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Rangpur posted:All this talk about the worst game in the series caused me to reconsider a vital mystery: why did I hate FFIX? Of all the entries I've finished, that's the only one I couldn't be bothered to replay. Reading White Dragon's LP made it look great. Was I just exceptionally bitter back then or something? Quite possibly! But the gameplay reason is the thousand little ways the game likes to rub it in that you are playing it badly. Bosses with rare steals, the baffling mess that is Tetrad Whateverthefuck, the hippo racing, the jump rope, the frog catching, the mock fighting during the play, the attack on Treefort Ratman, the goddamned Pluto Knights and their goddamned preferred roles... As opposed to FFVIII, where you are literally being graded the whole time, using totally unexplained criteria? You were too slow, or maybe too fast, and you didn't kill enough people, or maybe you should've been killing more, but only if it didn't cost you time which is more important, and argh! I know that was mostly only for money, but I do not like the feeling that the game is watching over my shoulder and judging me the whole time based on expectations it never tells me. Most of the stuff you're explaining for IX are just a series of minigames with attached rewards, or rare steals, neither of which are exactly unique to IX. Also, here's a hint: there's no reason to play the Hippaul Racing or Jump Rope games, and they should be skipped because they're terrible. Even the card game can be safely ignored except for that one mandatory section.
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Jul 21, 2013 23:03
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Rangpur posted:All this talk about the worst game in the series caused me to reconsider a vital mystery: why did I hate FFIX? Of all the entries I've finished, that's the only one I couldn't be bothered to replay. Reading White Dragon's LP made it look great. Was I just exceptionally bitter back then or something? Quite possibly! But the gameplay reason is the thousand little ways the game likes to rub it in that you are playing it badly. Bosses with rare steals, the baffling mess that is Tetrad Whateverthefuck, the hippo racing, the jump rope, the frog catching, the mock fighting during the play, the attack on Treefort Ratman, the goddamned Pluto Knights and their goddamned preferred roles... This is a rather bizarre complaint but it sounds to me like you just don't like mini-games and are taking things a bit too seriously. Half the things you list aren't forced at all, there is no RNG that I remember outside of stealing, and you don't even miss out on any real content by not doing those things, mostly just items. And I don't have the slightest clue what you mean by "rubbing it in" or "evaluating", are you actually mad that the game has rewards and scorekeeping in its mini-games? 
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Jul 21, 2013 23:04
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:You're absolutely right in that they get traded back often, but I haven't met anyone who liked XIII. I see them on the internet; that may be the best place for them. On the other hand I was in Gamestop the other day and heard two people talking about how much they're looking forward to Lighting Returns when a trailer or something played for it. v  v It had its fans, it's just kind of unlikely that "Final Fantasy XIII" is going to come up in regular conversation outside of the internet for people to mention it and it probably doesn't have a lot of die-hard fans who will bring it up outside of that. I doubt it's the most popular of the lot by any means but the most popular of the lot is probably not any FF game published in the last 12 years.It's certainly got a bad reputation but it's really easy to get into the echo chamber and forget that there are lots of people who happily absorb huge amounts of terrible anime and enjoy it or at least have enough of a good time that they don't leave with strongly negative opinions. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Jul 21, 2013 |
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Jul 21, 2013 23:11
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Yeah, what the hell? I didn't pay any attention at all to the minigames in FF9 and I didn't miss out on poo poo. It's not like the game's hard enough that you need better equipment or more money, and it's not like any huge revelations about the plot are hidden behind those minigames. Oh no! Some nobles in treno I will never see again didn't like my play duel! The horror?
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Jul 21, 2013 23:13
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I will say that for completionists, IX is probably the worst game in the whole series, though VIII is very close behind. When I was a teenager with nothing better to do than waste tons of time on stupid poo poo I was always proud of my "perfect" save file in FF7, and even that isn't as "perfect" as some other people with like clinical levels of OCD. I think that kind of person is attracted to RPGs very easily, and IX would drive them insane. edit: Seriously though, the more I think about the more IX feels like a giant middle finger to those kind of people. Excalibur II especially. The fact that some dude wrote a guide on how to get a perfect game while still getting Excalibur II by basically skipping everything that wasn't permanently missable, playing as fast as humanly possible (to the point of memorizing the entire game, basically) and then still being required to open the PS1's disc tray so cutscenes didn't count for your time limit (making a perfect game impossible on the PS3 or PSP / Vita) is nuts. Like that level of spergin' over a game just boggles my mind. Honey Badger fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jul 21, 2013 |
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Jul 21, 2013 23:16
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Bongo Bill posted:Recommend against picking it up. It's got lovely, broken, redundant, pointless third-party DRM on it. We're talking install limits, internet connection required, the works. Except after you log in/create a SE account (Which was actually insanely fast. Like, put in e-mail address, get an e-mail and create a PW and I was done.) that DRM isn't really a thing? Like you never have to log in again and you don't need a constant internet connection (unless you go into the options are enable cloud saves). Or at least I didn't get kicked off when my internet went down when I was playing. ZenMasterBullshit fucked around with this message at 23:24 on Jul 21, 2013 |
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Jul 21, 2013 23:22
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Well what do you know! I found a use for Dancers in FFD. When I was fighting the Earth Eater, I used my Dancer to heal my Paladin and D. Knight. Cure Dance doesn't trigger his spell absorption. My other two mages got killed by that point, but I decided to see how far I could go before having to reset. Killed him before he got me  That accessory he dropped is just what I need for the last dungeon. Prevents enemy encounters oh god yes Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 00:08
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Honey Badger posted:I will say that for completionists, IX is probably the worst game in the whole series, though VIII is very close behind. <snip> I think that kind of person is attracted to RPGs very easily, and IX would drive them insane. I'm not arguing IX is a bad game. I'm trying to explain why I didn't enjoy playing it. The plot and characters hold up well in contrast to FFVIII, which was guilty of the same things. But Final Anime-Military-Academy's balance is wonky as hell. I stumbled through it blind and still accomplished almost everything, so I never had the chance to get grouchy about it. I think of FF9 as similar to Breath of Fire IV in that respect: characters, plot, gameplay mechanics? Loved it. Anything unrelated to the plot or core mechanics just... grated. Given the opportunity to go back and play IX again, I'd likely enjoy it--a decade and change allows better perspective. 'Course I'm not buying a PS3 or Vita so... 
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Jul 22, 2013 00:22
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Honey Badger posted:edit: Seriously though, the more I think about the more IX feels like a giant middle finger to those kind of people. Excalibur II especially. The fact that some dude wrote a guide on how to get a perfect game while still getting Excalibur II by basically skipping everything that wasn't permanently missable, playing as fast as humanly possible (to the point of memorizing the entire game, basically) and then still being required to open the PS1's disc tray so cutscenes didn't count for your time limit (making a perfect game impossible on the PS3 or PSP / Vita) is nuts. Like that level of spergin' over a game just boggles my mind. (I am part of the problem.)
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Jul 22, 2013 00:32
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DACK FAYDEN posted:That guide was really helpful for letting me know to skip stuff. Thankfully, if you ignore the racing and jumping rope, there's plenty of time to spare to get E2 and only miss some stupid marginal chests. Didn't even affect my treasure hunter rank! Oh yeah, it's definitely a useful guide, but god drat the idea of speed-racing through the game so fast you can't even enjoy it, popping the lid on every cutscene, trying to jumprope perfectly 1000 times, getting every missable treasure and item, and getting Excalibur II all so you can say you have a "perfect" file is nuts. That's not even a game anymore, it's a job that you don't get paid for. edit: Also, is there a reason SE seems to not like releasing things on PC? Like come on dudes, I didn't buy a decent PC so that I could also have to buy every drat console that comes out to play your games. Is the PC market in Japan non-existent or something? Honey Badger fucked around with this message at 00:52 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 00:39
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Yes, Japan is the one country in Asia that doesn't play PC games. Most of the PC releases that come out of there are either indie games or porn.
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Jul 22, 2013 01:12
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SSNeoman posted:Well what do you know! I found a use for Dancers in FFD. When I was fighting the Earth Eater, I used my Dancer to heal my Paladin and D. Knight. Cure Dance doesn't trigger his spell absorption. My other two mages got killed by that point, but I decided to see how far I could go before having to reset. Killed him before he got me I refuse to believe that anything makes them actually useful. I still need to level Nacht up in them to get Phantom Rush too...
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Jul 22, 2013 01:15
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Surely the western market is large enough to warrant a team for some ports, though? It seems like they could be losing out on a crazy amount of money for the comparative work involved, but maybe not. Maybe enough people buy a console just to play a few games that don't come out on PC, but that seems kind of crazy to me. Here's hoping the dumptrucks full of money the FFVII re-release for Steam made them might be a hint to reconsider, but probably not.
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Jul 22, 2013 01:17
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quote:edit: Also, is there a reason SE seems to not like releasing things on PC? Like come on dudes, I didn't buy a decent PC so that I could also have to buy every drat console that comes out to play your games. Is the PC market in Japan non-existent or something? Yeah, more or less. When I went there, the only PC games I saw on sale was porn games, a few copies of Fate/Stay night (which I guess counts as porn the same way slipping a couple seconds of sex into the LotR movies would count as porn) and oddly enough a copy of Diablo. Granted I wasn't actively looking for PC games but most of the people I talked to either just played console games or said they went to arcades. EDIT: Oh goddamnit that post wasn't there when I was typing this.
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Jul 22, 2013 01:18
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The really weird thing about that is that the entire reason Japan started making RPGs is because they played Wizardry and Ultima which were PC games.
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Jul 22, 2013 01:32
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precision posted:The really weird thing about that is that the entire reason Japan started making RPGs is because they played Wizardry and Ultima which were PC games. Yuji Horii played Wizardry and Ultima, and he liked them so much that he wanted to make a game like those that anybody could play even if they barely had any idea of what a video game was. That's where Dragon Quest came from.
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Jul 22, 2013 01:34
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precision posted:The really weird thing about that is that the entire reason Japan started making RPGs is because they played Wizardry and Ultima which were PC games. And yet no JRPG has created a setting as cool as Ultima 8's Pagan.
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Jul 22, 2013 01:37
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I guess it's just a cultural difference, but it's hard to wrap my head around an entire country where everyone has access to high-end PCs and yet nobody uses them for games. I'm so used to people declaring PCs to be the one true way to play games that going out of the way not to do it is kind of funny. Is there any specific reason why PC gaming never took off there? Like slow internet connections or crappy download limits or something? I just hate that VII and VIII are the only FFs available on PC that aren't a subscription-based MMO. I haven't owned a console since the PS1 days and it sucks missing out on every new FF and MGS, which were my favorite games back in the day. I just can't justify spending hundreds of bucks on a console to play a couple games.
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Jul 22, 2013 01:43
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Honey Badger posted:I just can't justify spending hundreds of bucks on a console to play a couple games. Well, to be fair, you could probably find a PS3 on Craigslist for like $90.
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Jul 22, 2013 01:54
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precision posted:Well, to be fair, you could probably find a PS3 on Craigslist for like $90. Probably, but then factor in the cost of the games and the fact that I'd have to buy a PS4 to play anything coming out in the future and it just kind of kills my enthusiasm. I'll probably pick one up some day just to finally play through everything, but eh.
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Jul 22, 2013 02:04
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Is there a reason why XII isn't on the PSN Store? They have every game up to IX, and if they're going to come out with an upscaled version of X/X-2 I would understand why they wouldn't have the originals cut into any potential sales, but XII's absence is a little odd.
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Jul 22, 2013 02:33
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Great Lakes Log posted:Is there a reason why XII isn't on the PSN Store? They have every game up to IX, and if they're going to come out with an upscaled version of X/X-2 I would understand why they wouldn't have the originals cut into any potential sales, but XII's absence is a little odd. Because they'll probably do an HD version of XII after X/X-2.
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Jul 22, 2013 02:34
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Great Lakes Log posted:Is there a reason why XII isn't on the PSN Store? They have every game up to IX, and if they're going to come out with an upscaled version of X/X-2 I would understand why they wouldn't have the originals cut into any potential sales, but XII's absence is a little odd. All the articles seem vague, will this be released on the PSN as well or just a physical disc?
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Jul 22, 2013 02:55
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precision posted:All the articles seem vague, will this be released on the PSN as well or just a physical disc? I remember that they're selling them separately on the Vita, so I bet they'll do that for digital on PS3, rather than both for $40, you can get them digital individually for $20, maybe.
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Jul 22, 2013 03:14
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Honey Badger posted:I guess it's just a cultural difference, but it's hard to wrap my head around an entire country where everyone has access to high-end PCs and yet nobody uses them for games. I'm so used to people declaring PCs to be the one true way to play games that going out of the way not to do it is kind of funny. They have some of the fastest internet connections in the world so it can't be that. I really don't know. I do know that the fact that they are very densely populated and spend a lot of money on entertainment is why Arcades are still a thing there.
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Jul 22, 2013 07:28
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I think that the sparsity of PC gaming in Japan is one of the factors that is widening the divide between their offerings and the rest of the world, for sure. Isn't there a pretty strong bias against things like digital distribution, too, to the point where brick and mortar music stores are still doing big business? That's a huge difference in attitude compared to other countries where Steam and iTunes are the it-thing.
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Jul 22, 2013 07:30
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Defiance Industries posted:I think that the sparsity of PC gaming in Japan is one of the factors that is widening the divide between their offerings and the rest of the world, for sure. Isn't there a pretty strong bias against things like digital distribution, too, to the point where brick and mortar music stores are still doing big business? That's a huge difference in attitude compared to other countries where Steam and iTunes are the it-thing. Hopefully this will change next gen, given that both Sony and MS are talking about their design architecture being really close to PC so maybe we'll see more ports to PC of games coming out of Japan.
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Jul 22, 2013 07:40
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I don't think I know anyone personally here in Japan who uses their PC's for anything other than work and/or music/video production. When I was younger I enjoyed a few PC games but on the whole I hated never knowing what exactly the problem was when there was an error, having to worry about installation requirements, adventure games fell out of favor, didn't care for FPSes, old RPGs were hard, etc. With a console you just plug and play, and I think that might be a lot of it. If you live in a city and you're on a train or subway a lot you have some time to kill, so if you don't have a book you'll have a DS, PSP, or Vita. Most households either didn't own a computer or if they did it wasn't used for much other than documents or email (and more recently blogs I guess). Mobile platforms and development are huge and there's been a real boom of companies focusing on mobile stuff. There are so many free-to-play and mobile tie-ins and that's why you saw a lot of FF games exclusive to Japanese mobile phones. I remember playing the IV Interlude demo my old dumbphone. The Consumer Agency banned gacha-based games last year though, which is good because companies were making so many of them and so many people were spending way too much money on them. I am not an expert and this is all pretty anecdotal though! Anyway, if I get War of the Lions over the regular FF Tactics, is it pretty much the exact same story, with just more 'stuff'? Or are they really different? I can't seem to find a solid explanation. I haven't played either.
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Jul 22, 2013 08:04
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The two games have very different English translations, but if you're in Japan, I don't think you have to worry about that.  I think they're the same script in Japanese.If they are the same script, then yeah, they're basically just the same game. War of the Lions has a few new bonuses like Balthier from FF12 as a hidden character, but War of the Lions is just an enhanced port of FFT. Like the PSP port of Valkyrie Profile, or the PSP port of FF1. That said, War of the Lions does suffer from some slowdown in places.
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Jul 22, 2013 08:07
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ImpAtom posted:Because they'll probably do an HD version of XII after X/X-2. This would depend entirely on X/X-2 remaster's sales. People are already denouncing it because of the facial differences between the two versions.
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Jul 22, 2013 08:08
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Elec posted:Anyway, if I get War of the Lions over the regular FF Tactics, is it pretty much the exact same story, with just more 'stuff'? Or are they really different? I can't seem to find a solid explanation. I haven't played either. War of the Lions has a new translation, adds a bunch of small stuff (characters from other Ivalice games, a few new classes), and slightly rebalances things. It also has crippling slowdown, however, this can be fixed on a PSP with custom firmware.
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Jul 22, 2013 08:08
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Azure_Horizon posted:This would depend entirely on X/X-2 remaster's sales. People are already denouncing it because of the facial differences between the two versions. Yeah, anyone who feels that was is going to buy it anyway. If it doesn't sell well it ain't gonna be because of that. Endorph posted:The two games have very different English translations, but if you're in Japan, I don't think you have to worry about that. The PSP port of VP is sadly pretty lovely. 
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Jul 22, 2013 08:10
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ImpAtom posted:Yeah, anyone who feels that was is going to buy it anyway. If it doesn't sell well it ain't gonna be because of that. I don't know man, Auron's sunglasses are a lot lower now. 
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Jul 22, 2013 08:19
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Endorph posted:That said, War of the Lions does suffer from some slowdown in places. Great news! Kinda.. well its great if you have an iPad. War of the Lions on iPad got an update about a month ago, completely fixed all slowdown issues, the game zooms along now. Touched up the sprites too!
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Jul 22, 2013 08:27
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I highly doubt character faces are going to affect that game's sales at all. I think the fact that they're also giving X-2, a game most people probably wouldn't even consider buying by itself because of its iffy reputation even if they're curious about it, is going to ensure it's going to be pretty profitable. And aren't there people in the US or wherever who never got to play with the Expert Sphere Grid and the superbosses in X? A bunch of people will want that too I'd wager.
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Jul 22, 2013 08:36
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The GIG posted:I don't know man, Auron's sunglasses are a lot lower now.
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Jul 22, 2013 08:42
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Spaceman Future! posted:Great news! Kinda.. well its great if you have an iPad. War of the Lions on iPad got an update about a month ago, completely fixed all slowdown issues, the game zooms along now. Touched up the sprites too! This also works if you have an iPhone, but playing this game on anything smaller than an iPad mini is an exercise in frustration. When is Square going to release this to the US Google Play Store? Because I have a feeling my Nexus 4 is going to be just the right size to enjoy this game without lugging a tablet around.
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Jul 22, 2013 08:54
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ImpAtom posted:The PSP port of VP is sadly pretty lovely. How so? I played through it a couple times and didn't notice anything particularly different from the original. It's not like the trainwreck that is the SO2 port. There's some real minor differences based on it being based on the original Japanese version and lacking a couple interface tweaks from the US release but there wasn't anything particularly game ruining.
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Jul 22, 2013 09:10
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dis astranagant posted:How so? I played through it a couple times and didn't notice anything particularly different from the original. It's not like the trainwreck that is the SO2 port. It's based on the Japanese version of the game and so doesn't include the interface updates exclusive to the US verson, which makes some things (menu browsing in particular) shittier than they have to be. It's minor things but they add up. You can more easily equip and upgrade characters not in your party, Lenneth remembers the previously equipped skills when changing weapons instead of just de-equipping her skills, things like that. There's a few other minor things they didn't carry over either like some bug fixes. It also has some nasty slowdown in places and the way they ported the textures looks pretty bad. It's not unplayable but it's pretty low-effort. The PS1 version is basically better in every way aside from the low-budget anime scenes instead of the CG scenes. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 09:18 on Jul 22, 2013 |
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Jul 22, 2013 09:11
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I had no idea either the PC version or the 2012 re-release of FF7 (not sure which) polished up the script. "This guy is sick", eh Aeris?
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