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TheWorstAtWords posted:Was there any reason to ever use Eidolons in XIII other than the cool summoning animations? The only times I remember are using Vanille's summon to knock down Adamantoises so I Yeah Snow gets his Gestalt up out of battle and rides around in this FMV and you ask why he doesn't just always do that and then the game is even worse. This is a recurring theme. But what is Gestalt you ask? Literally a silhouette. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Gestalt or https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gestalt Quoting this for the new page:
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Aug 4, 2013 23:49
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:Right, but what is the difference in cast time? A few frames or something actually noticeable like a few seconds? It's stuff that can matter in post game, but mostly doesn't at all for basic completion.
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Aug 4, 2013 23:50
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Defiance Industries posted:I would think not, given that Tidus = Meg Ryan was unintentional but Sazh was supposed to look like Lionel Ritchie. wait... he was supposed to... what?
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Aug 4, 2013 23:50
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CAPTAIN CAPSLOCK posted:Right, but what is the difference in cast time? A few frames or something actually noticeable like a few seconds? It's not a huge thing, but I did find it to be a little annoying. Sazh for instance has a casting animation that's a bit longer than other characters'. It doesn't feel like it was an intended feature though, because why would they just make him worse for no reason? I enjoyed the battle system for XIII, but they definitely could've fixed it up.
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Aug 4, 2013 23:50
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Dragonatrix posted:On the other hand, they're also a lot slower and less efficient than just casting regular Fire/Blizzard/Thunder which can be used a lot more in the same amount of time, and deal proportionally more damage. Even the AI knows this and will never cast anything else. If there's any fights where not using the first level spells isn't more efficient, I have no idea. At least the -agas might be good for crowd control if you somehow need it, I guess. I can't even think of why you'd bother using the -ara stuff since they don't seem to do anything different or better other than take longer for no reason. -ara spells affect multiple targets and also deal more damage on Staggered targets than the initial spells. -aga spells are great for sending an entire enemy group into Staggered status if you chain nothing but -agas at the very start of a battle. Aeroga is great for crowd control because it can suck in nearby enemies and stun them. The AI changes based on enemy count and closeness of the foes: They'll use second-tier and third-tier magic spells for groups, and mix up their spells with the -Strike abilities to drive up the chain gauge faster than the player, who would just opt for casting a bunch of spells in a row. In this sense, the AI is actually telling you what works better. Re: Sazh and his magic casting; they made up for it with the fact that his version of Blitz and his Limit Break are two of the best abilities in the game for pure DPS.
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Aug 4, 2013 23:56
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Sabin was always my favorite Final Fantasy character because of this. 
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Aug 5, 2013 00:01
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I think one of the many changes of that FF6 ROM hack posted a couple weeks ago was that Sabin can now Suplex anything. One more reason to play it.
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Aug 5, 2013 00:02
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ImpAtom posted:No, it was perfectly aware of that it was! The director shamelessly wanted to make a porn game and has admitted as much. Meh, I didn't mind that Mugitani Kouichi did the character designs for Xenosaga II and III, even though he does hentai too.(and it really shows in Ep3) It's not like there is actually any porn in the game - just comedy scenes that show the developers know their audience. I guess I'm just desensitized to fanservice after so many years of JRPGs and anime. It's an inevitable part of the game so I just shrug and look passed it and enjoy the battle system. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 00:15 on Aug 5, 2013 |
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Aug 5, 2013 00:08
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I really don't know how anyone can defend FF13's battle system for the simple fact that positioning is at the same time both incredibly important and completely uncontrollable.
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Aug 5, 2013 02:01
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Fister Roboto posted:I really don't know how anyone can defend FF13's battle system for the simple fact that positioning is at the same time both incredibly important and completely uncontrollable. Well I mean, if you could move around you could just dodge all the enemy attacks! That wouldn't be fun? Instead enjoy the enemy constantly dodging attacks because your lead character got bumped out of the way by another enemy in between them!
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Aug 5, 2013 02:03
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Fister Roboto posted:I really don't know how anyone can defend FF13's battle system for the simple fact that positioning is at the same time both incredibly important and completely uncontrollable. Because positioning is actually not very important in the game. It can come into play but in general the biggest impact outside of the weird thing with Sazh's limit break is a slight decrease in damage taken in certain situations. It's a mechanic that could be improved for certain but it doesn't have a tremendous impact on how fights play out. Considering we're talking about the franchise where basic mechanics didn't work in earlier systems and where insane exploits and badly designed mechanics are commonplace, I don't really see why FFXIII would be considered egregiously bad in this regard. I think there are plenty of things FFXIII could have improved mechanically but I feel that way about every single Final Fantasy game. FF games are, to be honest, just not very good games mechanically. They have occasional moments of brilliance, true, but they're mostly popcorn games. The mechanics hold together well enough that anyone can finish the game and that people who invest a little can master the systems, but even the best of the best are kind of all over the place. FFXIII's system is unarguably flawed but for the most part it does what it needs to do in a fast-paced and overly shiny way. That's about the best I expect from Final Fantasy. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 02:12 on Aug 5, 2013 |
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Aug 5, 2013 02:03
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ImpAtom posted:Because positioning is actually not very important in the game. It can come into play but in general the biggest impact outside of the weird thing with Sazh's limit break is a slight decrease in damage taken in certain situations. It's a mechanic that could be improved for certain but it doesn't have a tremendous impact on how fights play out. Well to be fair all those broken systems and non-working mechanics are terrible too. It's why FF5 is still one of the best ones because all the poo poo basically works to the point you can beat the game with any combination of jobs. Hell, Blue Magic and status effects actually worked and were worth a drat in that game which automatically puts it heads and shoulders about almost every other FF. Every game IS the worst in the series.
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Aug 5, 2013 02:09
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I've just always felt like they really wanted to make an action RPG like Mass Effect but didn't go far enough in that direction for it to actually be fun.
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Aug 5, 2013 02:10
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ImpAtom posted:Because positioning is actually not very important in the game. It can come into play but in general the biggest impact outside of the weird thing with Sazh's limit break is a slight decrease in damage taken in certain situations. It's a mechanic that could be improved for certain but it doesn't have a tremendous impact on how fights play out. I'm not sure what I "like" more; this thing with 13's positioning where it sometimes matters but is uncontrollable, or 12's thing where positioning is always controllable but makes no difference because attacks aren't dodgable outside of them missing like usual.
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Aug 5, 2013 02:15
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Well to be fair all those broken systems and non-working mechanics are terrible too. It's why FF5 is still one of the best ones because all the poo poo basically works to the point you can beat the game with any combination of jobs. Hell, Blue Magic and status effects actually worked and were worth a drat in that game which automatically puts it heads and shoulders about almost every other FF. Oh, yeah, I'm not arguing that it's a good thing or anything. I'm just saying that if I could overlook the annoying bullshit in the other games, I can overlook it in FFXIII too. FFV is probably the overall most interesting when you just break down the mechanics and see how they work, I agree, but it has plenty of its own flaws and some pretty badly designed classes to go with the surprisingly good ones. (Although I disagree with your on Blue Magic/Status Effects. They were insanely powerful in certain other games, especially if you count Gau's Rage stuff as a form of Blue Magic.) I guess I just don't have high expectations from FF games. Fister Roboto posted:I've just always felt like they really wanted to make an action RPG like Mass Effect but didn't go far enough in that direction for it to actually be fun. Well, they seem to be going more even more hybrid with Lightning Returns so I guess we'll see how that pans out.
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Aug 5, 2013 02:19
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ImpAtom posted:(Although I disagree with your on Blue Magic/Status Effects. They were insanely powerful in certain other games, especially if you count Gau's Rage stuff as a form of Blue Magic.) I guess I just don't have high expectations from FF games. I don't have high expectations for FF games I would just like them to actually be good. Also, I do count Gau as a type of Blue Magic but I don't really give any thought to FF6's combat system for the same reason I don't care for FF8's, it's all an exercise in 'how quickly can you trivialize everything in this game'? Basically everyone in 6 is super powerful from the word go and it only gets worse once you get magic/summons/End game Lores and Rages. Hell, last time I played through it most encounters could be instant one by just using Edgar's auto cross bow once or twice. Maybe follow up with a chainsaw for the left over duders. FF6 just has never been a fun game to play for me. Not to say any FF is really that difficult but there's at least some challenge to some of them.
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Aug 5, 2013 02:26
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This is exactly what I was seeing. I never felt I had a firm grasp on XIII's combat system, even after dredging my way through the main story. I just kind of de-buffed/buffed>staggered>damaged my way through the entire thing. Whereas with XII I had enough control to bend the game over my knee backwards and had my gambits? set up so that my party were essentially auto piloting the optional endgame content. I was always a big fan of X's combat system, it was nice having the information and time needed in order to formulate some form of strategy; a shame you never actually needed to do so due to the game being as straightforward as it was.
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Aug 5, 2013 02:40
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ImpAtom posted:
I don't mean to put you on the spot, or even really disagree with you, but could you provide some examples of games you think are mechanically good in the same genre? It seems like a comment that would be much more interesting with greater context, if that makes sense.
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Aug 5, 2013 03:15
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ImpAtom posted:(Although I disagree with your on Blue Magic/Status Effects. They were insanely powerful in certain other games, especially if you count Gau's Rage stuff as a form of Blue Magic.) Am I the only one who never thought of Gau as a Blue Mage? Personally, I tend to think of him as a Beastmaster. Leap/Rage are basically just a slightly tweaked version of Catch/Release. Instead of just catching a single monster and releasing it for a single shot in battle, "catching" the monsters adds them to a list where Gau can pick one to "release" in battle. And once a monster's been "released," it keeps fighting until Gau dies or the battle ends. It just always seems strange to me to see people online refer to Gau as a kind of Blue Mage when the game very clearly calls out Strago as being the party's Blue Mage. (In fact, I vaguely recall at least one person in Thamasa actually using the term "blue magic" when talking about Strago's Lore ability.)
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Aug 5, 2013 03:21
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Dragonatrix posted:I'm not sure what I "like" more; this thing with 13's positioning where it sometimes matters but is uncontrollable, or 12's thing where positioning is always controllable but makes no difference because attacks aren't dodgable outside of them missing like usual. Except in XII it does make a difference? I mean, yes, enemies can hit you with attacks even if they're a couple feet away, but you can definitely still pull techniques like kiting an enemy around or having them waste time by committing to an attack on a character that they can't reach. In terms of general non-cheese use, there are a ton of enemies with large AoE attacks where it's important to have your team spread out. For example, with most of the large dragon-type enemies the smart approach is to have your team spread out all around them, so that you're close enough together to all benefit from AoE buffs and healing, but only one character will get hit by cone-shaped breath attacks and the like. W.T. Fits posted:Am I the only one who never thought of Gau as a Blue Mage? Personally, I tend to think of him as a Beastmaster. Leap/Rage are basically just a slightly tweaked version of Catch/Release. Instead of just catching a single monster and releasing it for a single shot in battle, "catching" the monsters adds them to a list where Gau can pick one to "release" in battle. And once a monster's been "released," it keeps fighting until Gau dies or the battle ends. Well, Strago is the Blue Mage, and Relm is really the Beastmaster I'd say. Gau is like a combo Berserker/Beastmaster.
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Aug 5, 2013 03:40
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weird vanilla posted:I don't mean to put you on the spot, or even really disagree with you, but could you provide some examples of games you think are mechanically good in the same genre? It seems like a comment that would be much more interesting with greater context, if that makes sense. I kind of agreed with him on that so here's a list from me: DragonQuest (Especially 8), SMT 3 and IV, Digital Devil Saga, Final Fantasy V, and Legend of Dragoon. If I can get a little farther away from traditional Skies of Arcadia, the Super Mario RPGs, Tales of Symphonia.
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Aug 5, 2013 03:44
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W.T. Fits posted:Am I the only one who never thought of Gau as a Blue Mage? Personally, I tend to think of him as a Beastmaster. Leap/Rage are basically just a slightly tweaked version of Catch/Release. Instead of just catching a single monster and releasing it for a single shot in battle, "catching" the monsters adds them to a list where Gau can pick one to "release" in battle. And once a monster's been "released," it keeps fighting until Gau dies or the battle ends. Relm is more Beastmastery, either copying an enemy's ability for a single release or Controlling them. Gau and Strago basically overlap in that both fill the "use an enemy's abilities" role. Gau just does it a thousand times better. weird vanilla posted:I don't mean to put you on the spot, or even really disagree with you, but could you provide some examples of games you think are mechanically good in the same genre? It seems like a comment that would be much more interesting with greater context, if that makes sense. It depends on what you're looking for precisely and what you consider the same genre. To use the closest 'competitor': Dragon Quest games are, by and large, less ambitious than Final Fantasy. They tend to stay very close to home and repeat the same basic systems with slight additions. However, the end result of that is that they tend to be better mechanically balanced. They have a reputation for being 'grindy' but that tends to be memories of NES days more than actual mechanics. Abilities and skills tend to be more useful, it's less easy to shatter the game into pieces by accident, buffs/debuffs are more consistently useful and so-on. Shin Megami Tensei, to use another large franchise, tends to have better mechanics overall. Status effects, buffs, and elemental weaknesses are arranged to be major parts of combat and fights are won and lost through proper exploitation of the enemy's weaknesses. It can be broken but how and why it is broken tends to be more interesting and involve more activity on the behalf of the player. The SMT superbosses are designed to encourage you to really understand the mechanics in a way that most FF superbosses are not. You can break SMT and you can break it hard, but the method of breaking the game is more involved and interesting for the most part and the combat mechanics are fast-paced and engaging. The Tales games are all over the map but, at their high point, combine RPG mechanics and active gameplay significantly better than Final Fantasy ever has. They're a mesh of action and RPG gameplay and even allow for multiplayer gameplay that is more engaging than the limited multiplayer allowed by some FF games. I can go into more detail but there's quite a few, and that is ignoring weird or esoteric games like Valkyrie Profile or Radiant Historia, which have their own mechanics problems but usually because they're trying something a lot more distinctive or unique than Final Fantasy. Where these things stand out is that a good chunk of the mechanics are designed to work together. They don't always work well but there's a cohesive design sense to the gameplay and you can see why each system exists. Final Fantasy games have some really cool ideas or neat mechanics but they're all designed with the same basic mentality in place: You're going to win fights by mashing attack, casting the best magic spell you have, and occasionally healing. There are other options there but they tend to be either completely worthless or so insanely overpowered that they basically replace the "mashing attack" part. You can do other stuff for fun but it isn't integrated into the combat in an engaging way so much as it just kind of... exists and sometimes it works and sometimes it's worthless. FFXIII, to some degree, is the inevitable endpoint of this mindset, where they flat-out designed the game around doing all those things as fast as possible. So is FFXII for that matter, where the Gambits are basically "you're going to be doing this stuff anyway so we'll just hit the buttons for you." There are cool mechanics in place in each Final Fantasy game that stand out if you do low-level runs or go out of your way to explore them, but doing that also highlights all the mechanics that are clearly half-baked, poorly implemented or that they just didn't care about. They have ideas but they ideas tend to be thrown in half-baked and bizarrely implemented. Sometimes this leads to charming or unique things but other times it just leaves a bunch of poorly mishmashed mechanics lumped together. Edit: That is a lot of  about Final Fantasy. Sorry about that.
ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 04:30 on Aug 5, 2013 |
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Aug 5, 2013 03:47
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I can say one nice thing about FFXIII's battle system: air juggling motherfuckers was the best. Frankly, air juggling is what got me through that game.
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Aug 5, 2013 03:48
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The previous post about Lightning getting a breast enlargement with jiggle physics in 13-3 makes me wonder if perfecting that "feature" for Tifa is what has been holding up a remake of FF7 all this time. It can't just be that S-E hates money.
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Aug 5, 2013 04:03
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To better describe Tifa's* panties, I brought these roses on stage. *No one correct me.
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Aug 5, 2013 04:15
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Lord of Pie posted:The previous post about Lightning getting a breast enlargement with jiggle physics in 13-3 makes me wonder if perfecting that "feature" for Tifa is what has been holding up a remake of FF7 all this time. I think Tifa was the only character they even had jiggle physics for in Duodecim.
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Aug 5, 2013 04:21
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Man, these last few pages.  So, I loved FF10. Everything about it just spoke to me, when I first played it. There was the predicament of the hero whom I somehow projected onto, because I'd just gone through a bad breakup and was preparing for college, and somehow that's the same as getting yanked into a strange new world by a magic doom whale. And I'd also recently gone on vacation in the Florida Keys, so I was like "tropical islands, yeah!" It wasn't a very sophisticated reason. My friend, though, with whom I'd bonded even further back in the day over FF6, hated FF10. This frustrated me immensely for no particular reason. Since then, though, it's become a bit more clear that different people can like and hate different video games. Man, this thread.  Azure_Horizon posted:
Okay, this is a cool idea. It's about drat time that random monsters were given context in a game world that isn't exclusively in a datalog. Now if they were to remake FF6, if only they did the same thing to address its own menagerie of giant disembodied Buddha heads, deranged mutants, and ambulatory piles of random organs. I really, really want to see a full collection of concept art for monsters in this entire series.
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Aug 5, 2013 04:24
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weird vanilla posted:I don't mean to put you on the spot, or even really disagree with you, but could you provide some examples of games you think are mechanically good in the same genre? It seems like a comment that would be much more interesting with greater context, if that makes sense. Shadow Hearts and that's basically all you need. Gameplay is based purely on timing and player skill and there's no glitches in any of the games regarding its battle system. There are also neat ways to break it, too.
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Aug 5, 2013 04:29
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Did FFXIII have a hardmode I was unaware of? Because yes, Auto-battle didn't get you through all the game. It got you through 97% of it. And this is coming from a person who thinks the final boss is hilariously easy. To this day, I have never seen his first form cast Doom. I mean for gently caress's sake, you can poison him, decrease his physical resistance, decrease his magic resistance AND make him weak to every element. Buff yourself, make sure you use Haste, stagger, enjoy hilariously high numbers until he decides to cheat with Merciless Judgement (resetting his stagger meter, your buffs and his debuffs). Heal (just hit up an Eidolan. Or Renew if you're in a hurry), rebuff, debuff, proceed as normal. You have no need, absolutely no need at all, for silly ATB cancelling shenanigans. Re: Movement This is the most frustrating part of the game for me. When a boss uses his super linear Death Laser on me, my party members would always decide to do a group hug so that they would each receive a portion of the blast. There was exactly one time when one ofthem glitched and didn't quite get close enough, so the beam missed completely. It's a minor thing, but it really feels like a "gently caress-you" from the game. Mazed posted:Okay, this is a cool idea. It's about drat time that random monsters were given context in a game world that isn't exclusively in a datalog. See, you say that but to me it reads like "Track down that one guy in that one place who will tell you that you need that one sword to kill this boss! Hope you have a guide handy, fucker!" Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Aug 5, 2013 |
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Aug 5, 2013 04:31
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Mazed posted:
A FF6 remake for handheld would be incredible. But the new Square Enix of the past five years hates fun and money so it won't happen probably. Probably.
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Aug 5, 2013 04:32
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SSNeoman posted:See, you say that but to me it reads like "Track down that one guy in that one place who will tell you that you need that one sword to kill this boss! Hope you have a guide handy, fucker!" Eh, fine. Honestly, the idea of searching around the world and uncovering info that'll be useful in a completely unrelated place is not inherently bad. Given the difficulty levels of most FF games, it's highly unlikely that any of this information will be absolutely crucial, but it'll still serve as incentive to talk, explore, and remember stuff that you hear, rather than pull everything from a flavorless text-dump. FF12 at least had the good grace to present its own bestiary as a compilation of in-universe writings, but it still didn't feel particularly organic or immersive.
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Aug 5, 2013 04:41
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Captain Mog posted:A FF6 remake for handheld would be incredible. Yoichi Wada (CEO of Square Enix) stepped down in march, and his replacement, Yosuke Matsuda, said that one of the changes he means to institute is for the company to get more serious about mobile games. Other priorities include: more transparent development cycles (a la Bravely Default), games targeted more closely for particular markets (which could be good or bad). Takes a long time for a battleship like this to turn, but turning FF Versus XIII into FFXV was surely a consequence of this new management.
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Aug 5, 2013 04:42
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So basically FFVI for mobile phones.
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Aug 5, 2013 04:56
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So, it takes place in XIIIs universe but it's called XV?
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Aug 5, 2013 04:56
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Austrian mook posted:So, it takes place in XIIIs universe but it's called XV? Maybe.
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Aug 5, 2013 04:58
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Maybe. Of all the Final Fantasys to do a hundred sequels of, why XIII???
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Aug 5, 2013 05:01
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The Unholy Ghost posted:Of all the Final Fantasys to do a hundred sequels of, why XIII??? Well it worked so well with X obviously
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Aug 5, 2013 05:02
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Austrian mook posted:Well it worked so well with X obviously There was only one sequel to 10 and it was better than 10 in basically every way, so it... did?
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Aug 5, 2013 05:04
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alcharagia posted:There was only one sequel to 10 and it was better than 10 in basically every way, so it... did? Umm... What?
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Aug 5, 2013 05:05
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Austrian mook posted:Umm... What? Which part of that do you need explained for you?
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