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pretty soft girl posted:4e was fun but I can't think of any other tabletop or board game I've played that made me think "this would be better if all of this bullshit was tracked by a computer game instead" more Absolutely. It's a real shame there weren't any video games that used the 4e licence, as all the effects and auras in that ruleset seem almost perfect for a Final Fantasy Tactics style game.
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Feb 18, 2022 06:18
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NikkolasKing posted:Orphan is hands down the hardest FF boss Not by a country mile. IT's not even the hardest boss in the game it's in.
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Feb 18, 2022 06:19
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neo ex-death is one of the hardest final bosses in a casual playthrough imo
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Feb 18, 2022 06:20
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most final bosses in the classic games would spam one powerful attack that would kill everyone if you werent prepared... so add zeromus and cloud of darkness to the list too
16-bit Butt-Head fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Feb 18, 2022 |
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Feb 18, 2022 06:22
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Whose head does Kefka hold in the final battle?
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Feb 18, 2022 06:27
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it's supposed to be an image of him throwing his head back and laughing
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Feb 18, 2022 06:31
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Not by a country mile. IT's not even the hardest boss in the game it's in. I was talking about final bosses since that was the topic. Orphan doesn't really have a lot of competition to begin with. I can't see any final boss in any FF game I've beaten coming even close. Elephant Ambush posted:Nope. Neo Exdeath is harder. I've played both games recently and it's crazy how much harder Neo Exdeath is if you're not just throwing gil and summoning. And even then it's basically a damage race because he can just gently caress you if he wants to. I dunno maybe I was underleveled or something but Orphan is not nearly that hard even if you don't know that Poison works. You've captured my interest. I've never beaten FFV, I got to like the second world or whatever it was and got bored and wandered off. Maybe it's time I finally beat the game this thread swears by. As for Orphan, I dunno, I beat every other story boss in XIII obviously. (even if Bart 2 took me a while)
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Feb 18, 2022 06:39
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So in the end what did I think of a more or less blind playthrough of FFVI. Dull, is probably the word that most accurately sums up my feelings. Underbaked as well. Gameplay wise the game has so many extraneous systems kludged onto it, most of which are just straight up not fun to use. 3 of the fourteen Characters are some shade of blue mage. One can cast spells from the enemy, which given how many absorb their main element is usually worthless. I have no idea how Strago works, and Gau relies on not only tediously returning to the Veldt, waiting on his little quest, and then guessing what the actual attacks do. All of them are awful to play with. Cyan's Bushido is far far too slow to be of use, it seems later versions change it so it can load while you wait but still why make it like that in the first place. Gogo is more of an extra so his skill sucking is fine. Mog's dances I both don't know what they do, I also don't know how to acquire them, they give you a straight up tutorial on Blitz but don't add text to explain what Lover's Sonata does. Setzer's ability is too chance based to ever really be relied on, and his actual equipment is usually worse then everything else you find. Cele's ability is almost worthless, but it did absorb Ultima when Altima cast it on me and I got a cheevo for it so that was cool. Morph loses it's use when you get high enough Mag Dmg. Tools are probably the best balanced, all of them seem to have some use, early game it's super useful for cleaning trash, and Drill and Chainsaw hit hard. I converted him to a Lancer at the end but Edgar was still putting in good numbers at the end. Umaro was cool, but not great for actually using. I talked about Sabin before but people didn't get my problem with him, people think "Oh cool Blitz is like Street Fighter commands, how can you not like it?" That's not really true, fighting games are fun because you need the execution of the moves to be matched with you ability to keep the opponent in range and the ability to predict so you land a hit. Blitz ain't like that It's just you mashing a half circle with zero risk, if you feel you didn't do it right you can back out. It's like comparing shooting a hoop with playing an actual streetgame. As a whole the game is just absurdly easy. There's very little of interest in the battle system, and no reason to explore the depth that is there given how pathetic every boss is. The only time that you ever feel in danger is when you end up using third stringer's with no spells and hand me down equipment, and even then that's using 10% of your brain and not 5%. For the story, It's a goddamn mess. Expanding the cast so far means so little time is taken on some characters that they are barely cut outs. Mog, Relm, Umaro, Strago, Gogo, and Setzer should have just been cut. I've heard that this game was ahead of schedule in development, they should've taken the time polishing systems and tuning difficulty instead of adding more extraneous characters. Locke fawning over a women's corpse is loving weird. If you did the same plot without him literally keeping a corpse in a basement it would work so much better. Which is unfortunate because his stuff with the ladies falling off cliffs would actually hit if I didn't have to think of him stuffing Terra in a freezer if she falls in battle. Edgar and Sabin's relationship works, but they don't go far enough in developing it. That coin scene is one of the best in the game, and the payoff with Setzer realizing it's double sided actually works really well. But instead of going with the strong throughline, they introduce Sabin with his Sensei bullshit and the fight with some nobody. And keep Edgar on flirt duty 90% of the game instead of developing a fraternal connection with a brother he hasn't seen in years. With the post destruction story it would work with him trying to save his castle first, but then they add the stupid Gerard plot which is just, Why? Relm and Strago feel like characters added after the game was mostly done. Obviously Relm is Shadows Daughter, but surprisingly little is done with it. And post ruin Relm just works as a painter, and Strago goes full Strega. There is no reason for their characters to be more than NPC's. Same poo poo with Mog and Umaro. Mog at least if they had changed it so you could see what happened to Narshe might've worked. Have an NPC that says they tried to flee to the Mines before he bleeds out. Then when you go in there have it strewn with Narsh's citizen's and dead moogles who tried to help protect them. Then you explain what happened to Narshe, call back to them helping Locke defend a helpless Terra, and show the escalation in stakes in the Post Kefka world order. Gogo is just a meme. Cyan I've already talked about. Terra, I'll give her credit she "Even So's" a hell of a lot better than Banana, but her whole character is just...poorly done. At no point did I feel they accurately sold her emotions in a scene. Her whole plot is so on the nose, she feels like she's reading a script. Shadow Rocks, He's got big Edgy teen energy, but the lad comes in clutch in the floating continent, I thought for sure he was gonna go with the party at the end but he still slips away, loving badass my dude. Celes is really the only character that works works. Her relationship with Cid on the island is rushed, and her intro in the dungeon coulda been better, but as a whole she was the only character I looked forward to seeing her in scenes, Ironic I guess since so many probably like her for the Play, and I hate that part, but whatever. Celes goes hard, best character. Side characters is filled with losers and nobodies. I can't imagine why General Leo rumors flourished given he's the most basic, boring honorable enemy archetype possible. Plus he has a dumb haircut. Bannon is nothing, his only discerning characteristic is a desire to do whatever it takes to defeat the Emperor. Ultros is just god awful bad, loving Family Guy cutaway as a character, and not one of the funny ones, one of the ones that goes on forever and then Peter turns to the camera and makes fun of it taking so long. Dying Soldier and His Fiancee was fine, but making jokes about what Cyan was doing just undermined the whole thing, there's so many parts of this game that they feel so afraid of being sincere that they end up making everything feel insincere. Daryl doesn't exist as anything more than a plot point ditto Rachel. Arena Guy owned, I wish him the best in creating a world of STR. The Impresario was fine I guess, this section is taking longer than the rest purely because the characters are so drat forgettable that I can't remember them at all, and If I can I don't remember what they even did. I'll end with Gestahl. Dude owns. For most of it he's mostly just a generic conqueror type, his faking peace was alright, mind numbingly obvious what he was going to do, but that is a neat little twist. His line about not having anyone to worship him when Kefka finally does him in however was easily the best dialogue from a villain in this game. Which brings us to Kefka. Absolute Garbage tier villain. I'd make a joke about him just being Leto's Joker, I cannot however for that is not a joke but a loving fact. He's treated as loving comic relief for the entire first half except when he does a warcrimes. Then he finally shows what a sick and twisted cycle path he is killing Emperor and loving up the statues. Here's the thing, y'know why classic joker works, he's trying to prove his thinking is correct to batman. He has an actual goal and character conflict, Kefka doesn't want to prove poo poo, he just wants to be the ultimate edgelord nihilist. He spends the first half of the game being totally ineffectual, then does literally nothing in the second world except do a light of judgement once before the party faces him. You'd think that seeing the state of the world would fill in for his lack of facetime, but they forgot to actually make any changes to half the world. Jidoor is literally the same, as is Zozo and Thamasa. South Figaro they're at least rebuilding. It's weak. Having your main villain be some cat just along for the ride, and then having him do nothing for half the game does not a good villian make. And then his actual "Philosophy" is so childish that it's hard to take him as an adult much less a threat. You know who did the same thing better Kuja, he had actual reasons, moved the plot along, had agency for more than one scene, and had a good song. You know what game did the making a small character the final villain well, The Shadow Hearts series. Check those out instead of playing this game to see le epic meme clown. Aesthetically the game looks good, but the palette is too dark, it makes it hard to see doors some time. The game is also too samey. The hidden Village filled with magus, the coastal center of a mechanized kingdom, the town on the edge of civilization, and the interior of an airship should not be indistinguishable. The only real standouts for background work is the Floating Continent, and Vector. Vector's too dark for my taste, but the floating continent is very cool. The weird bio-mechanical undulating flesh thing was a nice change of pace, the redux version of it with Vector mixed in was very very nice. Characters are fine, they're very expressive, but that's not a good thing when mostly that's used for all the lovely jokes. Music, Mog's Theme and the Serpent's Trench are the only two tracks that stood out to me as being exceptional. In summation, Final Fantasy VI is the Elizabethtown of RPG's, A bad plot, poorly told, overlong despite being objectively short, terrible character work, and an unlikable and unconvincing main character, a work with the cute blonde being the only likeable thing about it. FFVI is an interesting thing to look at for it's place in RPG history, but as an actual SNES game, I cannot recommend it unless your a massive RPG fan, whose already played all the greats. If you haven't I'd easily put SMTI, SMTII, SMTif..., Chrono Trigger, DQIV, DQV ahead of it. 5/10 not a terrible experience, but one filled with boredom.
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Feb 18, 2022 07:11
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I feel like I should mention something you might have missed because it’s not conveyed super well iirc, Gogo’s unique command is Mimic but their actual ability is being able to equip the command of every alive party member. And speaking of alive, it kinda seems like you weren’t aware that Shadow comes back with you if you wait for the last five seconds of the Floating Continent escape sequence. 
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Feb 18, 2022 07:41
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Shadow was in my final party. I kept trying to make Genji glove plus offering a thing loving no idea gogo could do that. I chose him for my final 12 and he was incredible dead weight
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Feb 18, 2022 07:42
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Cleretic posted:. In related games, Chrono Trigger doesn't exactly bend to breaking from completionism, Lavos Core is still probably gonna give you trouble. The best part about Lavos is trying to beat him the first time you see him at the Ocean Palace where his stats are beefed up. Unfortunately once youre inside the next two bosses have their regular stats 
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Feb 18, 2022 07:53
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hell yeah ff6 rules
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Feb 18, 2022 14:27
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Dancing Mad is a little too much, but the third part, when you actually fight Kefka, is a top 3 FF final boss music.
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Feb 18, 2022 16:19
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Eight-Six posted:hell yeah ff6 rules
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Feb 18, 2022 16:52
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Evil Fluffy posted:Ok cool, so if you have a better source that shows "no all these MMO characteristics in 4E are a coincidence and we didn't make it with them in mind" I'm all ears. For the laymen in the audience: Mike Mearls was part of the D&D4e design team. Reportedly, he argued against its principal innovations, including the idea that different classes should be balanced at all. Much later in the product line, he became the lead designer after the actual lead designers left. He oversaw the "Essentials" reboot of the line, which tried to make the game more like 3rd edition and included some good ideas and a lot of poorly-designed and much-criticized crap. When he lead the design of 5th edition, he actively trashed 4e, made the game much more like 3e, actively courted the most toxic fan communities, and even gave a consultant credit to two bloggers who are a weird fascist mystic and a violent rapist, respectively. Mega64 posted:So D&D could be considered a FF ripoff? When grognards say that a tabletop game sucks because its mechanics are as evolved as 1989's Phantasy Star II--where everyone gets "spells," not just the wizard--they're just making themselves look bad! Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 17:40 on Feb 18, 2022 |
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Feb 18, 2022 17:20
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Every now and then I have a negative reaction to something that other people really enjoyed and I wonder if there's something wrong with me. I'm glad to see that someone else broadly had the same reaction to FF6 as me, as I also came away from the game thinking "that's it?" FF3PR is in that boat too since in the second half the gameplay falls off a cliff.
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Feb 18, 2022 18:41
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that just means there's something wrong with both of you
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Feb 18, 2022 19:01
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Super No Vacancy posted:that just means there's something wrong with both of you Every now and then I have a negative reaction to something that other people really enjoyed and I wonder if there's something wrong with me. I'm glad to see that someone else broadly had the same reaction to those posts as me, as I also came away from the posts thinking "that's it?"
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Feb 18, 2022 19:11
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SweaterGear posted:FF3PR is in that boat too since in the second half the gameplay falls off a cliff. ????
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Feb 18, 2022 19:16
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https://twitter.com/FinalFantasy/status/1494718603836284930
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Feb 18, 2022 19:18
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I'm concerned that the Emperor does not look enough like a dog.
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Feb 18, 2022 19:19
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Schwartzcough posted:I'm concerned that the Emperor does not look enough like a dog. At least we still have a dog that looks like an emperor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P8H2MO1o74
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Feb 18, 2022 19:34
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I think a lot of that is pretty fair criticism, TBH. Except about the music, the music is bangin', especially by the standards of mid 90's SNES games.
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Feb 18, 2022 20:05
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I'm currently going through Stormblood in FFXIV and Hien has a banging remix of Cyan's theme. It also took me until then to remember that Doma was also a place in VI.
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Feb 18, 2022 20:16
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It's literally Cyan's theme. No remix about it.
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Feb 18, 2022 20:17
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Hien's dad is Kaien whose name is a transliteration of Cyan's Japanese one.
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Feb 18, 2022 20:21
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SettingSun posted:Hien's dad is Kaien whose name is a transliteration of Cyan's Japanese one. His real name is also the name of Cyan's son in VI
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Feb 18, 2022 20:31
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Not directing this at anyone in the thread but recent conversations made me think about things a bit. I think that when approaching older games, it requires a certain mindset. I feel like there is a difference between personal appreciation/enjoyment and general cultural enjoyment. Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes they don’t. Many people tend to conflate the two, but I feel like if you can’t accept the separation, it is harder to be taken seriously in the discourse. Basically - you can dislike a game and still accept that it is a good game. And if you can’t admit that, you should be able to at least recognize it’s importance. There are two very popular games that I dislike - Halo and FF7. I don’t personally find either one enjoyable to play. I didn’t enjoy them when they were current and I don’t enjoy them now. At the same time, I can recognize that they are good and important games and modern video games would not be what they are without them. On the flip side, I love Half-Life and feel like it’s one of the most important games of all time. I can understand if someone in 2022 tried Half-life and didn’t have a good time. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad game. Basically - time and place is important discussing media. Be it games, music, films, or tv shows. Idk if I have a greater point with this but I’m bored on set today so my mind has been wandering.
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Feb 18, 2022 20:43
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The gap in quality in the openings between V and VI is astounding. You get the goal, save the crystals, from the get. Shift to my boy Butz whose out there living the life with his Broko. Bam meteor, save galuf and lenna. Butz starts to dip, before choosing to be a hero and save the pair. You get a cool action scene with running from the earthquake. Then try and hijack a pirate ship, you get some more drama with Faris and Lenna and the pendant. Then you get a giant sea serpent driving the ship, and your off to the first are where you see everyone dedicate themselves to saving the crystals after seeing Tycoons death and then it gives you jobs already. Less than an hour in and I've already got more freedom then VI gave me in 10. FFV is starting out as a high fantasy farce and I'm here for it, but it's also managed to give an actual hook and characterization to everyone but galuf already. VI's writing is so amateurish in comparison that I can only assume that the V writers were moved to another project.
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Feb 18, 2022 20:44
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You are right. FF6's opening is far cooler. Give me a seige on a city in laser shooting robots, battling alongside a Moogle army, and escape from en evil clown via burrowing castle and Chocoboback 10 times out of 10. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 20:55 on Feb 18, 2022 |
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Feb 18, 2022 20:53
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I appreciate FFVI's ambition a lot, I think. It's a story where, to quote one of the directors, "everyone is the protagonist"--they wanted to avoid having a single, central main character, which is why Terra isn't really as central to the story as, say, Cloud or Zidane. She's not the protagonist. Nobody is. They didn't quite achieve "everyone is the protagonist," to be fair, but they did at least achieve an ensemble cast where most of the cast get time to shine. I like that a lot. Combine that with the whole World of Ruin aspect, where the main characters fail to save the world halfway through and have to pick up the pieces, and I think it's a pretty impressive achievement overall. That said I haven't played it myself in years, so I'm curious how I'll feel about it going into the Pixel Remaster soon. My last playthrough of the GBA version increased my opinion of the game, just like my last playthrough of FFVII did for that game, so I'm interested to see if that'll happen again.
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Feb 18, 2022 21:01
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FF6 just also has cool backstory lore with the War of the Magi, so even though it's not the World of Ruin yet, the world's already pretty hosed up from from last conflict involving magic.
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Feb 18, 2022 21:02
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FF6 was always my favorite. When I first played it I was engrossed well beyond any other game I'd every played. I tried replaying it a few years ago and couldn't get over how incredibly cheesy all the dialogue was.
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Feb 18, 2022 21:04
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ImpAtom posted:You are right. FF6's opening is far cooler. Give me a seige on a city in laser shooting robots, battling alongside a Moogle army, and escape from en evil clown via burrowing castle and Chocoboback 10 times out of 10. Love moving at seven inches per year on my Magitek armour with team members who never show up again. Amazing opening
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Feb 18, 2022 21:10
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Eight-Six posted:hell yeah ff6 rules
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Feb 18, 2022 21:17
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Gaius Marius posted:Love moving at seven inches per year on my Magitek armour with team members who never show up again. Amazing opening Biggs & Wedge show up again plenty of times
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Feb 18, 2022 21:19
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I think its fine for a narrative to have characters that aren't crucially important to the long form narrative. Even if it's the opening prologue that just exists to explain how we got to the stary of the game. In fact that's probably the best place to put too such characters.
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Feb 18, 2022 21:36
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Sherbert Hoover posted:FF6 was always my favorite. When I first played it I was engrossed well beyond any other game I'd every played. Love me some cheesy dialog  ~*swoon*~
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Feb 18, 2022 21:42
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Having bounced off FF6 like five times, I find myself in almost complete agreement with Gaius's review. I can't get into it at all. I think I would have liked it more if I had an SNES instead of a Genesis as a kid, and played it before I played any of the later FFs. To me, FF6 is a sour spot in the series where it's Squaresoft's first attempt at doing something bigger than the simplistic systems, worlds, and stories of the earlier games. It tries to make every character customizable, but also unique. It tries to explore deeper character motivations than saving the world from a force of pure evil. It tries to present a world of disparate people oppressed by a powerful central imperial army. It shoots broadly, and touches on all of these things too briefly, delivering a shallow experience. As a result, it ends up being the worst of both worlds, both lacking in the straightforward charm and refinement of previous entries, and also short on the personality that makes the later games weird and unique. That said, I think the soundtrack is pretty drat good.
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Feb 18, 2022 21:44
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I think it's fair to say that, at the time it was released, FFVI was groundbreaking and very influential, but in a lot of ways that were based on cinematic presentation and storytelling. It had a lot of interesting mechanics and impressive scope for the time, but those aspects weren't as pioneering as the more story and presentation-focused bits. Since then, those more influential aspects have been repeated and refined endlessly by the genre, to the point that the game seems basic and bland to people familiar with later games in the genre. Compare that to Chrono Trigger, whose story wasn't anything particularly special (outside of the time travel gimmick), but it had really solid gameplay, great pacing, fun (if simple) characters, and excellent 2D art that holds up well. I think CT would be the easier game for more modern gamers to go back to and appreciate, since the things it did well are pretty timeless. To appreciate FFVI's greatness, you probably had to experience it when it was contemporary.
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Feb 18, 2022 21:56
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