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FF7 was my first turn based RPG ever. I was 12 or 13 at the time I never did any grinding on my first play through. I just went from one fight to another as quickly as I could. Most bosses were hard. The tank on the elevator took a few tries because I had no grenades. I also never ever considered saving up limit breaks for boss fights. I played through all of FF7 at least five or six times and this never occurred to me. I also picked party members based on which one I thought was coolest (In this case Vincent and Barret) The only reason I got Vincent was because a friend beat the safe boss for me. I had no understanding that sometimes lower limit breaks would be better. I just assumed that the highest one was always the best. This confused me a lot with Meteor Rain VS Finishing Touch. Finishing Touch was obviously the highest and so the best one. I knew it blew enemies into the air and sometimes they died and sometimes they fell back down. This lead me to believe that enemies took a certain amount of damage mid air (off screen) before falling back down to take more damage. This explained why Finishing Touch killed smaller enemies but not larger enemies like dragons. At a glance meteor rain seemed to do more damage but only because I couldn't see how much damage Finishing Touch did in the air. So I started experimenting. I used "Sense" to check how much health enemies had. I wrote the number down on a notepad. I then did Finishing Touch. Once they landed again I did sense on them to see how much healthy they had left. I then deducted the damage they took from the fall and the result would be the damage they took mid air. Except some enemies took no damage mid air and other enemies took tens of thousands of damage (because they didn't fall it back down) This confused young me a lot. Eventually I got to where you go from CD 1 to CD 2. I forgot the name but you fight a two headed dragon boss and I got 100% stuck there. I had to call a friend again to help me defeat that boss. I played Final Fantasy Tactics the same way. No grinding just one story fight after another. Losing over and over and over again until I won. I still remember winning the execution grounds fight after at least 10 tries but on the one where I won. Mustadio had turned into a crystal and I just accepted that because I couldn't do the fight another time. I was always so surprised how FFT which was such a long game could fit on a single CD when FF7 needed three. I must easily have put 500 hours into FFT. Partially because a friend told me I could unlock the dark knight profession by mastering all jobs (I did all but couldn't master Squire) Now whenever I make a new game I clear Mandalia plans and Yugo woods. Then I level my party to master all their main jobs + alchemy (minus elixir) plus the highest +move ability Ramza: Master alchemist with thief skill (can fire guns, throw potions, steal vital equipment) Knight with item skill. dual wielding swords Monk with the item skill and equip armor (gives them both Helmet and armor which makes a huge difference) Priest with the items skill (The problem I have with my priest is that I ended up using almost only Holy to one shot difficult enemies) Dark Mage: Like the priest, Flare to one shot difficult enemies. Both the Priest and Mage are inevitably retired when enemies get 45% chance to block spells. The final lineup tends to be: Ramza: Alchemis/Thief with (always something to steal) Reis as Lancer Beowulf Cloud Worker 8 I never got further into the deep dungeon than "Terminate (floor 2 I think) Supposedly there's a cool boss at the end. I've played through FFT at least ten times but never managed to clear the dungeon. Wow this was way more than I intended for this topic. Catberry fucked around with this message at 21:07 on Mar 12, 2017 |
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Mar 12, 2017 21:00
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FF6 was my first turn based RPG, I thought it was pretty hard but then I never used healing spells because why would I want to heal instead of doing more damage?
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Mar 12, 2017 21:04
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Sakurazuka posted:FF6 was my first turn based RPG, I thought it was pretty hard but then I never used healing spells because why would I want to heal instead of doing more damage? tbf the only hp that matters is the last one
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Mar 12, 2017 21:09
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I'd say Final Fantasy games have a tendency to be relatively "easy" as RPGs go, which is a major reason why they are so popular, or were at least. FF8 aside, all of them have alot of RPG systems that are accessible and understandable. They're intended to be a good "first" RPG, and they were definitely mine. Well, I guess, technically Beyond the Beyond was the first RPG I *played* but Final Fantasy VIII was my first RPG that I owned and beat.
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Mar 12, 2017 21:57
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FF4 was my first
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Mar 12, 2017 21:59
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FF8. Young me was like "Oh wow I can use summons as much as I want and I never run out of mana" The game even brags about not having armor to change or mana in the SEED test. I never finished 8 actually. Things went straight to loony ville once I reached that high tech future city. I had no idea what was going on any more. Or why the mercenary school was taking pro-bono jobs from broke rebels to assassinate the president of the most powerful nation on the planet. Seems like bad business to me. FF7 was my firs final fantasy game. Final fantasy 8 was my last FF game. FF7 just set the bar too high. I bought FF9 online. I heard it was good but when it arrived the CD didn't work and I spent months arguing with the seller. I never got to play it 
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Mar 12, 2017 22:12
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my first rpg was pokemon blue, kinda surprised so many people started with ff tbh
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Mar 12, 2017 22:17
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Catberry posted:I never finished 8 actually. Things went straight to loony ville once I reached that high tech future city. I had no idea what was going on any more. That decision is actually part of the catalyst behind the Cid/NORG schism that occurs when you return afterward, since NORG only cares about money and thinks siding with the sorceress would be in the institution's best interest while Cid is determined to fight against her (and is kind of incompetent at... well, everything really). VIII's plot is bananas from start to finish, honestly. My first RPG was actually Mystic Quest, which I rented from a local Blockbuster and enjoyed so much that I tried to swap it out for another cartridge when the time came to return it. That was followed fairly closely by Pokemon Blue, and eventually FFVII.
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Mar 12, 2017 22:26
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FF4 was my first ff. First actual rpg would have been Mission Thunderbolt
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Mar 12, 2017 22:27
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mandatory lesbian posted:my first rpg was pokemon blue, kinda surprised so many people started with ff tbh Well, there were seven FF games released before Pokemon. Yeah, all you kids get off my lawn.
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Mar 12, 2017 22:28
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mandatory lesbian posted:my first rpg was pokemon blue, kinda surprised so many people started with ff tbh It's worth remembering that even just in the US there were 3 FF games before Pokemon was even a thing and FF7 came out the year after. Especially on a forum like this where people who were largely pretty nerdy growing up congregate you've got a skewed sample size leaning towards that.
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Mar 12, 2017 22:30
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My first RPG was Lunar, which means what happened to the series goes beyond anger at playing a bad game, it's personal.
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Mar 12, 2017 22:31
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ImpAtom posted:It's worth remembering that even just in the US there were 3 FF games before Pokemon was even a thing and FF7 came out the year after. Especially on a forum like this where people who were largely pretty nerdy growing up congregate you've got a skewed sample size leaning towards that. if you played ff first you are an old Die Sexmonster! posted:Well, there were seven FF games released before Pokemon. this guy gets it
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Mar 12, 2017 22:36
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Kalenn Istarion posted:The answer is yes, because final fantasy Seriously. If methed-out tweakers in Hawaii can get excited about a turn-based Final Fantasy, then anyone will. Elentor posted:That's Sonic 3 and I'm also one of the stupid kids who got stuck in it. I never figured it out. I was so relieved when you could clip past it climbing as Knuckles Fur20 fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Mar 12, 2017 |
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Mar 12, 2017 22:50
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I opened up Final Fantasy III on my phone for the first time in five years. I'm outside of a dwarf cave. What am I supposed to do next? It looks like I was trying to teach someone black magic, should I keep doing that?
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Mar 12, 2017 23:16
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FF: Dawn of Souls was my first non-Pokemon JRPG, playing it in my early-mid teens and quickly getting into a bunch of the others. I had difficulty with some bosses that meant I didn't beat them the first time around, but that was less because of actual difficulty (although some of them were legit hard) and more because I was a bit... blunt, and struggled with points when my method of play wasn't working and I needed to adapt. Which I've always thought is where 'difficulty' in Final Fantasy games tend to come from; it's not that it's hard, it's just that it's occasionally demanding. 1 and 2 I beat and got through all the bonus content of. 4 I stalled out at Demon Wall. I probably could have beaten it, really, but I just got bored and stopped. 5 it was NeoExDeath. I maintain that FFV is one of the few legitimately hard Final Fantasies, and has a really strong difficulty curve, but at the time NED was too much for me. 10 it was Evrae. It must've been my team composition, because I replayed this a year or two ago and he's not hard at all, but the locational stuff means you've really gotta make use of Wakka. The 3make I played later, and couldn't beat Cloud of Darkness. And 6 and 12 I stopped playing before completion not because of any real difficulty, but I just went 'yeah I'm done with this' after a given point. All of these, with the exception of 4 and the 3make, I've since gone back and beaten. I don't think Final Fantasy games really try to be 'babby-easy' or whatever, but I think most of them generally underestimate tools they give you, so it's very possible to obliterate what difficulty it does have by just finding the right button. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Mar 12, 2017 |
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Mar 12, 2017 23:23
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Cleretic posted:1 and 2 I beat and got through all the bonus content of. i've had dawn of souls since release and even kid me with almost infinite time could not bring myself to beat the ff2 after-story
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Mar 12, 2017 23:28
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Cleretic posted:5 it was NeoExDeath. I maintain that FFV is one of the few legitimately hard Final Fantasies, and has a really strong difficulty curve, but at the time NED was too much for me. FF5 is actually one of the easiest. The main thing that can make it feel hard is when people spread themselves across a bunch of jobs instead of just focusing on a couple and then being paralyzed by indecision. A Chemist can solo every fight in the game, because they are broken OP as hell (as are bard songs if you're patient). A pair of black mages and a pair of white mages can take down NED pretty solidly. Toss in some time/blue magic as well and you're more than good to go because haste, mighty guard, and white wind on a team tossing out Holy and Flare will have no concerns beyond a couple Ethers and Elixirs, maybe. If all else fails, give everyone GilToss and kill Neo Exdeath by throwing money at him.
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Mar 12, 2017 23:40
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Evil Fluffy posted:FF5 is actually one of the easiest. The main thing that can make it feel hard is when people spread themselves across a bunch of jobs instead of just focusing on a couple and then being paralyzed by indecision. A Chemist can solo every fight in the game, because they are broken OP as hell (as are bard songs if you're patient). A pair of black mages and a pair of white mages can take down NED pretty solidly. Toss in some time/blue magic as well and you're more than good to go because haste, mighty guard, and white wind on a team tossing out Holy and Flare will have no concerns beyond a couple Ethers and Elixirs, maybe. That's the same thing of the dev team underestimating the tools they're giving you, combined with a really strong personal power curve in V. At this point, after all those Four Job Fiestas and the gift of a lot of hindsight, we know how strong drat near any job in FFV can be. What I think makes FF's power curve work, then, is that to an extent the game's aware of it. Sure, they didn't expect how powerful some of these tools are--how could they--but they aren't lowballing you. They know that, going into the merged world (and even for a little bit before) you've got the tools to do some real goddamn damage, and so the rest of the game from that point is designed with the notion that you will be. It expects a certain degree of system mastery of you, to have figured out by yourself how to use the tools you've been given and have chosen to focus on to overcome challenges that, otherwise, can seem unreasonable. It's a similar type of difficulty to what you see from Shin Megami Tensei, and arguably Dark Souls. It's not deliberately bullshit or unfair, if just has expectations and will not hesitate to destroy you for not meeting them.
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Mar 13, 2017 00:27
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The GIG posted:If we're gonna say people's criticisms are less reliable because it's been 20 years since it came out then you have to extend that to the praise too and then find a way to extend that to people who never played it at launch and played it sometime in the intervening years and thats a giant rear end mess to try to cast that particular net over. I'm saying the criticism specifically about the difficulty is most likely to be coloured by time and repetition, I wasn't speaking to criticism generally. Elentor posted:You'll have to apply recency bias to yourself as well then and not act like everyone else's opinion is, in your own words, "dumb". At which point it's better just not to act like you're the only person with an objective flawless perception and cut the middleman that is arguing about how everyone else is polluted except you. See my above comment. I'm not saying my memory of the game is unbiased. I certainly find the game much easier than I did the first time I played it. I believe that same result will colour people's memories of the difficulty - meaning we're all biased to remember it as easier than it really was. You are of course free to disagree.
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Mar 13, 2017 00:48
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Kalenn Istarion posted:I'm saying the criticism specifically about the difficulty is most likely to be coloured by time and repetition, I wasn't speaking to criticism generally. to that end, I played it for the first time like <5 years ago and it wasn't hard at all, save for Carry Armor. enemy skill breaks that game like halfway through disc 1
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Mar 13, 2017 05:18
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Rick posted:I opened up Final Fantasy III on my phone for the first time in five years. I'm outside of a dwarf cave. What am I supposed to do next? It looks like I was trying to teach someone black magic, should I keep doing that? Uh...do you mean the gnome city? I can't remember dwarves in the game but they were probably there. I mainly rmeember the gnome village you have to be Mini to get into. And yes, Black Mage is pretty good. You will need it for one of the hardest bosses in the game. I would suggest Monk as well if you don't have it. @FF Difficulty Aren't we all so old and have played these games so many times that they would obviously seem too easy and simplistic? Like, FFVII's combat probably blew a lot of minds back in the day because we were little kids and didn't know any better. I'm not saying it's a bad combat system or anything - I think it's the best of the PS1 FFs - but I'm just trying to say that debating dificulty and stuff now is kind of pointless. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 05:27
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morallyobjected posted:to that end, I played it for the first time like <5 years ago and it wasn't hard at all, save for Carry Armor. enemy skill breaks that game like halfway through disc 1 Curious if you had read a walk through or any other discussion of the game's mechanics beforehand or were going in blind?
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Mar 13, 2017 05:36
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Oh, you people. My first RPG was MegaMan Battle Network 4  While, the first FF I played was IV, the first one I completed was VI as a 14-year-old on an emulator. I thought the Kefka fight was hard because of all the phases and because I didn't get the esper-spells system. To top it of, because I'm stupid and I have way too much patience for grinding, I didn't finish my first playthrough of VIII because I overgrinded (managed to get Squall, Zell and Selphie to level 35 before meeting Rinoa) and I junctioned tier 1 spells to stats in Disc 2 because "I'm not junctioning Thundaga, what if I need to cast it?  "
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Mar 13, 2017 05:47
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CeallaSo posted:My first RPG was actually Mystic Quest, which I rented from a local Blockbuster and enjoyed so much that I tried to swap it out for another cartridge when the time came to return it. That was followed fairly closely by Pokemon Blue, and eventually FFVII. Wasn't Mystic Quest the game where the last boss was undead so you could one shot every phase with a strong healing spell?
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Mar 13, 2017 05:49
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NikkolasKing posted:
FF7 launched with bland combat. Just like every previous FF before it with the sole exception of 6 that is 100% carried by the existence of Sabin.
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Mar 13, 2017 05:49
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Failposttoottoot
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Mar 13, 2017 05:56
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Catberry posted:Wasn't Mystic Quest the game where the last boss was undead so you could one shot every phase with a strong healing spell? Not quite. If I remember correctly, the Cure spell healed so much HP that it would actually overflow the boss's health in such a fashion that it would register as doing huge amount of damage. Amusingly, this apparently only works when the hero casts it, as apparently Phoebe's Cure heals so much more that it overflows the boss's health back around and heals it.
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Mar 13, 2017 10:56
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NikkolasKing posted:Uh...do you mean the gnome city? I can't remember dwarves in the game but they were probably there. I mainly rmeember the gnome village you have to be Mini to get into. Dwarves are second crystal dungeon, right after Medusa's Tower. Rick posted:I opened up Final Fantasy III on my phone for the first time in five years. I'm outside of a dwarf cave. What am I supposed to do next? It looks like I was trying to teach someone black magic, should I keep doing that? If you have more that the base jobs, I think next destination is the abandoned town to the south (but make sure you're prepared first, when you go there you get thrust into a dungeon and cannot leave until you finish it). If not, check the dwarf town to see how many horns are on the middle pedestal. If one, go to the basement area and Toad yourself to access the dungeon. If no horns, go to the other cave on dwarf island. If two, abandoned town. Also explore the far left and right areas with your ship if you haven't, there's a town on each side with good stuff.
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Mar 13, 2017 11:21
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NikkolasKing posted:Aren't we all so old and have played these games so many times that they would obviously seem too easy and simplistic? Like, FFVII's combat probably blew a lot of minds back in the day because we were little kids and didn't know any better. My very first step towards game development was because I, as a kid, almost 20 years ago found FF7's combat to be so bland and boring that I decided to learn how to reverse-engineer, edit hexadecimals and mod just to make a harder version of the game because I felt the materia system was wasted on a game tuned so poorly. A few years later I got around to it, then someone made a tool to help me and the tool ended up corrupting the enemy files  . Afterwards I decided to learn how to mod more seriously and how the common file architectures worked. Again, same kid who could not beat FF5 even with cheats. Had a lot of trouble with FF8 of all the games (which is a game I find trivial now). Vagrant Story is one of my favorite JRPGs and one that I've replayed to death and it kicked my rear end the first time. I don't misremember any of that.
Elentor fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 15:09
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I literally beat all the games without trouble except FF4 and I'm not misremembering anything. FF7 was a real fun game.
bloodychill fucked around with this message at 15:49 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 15:39
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I feel that if the argument against criticizing the gameplay comes down to "Maybe you forgot it was good" then you are probably doing more harm than good to the game's rep.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:39
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The GIG posted:I feel that if the argument against criticizing the gameplay comes down to "Maybe you forgot it was good" then you are probably doing more harm than good to the game's rep. Same goes the other way as well. People are always complaining that people don't remember how boring or bad a series are because it was a long time ago their memories are clouded with nostalgia. It just might be that different people like different games...
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Mar 13, 2017 15:51
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It's almost as if getting upset someone has different opinions on media enjoyment is dumb or something.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:54
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There was the Donkey Kong 64 LP made by Dazzling adder i believe. It started out with him stating that this was a very good game from his childhood and the LP ended with him souring on the game.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:57
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It's true except when talking about FF8, which is bad ad furthermore the worst.
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Mar 13, 2017 15:57
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bloodychill posted:It's true except when talking about FF8, which is bad ad furthermore the worst. The truest post in this whole thread. Mega64 posted:Dwarves are second crystal dungeon, right after Medusa's Tower. Ah, then he already beat Salamander who I recall being potentially the hardest boss in the remake. I'm not sure if Black Mage is that great after him...I need to replay it. NikkolasKing fucked around with this message at 16:02 on Mar 13, 2017 |
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Mar 13, 2017 16:00
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Sefal posted:There was the Donkey Kong 64 LP made by Dazzling adder i believe. It started out with him stating that this was a very good game from his childhood and the LP ended with him souring on the game. To be fair a lot of LPs end like that.
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Mar 13, 2017 16:00
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However I can totally sympathize with people learning that thing they liked about a game back in the day is actually the thing everyone else playing hated and it's not coming back.
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Mar 13, 2017 16:01
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Just bring back dirge of cerberus
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Mar 13, 2017 16:03
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