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Maybe I'm weird but I can't play old games that were obviously never finished. Like, I can play FF9 again because it's the type of RPG that isn't made much anymore and I like the world and atmosphere a lot, I can play CT again because it's a good game, but I can't play Xenogears because I know they basically never finished it. I'd let that slide if I was desperate to play a new Square game in the PS1 days but you have enough choice now that you don't need to play half-finished stuff. The White Dragon posted:let's make a sequel to Chronic Trigger Travel to the year 420 AD
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Sep 9, 2012 08:13
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:If that isn't a testament to awful taste I don't know what is. Xenogears could have been so much more. Yeah, but it wasn't. I've only read lps of both, but Chrono Cross didn't have people sitting in chairs narrating for half the game.
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Sep 9, 2012 08:23
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Momomo posted:Yeah, but it wasn't. I've only read lps of both, but Chrono Cross didn't have people sitting in chairs narrating for half the game. Yeah, they compressed half the game's narration into ten minutes instead. Both are severely flawed games, but I have to say I like Xenogears more because A) giant robots, B) a more interesting battle system, and C) the characters have, well, character.
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Sep 9, 2012 08:29
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ImpAtom posted:Eh. Xenogears was, at its heart, an homage to mecha anime with an overly complex backstory (that mostly served to reference mecha anime.) Most of the game had actual dungeons, they only skipped one or two for the narrative style at the end. Momomo posted:Yeah, but it wasn't. I've only read lps of both, but Chrono Cross didn't have people sitting in chairs narrating for half the game. It was a fraction of the second disk, not half the game.
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Sep 9, 2012 08:33
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Pureauthor posted:Yeah, they compressed half the game's narration into ten minutes instead. Pyroxene Stigma posted:It was a fraction of the second disk, not half the game. Well it was still way more than Chrono Cross did. I have zero nostalgia for either game, and it just came off as the more salvageable of the two. Xenogears clearly had a lot of thought put into the story, but I dunno. It seemed seemed like it took itself way too seriously, so it was hard to swallow lategame plot twists when it starts out with uppercutting dinosaurs in a giant robot.
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Sep 9, 2012 08:48
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But Rocks Hurt Head posted:I've never played Cross but does anyone know how development went so wrong on the game? I don't think I've ever heard someone complement the game without massive caveats. The creative team got together for a brainstorming session, asked "What did people really love about Chrono Trigger?" After they finished making that list, they pinned it on a bulletin board and said "Ok, let's not do any of this." Which, well, it's a problem when that list contains things like "it's a fun breezy adventure" and "charming, distinctive characters." That, or they were making a stand-alone title, got like 70% done and then were told it was supposed to be a Chrono Trigger sequel.
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Sep 9, 2012 08:53
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Well the thing is that Chrono Cross is more a Radical Dreamers sequel than a Chrono Trigger one.
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Sep 9, 2012 09:05
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TurnipFritter posted:That, or they were making a stand-alone title, got like 70% done and then were told it was supposed to be a Chrono Trigger sequel. I believe this, the elements from CT never meshed well with the unique aspects of Cross' plot. Momomo posted:Well it was still way more than Chrono Cross did. I have zero nostalgia for either game, and it just came off as the more salvageable of the two. Xenogears clearly had a lot of thought put into the story, but I dunno. It seemed seemed like it took itself way too seriously, so it was hard to swallow lategame plot twists when it starts out with uppercutting dinosaurs in a giant robot. Actually, it started out with Fei going insane and murdering everyone and destroying his hometown, so I really don't know where you're coming from.
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Sep 9, 2012 09:06
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Chrono Cross is more like a Baten Kaitos prequel than a Chrono Trigger sequel. Masato Kato is the common element. He wrote the scripts for all three of those games, but Chrono Trigger's followed an outline by Dragon Quest director Yuji Horii rather than being wholly original. Interesting, isn't it?
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Sep 9, 2012 09:16
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CarpiliusCoralinus posted:Well the thing is that Chrono Cross is more a Radical Dreamers sequel than a Chrono Trigger one.
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Sep 9, 2012 09:17
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The White Dragon posted:This is true. I guess they wanted a major financial success, though, so to hit it out of the park, they tossed in some tangential CT references and rebranded it CHRONO SEQUEL! They shoulda just trusted the integrity of their off-main titles and just stuck with Radical Dreamers or something. It probably wouldn't even have any of the major flaws; it's really obvious that the biggest problems with CC come from any time they try to connect it to CT. Radical Dreamers (as a name) wouldn't have sold as well, but they really had a lot of great off-main titles at that time. Brave Fencer Musashi, Chrono Cross, Xenogears, Einhander, Threads of Fate, Bushido Blade... What happened, Squaresoft 
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Sep 9, 2012 09:20
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I had the demo of Bushido Blade from a Playstation Underground disc. It owned. Never played the full thing. Also where the gently caress is my Einhander sequel? To make this post on topic I'm going to play FFIX again. Best game.
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Sep 9, 2012 09:22
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Man, I loved those non-FF titles. They were so great! Well, except Tobal No.1. I know I'll probably be kickin' at someone's shins saying that, but I thought Tobal No.1 was pretty lovely. Someday I'll LP at least one of 'em even if I have to bust out my old graybrick PS1 and feed the composite in through a USB adapter to do it, haha. Brave Fencer Musashi was the first time I ever heard a video game say a dirty word! "What the-- what's all this crap?!" wasn't even transcribed, so I wasn't sure-sure that he was saying what I thought he was, but you knew deep down that this is exactly what the game was saying. Of course, these days CJ don't give no fucks about killin' bitch-rear end niggas for their green, but there was a magical time when companies wanted their spoken word scripts in games to be clean as a family movie from the 1930s. Fur20 fucked around with this message at 09:28 on Sep 9, 2012 |
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Sep 9, 2012 09:23
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remeez posted:I had the demo of Bushido Blade from a Playstation Underground disc. It owned. Never played the full thing. Facinating. Pyroxene Stigma posted:Radical Dreamers (as a name) wouldn't have sold as well, but they really had a lot of great off-main titles at that time. Brave Fencer Musashi, Chrono Cross, Xenogears, Einhander, Threads of Fate, Bushido Blade... "Great" in the case of Musashi, Xeno, and Threads.
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Sep 9, 2012 09:23
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:Radical Dreamers (as a name) wouldn't have sold as well, but they really had a lot of great off-main titles at that time. Brave Fencer Musashi, Chrono Cross, Xenogears, Einhander, Threads of Fate, Bushido Blade... The World Ends With You was pretty awesome but must have sold like poo poo because until recently they were pretending it didn't exist. SE is publishing loads of good Western stuff now too which is weird. The impression I'm getting is they're giving smaller game studios large budgets and more generous timelines than say Activision does.
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Sep 9, 2012 09:31
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I miss games like Musashi. psx Squaresoft was the best game company ever.
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Sep 9, 2012 09:38
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Himuro posted:I miss games like Musashi. psx Squaresoft was the best game company ever. We can argue about Final Fantasies all day, but this point I believe we all agree upon. They experimented, the games were fun, the plots were loving batshit in some cases... CarpiliusCoralinus posted:"Great" in the case of Musashi, Xeno, and Threads. 
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Sep 9, 2012 09:44
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:Radical Dreamers (as a name) wouldn't have sold as well, but they really had a lot of great off-main titles at that time. Brave Fencer Musashi, Chrono Cross, Xenogears, Einhander, Threads of Fate, Bushido Blade... The trend for that began even in the late-SNES days with a bunch of more off-beat titles which mostly never made it out of Japan, like Bahamut Lagoon, Live A Live, Treasure of the Rudras.... These days, while their output as a publisher is higher than ever, their more closely-integrated development studios seem to do far more sequels and spinoffs than original work. You do still get the occasional The World Ends With You, Sigma Harmonics (some kind of murder mystery RPG for the DS, apparently?), or The Last Remnant, but it does seem that a lot of the sorts of game that would've been released as its own thing in the past are instead being given Final Fantasy branding, and then as likely as not condemned to Versus-style development hell. My guess is that contemporary game budgets are so large that they feel compelled to micromanage them to death.
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Sep 9, 2012 09:45
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Bongo Bill posted:The trend for that began even in the late-SNES days with a bunch of more off-beat titles which mostly never made it out of Japan, like Bahamut Lagoon, Live A Live, Treasure of the Rudras.... You're missing Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana... 2?) which instead we got... Evermore. Evermore is an okay game, but compared to what we would have got, it's just depressing. FFIX is a lot more fun than I remember. I'm at Lindblum now and drat does that city feel alive. I'm trying to decide on a party involving characters I hardly touched the first time I played it. I'm guessing Zidane (he's mandatory right?), Freya, Quina, and... Eiko? Maybe Vivi? My standard team of Zidane, Steiner, Dagger, and Amarant got me through the game pretty smooth last time.
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Sep 9, 2012 10:09
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ShadeofDante posted:You're missing Seiken Densetsu 3 (Secret of Mana... 2?) which instead we got... Evermore. Evermore is an okay game, but compared to what we would have got, it's just depressing. Zidane is mandatory till Disc 4 - you can swap him out once you're in Memoria (and only Memoria, he'll be forced back in if you leave). I'll probably say just choose whoever you like. FFIX is a relaxed enough game that you can pretty much coast along with your favourites. So if you wanted to see the other 4 you didn't choose, just swap Zidane out in Disc 4 and play along.
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Sep 9, 2012 10:12
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Wasn't TWEWY developed by some other company and only published by Square, much like the thing with Eidos? Not only have all the unique one-off games disappeared, but so have their side-franchises like Seiken Densetsu, SaGa, and Crystal Chronicles. Now it's all about Final Fantasy, Kingdom Hearts, and Dragon Quest. On one hand, it's a shame that Square Enix has pretty much turned into a pure profit machine that doesn't really try new things that isn't a part of one of their big franchises. On the other hand, watching how the last few Mana games ended up, maybe it's better that it's not getting new games besides ports.
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Sep 9, 2012 10:51
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:FWIW I totally agree here. Finished and greatly enjoyed all three. Threads of Fate set itself up perfectly for a sequel that never came. I was being sarcastic. Hence the sarcasm quotes. I find all three to be kinda middling and they haven't aged well. I get why people like them though, nostalgia is a hell of a thing!
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Sep 9, 2012 11:10
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I love both Chrono Cross and Xenosaga, and while I can see why Xenosaga is hit-or-miss for a lot of people, Chrono Cross objectively kicks tons of rear end. I can see people initially being upset that the mechanics don't have much in common with Chrono Trigger, but a decade later people are still making GBS threads on it. Which is a shame, IMO, case it's loving awesome.
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Sep 9, 2012 11:31
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DiminishedAngel posted:I love both Chrono Cross and Xenosaga, and while I can see why Xenosaga is hit-or-miss for a lot of people, Chrono Cross objectively kicks tons of rear end.
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Sep 9, 2012 12:21
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Schwartzcough posted:If you can't at least appreciate the music, you have no soul. Those are all present with FF13, though. Each character had weapons, attack styles (and poses!), summons AND limit breaks that suited their characters. Snow is a headstrong heroic JRPG male who WILL SAVE THE GIRL NO MATTER WHAT. He's Sabin's strength and Locke's heroic mentality, and as a big guy his attack style is pretty much charging in fists-firsts and staying in the melee. When NOT attacking, his role is to defend others by staying in the front lines. Sazh, on the other hand, is a clearer-headed character who thinks BEFORE he leaps. He attacks from a distance with his guns; he's a thin guy about 40. He's not going to be rumbling in the dogpile like Snow. When not attacking he provides useful support strategic support skills (i.e. Haste), just like a strategic thinker would do. Note that the battle engine has their "positions" reflect this, too. Snow often moves and then stays close to the enemy, whereas Sazh rarely moves and keeps his distance. The other characters are the same, Fang is a proudly tough all up-in-your face lesbian and she has no problems nunchucking people face to face, whereas Vanille is perky but pretty tiny: perfectly suited for a long-range fighter who concentrates more on healing. The fact that her ultimate attack is DEATH is just hilarious, too. Seriously, all of the things you complimented FF6 for ARE present in FF13, even moreso at times. FF13 gets a lot of flak, and a lot of it is deserved, but I think so many people WANT to hate it they overlook some of the love and details that were put into it. The characters really are very well designed, even if you don't like how they are written. Mister Roboto fucked around with this message at 14:40 on Sep 9, 2012 |
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Sep 9, 2012 12:29
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ShadeofDante posted:FFIX is a lot more fun than I remember. I'm at Lindblum now and drat does that city feel alive. I'm trying to decide on a party involving characters I hardly touched the first time I played it. I'm guessing Zidane (he's mandatory right?), Freya, Quina, and... Eiko? Maybe Vivi? My standard team of Zidane, Steiner, Dagger, and Amarant got me through the game pretty smooth last time. I'm doing the same thing as you right now. First time around I did the "Standard" Zidane, Vivi, Steiner, Dagger (Team First Party You Get In The Game, a JRPG staple) This time I'm going for Freya, Eiko and either Amarant or Quina once I see who I find more useful. The thing is the game actually forces you into certain parties for most of the game anyway. I forgot when you get the freedom to choose but it's pretty far along, and even then they still make you do stuff like form 2 parties and use both. ApplesandOranges posted:Zidane is mandatory till Disc 4 - you can swap him out once you're in Memoria (and only Memoria, he'll be forced back in if you leave). Whaaat. So you can beat the game without Zidane in your party? He's a pretty good party member anyway though. THE AWESOME GHOST fucked around with this message at 12:35 on Sep 9, 2012 |
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Sep 9, 2012 12:32
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Mister Roboto posted:Seriously, all of the things you complimented FF6 for ARE present in FF13, even moreso at times.
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Sep 9, 2012 12:50
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CloseFriend posted:I love VI, but if anything, I found XIII even better at differentiating the characters' usefulness in battle. In the vast majority of the main series, the characters' capabilities get pretty samey by the endgame. Even in VI, by the time you get the band back together in the World of Ruin most of the characters' individual skills have obsolesced and strategy revolves around magic and relics. Every game in the series has characters whose relevant skill sets mostly bleed together by the end if you let them except IV and IX (I think; I haven't played any in a while). In XIII at least, even by the end of the main story, developing the non-"natural" roles is still such a prohibitive pain in the rear end that you have to really put a lot of work in to make all the characters the same. 12 fixed this in the International release where you choose predefined jobs for everyone. They weren't based on the characters though, you could make Basch your black mage and Penelo your knight. 10 had predefined jobs early on but yeah by the end if every character maxed out the sphere grid they were almost functionally identical. The only differences were overdrives and the fact that Yuna could summon. 9 does have defined job commands for everyone but the "endgame" is basically getting each character to do 9999 damage, most enemies in the game will go down in 6 turns max if you can do this and everyone has a pretty easy combo or ability to get there (not sure about Amarant, maybe Throw?
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Sep 9, 2012 14:11
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Mister Roboto posted:FF13 gets a lot of flak, and a lot of it is deserved, but I think so many people WANT to hate it they overlook some of the love and details that were put into it. The characters really are very well designed, even if you don't like how they are written. Oh, wow, as much as I love XIII, I'd never thought about it like that. I mean, I knew each character had those best suited roles, and I already appreciated their characterizations in the story, but I never drew the connection between the two. I still wish they hadn't set up the crystarium so it would seem like you had some degree of customization, though; that probably put off a lot of people.
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Sep 9, 2012 14:34
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So despite FF6 being a game I grew up with, I finally beat it for the first time last night. It was weird, I was expecting Kefka to be harder than he actually was. I don't think I over-leveled much (the vast majority of my party was about to hit 50), but I guess the gold hairpin + gem box, as well as the genji glove + offering can really trivialize some fights. Umaro was such a fun character to have in the final battle. I really enjoyed him chucking my party members at the various Kefkas while the other guys did their thing. He and Celes made it from start to finish in that fight (I also had Shadow and Edgar, but they got replaced by Sabin and Relm between different tiers.) I'm thinking of tackling another one of these played-but-haven't beaten Final Fantasies on soon. Right now I'm torn between VII and IX. I would appreciate any suggestions as to which one would be a better transition.
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Sep 9, 2012 14:52
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Arrrthritis posted:So despite FF6 being a game I grew up with, I finally beat it for the first time last night. FF7 is a more modern world. FF9 is a more steampunk FF6 world. FF7 is also getting a little clunky these days with its blocky graphics. FF9 has better graphics overall. I personally think FF7 has better music. FF9's is good...just unmemorable. Battle engine wise, they're pretty similar, but FF9's is more refined. FF9 also has slightly worse loading times for battles, possibly the worst in the entire series. FF7's cast is also slightly more memorable than FF9's. Yes, someone will inevitably come in and say that 9 has Vivi and Steiner, but that's pretty much all that anyone cares about. Say what you will about Cloud being emo or Barret being stereotypical, at least they're REMEMBERED. Half of FF9's cast is completely forgotten by most of the FF fandom.
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Sep 9, 2012 14:56
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Arrrthritis posted:So despite FF6 being a game I grew up with, I finally beat it for the first time last night. Definitely VII before IX, and not even for any sort of "which game is better" reasons. IX has a bunch of improvements to UI and useability that'll make it hard to go back to VII's more antiquated systems. But certainly play both. Namnesor fucked around with this message at 14:59 on Sep 9, 2012 |
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Sep 9, 2012 14:56
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Arrrthritis posted:I'm thinking of tackling another one of these played-but-haven't beaten Final Fantasies on soon. Right now I'm torn between VII and IX. I would appreciate any suggestions as to which one would be a better transition. If you want more VI, go for IX. If you want something different, go for VII.
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Sep 9, 2012 15:02
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I think I'm going to go with VII, then, just so it doesn't feel like a step back going from IX to VII. You guys have been really helpful, thanks!
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Sep 9, 2012 15:15
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:If that isn't a testament to awful taste I don't know what is. Xenogears could have been so much more. If we had gotten a completed Xenogears I'm sure it would have been more or less the same but with a lot more detail. Stuff found only in Perfect Works would have been in the actaul game for example. Maybe Rico would have been important after Nortune. I think Gears is a deeply flawed game but I love it anyway. It has horrible dungeons, Babel Tower (a whole magnitude of terrible worse than any other dungeon in teh game so I count it as its own flaw), and some really dumb plot elements like what Billy's dad was up to and why he looks different. poo poo like that was just unnecessary. But then on the other hand, all these things are insignificant as far as I'm concerned. I couldn't care less if Billy's arc is dumb because I don't care about Billy. The game is really only a story about Fei, Elly, the main villains, and that's it. The others are just there for flavor. If you don't like Fe, Eilly, the origin story and all that, you probably won't like the game, no matter how much you enjoy the side charactes and plots. I really like the backstory of humanity being created by a malicious superweapon AI as well as the tragic love story of all the Fei's and Elly's. I'm a sucker for romance and XG definitely has one of my favorite tales of tested and enduring love in a game. I also really liked Grahf. He hammed it up to the max but at the end of the day, it's a really interesting twist that the villain is another "Fei" who had already lived through the same suffering Fei did but ended up choosing a different path. And I think we can all agree the music was some of the best ever, especially on the PS1. Whether you wanted something sweet something sad, or something ominous the OST delivered perfectly in all areas. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 15:38 on Sep 9, 2012 |
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Sep 9, 2012 15:34
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This is perfect, all right. Perfectly, ear-piercingly awful.
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Sep 9, 2012 17:09
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Really? I've always heard Lahan's theme listed as a lot of people's favorite town theme. There are alternative choices for sweet themes. I prefer these anyway. The latter I like a lot but I can never remember the name.
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Sep 9, 2012 17:17
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:Zidane, Vivi, Steiner, Dagger (Team First Party You Get In The Game, a JRPG staple) Team Wizard of Oz, you mean. I know I'm gonna get dogpiled for this but I didn't like FFIX's art style at all. I loved the modern vibe of VII and I thought VIII was fantastic (one lovely plot point and some poorly implemented gameplay ideas aside), so I was really disappointed by the throwback approach for IX. The gameplay more than made up for the visuals, thankfully, but it was still a disappointment. I loved the older games - I'm old enough to have started RPGs with Dragon Warrior, so there's plenty of nostalgia for me to draw on - but I was enjoying finally seeing games with newer aesthetics. I understand why Square made FFIX the way they did, but I'm glad they moved in a new direction afterwards.
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Sep 9, 2012 17:53
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Mega64 posted:Wasn't TWEWY developed by some other company and only published by Square, much like the thing with Eidos? Crystal Chronicles would be the replacement for the Mana series, and that was a pretty large drop in quality. Maybe if they hadn't made the first game as one of those idiotic "you can play with friends... but only if you're using gameboys as controllers because clearly using the menu rings around that character, while everyone can still fight and move, would just be crazy" games. Like Four Swords.  I'd love to see a new Seiken Denetsu game. Do hand drawn sprites, put it on the WiiU, and go from there.
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Sep 9, 2012 18:30
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Mister Roboto posted:Those are all present with FF13, though. Each character had weapons, attack styles (and poses!), summons AND limit breaks that suited their characters. Snow is a headstrong heroic JRPG male who WILL SAVE THE GIRL NO MATTER WHAT. He's Sabin's strength and Locke's heroic mentality, and as a big guy his attack style is pretty much charging in fists-firsts and staying in the melee. When NOT attacking, his role is to defend others by staying in the front lines. Well, we're sort of talking about different things. When I mentioned each character having equipment options, I was talking about how each character could potentially equip a weapon, shield, armor, helmet, and two accessories, and different characters could equip different types of equipment. The large number of equipment options let you make more strategic decisions based on the equipment properties and who would get what. Starting with 7, the equipment options were dumbed down tremendously- one weapon, one armor, one accessory. (Sometimes you didn't even get the armor, as in VIII or XIII, and in X it didn't really do anything). Each character had a unique type of weapon. I suppose you could say the unique weapons helped define the characters, but that's hardly unique to XIII; half the series had characters with their own unique weapons that define them. But 7, 8, 10, and 13 all have virtually no variety or options in the equipment at all- character differentiation in battle is instead determined by what they can do!... Except most of those games have no real differentiation there either. And while it's true that XIII has positioning mostly based on weapons that make characters close in or stay backed off, it sounds like that's largely determined by "is it a melee weapon or a distance weapon, or magic?" In other words, "close or far?" That's not particularly differentiating. Also, while the characters may have preferred roles, it doesn't feel that unique about Snow to have Sentinal when half the rest of the team can do it too. Not knocking XIII here; just saying my point still stands that not only did characters in VI in have unique commands, but HOW those commands were implemented was often cleverly tied to the character's personality. Gau, the beast-child, goes into an uncontrollable berserker rage based on monster attack routines; Setzer the gambler has a roulette wheel- several of the characters get their own unique mini-game in battle based specifically on their personality. Besides "in your face" or "backed off," the characters in XIII really don't give that feeling of uniqueness.
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Sep 9, 2012 18:31
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