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I just started FFXII and at least I'm enjoying the tutorial/newbie part of the game so far, which is actually a big plus in its favor. I assume all this bullshit about not getting certain items unless you did seemingly random nonsensical stuff was patched out? Just last night I was like i googled up info about license boards and got some old info that you couldn't reset the boards or change jobs once you picked them which was a real "WTF, guess I'll look up a class guide" and in that far more up to date guide said you could change them whenever you wanted (thanks to patches and the Zodiac Age remaster).
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Jul 2, 2022 17:27
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yes, the really loopdy-loops mechanics were mostly removed in zodiac age, including the chests. though I think the best bow only spawning in an invisible chest with a 0.05% appearance chance in a completely innocuous seating area is still there didn’t the SaGa developer take over after matsuda left? it’d explain a lot
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Jul 2, 2022 17:30
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Oxxidation posted:2, 11 and 12 had some profoundly weird design choices but 9 is just an RPG, besides the character designs 9's card game was a preview of 12's obtuseness. I don't hate any of the FF games, I do find 13 to be really disappointing because there's so much there I want to like.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:32
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TZA changes where you get pretty much all of the best spells and technicks to innocuous chests in lategame areas, however.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:33
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Heath posted:What is the worst one? 2 doesn't count It will always be FFVIII. It's not a bad game but it is the worst FF by a mile as far as I'm concerned.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:35
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Oxxidation posted:2, 11 and 12 had some profoundly weird design choices but 9 is just an RPG, besides the character designs The characters do nothing for me, I have hated the "learn things from equipment" thing in every game that's used it, and the battles are intolerably slow.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:37
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There are like four things I can levy against IX: Combat is glacial--especially initiating one. Stealing sucks. The world makes no sense if you think about it even a little. And the final boss feels like it comes out of nowhere. Game is still real good though.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:38
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AngryRobotsInc posted:The characters do nothing for me, I have hated the "learn things from equipment" thing in every game that's used it, and the battles are intolerably slow. I’m going to give you a piece of my mind once the camera finishes panning around me
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Jul 2, 2022 17:38
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The invisible chest with invisible OP weapons is straight up dev easter eggs fun and only crazy people could be bothered by it. The zodiac spear chest thing *is* dumb but also 1) you don't need the spear and 2) you wouldn't know you missed it anyway. It's more of a completionist gamer brain issue. Things like Dispel, etc being in a random pot are the real offenders although I don't remember it being an issue unless you wanted to do some of the hunts earlier. YMMV on the automating of rpg battles that you had to manually do for all the previous games and also other rpgs
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Jul 2, 2022 17:39
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No Dignity posted:I still found the game interminably boring after twenty hours of auto attacking and manual steal commands This is my main issue with every final fantasy I've played besides FF7R, except in most FF games they make you do the busywork with foregone conclusions. Auto-attacking at least lets me skip mashing the buttons and I can also speed things up to get through ito faster. FF combat just doesn't have the strategic depth or decision making to be worth micromanaging every goddamn turn. All the strategic decision making you wouldn't be making on a worthless random battle you're not watching anyway, is completely described by the gambit system. It's not like a feel like strategy genius when i get poisoned and use item or spell to cure poison, like, that's the only thing to do there, it's not like I'm ever going to strategically use my poisoned status for some niche buff or situational attack. In any ff I've played, you can get by default attacking only as long as you heal up, other options are just ways to maybe end a battle faster but usually not because of the animations for stronger attacks anyway. I liked FF12sff because it requires the exact same strategizing as any FF, but let's me set things up ands adjust them as I go rather than sit there like a drinkin-bird mashing A to hit attack on the billionth boringass random battle in my way. Then on important big fights, your trash mulching setup won't cut it and you either need to program a new strategy AND still assume direct control more often. Also directly controlling summons was really fun, ngl I was bummed when I did my first summon in FF7R and they didn't give me control. Actually... FF7R would be perfect to add gambit system too lol, beef up these easy enemies and let the other party members actually fight concurrently. The entire DnDy cRPG genre could really use a gambit system, I think NWN2 or something had some rudimentary AI scripting I didn't much use back then. Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous though, I think I know the genre and systems well enough by now to be able to make a good flowchart for my party members and micro main PC.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:40
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also if you hated the gambit system... just don't use it? then it's just normal turn based menu combat
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Jul 2, 2022 17:41
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Gambit systems great crime might just be exposing how little you actually do in FF games. I was even happier with the paradigm system where you could just say "do the debuff things now... okay now do defense things!"
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Jul 2, 2022 17:45
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Oxxidation posted:2, 11 and 12 had some profoundly weird design choices but 9 is just an RPG, besides the character designs 9 is a weird case of being less than the sum of its parts. Everything about it in isolation is great. The music is among the best and most unique in the series (the world map theme is one of the chillest songs), at least half the cast is very memorable (Vivi and Steiner are perennial favorites, Quina is one of the most unique characters in the series, Freya's design is at least pretty beloved if not necessarily her character), it's got some of my personal favorite environments in the whole series (I love all the cities, especially Lindblum, Cleyra, Treno, the one rainy abandoned rat city that I can't think of the name of)... The story is overall pretty whatever, I guess. And I think that's where it really falls apart, it's too conservative overall but it clearly wanted to reach the weird heights of 8 and couldn't quite pull it off. It's been a while since I played it but when I think about individual things in the game I'm like "yeah that rules" but if I were to think about the game as a whole all I can come up with is that it's alright.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:46
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12's automation is good, which is why they added Auto Battle to previous games. I wish they added Gambits too.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:47
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I'm not sure ff8 reached any 'heights' other than current-gen spectacle and dumbest ff story on record
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Jul 2, 2022 17:48
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GloomMouse posted:I'm not sure ff8 reached any 'heights' other than current-gen spectacle and dumbest ff story on record It's probably the weirdest story in the series, that's what I mean.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:50
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I will agree that for as much as I dislike IX, the soundtrack is top tier.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:51
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Heath posted:What is the worst one? 2 doesn't count 3, easily. It's additions to the franchise, while eventually built into something amazing in 5, are rudimentary and just loving boring in its game. It's a step back in both terms of mechanical design and attempt at narrative compared to 2 and is too long and too fiddly to be a fun quick little jaunt like 1. It's just a step back in all regards even if it's technically the start of the job system. Mega64 posted:12's automation is good, which is why they added Auto Battle to previous games. 12's automation only works because there's like 3 viable option in any given second of combat and 2 of those are "Attack with weapon" and "Attack with element enemy doesn't absorb". Which means you could probably make gambits for the simpler ones like 1-3 but something like 5 with the plethora of options you're given to use and how they actually designed fights to be interacted with with status effects and other poo poo the gambit system would have to be so robust you're essentially writing full action scripts and that's like....30 minutes of work per job/action ability combo and just wouldn't be worth the time. ZenMasterBullshit fucked around with this message at 17:54 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 17:51
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FF13's story is weird as poo poo but the game fails to tell like... all of it because it's a mess
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Jul 2, 2022 17:52
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3 also has a fairly dishonorable reputation stemming from the DS version, which had the absurd gameplay system of punishing you for changing jobs. I heard they fixed that in the Pixel Remaster, though.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:53
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Arist posted:3 also has a fairly dishonorable reputation stemming from the DS version, which had the absurd gameplay system of punishing you for changing jobs. I heard they fixed that in the Pixel Remaster, though. The PR is a fine game. What I said is still true for its version. It's just kind of a version of FF1 that's a loving slog to play comparatively and is less interested in its narrative and cast than 2 was. And given how simple the job system was you get more character customization with 2's weird experiment than 3's. 3 is a fine game. It's just easily the worst mainline FF game because the other's at least have SOMETHING to latch on to, some spark that's evocative in some way. 3 is smooth and boring. ZenMasterBullshit fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 17:56
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8 is pure insanity and I both adore and respect its dedication to being the video game equivalent of a fever dream. I regularly forget 9 exists, despite me beating it like, three times. 12 is the best FF. These are my opinions.
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Jul 2, 2022 17:56
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HD DAD posted:I regularly forget 9 exists drat, genuinely sorry for ya.
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Jul 2, 2022 18:02
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Id say IX is my least favorite but on a pure "I quit this game 3 times instead of beating it over the course of 20 years" IV has to take the cake. Got nothing for me in that.
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Jul 2, 2022 18:02
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12 is really great especially with SFF and 11 is also really good but you have to take 11 with a bunch of huge disclaimers and qualifications to understand why it was the most profitable and best selling final fantasy until 14.
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Jul 2, 2022 18:02
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Khanstant posted:also if you hated the gambit system... just don't use it? then it's just normal turn based menu combat It's the intersection of the gambit system and the game's (lack of) encounter design, you just fight endless repetitions of the same couple of mobs for infinity in any direction you walk in the field. It's like the worst of both worlds between random encounters and seamless field combat, the only time you find anything interesting is if you're doing a hunt or a find a rare mark, which nearly always have some silly spawn condition like '20% chance of appearing in the rare mild rain weather condition when the sign of Aries is waxing and the moons are in alignment'. Outside of that practically everything is flattened down into the same MMO mob that takes roughly the same time to kill and at worst will probably just cast blind or poison on you. That the most painless way to deal with combat is to just auto-attack them down with gambits is just icing on the cake
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Jul 2, 2022 18:02
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To be honest most of the complaints against the gambit system seems like complaints you can levy at FF as a whole so I don’t know why it gets singled out
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Jul 2, 2022 18:04
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Oxxidation posted:2, 11 and 12 had some profoundly weird design choices but 9 is just an RPG, besides the character designs Load times annihilate pacing Feels bad to move around locations Tetramaster Character build/progression is maybe the dullest since 6 Jump rope Still have no clue how the geopolitics or ecology of the world work outside of story events Tree boss that is a pale imitation of the good tree boss WTF was up with that tree boss Oooh squishy Chocobo hot and cold is an awful accompaniment to good chocobo music Kuja isn't nearly as cool as he looks Ending on par with Star Ocean endings
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Jul 2, 2022 18:06
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endless repetitions of the same couple of mobs for infinity in any direction is just random encounters so I don't know how it's any worse than X, and i don't have to go to a separate battle screen now and can automate it. sounds like improvement to me ^^^ EDIT:lmao it's a bad sign when you have to put optional card game and ultra optional jump rope game on your list GloomMouse fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 18:07
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12 probably didn't benefit from the field-wandering sections being so long and with so little to break it up. even X had the party exchanging little quips back and forth during encounters the only encounter from it that i can remember is frantically running from a horde of tiny spear-toting men in the necrohol
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Jul 2, 2022 18:10
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If a game can be defined by bad minigames then the worst FF is 10.
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Jul 2, 2022 18:12
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I remember being loving DONE with the Ogir-Yensa and Nam-Yensa Sandsea long before I was actually done
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Jul 2, 2022 18:12
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12, 13 (this one, sigh, did it best), and 15 all suffer from not enough field dialog. I get with 12 since it was the first to really do this but all of them desperately need tons of meaningless character conversations to fill the dead air in dungeons and traveling.
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Jul 2, 2022 18:14
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CharlestheHammer posted:To be honest most of the complaints against the gambit system seems like complaints you can levy at FF as a whole so I don’t know why it gets singled out Because the other ff games that have simple combat usually have a flourish for either narrative or just pure spectacle in fights that generally makes up for their simplicity. Like ff12 has very little to give you to do and most of the time it actively holds out on what little it gives you until too late (LIke almost every Technick in the game for example). The shift in perspective and the lack of pizazz on animations/spells/etc. and how dogshit the menus are really pulls you out of the experience enough to realize "Oh this game has almost nothing going on mechanically, huh?" Hell, even the simpler FF games than it like 4 at least try to get something going by consistently shaking up your party and hard limiting your options so they could actually design boss fights around it. 12's freeform character growth, even in the limited Job boards versions, are like...70% unlocking the ability to keep to scale with what equipment you can buy. Most of the encounters really boil down to What Element Actually Hits This Guy and What Status Effects Do They spam. Compare this to something like 5 where starting from like the 3rd hour of the game every single boss has some scripting gimmick or tech that you can overcome in many ways but you have to play around in some way, or 13's bosses who's patterns of attacking/buffing/debuffing etc are what you have to time your shifts on to try and constantly keep up pressure. 12 is probably the simplest FF game combat wise since 4? Like people chime in "Oh you can beat most of hte early ones just by auto attacking" but 12's the one where that is by and large to most optimal way to do most of the content in the game. And then they made the menus so annoying to use that you'll prefer to use the Gambits where you can just automate the simple gameplay so you're interacting with it even less. It's essentially a DQ game but you took out all the weapon and class based abilities. And deleted half of the buffs/debuffs to the most bare bones versions of them. No 12 is a standout for how little is going on. Both in gameplay and narrative because they shunted what little depth they gave either to a codex you have to have a guide to truly get info out of and a bunch of side content that gets old fast or you have to grab that guide again to figure out. ZenMasterBullshit fucked around with this message at 18:20 on Jul 2, 2022 |
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Jul 2, 2022 18:17
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yeah even just canned quips like in FF7r cloud: "keep your guard up" tifa: "sure thing, coach" adds something to running around killing mooks
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Jul 2, 2022 18:17
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zedprime posted:Ending on par with Star Ocean endings My man you have a non-functioning brain I'm sorry.
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Jul 2, 2022 18:18
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I didn’t care for 9 when I played it. It might have been because it has been hyped up so much but I didn’t think the story really held up and mechanically it’s just not a great game
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Jul 2, 2022 18:18
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GloomMouse posted:Gambit systems great crime might just be exposing how little you actually do in FF games. I was even happier with the paradigm system where you could just say "do the debuff things now... okay now do defense things!" I think that's why I love it so much, I usually get 1/2-3/4 through the final fantasies I've played because the combat hits a point where the illusion breaks and all I see is like... in high school when the teacher would just hand out worksheets instead of teaching and you just gotta plow through them as fast as you can while thinking only as little about it as you need to. but the nature of the games are to slam you with battles constantly and if that's the part you hate, it just dominates too much of playtime to ignore. ff12 was like "we'll call you when something interesting happens" and it was perfect. I'm there to see amazing character, monster, and environmental designs -- the story, spectacle, and adventure. it's a lot like pokemon in a way, i'm never visiting those games because I really wish i could rifle through menus.
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Jul 2, 2022 18:18
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GloomMouse posted:endless repetitions of the same couple of mobs for infinity in any direction is just random encounters so I don't know how it's any worse than X, and i don't have to go to a separate battle screen now and can automate it. sounds like improvement to me That's why I said it's the worst of both! At least in one of the old games the random encounter might be with a monster or group of monsters that require some level of strategy, like a big monster like a sand worm hitting you with big partywide attacks and enough HP to require nuking down or a pack of obnoxious enemies spamming status effects on you, it adds at least a little variety and novelty to the combat system. Then in FF12 when you first meet a Malboro it'll be as a trash mob with a nerfed version of it's signature attack because you'll be fighting so many of them it wouldn't be fair if bad breath actually messed you up
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Jul 2, 2022 18:19
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isn't FF9's ending just "guy gets girl" with a few where-are-they-now interludes on the way star ocean 3 ended with the characters cogito-ergo-summing an entire universe out of nowhere, i don't see the comparison
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Jul 2, 2022 18:20
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