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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Except that hasn't really been true since 6 moving forward. Since they started writing actual stories for the games they kind of move heavily away from old concepts, keeping them in name or very loose association if they kept them at all. 6 to 7 to 9 to 10 have very little in common w/r/t lore or setting, minus the name of a few attack names here and there. 6 > 7 is a bad example because those two are probably the two most similar consecutive Final Fantasies. Maybe it's because I'm ultimately a child of the classic FFs where that was much stronger, but it's certainly still present. Some are far more imaginative than others, but they do share those same building blocks. That consistent vocabulary and bestiary is a big part of it, I'll admit; you will always be able to grasp what spells do what by name, Ifrit will always be your real introduction to summons (or at least pretty close by), and you know poo poo's gotten real when Meteor gets involved. But it's also sort of an intangible central piece to the approach, this consistency to how they play. I haven't really put enough thought into this to describe it, but it's all those little things to the gameplay systems that make them feel consistent and familiar. It's like an extreme version of how Nintendo's franchises go; no matter what new stuff a new Zelda throws at you, you can be confident that inside it's still the same game. I dunno, my vocabulary is failing me on this one.
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Nov 13, 2016 09:39
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Well, the thing I was trying to say there was that while that vocabulary and series of recurring elements is certainly a factor, it's not the only one. There's also far more intangible concepts. (I will admit I hosed up my selections horribly, though.) I admit the separation I'm trying to talk about thereis hard to describe in Final Fantasy, so to nail them down I'm instead going to use a different example: Hyrule Warriors. It has a lot of that surface-level vocabulary you'd point to when saying 'this is a Legend of Zelda game'. it's got Link, Zelda and Ganon, it's got the Master Sword and the Triforce as central story points, you collect staples like bombs, the boomerang and the hookshot to solve puzzles and fight enemies that are only vulnerable to them, and if you're willing to fudge the numbers a bit you can even say it's got dungeon-style levels that contain McGuffins. If you're making a checklist of Things Zelda Games Have, it'd probably score just as well as something like Link's Awakening. But all of that does not make it a Legend of Zelda game, because mechanically it's something different, it's Dynasty Warriors. It's doing its own spin on that formula, using those Zelda staples to do something new with that formula, but wearing those clothes doesn't make it a Legend of Zelda game instead. And that's how I see FFXV. While it does seem to have a lot of superficial Things Final Fantasy Games Have, it looks to me like it's lacking too much of the under-the-hood mechanical things that 'make' a Final Fantasy game for me. I'm guessing I probably hosed up that explanation too, but that's what I'm rolling with. I admit this is kind of a pointless argument for me to be having anyway, because unless that rumor of it coming to PC comes true I'm not gonna be able to play it anyway, but that's where I'm coming from. ZenMasterBullshit posted:First, that initial claim requires some explanation because it is not some naturally inherent truth like you seem to feel it is. First of all I'm not even saying it's a bad thing, because VI and VII are both pretty solid games. For what it's worth I like VII more after having played both, so it's not even throwing stones at it for being derivative. Mechanically, if you were to distill and describe the progression mechanics of Final Fantasy games in the simplest way, VI and VII are the only ones where you'd use largely the same description twice in a row: equip magical things onto your party members to get separate experience that gradually gives you access to stronger magic/abilities. It's far from the only time two FF games have the same general description there (III/V, X/XII), but that's the only time where there isn't at least one game between them. Narratively, they've got a lot of similar plot features, just in nowhere near the same order or implementation. Vector and Shinra are both massive industrialist cities doing terrible things to the setting's source of magic for technological power. Kefka and Sephiroth are both experiments that go off the rails and eventually usurp their creators' antagonist role when they sink their teeth into a big ancient magical power nexus. Celes and Cloud are both supersoldiers made by the initial antagonist force, Terra and Aerith are both innocent (well okay, 'innocent' in Aerith's case) magic-using girls that are members/descendants of a largely-lost mystical race that is relevant to the story's main conflict. I could continue going on with parallels that admittedly get a little muddier after here (Leo/Zack, Death Gaze/Ultima Weapon), but generally I'm saying that there's a lot of common threads between the two games, they're just putting all of those pieces in a different order. And like with the mechanics, you've occasionally got similar characters/details/plot outlines, but it's a rarity when they're adjacent like that. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 13:37 on Nov 13, 2016 |
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Nov 13, 2016 13:32
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Gologle posted:All I want from FF15 is this I just realized how much Final Fantasy would work together with Gundam-grade mecha anime bullshit, and now I'm sad I won't see Mecha Final Fantasy.
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Nov 15, 2016 02:50
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Terper posted:It's possible and has been done. Ringabel is honestly the best option due to his speed. So this same logic would in turn make Yew the best soloist for Bravely Second, I assume?
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Nov 16, 2016 09:39
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Terper posted:Sure. I think Yew took Ringabel's spot as the fastboy and Magnolia took Agnes' as the magic-user, with Tiz and Edea having their original stat spreads as the all-rounder and bruiser respectively. But I'm going off memory of my own playthrough and checking that like, once early on before I stopped caring.
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Nov 16, 2016 10:23
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The most fun part of the IIImake is that completely unexpected classes that you'd expect to be garbage can get hilariously strong. Geomancer can hit the damage cap surprisingly quickly and often. My personal favorite is the surprising amiunt of attack damage Scholars can do if they dual-wield books. My most reliable damage for much of the game was the world's scariest bookworm.
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Nov 18, 2016 01:00
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As much as I loved Bravely Second, it really proved to me how much that type of game NEEDS endgame challenge dungeons. It's no fun setting up some insane supercombo that lets you make four times more moves, doubled stats and making GBS threads out damage in all directions when you don't have something to match you for trying. It had some bonus bosses, but they weren't really as fun.
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Nov 18, 2016 23:16
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Terper posted:The Ba'al aren't as fun as facing different job setups. They're more gimmicky. Yeah, neither the Ba'als nor most of the 4HoL demons were 'hard' so much as 'weird'. And I'm fine with weird, but it doesn't really challenge you in the same way. Also, I felt like a lot of the Ba'als had more HP than they should've; as gimmicks they're fine, but I feel like a gimmick boss shouldn't stick around too long after you make it clear you 'get' them.
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Nov 19, 2016 08:41
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I feel lime your first FF being your favorite is largely correct, but it might color what you look for from the rest of the series. My first was the GBA remakes of I and II. Now I maintain that II is better than its reputation and is a really fun game (and you can argue that it being ao weird compared to I led to them making all the numbered FF games so different) but neither of them are my favorite. My favorite is V, my third FF (although not my third-beaten) which took the theoretical freedom and strengths of that first FF game and turned it into something really fun. Those early games for me leaned far more on mechanics and personalized playstyle than story, though, as well as being pretty hard. Which might be why I don't like the rigid party structure of IV, the relative easiness of VI and took a while to warm up to the story-heavy VII. Final Fantasy didn't peak at the first ones I played, but they codified what I look for in them.
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Nov 22, 2016 22:37
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Motto posted:Tetstuya Nomura directed for several weeks before realizing he'd been assigned to the project. He thinks they should be remaking V instead. Don't wait for the remake, just play the for the most part endearingly janky and SUPER 1996 original.
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Nov 23, 2016 02:31
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ImpAtom posted:For one he isn't supposed to be a foul-mouthed guy who talks like Mr. T, which is by far the thing most people take away from him. I took away that he was a muscle-brained idiot who gave a whole lot less of a poo poo about things outside of his personal goals than he claims. Is that at least partly right? There's absolutely more to localizing a game than just making sure that you 'get it'. Consider the pre-GBA translations of Final Fantasy V, for example; Both the official PSX translation and the SNES fan-translation might be technically correct and understandable, but they absolutely bungle the tone. Alternatively you can take Chrono Trigger (the original translation was pretty solid, but there's apparently a few 'oh THAT'S what they were going for' moments in the DS retranslation) or FF Tactics (original translation was imperfect but serviceable, the PSP version onwards is more understandable but pretentious as gently caress). Then there's the other side of it, where the localization finds ways to add to the story. Apparently Kefka was no fun at all until Ted Woolsey got to him and amplified his silliness. The 'there's SAND on my boots' bit was in the original script, but that's about it.
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Nov 23, 2016 08:11
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DACK FAYDEN posted:The best Ted Woolsey story is that he wanted to call Punchinello from Mario RPG "James Bomb", and that's why he introduces himself with "The name's Nello. Punchinello." in the final game. Get him on the writing team for a Bravely game, the tone there seems right up his alley.
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Nov 23, 2016 08:45
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I kept wanting to make suggestions for improvements to the FFVII remake, because I think there's a lot of ways you can improve on it. But honestly, if they just played straight with all this weird poo poo that seemed to be in the game solely because they could put it in there and didn't know not to, I think I'd be happy. Don't shy away from the warts, S-E, just show everyone exactly what it is they actually played.
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Nov 24, 2016 12:32
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Onmi posted:Final Fantasy has an incredible habit of having a massive fanbase, most of whom don't seem to understand a loving thing about the games they like. Hence why we get "Tidus was whiny and bitchy and hated his dad" and "Vaan was irrelevant." Though the last one isn't helped by people not understanding the games development timeline I think the thing with Vaan is that he's relevant in a different way than all the other members of the XII cast (except Penelo, who's really irrelevant). Everyone else is important because of who they are, their designated role in things and how they interact with each other, same as most Final Fantasy characters (VII and X, off the top of my head, are pretty much full of that). Vaan's another type of character, he's just some guy that gets swept up in massive events and proves himself strikingly capable of fighting for what's right. There's plenty of that in older Final Fantasy games (the entire cast of II and the IIImake, Bartz, Locke...) but not really in more recent ones unless you count Tiz from Bravely Default. Vaan is still a relevant character, but it's in a more complex way, because of what he does rather than who he is.
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Nov 26, 2016 09:13
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Booourns posted:I feel like I'm one of the only people in the world who actually liked the sandsea part I liked the Sandsea fro the entirely dumb reason that most of the enemies were the same, so you got an insane chain going. I mean, it's not very useful, but it's pretty cool.
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Nov 26, 2016 22:13
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Sewers aren't quite as bad as their reputation suggests. They're rarely any good, but they don't really give you any poor game mechanics to grapple with. Not like the ice levels, or nature's sewer level, the swamp level. Underdog choice: The darkness level. The best type of level on average is the machinery level.
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Nov 27, 2016 07:34
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The White Dragon posted:Well what about like ice levels that only have it for the aesthetic, like Secret of Mana? I will allow it, because the Crystal Palace was my favorite part of Paper Mario.
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Nov 27, 2016 07:53
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Raxivace posted:The world end once again in a week when The Last Guardian comes out. Half-Life 3 is the last remaining seal on the apocalypse, Valve shifted company direction away from it to save us. So, quick question on Lightning Returns structure: should I complete the city questlines in a particular order, or do they all roughly coincide difficulty-wise? I know they've all likely got chunks where it's a good idea to go 'okay let's go do something else in the meantime', so I can't really blitz one while not touching the others, but I want to know if there's a general order I should go for or if it's like Saints Row 2 where it soesn't really matter?
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Nov 29, 2016 00:49
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So I'm thinking, now that the whole FFXIII sub-series has finally had all its remnants wrapped up and can be considered 'done'... where does it land, in the pantheon of great game development gently caress-ups? Because on the one hand, at least everything came out, and has all been pretty decent if occasionally unpopular because of the name it carried. Versus XIII is not a Duke Nukem Forever by either possible metrics, and even at the XIII series' worst (XIII-2?) it was never dealing with a debacle of Sonic 2006 or even FFXIV 1.0 levels. But on the other hand, it's been an albatross around S-E's neck for so long. As bad as Sonic 2006 was, Sega could learn from its mistakes and joke about it ten years on, and even XIV 1.0 had A Realm Reborn rise from its ashes. Half-Life 3's never coming out, but Valve sure as gently caress haven't been lying fallow. S-E insisted on putting together a spinoff series even more ambitious than FFVII's (which, keep in mind, was mostly budget titles) before the game was even released, and then didn't know what to do when it wasn't as popular as they expected and spinoff development started falling apart. They've been trying to recover from that choice for a decade now, and have only now managed to reach the point of having cleaned the plate.
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Nov 29, 2016 10:45
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Terper posted:I can confirm there is in fact a lot of explosions. How close to the maximum possible amount of explosions is it?
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Dec 1, 2016 09:44
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Not a Children posted:I wish they'd get the rights to The Valedictory Elegy and put that in another game That's an unlockable track in Smash Wii U. It plays on Gaur Plains though, so it's always gonna be second fiddle to You Will Know Our Names. I'm still disappointed that the Cloud DLC didn't include more music than Let the Battles Begin and those Who Fight Further. There's so many good picks no matter how you limit the pool!
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Dec 2, 2016 22:51
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I think FFVI has very few actual 'plot twists'. There's Terra being an esper, and Kefka backstabbing Gestahl to become the final boss. I'd even say Kefka usurping Gestahl as the villain isn't that much of a twist, because he's clearly the most defined antagonist in the Vector Empire anyway. Everything else is kinda just minor wrinkles and turns in personal stories (Duncan's not dead after all!) rather than central to the plot. (EDIT: Or just awful things the Vector Empire are doing, but those are never built up to be anything else so they're not really twists either.) I... guess you could argue Celes' not-betrayal, but I'm still not sure if we're ever supposed to actually believe that one. My favorite plot twist, though, is XIII-2's ending, because it's explicitly not a plot twist. Noel and Serah are explicitly told what would happen, assume it's your standard JRPG endboss bullshit and do it anyway, and then it all happens exactly as they were told it would. Given those two were loving idiots all through that game, that ending was hilarious.
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Dec 3, 2016 08:57
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Soul Glo posted:Everybody craps on X's VA, but I still remember it being pretty mind-blowing that it had VA at all. And it was the first game (or at least, one of them) to work around trying to have a named character in a voiced game. They didn't do it WELL, partly because the FFX party's meant to be very close so it's weird nobody ever says Tidus' name, but points for trying. The only JRPG I've seen that I felt handled it well was Persona 4. For some reason, it never really felt awkward there that most of the cast didn't seem to actually know your name. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 00:19 on Dec 4, 2016 |
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Dec 4, 2016 00:16
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I'm gonna need to look up all the old FF tracks in XV, I just know it. I at least need to know what II and V get to bring to the table.
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Dec 5, 2016 02:16
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LOCUST FART HELL posted:Nothing from FFXIV Heavensward either Awww, it doesn't have the Heavensward main theme that is a blatant soundalike of 600 AD?
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Dec 5, 2016 08:28
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Help Im Alive posted:I guess I would buy a third Theatrhythm but what could they even do with it? Curtain Call has like every good FF song already I'd suggest non-FF songs, but then I remembered that no, Curtain Call has Battle with Magus and Serpent Devouring the Horizon, as well as a huge selection of other, inferior songs. There's nowhere else to go, you can't get better than that. I think you'd have to wait another decade or so for more good music to pile up before you can go for another. Cleretic fucked around with this message at 13:21 on Dec 5, 2016 |
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Dec 5, 2016 13:18
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So a surprisingly hard question struck me today: What's the FF game that's worst about female representation, that isn't FFXV? Because XV is just SUPER bad at it, yet when I saw someone on another forum mention that's just kinda what you expect from a conservative Japanese company went 'hold on'. Final Fantasy has been really good about strong female representation historically, it's XV that's the aberration. The contenders I've got so far, excepting the first since it kinda doesn't give us enough data to go on... X-2: Kickass ladies all over the place, but super pandering to the female audience as a conservative Japanese company saw them. A big part of Yuna's motivation is being in love with a boy. VIII: I haven't played it, so I'm judging from the outside, but what I've heard suggests that it's pretty happy to sideline or damselize what female heroes it has. Beyond that, can't judge. VII: Tifa and Aerith might be strong characters, but both of them are hugely defined by their relationship with Big Strong Men. And then there's Wall Market, I dunno what that counts as but it's not good. But most of the game's other women are pretty solid, so I dunno. IV: You've got Rosa and Rydia, and Rosa does not come off well. The game's female cast beyond them and Porom is pretty thin.
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Dec 6, 2016 11:10
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Sakurazuka posted:FF15 is fine with it too you just don't get to play as any, you get Iris and Aranea as guests though. I don't know who those two are, all I know is it's the only game in the series that doesn't give you the option of having even a single lady (excepting NES III and arguably I if you don't think White Mage counts), and the most visible female character by far before release was Tits Mechanic. I think there might also be a captured princess, but don't hold me to that one. Mega64 posted:Would love to go in on this further but stuck on mobile so won't. Obvious choice is FF1 since there's barely any female reps at all and none of them do anything. 4 is pretty bad but Rosa does have rare moments of badassery and the game does have that nation run by eight women when everything else is a monarchy. 2 and 3 are decent for their time. Everything else is pretty good besides maybe 8. I kinda have to waive FFI by virtue of it being so bare-bones. Sure, there's barely any female characters that do anything, but that feels more a part of how small the cast is at all. The NPCs I can think of that have a story impact that aren't bosses are Princess Sara (damsel, so fair cop), Matoya, Sarda and Bahamut. And I only remember Sarda because of 8-Bit Theater.
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Dec 6, 2016 12:00
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Motto posted:I'm glad we already got to people unironically saying this. I'll happily be a voice of dissent and call the game too far from its JRPG roots and with poor female representation if that helps. I mean I didn't buy the game, so take it with the grain of salt that requires, but it's a role I'll happily play.
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Dec 7, 2016 22:34
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Mega64 posted:I just realized half the non-MMO FF games up to 13 have had follow up games now (and 5 has an anime). This is now my second-favorite idea for a Final Fantasy sequel. My favorite is a Platinum action game where you play as Gilgamesh. The entire game is crossing over into worlds right on the brink of a great final conflict and challenging the most hero-looking people to optional fights for their swords. One of them has to be Excalibur! There's an overarcing and highly dramatic story about a multiverse-spanning threat, but Gilgamesh doesn't care about that for most of the game. He only turns up after the final boss fight, to challenge the victor.
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Dec 8, 2016 02:28
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I always thought three mainline Final Fantasy games per generation was a good pacing for them. One to learn what they can do with the new technology at the start of the generation, one to get a little more adventurous around the middle, one to really push it in the last phase of its life. A generation of FF games tends to be fairly internally consistent on some level, so if you really get into how they did one then there's a few more you might like. The last generation was really the only one that didn't give us that, although you could argue the XIII trilogy had that going on internally.
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Dec 9, 2016 08:22
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Now that I'm thinking about it, it's weird that the semi-religiously-sanctioned sport allows the Al Bhed to field a team. Especially since their list of shady deeds, as I recall, goes further than heresy anyway.
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Dec 13, 2016 22:47
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As much as I hate both this actual sequence and the overall concept and direction of the remake, I feel like the entire value of the remake will hinge on and be understood by their approach to Wall Market. You can't pull off Wall Market with modern, realistic graphics and the sequels-and-spinoffs takes on Cloud and Aerith, it's too silly and reliant on the original script's dynamic. It's a massive challenge that's very early in the development for the project, so their approach to it will tell us a lot about how they're approaching the whole thing. I personally expect that entire sequence to fall flat and be a really awkward experience that most players will want to skip, as it sticks to the script enough to maintain most/all the questionable parts of it (both gameplay and writing) but bungles the delivery by rewriting the characters to the point where much of the actual comedy falls flat.
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Dec 14, 2016 09:24
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NikkolasKing posted:Well a bunch of super realistic HD men climbing in a tub with another man against his will can definitely be awkward compared to how cartoony everything was in original FFVII. I'm kinda torn on that. On one hand, I actually feel like Cid would make the translation to the remake really well, if they don't pull their punches. Cid is an abrasive, destructive and terrifying man who hates that his glory was taken away from him, he perfectly suits the level of 'oh god what  ' that would come from not changing anything from the script. He is perhaps the least heroic man in a party full of people racing to that bottom.But on the other hand, they would have to do SO MUCH to make drat sure not to glorify or even excuse his behavior. He's a compelling character, but I genuinely would not trust most of the audience with him.
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Dec 14, 2016 11:36
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Fister Roboto posted:There are a lot of things that are just really silly and cartoony in the original that aren't going to translate well to a much more realistic style. Like what the hell is Cait Sith even going to be? My favorite little thing in VII is, when Cloud's having his psychotic break after Sephiroth gets the Black Materia, Cait Sith turns up after dying and reintroduces himself to your third party member while that scene is going on. He totally bombs the dramatic impact of both the current scene and his own death just prior, and it's hilarious and amazing. Ain't no way that part is gonna hold in the remake.
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Dec 14, 2016 22:12
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bloodychill posted:It's their game and they'll do what they want to and it will probably kinda suck. Doesn't mean you can't play the original though since it's digitally distributed all over the place. It's not like SE is George Lucas going on some weird crusade to remove old versions of his movies from existence. How do you know they won't? They easily could, it's really only a call of product recognition over historical completeness away. Even then, consider how a remake always becomes Square's standard for later re-releases. The DS versions of 3 and 4 are now distributed over the originals, the iOS ports of 5 and 6 now the standard despite backlash. When new platforms hit and Square starts re-releasing their catalog, they'll prioritize the remake of VII over the original even if the reception is just abysmal.
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Dec 15, 2016 02:26
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Xarbala posted:I would but it's not on steam. I wouldn't even if it was on Steam, but it's a pretty convenient excuse to deflect assertions I should play it.
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Dec 16, 2016 05:45
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ApplesandOranges posted:FFXV being such a mainstream game is baffling. Where was all this attention for the past 14 games? Define 'mainstream'? Because it looks about as big as I remember a few other mainline games being. VII and X particularly, but others had that going too. EDIT: If you're talking about the porn parody, that's totally getting off the ground not because 'Final Fantasy is mainstream now', but because this one includes a really easy, non-niche porn costume. Unrelated: I was just watching videos of the arcade Dissidia, and just realized that Lightning's arena is a corridor.
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Dec 18, 2016 05:49
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Inspector Gesicht posted:I dropped the PC version of FFVII for the time being when I got stuck in Junon and that loving music never let up. Is there any other level in the game which is just plain obnoxious? Fun Fact: the marching minigame is literally impossible on mouse and keyboard.
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Dec 23, 2016 22:31
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8-Bit Scholar posted:Nocturne is still damned great, though the encounter rate can be kind of...uh...infuriating. Nocturne is a game I really want to finish and love, because it really does check so many boxes for me both aesthetically and gameplay-wise, but it's in this awkward state where it's just barely too old-feeling for me to get into. The later PS2 Megatens, Persona 3 in particular, introduced just enough streamlining and efficiency that I just can't go back and play it. Honestly, just... give me the Compendium for the original playthrough or something andnI'm golden.
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Dec 25, 2016 06:22
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