Thievery, just steal the extra 50-100 times and spend those stat points elsewhere.
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Aug 30, 2012 19:32
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ApplesandOranges posted:FF9's ATB system is set up that there will never be a case where a character gets double the turns of another barring counterattacks/Ozma. The other factor is, of course, that endgame enemies have 50 Speed or unmarked innate Haste and if you don't pay attention to your own, you'll end up fighting dudes who get two to three turns to your one instead even with Auto-Haste. And Spirit is too nebulous a stat to prioritize. It's okay for casters, crappy for everyone else since it otherwise only determines the rate at which you generate Trance and its rate of decay, and most characters' Trances are pretty mundane compared to their non-Trance options. It's okay earlygame for Steiner, but mid- and lategame, he has Shock and therefore no use for his Trance. Zidane, also useless since it's only a factor in his Steal formula if you don't have Bandit equipped. It's crappy for Freya because you get better mileage out of Dragon's Crest than her Trance (even if it makes her invulnerable), and even Amarant isn't that great because oh boy I'm gonna use multi-target No Mercy once As far as casters go, it's not bad because it determines the duration of Protect and Shell, but there's no real need for buffs in FF9 anyway. For Vivi, it's half his accuracy formula for Meteor, but if you're gonna grind up his level high enough that you can max his Spirit, you might as well just equip everyone with Auto-Reflect, give him Reflect x2, and bounce a 8x strength Bio at the enemy party. I'd say the only character who you really want to bother giving high Spirit to is Garnet because she has hands-down the best Trance in the game. Fur20 fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Aug 30, 2012 |
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Aug 30, 2012 19:57
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zenintrude posted:Hmm... There's no facepalm big enough to cover what that guy just said, unless something got lost in translation.
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Aug 30, 2012 21:12
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The White Dragon posted:And Spirit is too nebulous a stat to prioritize. It's okay for casters, crappy for everyone else since it otherwise only determines the rate at which you generate Trance and its rate of decay, and most characters' Trances are pretty mundane compared to their non-Trance options. It's okay earlygame for Steiner, but mid- and lategame, he has Shock and therefore no use for his Trance. Zidane, also useless since it's only a factor in his Steal formula if you don't have Bandit equipped. It's crappy for Freya because you get better mileage out of Dragon's Crest than her Trance (even if it makes her invulnerable), and even Amarant isn't that great because oh boy I'm gonna use multi-target No Mercy once After some work with Ctrl-F (on "Spr" and "Spirit") in the Battle Mechanics guide on GameFAQs, it looks like spirit improves: - Critical hit rate with regular attacks - How long beneficial status effects last - How quickly negative status effects wear off - How frequently regen ticks - How slowly poison and venom tick - Damage from Spare Change - Damage from thief swords and knight swords - Counterattack rate (when Counter is equipped) - How quickly trance refills - How slowly trance empties when active - Hit rate of Steal when not using Bandit (Bandit makes that step 100%) - Hit rate of Meteor - Percentage of HP you're revived with via Life (Spr +5)%, Phoenix (Spr +30)%, or Revive (Spr +20%). Also technically Full-life but it's (Spr +100)% so it's moot. Point being, it does a laundry list of useful poo poo. Boldfaced are the ones you didn't note. That said, I'll absolutely grant the point that speed is more useful than it otherwise would be, if you use the Wait trick with the ATB. E: Personally, I love it, if for no other reason, than for the way it makes regen even more insanely awesome than it already is. Regen ticks twice as fast at 50 spirit compared to 40 spirit. Vil fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Aug 30, 2012 |
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Aug 30, 2012 21:42
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Geez they pretty much made Spirit do anything extra they thought of.
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Aug 30, 2012 21:50
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To be fair to speed, the time it takes to get each turn scales with speed, exactly the same way as the time it takes for regen to tick scales with spirit. In other words, 50 speed is getting turns twice as fast as 40 speed or three times as fast as 30 speed. It basically boils down to a linear (60 - <stat>) function in both cases, and at a theoretical value of 60 you'd get turns instantly and regen would instantly heal you to full. Hence why the game caps you at 50 for those stats. You do have to make sure to use the Wait trick though in order to benefit from high speed. Otherwise, by the time everything's done animating, a. someone else will have their turn up again and b. each enemy gets to take a turn too. On the bright side, enemies can't take advantage of the Wait trick. 
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Aug 30, 2012 22:04
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What's the Wait Trick?
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Aug 30, 2012 22:06
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everyone posted:gently caress FF2 I can't really call FF2 a great game, or even a good one, but it really annoys me when people say it's "painful" to play. Have you played FF1 recently? FF2 is actually a fairly easy game for its day, nonsensical leveling system aside. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that the Berserk spell, when leveled up, demolishes bosses. Hell, I'm pretty sure I figured out how good the instant death-like spells were on my own. Really, the major problem FF2's system has is the evade/agility bullshit. It is rear end-backward (you gain agility by having high evade, which can get from high agility), unintuitive, and really easy to exploit. (Even still, I'll fully admit my love for FF2 is strange and unfounded. But it's not that bad a game.)
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Aug 30, 2012 22:11
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Well, one problem with spells in FF2 was that the game never told you that heavy armor inflicted penalties on spellcasting. So a lot of people would equip the best armor they had (Because after all, they can equip everything!) and then think magic sucks because it doesn't work.
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Aug 30, 2012 22:13
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Dr Pepper posted:What's the Wait Trick? Scroll back through TWD's recent posts in this topic. The basic idea is "have the battle system set to Wait, keep at least one character's turn up at all times, and hop into an item/ability submenu to trigger Wait whenever attacks are animating". It maximizes how much benefit you actually get from "ATB time", so you don't have a whole bunch of it go to waste - or more to the point, go to enemies - while all the various attack animations are going off. If you're not in a submenu (to pause "ATB time") and all four of your characters' ATB bars are full, then some or a lot of it is going to waste. That said, FF9 is an easy enough game where you can just play normally and ignore that that happens, but it's worth bearing in mind.
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Aug 30, 2012 22:20
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I don't really think so.
Mister Roboto fucked around with this message at 14:45 on Oct 23, 2014 |
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Aug 30, 2012 22:22
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The Dawn of Souls bonus dungeon was a great idea! Who doesn't want to play endgame-level enemies with guys that level 20 guy who died in the beginning of the story?
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Aug 30, 2012 22:22
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Mister Roboto posted:I seriously doubt anyone here who defends FF2 played it on the NES without any internet guides. I liked FF2 for Dawn of Souls well enough. You could not pay me to play the NES version.
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Aug 30, 2012 22:23
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Bonaventure posted:I will defend FF2 over FF1 until my dying breath. If you don't sperg out about grinding or getting poo poo early, and treat dungeons as multiple run events (go in once to get treasure, exit, go in again to accomplish the goal), I've found it's got a surprisingly balanced difficulty curve. Well, until the Jade Passage. Then it really turns to poo poo, like all Final Fantasy last dungeons before FF5. WOW I didn't think anyone else felt the same way! I agree with you completely and also must defend FF2, but I thought it would be pretty useless in this thread (note how nobody even bothered responding to you). I still think that most people making GBS threads on FF2 never tried playing the game normally. It's an NES game and its greatest flaw is that you have the option to mindlessly grind yourself to be overpowered. Of course that's all anyone hears about so they do it themselves for whatever reason and then call the game unbalanced... it IS balanced for anyone willing to play it normally. It actually has way minimal grind compared to FF1 and FF3. I don't see how folks come to the conclusion that it's unplayable. Anyone can try this to see how playable the game is: Pick 1 weapon and 1 spell for each main character, and stick with those for the entire game. Stock up on items (this is no different from FF1). Go through the game, retreating from dungeons to regroup when necessary (also not unheard of in FF1). The name of the game is, whatever doesn't kill you, makes you stronger. It's really interesting to see how your characters develop when you don't try so hard to game the system. FF3 on the other hand, is the only main FF I have yet to beat. The grind is worse than FF1. THAT is my idea of "unplayable". nene. fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Aug 30, 2012 |
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Aug 30, 2012 22:25
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nene. posted:WOW I didn't think anyone else felt the same way! I agree with you completely and also must defend FF2, but I thought it would be pretty useless in this thread (note how nobody even bothered responding to you). I still think that most people making GBS threads on FF2 never tried playing the game normally. My problem isn't that the game isn't rewarding, but that it's punishing. You're exploring a dungeon, you choose the wrong door, bam, PUNISHMENT ROOM 100% encounter rate with disproportionately strong enemies. You get unlucky, get slapped with Swap, you can't just Swap back because the enemies' HP totals suck. Made the mistake of making a dual-wielder? PUNISHMENT. As opposed to the rewards: treasures often suck or are battle items that you may or may not like to use, with some very rare exceptions where you get equipment that doesn't really get outdated but, again, PUNISHES you for not micromanaging your weapons. I got through the game using the default setup: Sword + Shield Firion, Bow + Magic Maria, Dualwielding Axe Guy, and then that last rear end in a top hat who joins your party comes in so late and so underpowered that you basically ignore him. I generally neglected buffs, which I didn't know were useful until I cleared the second quest (I basically said "gently caress this noise" because none of your temporary party members have shields by default and I refused to grind them up, but realized that a number of them come with mid-level buff spells and tried them out), but managed to beat the final boss by healing with Firion and pounding it with Holy from Maria after realizing that he can't target your back row unless your entire front line is dead. Obviously not the intended method, but that's what it got. Beatable, not nearly as challenging as everyone claims, but definitely not my idea of a good time. As far as its core game design goes, FF2 is very guilty of "too much wrist-slapping, not enough back-slapping" for its genre. Fur20 fucked around with this message at 00:01 on Aug 31, 2012 |
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Aug 30, 2012 23:55
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Since tonight's the final night for the FFVFJF, I decided to finally go through the final dungeon with my party of 37 Dragoon, 37 Summoner, 37 Geomancer, and 37 Thief. Everything was a breeze because I would flee from random fights and spam Bahamut/Odin on the bosses. But gently caress Neo-Exdeath. I fought him for about an hour before I gave up. I just don't have enough HP to manage Almagest.  My Dragoon (Bartz) is the only one that lives through it, but only barely with 50HP left and a poison de-buff. Sometimes he could live long enough to throw out a Phoenix Down on a Summoner so they can start using Phoenix on the rest of the party, but even then they go an entire round with no buffs and low HP. I really can't believe that I have to quit at this point. I've never been so frustrated on a final boss in a Final Fantasy game. 
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Aug 31, 2012 04:46
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LoudLoudNoise posted:I really can't believe that I have to quit at this point. I've never been so frustrated on a final boss in a Final Fantasy game.
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Aug 31, 2012 04:48
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Yeah, use those summons to good effect (the Magic Lamp is a godsend for that fight, too). And grind a few levels if you have to.
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Aug 31, 2012 04:49
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Note that summoning Odin manually won't use Zantetsuken (unless the back piece is the last alive), and to Petrify the Almagest rear end in a top hat, you're going to need to beat its 75% Magic Evasion with Shoat. I had a more offensive party than yours and I had to grind into my low 40s just to have the HP to survive an Almagest (just one). You may need to go further. Kyrosiris fucked around with this message at 05:06 on Aug 31, 2012 |
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Aug 31, 2012 04:58
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