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Raptor1033 posted:What? You mean his vest? A staple of fashion for several hundred years now? Listen man just because you know the names for common articles of clothing doesn't mean you get to be the arbiter of taste, or whatever Also the reason that some people prefer the old games that has nothing to do with nostalgia is you straight up don't spend as many ten-minute stretches just clicking through dialogue boxes and watching cutscenes; that hasn't killed modern FF games for me, but people who have low patience for drawn-out melodramatic JRPG exposition (a different thing from "not caring about story") can't handle games like 10 and 13. There's nothing wrong with that. What's up, new thread.
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May 17, 2012 20:00
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Momomo posted:But the sprites are very nice looking and the portraits look like complete rear end, so that'd be Amano's problem. Do you just hate Amano's art, or do you think they're poorly rendered ingame? I disagree either way but the latter is way more understandable. Momomo posted:I really hate the large disconnect between the offical art and what's actually ingame. The disconnect for the characters is only really big in FF5, where pretty much nobody looks like their artwork besides Galuf I think. In 6 the characters look quite a bit like their artwork other than Locke's bandana, and in 4 I don't actually think Amano did the status portraits anyway because for example Cecil's DK portrait just looks like a generic medieval greathelm whereas in the Amano art (and on the sprite) it's some kind of crazy elaborate aerodynamic anime thing. EDIT: In fact if we're talking about the original versions of games, 6 is the only one I can think of where Amano's art is used for ingame portraits. Most of the other pre-PSX games don't even have ingame portraits including 5. Baku fucked around with this message at 20:11 on May 17, 2012 |
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May 17, 2012 20:09
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The costumes are a big part of the character design, though; most of the characters in these games spend 90% of the time in the same outfit and good character designers often use a character's clothing to communicate something about their personality. For a simple example from Nomura's own work, look at the difference in Reno and Rude. They're technically wearing the same suit, but the way they wear it (and what they wear with it) characterizes them and makes the contrast between them obvious at a glance. Are you talking about the writing or something? Does he even have anything to do with that? Baku fucked around with this message at 18:56 on May 18, 2012 |
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May 18, 2012 18:51
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And in defense of Amano as a character designer, I think a lot of the concept art for FF6 is pretty evocative of character. When the topic of character design came up in the last thread I made a post that I think was both pretty good and pretty goony illustrating how while Setzer and Sephiroth look similar in their Amano art, the artwork of them successfully conveys information about who and what they are. I used this picture of Setzer: I think it's really quite good, despite the weirdness going on with his feet (all of Amano's drawings have kinda weird feet). EDIT: VVV both of those seem to have similar inspiration and stuff, though; there's both a sort of modernity and a Jpop vibe to everything he designs, just stuff like FF10 and Kingdom Hearts are a little more wild/exaggerated/costumey and less practical. Like Tidus isn't really wearing a "fantasy" outfit; you could make something sort of like it with a hoodie and a pair of overalls. It just looks like something a crazy pop icon or Harajuku kid would wear instead of an American office worker. Baku fucked around with this message at 19:15 on May 18, 2012 |
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May 18, 2012 19:07
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JoeyJoJoJr Shabadoo posted:Ach, I knew all the MM facts but wasn't sure about the specific years. That's awesome that Uematsu has a metal band. Now I will rock out to it They've covered a whole lot of other FF songs, too! It's pretty fun listening to them, if only once for the novelty.
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May 19, 2012 04:19
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Dr Pepper posted:I give 2 a pass for being an experiment that didn't quite work out right. Like, it has good ideas, they just weren't executed well. They are executed so poorly as to tarnish the quality of the ideas themselves in peoples' minds. The way the Agility/evade/armor system works in that game is one of the most inspired pieces of awful design I've ever experienced in anything.
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Jun 13, 2012 21:30
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Once you recruit all six characters, you can pretty much decide whoever you want to use and just use those people for the rest of the game, as there aren't any forced sequences like in 10 where "whoops, we're suddenly underwater hope you leveled Wakka". So if you want to pretend the main character doesn't exist, you can.
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Jun 13, 2012 21:47
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The White Dragon posted:See and now you're just purposefully misconstruing my meaning. Matsuno doesn't write stories or characters, but para-historical events. This has lots of potential for the blockbuster hit of the summer, because there's tons of stuff throughout history with folks killin' the poo poo out of each other in giant battles and buildings exploding and collapsing and weird artifacts from forgotten cultures etc., but that's all very superficial. From a storytelling perspective? For developing individuals for a reader (or a player, in this case) to relate to? Really lacking. And yet other than FFT his games have pretty much all been cult hits rather than the "blockbuster hit of the summer". Language is important to storytelling too, and Alexander Smith's translations of Matsuno's stuff are just good. You can get up in arms and cry about "unwieldy language" or (god forbid) bitch about how "them characters don't talk how real people talk", but you'd be totally wrong in those criticisms and probably also forgetting stuff like Ashley Riot's action movie "Reinforcements? I am the reinforcements" shtick. Alternately I could have just posted "but Vagrant Story" or something
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Jun 14, 2012 07:06
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Whoa, forgot about the Fiesta but I'm already making time thanks to frameskipping my way through the tedious opening stuff. I did hardmode because I like the shades and didn't even expect it to be harder, and so far my group setup (Blue>White>Knight) is pretty promising. Thoughts so far... I'd never done 2-4 Blue Mages at the beginning and holy poo poo do Aero and Goblin Punch trivialize everything up through the water crystal. I shiver thinking about fighting mammoth bro with my Thief roll from last year. It's pretty funny that I've gotten three wind crystal jobs so far and I'm secretly hoping my fourth is Monk or something just to keep with the theme. I feel like I already have a solid enough team and I'll be a bit spoiled if I end up with one of the beatstick jobs like Ranger last. EDIT: And man, I don't envy you Thief/Berserker guy. I got Red Mage second last year and getting the water crystal nearly killed me. I can't imagine proceeding to Liquid Flame and Byblos with a goddamn Berserker as my only bonus.
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Jun 22, 2012 10:52
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So I just beat Exdeath and got to World 3 with my Blue/White/Knight/Monk set of wind crystal bros. Predictably this is pretty easy, and I sort of feel like I won the #reghard lottery; White Mage is the worst wind crystal job to roll first but it's awesome for a later roll for obvious reasons, Blue Mage is Blue Mage, and Knight is never flashy but double gripped swords get the beatstick job done. Unless I'm mistaken I'll even have a pretty easy time getting Big Guard with the !White Confuse spell. My only real unexpected observation so far is that Monk really isn't as good as I remember it being. Come to think of it, I guess I've never really used one past World 1. The damage output is lower than a double-gripping Knight with worse defenses and without the option to swap in a shield, though I guess having a secondary slot open for !White or !Blue is nice. Does the damage formula for martial arts just scale poorly into the lategame, or am I doing something wrong? Anyway, I'm basically cruising this poo poo. With the legendary weapons and a Blue Magic clean-up I'm not worried about the Cleft of Dimensions at all, and I'm confident that I have the tools for Omega/Shinryu within this ability set if I decide they're worth the trouble. Are there any pledges specifically based around people completing them? Maybe I'll let that decide. Baku fucked around with this message at 18:17 on Jun 24, 2012 |
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Jun 24, 2012 18:15
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TheTofuShop posted:Finally got my last job, and ended up with Knight/Summoner/Beastmaster/Samurai. Not too shabby, although I havent really been able to get any use out of the Beastmaster so far, any advice on how to better use the beastmaster? There's two items you wanna be sure to pick up, Kornago's Pot (accessory, from a quest in Kelb) and the Hypno Crown (helm, chest in Drakenvale). The former makes capturing monsters easier by raising the HP threshold on it, while the latter increases the success rate of !Control. Goblins use Flare when released for whatever reason, so if it's at all possible they're an easy great thing to capture in the first world. !Control is really good against some normal enemy packs, always try it out when you enter a new area. The Beastmaster also has a surprisingly respectable Strength and whips do full damage from the back row, so don't be afraid to try normal attacks and it might not be a bad idea to grab the Flame Whip when you start unsealing weapons as it randomly casts Firaga and can do quite a bit of damage.
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Jun 24, 2012 21:26
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Aaand all Wind Crystal #reghard is clear.  I actually got my rear end handed to me by Exdeath at about level 36, so I went back out of the Cleft and ground a little under the pretense of buying Arise and Dispel (which I sheepishly forgot despite 3/4 of my characters having White Magic set). Finished observations: 1) Those five levels sure did seem to make a big difference in terms of susceptibility to White Hole and Grand Cross. On my kill (my first attempt at 41) that stuff basically never landed. 2) Holy ended up being the backbone of my offense; it does a ton of single-target damage for how cheap it is, especially with the Sage's Staff. Cara was dinging XD for 5k a round, which is more than Faris or Lenna could do. I expected White Mage to pay off in terms of protection and utility, but I didn't expect to lean on it for damage. Now to decide if I wanna do normal or hard for my next one. I'm thinking hard, because despite being "hardmode" this party felt a little too rudimentary, well-rounded, and effective.
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Jun 25, 2012 07:54
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 I remembered that I had both a Knight and a method to Berserk, so this took a total of about ten minutes and exactly two tries (the first go he landed a physical attack on Faris before she used Guard). Ragnarok: feels good man ...I'm gonna end up figuring out Omega just because the #victory backlog is preventing me from a rereg. Man I forgot how much this game owns.
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Jun 25, 2012 21:13
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Griever posted:Geomancer and monk stink! Just did my second reg for normal mode so I could actually get some water/fire/earth jobs, AND GUESS WHAT MY WIND AND FIRE JOB ARE! I just got done with you, Monk. Leave me alone. Course, my water job is Summoner and all the earth jobs are good for something so I'm feelin' fine. And huh, I'd never looked closely at Faris's Mystic Knight sprite before. That's certainly an outfit.
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Jun 26, 2012 00:55
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3's job system is inherently imbalanced, some jobs are meant to be linear improvements on others. The most notable example of this is that in the endgame of the NES version, there's no real reason to use anything but Ninjas for physical characters and Sages for casters. The game as a whole is kinda busted and that system is obviously sort of blah and un-ideal; but then, it's an 8-bit JRPG. Its competition is FF1, FF2 (which is not only the worst FF but one of the worst RPGs I've ever played period), and the NES DQ games which also have an awful lot of rough edges and shallow parts. 5 is actually pretty well-balanced for a casual playthrough. There are some jobs, like the aforementioned Thief and Monk in 5, that aren't amazing for an endgame party... but then, the whole point of the job system in those games is that you change jobs. Thief has the invaluable Steal ability and transfers the highest possible Agility bonus to Traveler/Mime when mastered, and Monk has a couple of pretty interesting skills in Counter and HP+30% as well as the highest possible Stamina bonus. There really aren't any useless classes in 5 for a normal, four-character playthrough. EDIT: And yeah, Tactics is an incredible game as a whole, but I think the job system is actually more imbalanced and hosed up than FF5's. There's also not a lot of reason to bother with it later in the game, because the protagonist and the plot-important NPCs you recruit have incredibly powerful custom classes that make grinding other ones feel like a waste of time. Baku fucked around with this message at 04:17 on Jun 26, 2012 |
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Jun 26, 2012 04:13
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Mazed posted:By what criteria is he planning on judging "better"? Maybe he's stating his opinion, or the prevalent opinion at S-E, rather than establishing some kind of crazy objective standard based on statistics
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Jun 26, 2012 09:43
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Mega64 posted:I thought FF2 was the best FF. They did that battle system once and then could never use it again because it was just too perfect. If you were right, this would be a world without SaGa. A better, more decent world.
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Jun 26, 2012 10:53
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Wheresmy5bucks posted:In FF1, it was overpowered to a degree, but it had the fundamentals of proper balance. It was pretty good at melee damage(about 70% of a Fighter), and Lv7 White/Black magic let them be about 70% a mage, given they miss out on some important spells, mostly from the White list. If some of the game's numbers worked right, like Intellect boosting magic, it'd probably be perfectly balanced with white/black/fighter. As is, it's probably the #2 Class after the unstoppable juggernaut that is the fighter. Yeah Red Mage in FF1 is a total badass. He's the only guy besides Fighter who can wear chain/plate armor prior to promotion which means he's basically invulnerable until you beat Kary. It's a real boner that he can't learn EXIT though, because my original party was Fighter/Monk/Thief/RM and that meant I couldn't loot the Masamune and warp out of the Temple of Fiends  And yeah they kinda blow in FF3 but to be fair every class that isn't Ninja or Sage is obsoleted by something in FF3. That's just how that game was designed; part of me wants to try the DS remake because I've heard it took steps to fix that, but then I'd rather just play through FF5 or FFT again for my job system fix. EDIT: And on that note I got Monk/Summoner/Geomancer/Chemist for my second (and normal) fiesta run. I expect Geomancer to fall off a lot especially because the best use for !Terrain is a cheap source of MP-free damage for mages but !Call is just better, but it sure was useful for my shoot-out with Archeoavis and honestly who gives a poo poo because Chemist. Baku fucked around with this message at 06:08 on Jun 27, 2012 |
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Jun 27, 2012 06:04
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The White Dragon posted:I would sacrifice a million Motomu Toriyamas Aztec-style (possibly atop Chichen Itza) if it meant getting a Minstrel Song-style remake of Romancing SaGa 3. I actually agree with this despite being the person who originally slammed the SaGa series to start this whole conversation. RS3 is the only game in that series I can bear long enough to play to completion; it feels like it does the best job of utilizing SaGa mechanics without just being a crazy busted shitshow or having some ludicrous set of additional gimmicks. And no weapon-use limit! I wonder how much of that is also just because it's the visually appealing 16-bit one, though. I'm a sucker for those pretty SNES sprites.
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Jun 27, 2012 07:14
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Yeah I'm honestly not a fan of the Brave Blade, I passed it up with a Knight too in my hard run this year. Knights get a great legendary weapon anyway (+5 Str, holy damage) and Chicken Knife is a good Rapidfire or even Goblin Punch weapon.
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Jun 28, 2012 06:48
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Pyroxene Stigma posted:Is there a way to get Slash-All in FF5? Would it work with the Healing Staff? In the SNES and PSX version, no; the closest thing is Rapidfire/Barrage/X-Fight which swings four times at random enemy targets. One of the classes in the GBA version (Gladiator) basically got Slash-All, but I have no idea if you can target your own party with it... and anyway the only time that'd really be useful is a fiesta including GBA classes where you got it and a staff-user who wasn't a White Mage. Because seriously that's a lot of hoops to jump through for what amounts to a 3rd level spell.
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Jun 29, 2012 21:26
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Dr Pepper posted:Edge is one of the best characters in The After Years so it's pretty viable, in all honesty. Is the balance in TAY a lot like normal FF4? Because one thing I always found funny is that other than maybe swapping out Rydia for Yang or Porom, the party they give you for the endgame actually is the best possible party you could make from the people in the game. This was kinda fun to realize in FF4A.
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Jun 30, 2012 19:04
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Harlock posted:You could just make a random number function in a spreadsheet and do it yourself. I've done the random number generation for this before, and just in case it helps someone... - There are 20 crystal jobs in the normal game, which are those included in the fiesta pool. Traveler and Mimic bring the total to 22 if you were to include them, and the Advance jobs bring this total to 26. - There are 6 wind crystal jobs, 5 water crystal jobs, 5 fire crystal jobs (in sets of 3 and 2), and 4 earth crystal jobs. Mimic is technically the 6th water crystal job, but the fiesta doesn't use it because (like Traveler) it's sort of outside the normal system rules and you also can't acquire it until World 3. Given those numbers, it's pretty simple to use a spreadsheet or any kind of online dice roller or random number generator to create a fiesta party of your own. There's also a lot of little rules modifications you could do like including Traveler in the wind and Mimic in the water or earth list, rolling a different job for each half of the fire crystal (giving you a pool of 5), or using the Hard Mode method with a no-duplicates clause. You can do even crazier stuff with hex editing in an emulator or cheat device, like opening all the jobs from the beginning so you can do a Fire Only run or something. Final Fantasy V owns.
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Jul 2, 2012 23:24
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:Yeah I realized this later. Seems kinda flawed as a lot of the wind jobs are simple but useful, like I'm pretty sure a Knight is better than a Dragoon at any point of the game and "Hard" mode can give you an easier party a lot of the time. Yeah honestly I did Hard this year and it feels like the most common scenario is stacking up on Wind/Water jobs which doesn't really make the game harder; Knight isn't flashy but having one is never a liability and Blue/White/Black/Summoner are probably the best jobs in the game so it's not like extra chances to get them is a bad thing. It's really just gambling against the small chance of getting 2 Thieves or Berserkers I guess. And there's a pretty lovely trade-off in that you often don't get a Fire/Earth job at all and some of those (Geomancer and Dancer come to mind) are among the most underplayed and underappreciated jobs that the fiesta can give you an excuse to mess with. Mega64 posted:Maybe I'll try Extreme Mode, where I use cheats to unlock all the jobs immediately and have them all available. Maybe even add Freelancer/Mime and the GBA jobs to the mix. Getting the later jobs could actually make the early parts of the game more difficult since some won't really have good equipment options yet. This sounds like fun! Traveler/Freelancer is actually sort of deceptively powerful even without having multiple jobs mastered because while their base stats are pretty crappy being able to equip everything counts for a lot. Like as soon as you master Knight, it's basically just a Knight who can also equip Ribbons and break rods. I assume that's why it isn't included in the fiesta. Baku fucked around with this message at 20:33 on Jul 3, 2012 |
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Jul 3, 2012 20:30
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I think the real problem is that short of having multiples of problematic (Berserker) or low damage (Thief) jobs, the only way to really make FF5 harder is to start taking party members away. It's a testament to how well-designed the job system is that people have beaten the game with pretty much every possible fiesta party because even the "bad" jobs own certain parts of the game, have very specific uses, or have unexpected synergies with more popular jobs. It really just isn't a very difficult game once you beat it a few times and figure out its guts instead of relying on Rapidfire spam. And despite saying that, many of the Cleft bosses and Exdeath are still tougher than the other SNES FF games unless you grind madly, including the "harder" versions of FF4. Baku fucked around with this message at 20:45 on Jul 3, 2012 |
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Jul 3, 2012 20:41
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They should just make XIII sequels from now on and then when they get to XIII-14 start going backwards through the catalogue and doing the same thing with every other game. That is their hundred year plan. Hopefully I will live to see Final Fantasy II-8.
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Jul 5, 2012 21:48
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Kinda weird to hear that 13-2 was a big financial success, given that it's already $20 at Best Buy (which is why I just picked it up). I guess it was a lot cheaper to make, though. EDIT: My brick and mortar store; it's still $40 online and like $25 at Amazon I guess. Maybe worth checking into if you've got one on your commute or were planning on buying a TV this week or something! Baku fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Jul 6, 2012 |
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Jul 6, 2012 06:44
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Fister Roboto posted:I rereg'd for the Fiesta, and my first three jobs are Knight, Berserker, Ninja. Unless I get Chemist for the fourth one, this is going to be rough. Eh. Samurai works just as well, giving three people Coin Toss and spamming it with sufficient gil is pretty much all it takes to beat Neo XD (and a lot of other bosses, natch). You don't actually need magic or the ability to do non-trivial elemental damage for anything except Fork Tower and there's no compelling reason for you to bother with that party other than a few random things like Guard Rings; 6 legendary weapons should be more than enough and you'll never be able to use Flare or Holy anyway. That's not the worst party you could have gotten by a longshot. Cheer up guy! 
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Jul 6, 2012 22:45
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It's actually rather elegant design, because it means people who get into the guts of the game and want to challenge themselves can find those strategies (like the stuff we've been doing in the Fiesta) while people who just want to experience the story can spend another 20 minutes grinding and trivialize the challenge. JRPGs (and some western RPGs too) have been organically doing what Bioware created a ludicrous "new" system for in ME3 since at least the 8-bit era. Most games that use stuff like scaling XP to cut down on grinding either end up being too easy for genre vets (Suikoden) or too hard for casual players (Persona) because as it turns out it's really loving hard to balance a 20-100 hour JRPG. Not that there's anything really wrong with games specifically for casual or hardcore players. Of course, reviewers who play one of these games per console generation and haven't actually beaten one since the PS1 era just sorta gloss over that.
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Jul 10, 2012 00:16
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TheIllestVillain posted:Anyway I'm going to move on to FFV, any advice on which version to play? Yeah what that guy said. It's a toss-up between the GBA version and a translated Super Famicom version. The former has extra content and better translation/text, the latter has better audio (and imho looks better). Just like FF6 and CT the only version to pass up is the PSX one, which is basically the SFAM/SNES version with lovely loadtimes. So hey I posted that I bought 13-2 for $20 at Best Buy like a week ago and I finally got around to putting ~5 hours into it. What's the deal with this game? It's like in one sense they categorically fixed all the problems with 13's gameplay; you can specialize characters basically from the word go, there are areas to explore and hidden stuff to find, monsters drop gil and you can use it to buy weapons and poo poo, and the story (while still patently ridiculous) is at least comprehensible thus far. I should hate Chocolina, but for some reason I like running into her, and I think that sums up my overall experience. I'm not crazy about the monster party thing, and I'd rather just have a third character to customize, but hey putting shades on a behemoth or whatever. The core game design here is what 13 should've been, and it's a drat shame most people will justifiably never play this thing because come on.
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Jul 11, 2012 09:39
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Garula with 4 Thieves is the worst thing. At least 4 WMs have a substantial well of non-farmed healing, and in a normal run the Traveler option. Even if you steal four mythril knives he takes half an hour to kill because you can't put anybody in the front row unless you want them to just die at random.
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Jul 11, 2012 10:47
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FF1: NES for the oldschool experience, Dawn of Souls (GBA) or PSP for quality. PSP looks and sounds better but Dawn of Souls gets you 1+2 in a two-pack and the actual game contents are basically identical iirc. FF2: Don't play it at all but if you have to Dawn of Souls or PSP. FF3: DS with a bullet. FF4: There is no ideal version, the DS remake has better balanced gameplay and an interesting unique augment system while the GBA/PSP versions offer unique bonus content of their own, sprite-based graphics, etc. Avoid the US SNES version (Final Fantasy 2) because it's generally stripped down and the PSX version because it has lovely CD loading issues with no real advantage. FF5: GBA has bonus content, the best translation, and is generally superior all around. A translated SNES ROM has better audio and will do in a pinch. Avoid the PSX version. FF6: Another toss-up, the GBA version has bonus content but suffers the same audio quality issues. The bonus content is weak enough and the music important enough that I might recommend picking the US SNES version instead. Either version is probably fine, go with the platform you prefer. Avoid the PSX version. The GBA/PSP version of 1 and the DS versions of 3 and 4 have substantially altered gameplay from their original versions, which is why I threw out the NES version of 1 in case you actually want to play for historicity or something. You don't want to play the original versions of 2 or 3, and 4DS isn't objectively better so much as different. And yes, you'll need a DS or GBA to run the GBA versions. If you want to play the series on real hardware that's the platform I'd recommend, because something like a DS Lite can play basically all six games in ideal or nearly ideal versions. Baku fucked around with this message at 11:02 on Jul 11, 2012 |
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Jul 11, 2012 10:55
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Bruceski posted:EDIT: as for my own self, my Knight/Berserker/Time/Summoner is ready to take on Exdeath and I think I'll go for Shinryuu as well. With the "berserk/guard" trick is there an easy way to get everyone low enough to trigger the knight's autocover or do I need to just start hitting myself and hope I get lucky? I got a Power Staff as a drop so I don't need to worry about the Wonder Rod cycling. I did this trick for the first time to kill him on my Knight/White/Blue/Monk fiesta. The tricky thing here is that I'm pretty sure he always starts the battle with a Tidal Wave, which will heal critical characters to full if they have a Coral Ring or kill them if they don't and don't block it. You can either let people die and keep rezzing them with Phoenix Down until your setup is rolling, or fight him normally and just try your best to stay kicking until he uses Maelstrom. I got lucky and he Maelstromed pretty early and hit all four people, so my killshot looked like this:  It works fabulously, I kept expecting him to gently caress me over by attacking right as my Knight's turn came up before I could input the Guard command, but it never happened (and he took me a while to kill because my best offense was Holy; he absorbs light). Remember that Summon can give you an additional buffer against that in the form of Golem, and you may wanna consider manually hasting everyone *but* the Knight so their turn comes up less often giving him less of an opportunity to get a hit in edgewise. Baku fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Jul 11, 2012 |
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Jul 11, 2012 22:36
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I'm curious if my opinion will change later when I start running into that hardcore repetition, but so far I'm loving 13-2 if only because it feels like an actual videogame. 13 was basically an animated movie sometimes interrupted by boss fights. This game seemingly had a branching path in the first 5 hours.
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Jul 12, 2012 00:36
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MrAristocrates posted:XIII's problem is that it had a decent story told poorly. I feel this is a difficult conclusion to draw given that, after having beaten 13 a second time just to watch the ending again, I'm still not sure what the last boss was supposed to be or what happened. I hesitate to call it a decent story because I don't even really understand what was going on for substantial chunks of it; I did like most of the characters though. I think 13 let me down even harder because I didn't read much of anything about it before launch day and was still psyched after watching this trailer which maybe says as much about me as the game.
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Jul 12, 2012 01:00
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I mean I know I was killing Orphan but I couldn't explain what Orphan actually was if you asked me to
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Jul 12, 2012 02:01
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Couch Life posted:If I've learned one thing from doing the Four Job Fiesta it's that Red Mages are loving useless. Doubly so when they're the last job you get. Eh. Doublecast Cure 2 is still better healing than most classes are reliably capable of, they can smash rods and equip shields, and there's some low-level spells with a surprising amount of utility (like the white magic confusion spell, which is the second-best way after a Beastmaster to learn Mighty Guard and White Wind). Red Mages aren't immediately powerful, but they're versatile and have a lot of little advantages going for them. They definitely benefit from having a second caster on the team to take full advantage of Doublecast, though.
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Jul 12, 2012 03:43
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My eyes glaze over even reading posts about that stuff and I actually enjoyed the plots of 8, 10, and 12. It's still very easy for me to understand how most people found 13's story ridiculous at best and incomprehensible at worst. I remember being annoyed when FFT with its awful translation and Xenogears with its warped plot twists and bizarre second disc totally vexed the gaming media so maybe FF13 fans feel the same way about me right now. I don't particularly care. They're wrong, FF13 is nonsense, and the only way to work out exactly what's going on, unpack its ideas, and ascribe sensible motivations to most of the characters is to examine and discuss it with a level of scrutiny it does nothing to deserve. I had some fun playing it because of the battle system and some of the audio-visual stuff was great, but it's joining 2 and 3 on the pile of main series games I'll never replay and 13-2 is a better actual game in pretty much every appreciable way. EDIT: I'm not even sure that last part is controversial, since most people that don't either love or hate both games seem to agree. VVV Francois Kofko posted:Huh, and I thought I was paying good attention. Thanks. The thing is, I'm not sure it's really mine or your faults that we weren't paying good attention. Baku fucked around with this message at 05:12 on Jul 12, 2012 |
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Jul 12, 2012 05:09
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Fister Roboto posted:The summons in FF8 are no more hidden than unique equipment that you can steal in other games. The chests in FF12 are kind of lovely but the Zodiac Spear is just like the Excalibur II in FF9, sure it's the best weapon in the game but it's far from a necessity. The Zodiac Spear isn't even the best weapon in FF12, either. The Tournesol (greatsword) has 140 instead of 150 attack power but higher parry value and a higher combo rate making its damage over time better, and the Masamune (despite having an attack power of like 80) has a ridiculous combo rate of 40% or something. If you have at least one dedicated mage (who would use the Faith Rod) or gun/bow user in your main party, the Zodiac Spear isn't even one of the three weapons you'd want. The way that chest works is legit bullshit, but the importance of getting it is way overstated, and getting it as early as you can (mostly by using online guides and running for dear life for the chest) ruins the difficulty curve of the game.
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Jul 13, 2012 21:52
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ImpAtom, I don't think there's ever been a Final Fantasy game that's sociopathic in the way you describe (the GTA/SR way) and probably never will be. And while the series has seemingly become melodramatic, it was never lighthearted all the time (there was a lot of dark, serious business stuff in 4/6/7; 4 starts with you committing war crimes that weigh heavily on the protagonist) and that levity and sense of adventure still pops up in the new games. 12 and 13-2 both had them, at least. I really think you're just overstating the shift that took place in this series, which is a really common thing among people whose tastes have changed or who have flat out outgrown the content or even the medium. EDIT: And for what it's worth, I absolutely agree about the weird way some games construct their murderous protagonists. GTA4 was loving bizarre. Baku fucked around with this message at 23:36 on Jul 15, 2012 |
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Jul 15, 2012 23:32
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