Final Fantasy Megathread - People here, it sounds like sickness

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Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

For the DS/PSP version of FFIII, what would the hardest combination be for a FFV-style random class challenge? Ignoring the parts where you need Toad/Mini and I guess the dungeon where only magic really does any damage.

I figure Scholar and Evoker for the middle two crystals. I guess White Mage for the first crystal? Not sure about the last.

Edit: I guess I might as well spoiler that part since the game just came out again.

Armor-Piercing fucked around with this message at 01:29 on Oct 2, 2012

# ¿ Oct 2, 2012 01:18

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# ¿ Jun 1, 2024 16:35

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

ApplesandOranges posted:

I'd actually say Thief is worse than White Mage - White Mage is harder going on, but they do eventually get access to the elemental rods that make grinding easier for the first part of the game. Thief doesn't have survivability or enough damage to matter.

For the Fire Crystal, Scholar easily.

For Water, I'm not entirely sure - Evoker is a strong candidate, but you can occasionally bust out a decent effect from Heatran or Catastro. Dark Knight is pretty flimsy and Souleater is pretty terrible near the end of the game. But I'd say go with either - they both have enough flaws at the end of the game.

For the Earth Crystal, Magus is easily its weakest job. Sage is also poor because of its low Agility, but Magus takes the cake.

I'm actually interested in using both Thief and Magus (I've used all the other earth crystal jobs except Sage a little bit anyway), so that works out.

My thinking was that Evoker would be an easy choice for the worst job in the water crystal (and strong contender for worst in the game) just because the spell effects are random. If Dark Knights aren't great either though, maybe I'll use one instead so I actually have someone who can equip the Ultima Weapon.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2012 14:40

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Dr Pepper posted:

The game puts a cap on how much you can level up in each area.

For a good chunk of the game you can hit this cap just by not avoiding enemies as you progress through each area, too. Then you beat the boss and get a small chunk of points to spend on the newly unlocked sections. There's no point in grinding until towards the end of the game.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2012 19:16

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Being able to max your crystarium the moment it expands doesn't seem that beneficial to me since regular enemies for most of the game aren't that strong. You could avoid encounters since you wouldn't need the points any more, but then all you've accomplished is dividing combat and progression which, to me, would be much more tedious than doing both at once.

Unless grinding at Hope's house is more efficient (which it might be, I don't know), it makes more sense to me to wait until you can, for example, repeat Mission 24, preferably with the Growth Egg. There you're at a point in the game where you don't naturally max your crystarium through progress and you aren't already powerful enough to fight everything around you.

# ¿ Oct 7, 2012 20:04

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

I heard that Xenoblade is the best JRPG of all time and will revitalize the genre.

I disagree with all of that though, and second playing Persona 3 (or 4).

# ¿ Oct 17, 2012 05:47

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Azure_Horizon posted:

Just wanted to remind everyone that they said Lightning will have multiple costumes, akin to different "classes." We'll see if she gets better ones.

So it's a S-E game, third in its series, and has a female protagonist with multiple costumes...

# ¿ Dec 19, 2012 02:21

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Sex_Ferguson posted:

Nier's story on its own leaves a lot to be explained, such as stuff like the time jump at the beginning, why the world is the way it is and so on. While the game's own self-contained story is nice it leaves a lot to be desired in actual resolution.

I mean, I liked it too, but I could see why someone would feel Nier's story is kind of lacking.

I have a hard time remembering what's in the game and what's only in Grimoire Nier at this point, so I could be wrong, but I think it's pretty clear in the game what the time skip is about. It doesn't explicitly say "hey, you know the prologue that is 1300 years before the rest of the game where you're the same guy? That's because X" but the last part of the game more or less explains it.

They definitely don't give you all the information about what happened to cause everything, but I don't think any of that is really necessary. You don't need to know about the Drakengard connection, for example, to understand the plot of Nier, even though it does add a lot of detail to the background. That's why that stuff is in Grimoire Nier instead of the game itself. Personally, I like that not everything is fully explained and perfectly self-contained; it feels a lot more authentic that way.

Nier is a pretty cool game.

# ¿ Dec 22, 2012 16:20

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

I love Enc-None and used it pretty frequently both times I played FF8. In a game with random encounters, it is fantastic being able to just turn them off entirely once you've gotten all the drops/cards/magic you want from monsters in a location, or if you just want to get through an area, finish a quest, or solve a puzzle and you're sick of being interrupted every 30 seconds.

I also like the characters and enjoyed the story.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2012 01:17

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

The White Dragon posted:

Alternatively, you know what isn't fun? Playing through the game most of us probably did as kids thinking, "You know what would've made this game a lot easier? Equipment" not realizing--because of the hamfisted way it's presented--that Juctioning is equipment.

That's seriously all they had to frame it as, but noooooo. Instead of giving it to you straight, they present Junctioning as this mystical paramagic pseudoscience involving things living in your brain. In the tutorial. That's not good game design, at least from what's comparable to a pedagogical point of view.

Did you really play a chunk of the game without figuring out how to junction? I figured when most of us played it as kids we just screwed around in the menus (pretty easy when anything you can't use is greyed out) until we had a rough idea of how to do that sort of thing.

I can't find a video of the magic-junctioning tutorial, but the GF-junctioning tutorial doesn't go mystical at all. It's extremely straightforward. Between these and five minutes of playing around, it's a pretty simple system to grasp, even for a kid.

Edit: The magic-junctioning tutorial. Same deal.

Armor-Piercing fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Dec 29, 2012

# ¿ Dec 29, 2012 03:06

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Azure_Horizon posted:

The most interesting feature of Seifer is the fact that his ideals are based off of a movie Laguna was a part of. But the story tries to be so much larger than him, that he comes off as an angsty, and ultimately useless, villain.

Isn't that how he's supposed to come off? He's a childhood rival, inspired by a movie (and mind control or whatever) to become a part of something much bigger than himself, where his role ends up being much less important than he'd imagined. He got the cool job he always wanted as a kid and it ended up being awful in reality.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2012 08:23

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

I don't mind that it doesn't show every step of the process, personally. I mean, part of the reason it happens is because he's isolated like that, and Squall (and the player) don't need to be present for things to happen in the world. If he showed up constantly and I saw every step of the process I would probably get sick of him pretty quickly, and the change is more striking to me when he only shows his face every so often.

# ¿ Dec 29, 2012 08:35

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Zombies' Downfall posted:

The thing is that people look back on the series as having "classic medieval roots", but the weird techno stuff and exotic character designs and poo poo (what a lot of people sum up as "anime") go way back to the series' roots.

Edit: I wish I knew about this when I played through the NES version. I guess I'll fight him when I get around to the PSP port, but it won't be the same.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2013 03:56

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

I've only played the DS version of FF3, enjoyed it thoroughly, and intend to replay it at some point using a team of the "worst" jobs. I had to do the entire final dungeon twice (I died at the final boss on my first attempt), and it was frustrating, but only enough for me to make sure I did it right the second time.

The final dungeon in FF4 (PSP version), however, was annoying enough that I almost stopped playing.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2013 16:22

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

With people asking about FF3 lately, would there be any interest in doing a four job fiesta like what is done regularly with FF5? Because I would seriously entertain the idea of playing through the PSP or DS version with a Scholar and Evoker in my party, especially if it would convince more people to try the remake.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2013 19:07

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

There are a couple places where you'd probably need to make an exception - I think there are parts where you can't progress without Toad or Mini, and one dungeon where only magic attacks will do any reasonable damage - but I think most of the game could be completed with most combinations of one class per crystal. You'd have to roll mostly healers to really have a horrible time with things.

Is the NES version (especially with save states) easier enough that it would be doable? I'm not suggesting everyone play only the remake. I guess I should also have clarified that I don't mean running something of the same magnitude as the actual Four Job Fiesta, just something to do here if several people are going to be playing through FF3 anyway (in which case I don't think length is as much of an issue).

# ¿ Feb 2, 2013 21:03

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

I was planning to do a run with either Thief/Scholar/Evoker/Magus (or Sage) or with only jobs from the first crystal to see what I could do. Not a big fan of single-class stuff.

I also didn't realize there was a Four Job Fiesta format where you didn't get one job per crystal. If you don't roll a class from the first crystal with that, are you just stuck with Freelancers?

# ¿ Feb 2, 2013 22:25

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

One of the reasons I prefer FFIII (DS :v:

) to FFV is that, while both games have a non-existent story, III has much less of it. It's why I'm interested in replaying I and III at some point, but not V.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2013 19:48

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

When I played through FFXII I set gambits for two characters and manually controlled the third, which I felt quite happy with. I was still really involved in combat, but it didn't slow down at all like having to control all three would. Played roughly like Dragon Age (or I guess Kingdom Hearts?) that way. It helps that I like the characters and setting in it more than most of the others, but the combat in XII is probably my favorite in the series.

Edit: I haven't played X-2 yet though. Just waiting for that HD version.

Armor-Piercing fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Jul 28, 2013

# ¿ Jul 28, 2013 07:02

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

It's because they're probably going to be doing FFXII HD, assuming X/X-2 HD goes well. Same reason Persona 4 isn't on PSN. Also, removing backwards compatibility was a wise move, saving money on something most people didn't care about.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2013 00:00

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Schwartzcough posted:

I certainly cared. The PS2 had a ton of great games, which in order to play now requires me to keep around an extra console that's got countless hours on it and is of questionable lifespan, or buy the games all over again in some PS3 package or PSN if you're lucky. And I'm not super interested in saving Sony money; it didn't save consumers anything because the PS3 didn't get any cheaper when they removed backwards compatibility.

Sure, and I feel the same way, but it still made sense from Sony's perspective to get rid of it.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2013 00:27

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Evoker is probably the worst class in the game (you don't get to choose which effect you get for your summons), so you aren't missing much. The others are a bit more useful, but probably not enough that you would want to bring their job levels up when you've probably already got decently-leveled fire crystal jobs.

My endgame party had a Knight, and I'm pretty sure a Ranger as well (though I may have switched them to Ninja). The final crystal's jobs are really solid, too, so you might as well just hold off for them. Grinding job levels in Evoker if you're going to switch to Summoner anyway would just be wasted effort.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2013 06:02

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Protons posted:

Bard seems bad too. I guess I'll stick to my white mage black mage dark knight and monk. My monk is an absolute power house.

The Bard, like the Evoker (in theory), isn't very useful when you first get access to it because you won't be able to access most of its abilities. I haven't really used them, but I hear they get better later on.

Monks are awesome though. Since job level is tied to your number of attacks and unarmed damage, and you get Monk so early on, you don't even need to put any effort into making them so good. The Black Belt does have better stats overall, but would mean doing a lot of job level grinding to catch up.

Edit: That's also part of why I kept a Knight in my party, too. His job level was quite a bit higher than everyone else's, which came in really handy.

# ¿ Aug 4, 2013 07:18

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Krad posted:

Not really sure how you made the jump from SRPG to third person shooter, but hey! ~~Kingdom Hearts~~ FFXV's probably got you covered!

Valkyria Chronicles. :colbert:

# ¿ Aug 6, 2013 02:54

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Fingers McLongDong posted:

Is FFIII ds worth playing? And is revenant wings also worth playing if I like tactical rpgs? I heard mixed things about it and focusing on vaan and penelo seems silly because they were nothing more than viewpoint characters in ffxii.

Do you like FFI? It's closest to that in terms of the gameplay progression and general lack of story, except you can change classes, but those classes need to be leveled up individually, so getting newly-unlocked classes into a usable state can be a chore. The game isn't very well-balanced, and is a bit random - enemy HP and number of attacks changed from the original version but not in a carefully playtested way. The final dungeon is also longish and has five boss fights but no save points.

You should probably just avoid it unless you're okay with all of that. It's one of my favorite games in the series, but most people agree that it's terrible and suggest the NES version instead.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2013 18:33

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Zombies' Downfall posted:

The terrible secret of Final Fantasy is that the NES versions of the originals aren't good enough to hold up today and the remakes of them are all superior in some ways but in the case of 1/3 made bafflingly bad design choices (the remakes of 1 are the easiest games ever, the remake of 3 as noted already is a real grinder) and in the case of 2 absolutely no amount of bugfixes and balance changes can save that ship from sinking.

They're worth playing as historical artifacts if you wanna say you've beaten every game or to see the origins of the job system or something, but as actual games they just aren't very good and certainly don't stand the test of time the way 4-10 do. I can still randomly pick up any of those games, including 8 for all its bizarre warts, and spend days on it.

Apart from not giving any direction at all in terms of where to go or who to talk to, the NES version of FF1 is just fine, in my opinion. It can be frustrating to see Ineffective at times, especially when you're in a close fight, but I like that it means I'm actually thinking about which party members I'll need to attack which enemies. Instead of telling everyone to attack the first monster and letting the damage spill over to the rest, I'm considering roughly how much HP I think the monster has, how much damage I've done to it, and whether I think one character can finish it off or if I should send two just to be safe.

Conversely, I played through several games in the 4-10 range for the first time over the past few years and thought a few of them were garbage. Whether something "stands the test of time" in this case is probably more a matter of what your tastes were then and now - you may not like FF1 now, even if you may have in the past, but I certainly enjoyed it, and maybe I would have liked FF4 more if I'd played it when I was younger, but I definitely do not like it now.

# ¿ Aug 10, 2013 22:41

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Saigyouji posted:

Is there actually a game with monks where they don't pretty much have to start using magic/weapons to be viable in the endgame? I'm only coming up with FFI, and maybe FFVI, since blitzes continue to hold their own.

FFIII, although usually you'd replace them with Black Belts.

# ¿ Aug 19, 2013 21:11

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Sunning posted:

I was too busy looking at the sprite to notice this earlier, but the copy/paste job on that meteor is way worse. Not even an attempt to make those tiles line up.

# ¿ Oct 9, 2013 21:40

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Once again, Deus Ex predicts the future:

Eidos doing a Final Fantasy game would be pretty awesome. I want to imagine it being like Anachronox but with an ending.

# ¿ Oct 31, 2013 01:53

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

That loving Sned posted:

This is a first for the series, since it's usually left out for file size reasons. Not only do the voice files take up some disc space (a problem for the 360 since it's limited to 7.8GB per disc), but FMVs are now lip-synced to the voice acting. Either they'll include new FMVs in the download, or just use the Japanese voices and have them de-sync horribly.

It says in the article that it changes the lip-syncing as well:

quote:

It includes lip-synching that differs from the English-language voice track already included with the game

I imagine that would apply to FMVs as well, but it would be funny if it didn't.

I'm still going to hold off until this game is like $20 (I'm just going through XIII-2 now), but at least you should be able to grab this language pack while it's free even if you don't have the game itself.

# ¿ Nov 21, 2013 14:16

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Not all of us want to be spoiled, so you may want to edit that.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2013 18:34

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

The White Dragon posted:

Wait so if FF15 is still a continuation of the FF13 canon, does this mean that it takes place in super-future Earth

At this point I guess I shouldn't care since I've already been spoiled, but it would be nice to tag this stuff in case other people read it later.

# ¿ Nov 22, 2013 19:30

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

I finished XIII-2 yesterday and I liked it a lot more than XIII and quite a few other FFs, but I think that may be because while I played I watched TV instead of paying any attention to the story (something that probably would've helped me with, say, FFX). I got the basics down, but after hearing paradox paradox paradox every conversation I quickly tuned out.

I didn't like it when XIII split the characters up, partly from having an undersized party a couple times and partly from not liking most of the characters. Noel may seem straight out of Kingdom Hearts, but without listening to him much I didn't find him offensively bad. Having a Proto-Behemoth and a Chocobo in my party made up for that though.

I guess I'd agree that the combat isn't quite as good as in XIII, and I was a bit upset when I realized I wasn't going to get Haste/Hastega, but between having cool monsters instead of Snow and the relatively lower emphasis on combat in XIII-2 I didn't really mind. XIII-2 feels almost more like an adventure game than a regular FF game, and I spent a lot of time just wandering around, looking for hidden fragments and stylish monsters to recruit. Exploring in this game was fun and rewarding for me in a way that Xenoblade was supposed to be (but for me, was not).

Caius' design was god awful but he is also Grimoire Weiss so I guess he breaks even.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2013 01:37

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

I thought XIII-2 did nonlinearity a lot better than XIII did linearity, but that's probably because XIII was a long line of monsters while XIII-2 had a little more variety.

As much as I don't like X, I think it was a better linear design than XIII. Maybe that's because it's been longer since I played it though.

# ¿ Dec 1, 2013 01:52

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Final Fantasy VII:

quote:

RPG classic

Final Fantasy VIII:

quote:

the greatest Role Playing Adventure of all time

Square-Enix knows what's up. :smug:

# ¿ Dec 5, 2013 19:21

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Also the number of spells you draw each time is increased by your magic stat, so if you do want to grind out spells that way prioritize your magic stat, then speed. Drawing nine spells at a time makes the process pretty quick.

# ¿ Dec 6, 2013 23:21

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

They beat up Gackt, don't they.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2013 04:42

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Pyroxene Stigma posted:

That era was when Square could do no wrong, and is probably why we're all posting here. I know a lot of you love X, I wasn't such a huge fan (and the PS2 got a lot of needless, halfhearted sequels) but everything they made near the end of the SNES' life and their PSX titles are solid gold. VIII was a misstep, one I personally find enjoyable, but VII and IX were incredible. Tactics is the best game the company's ever put out. Even random offshoots like Bushido Blade and Threads of Fate were a blast.

We'll never see an era like that again, thanks to rising costs in game development. Back then they could afford to experiment and see what stuck.

In the spirit of the thread title, I disagree with almost all of this (I don't care for X either). I stopped enjoying IV and V long before the halfway mark (still need to finish VI); IX is probably my least favorite game in the series; I still haven't maintained interest in VII long enough to finish the first disc (though I just bought it on Steam to try again in the near future, so fingers crossed); VIII is one of my favorites, and to date the only one I've played through twice; and I thought Tactics was pretty boring with the exception of Calculators and was relieved when I'd finished it.

I keep playing them though, for whatever reason. Final Fantasy has to be the series I've put the most time into relative to how much I don't like most of the games.

Bushido Blade owns though.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2013 07:11

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Zaphod42 posted:

This has to be a joke post.

No joke. I also really like IIIDS, strongly prefer it to V, and plan on buying the PSP version to replay it once it hits the $10 mark.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2013 17:19

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Kyrosiris posted:

Are you just... allergic to customization?

No, I generally love customization in RPGs. I get really into planning character/party builds, even when I'm not actually playing the game yet (I've had a Baldur's Gate party in the works for like a year now, waiting for when I eventually get to the Enhanced Edition).

I'm not sure I can really explain my preference for the III job system in a way that makes any sense. When I think about replaying III, though, I think along the lines of "I'm going to use a Scholar, and I'm going to take a Thief to steal attack items for him." When I think about replaying V, I think "ok, grind Red Mage to get X-Magic, stick that on my casters," and so on. It's less "what kind of strategy do I want to go for" and more "which skills do I grab to make my characters stupidly overpowered."

Again, I realize this isn't terribly good reasoning, since I could easily just play V and use the limits of III's system when planning my party, but there you have it.

I also don't care for the characters or writing in V, so that III has very little of either is a plus to me. That's really a big part of it, since it's also why I don't like most of the other FF games that I don't like.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2013 18:20

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# ¿ Jun 1, 2024 16:35

Armor-Piercing: Sep 22, 2009; Nightly dance
of bleeding swords

Pyroxene Stigma posted:

Yeah, he can be as wrong about FFV as he wants as long as he doesn't fervently defend XIII.

I really liked III DS, but I'm glad I never tried to finish it after reading this thread.

Lightning and Fang are decent and the combat was fun enough, but that's about it for me.

The end of IIIDS can be pretty frustrating. It's a really long dungeon with four separate boss battles before you even get to the final boss, and there aren't any save points. My first time through I died at the final boss and had to do the whole thing over again. I can definitely understand not wanting to go through that.

As far as final dungeons go, though, I thought the one in IV (PSP version) was much worse. Even the random encounters in that were rough, to the point where I just ran from everything on the last few floors. I'm generally not underleveled in these games, and I managed to beat the final boss, but getting to him was more painful than anything I can remember in IIIDS. I don't think I've seen anyone else complain about it though, so maybe I was doing something wrong.

# ¿ Dec 27, 2013 23:35

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Final Fantasy Megathread - People here, it sounds like sickness

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