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ImpAtom posted:I wasn't talking about FF. I was responding to the comment about how "at least developers remember what fun games are, like Saint's Row." Ah okay, I think I crossed wires somewhere between that and the comparison to how stuff like Four Heroes of Light made you feel. FINAL FANTASY IS A VERY SERIOUS SUBJECT
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Jul 15, 2012 23:42
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Moldy Taxes posted:I wouldn't be surprised if Versus XIII was rebranded as XV. I'm thinking either that or they just drop the XIII and call it "Final Fantasy Versus" or something silly. When you get to XV I think saying the game title aloud is a little silly; pretty much every other big franchise has switched to subtitles at this point except Dragon Quest, and they're only just now getting to X.
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Jul 20, 2012 15:31
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Yeah. Honestly Spirits Within isn't a terrible movie at all, it was just an exorbitantly expensive movie nobody in particular wanted. Final Fantasy fans couldn't get jazzed about it because it was mainly a sci-fi rather than fantasy film that had nothing to do with magic or crystals or any of the videogames. The general public (at least in the US) isn't into PG-13 and R-rated animation, and most critics and film buffs didn't rally to its defense because it wasn't a great movie either. It's kind of a shame, to be honest; it's at least better than basically any other videogame movie Hollywood's ever poo poo out, and it at least shouldn't have caused as much harm to Square as it did.
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Jul 20, 2012 21:17
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As a tabletop and FF person, I think something like a 3E-based system (with dramatically redone spells to reflect FF spell types/spells/schools and better balance the game) where you have a "character level" cap based on the session or the group's progress but can change your class at any time between sessions or during downtime between anything (or any multi combination possible within the cap you have using your individual class levels) might work. So like Playername levels up to 8 as a Warrior, 2 as a Paladin, and 4 as a Monk. But the *total level cap* right now is 10. He could be an 8/2 Warrior Paladin, a 4/4/2 Warrior Paladin Monk, or something like that and freely switch how those levels are distributed between games. You'd have to do a lot of work on the guts of the system to make the balance and stuff work out, but it has potential, and the free willy-nilly multiclassing of 3E already sort of fits the job system concept. I definitely have not done a notebook draft of something like this before with 8 base classes (Warrior, Monk, Thief, Engineer, Black/White/Red/Time Mages) and the PrC system for stuff like Paladin/Ninja/Summoner in an Ivalice type framework before. That'd be too massively nerdy to admit, even on Something Awful.
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Jul 21, 2012 04:27
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I find it easiest to think of the three major in-continuity Ivalice games (FF12 > FFT > VS) as idealized and fantastic visions of the three most popular historical periods of western history. FF12 is the ancient age of wonders, the way people romanticize the Classical period. FFT is the early middle/dark/dung age vision, where religious persecution and feudal class struggle replaced all the "wonder" (art/culture/beauty). Vagrant Story is the renaissance, in which the church is struggling to maintain its power base against the rise of national governments, while the rebirth of scholarship and rise of science are finally putting the wonders of FF12 and superstition/fear of FFT to bed forever. The Dark and Sydney's power are sort of like the last bastion of those forces, the last of the supernatural forces in a world that's growing up. That's why everybody is so interested in claiming it, and why it needs protection. Aside from FFT's dramatically different ingame artistic style (squat 2d sprites instead of normally-proportioned 3d models) they're about as similar as I'd expect them to feel, given that they're meant to illustrate three distinct time periods in western history. Of course, none of those periods was quite like the way they're portrayed in the games (the ancient greeks didn't have magic airships and the western european middle ages weren't as miserable and backward as everybody thinks), but they're sort of like Japanese designers taking on western history the same way westerners have this vision of the Mythical Orient. Baku fucked around with this message at 21:57 on Jul 24, 2012 |
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Jul 24, 2012 21:53
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You could make a prequel in the time period right before the game using all the assets that are already in the game (plus like a menu portrait for Kefka). Celes, Kefka, Leo as the main characters, maybe some disposable soldier guys or something as temp recruits. It might be terrible, but you could!
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Jul 25, 2012 01:10
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ImpAtom posted:That's a pretty god damned good reason to get a bit angsty. Yeah, Cloud basically has PTSD. And that sort of concept is pretty integral to the overall character development and thematic purpose in FF7. It's a game about a bunch of sad-rear end people who feel like failures other than Aeris, which is why she has to die. I honestly think it's part of why the game struck a chord with a lot of nerdy young dudes. They should just write "FLOWERS CAN BLOOM, EVEN IN MIDGAR" on the cover, because a lot of people somehow seem to miss this. And I really don't think of Terra as a typical RPG protagonist anyway because FF6 really isn't a typical RPG; the characters aren't really supposed to have complex inner lives, they're archetypes and unlike a lot of 16-bit era RPGs the broad strokes are intentional. That and it's possible to beat the game without her even being with the party for over half of it. Baku fucked around with this message at 23:32 on Jul 27, 2012 |
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Jul 27, 2012 23:25
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Tengama posted:-I apparently missed this in every playthrough of the game I did as a kid but the second hidden character can apparently equip other characters abilities. Was this just added in the gba version? Nope, he could always do that. It's not as useful as it sounds, because his stats and equipment list are terrible and he doesn't gain esper stats, so he's pretty much always worse at everything than the characters he's stealing the abilities from. But it's a lot better than just having one ability on his list, because there are times when that ability is an awful choice, and you can at least give him a Merit Award if you want him to use an ability that requires a sword or something.
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Jul 28, 2012 01:48
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Mega64 posted:Holy poo poo, I never realized just how much FF9 cribbed from other FF games. Granted, quite a few of those points are a stretch, and some are just gameplay mechanics, but there's still a lot of themes that mirror the themes of previous FF games. The counterpoint to this is that the whole series does this. About 15 of the job classes, chocobos, moogles, airships (usually plural), Cid as an important NPC, Ragnarok, Ultima (and 75% of the spell list for that matter), Ultima and Omega Weapon, a ton of weapons and armor (Ragnarok, Masamune, Genji gear etc), most of the summoned monsters, Gilgamesh, crystals, four elemental fiends, a ton of normal monsters (Tonberry, Marlboro, Iron Giant, Cactuar etc), Star Wars references in names and dialogue, elemental naming convention for protagonists, a love story, themes of friendship in which the thing that distinguishes the villain from the party and proves their ultimate undoing is being a loner above and apart from others... Between the conventions of fantasy stories and all the recurring weapons/monsters/magic, you could argue that any given game in the series may as well be a "love letter to the series". I still don't think anything about FF9 was particularly "retro" other than its traditional class-based system, and here's a list of prior Final Fantasy games where your characters either don't have traditional classes or can change them: FF2, FF3, FF5, FF7, FF8. 6 is kind of in-between, because every character has defined base stats/skills and a different equipment list, but you can tailor their stats and spell list to whatever role you want. There are literally fewer FF games prior to 9 that have predefined character roles than don't. Baku fucked around with this message at 04:39 on Jul 29, 2012 |
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Jul 29, 2012 04:35
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Azure_Horizon posted:The ridiculous plot twists in IX are nowhere near on the level of 7 or 8. The only thing those two games influenced on IX were the graphics. And that laundry list of poo poo I posted that is in at least 2 or 3 Final Fantasy games prior to 9. Like chocobos and half the monsters and items and summoned monsters. That stuff too. I seriously do not see what makes 9 "more like the SNES games" or an homage to the older titles or anything other than it having a seemingly more "innocent" tone, at which point it's probably worth noting that the aesthetics (particularly color palette and music) and some plot events in 6 are among the darkest in the whole series and the protagonist of 4 is a war criminal seeking redemption. People see a larger sea-change in the direction of the series than actually occurred, when in reality the changes in the series' writing, direction, tone, and mechanics from 1-8 were a gradual progression. The White Dragon posted:Alternatively, the main villain isn't even the protagonist's brother but someone else entirely! I mean, the first game's main villain was a random mook you thrashed at the beginning of the game, who made a pact with the four fiends that sent him back in time so he could accrue infinite power by reliving the same 2000 year cycle in perpetuity. Or something. Seriously. For those unaware that is, if not exactly correct, pretty close to the actual plot of Final Fantasy I. The first game in the series, on the NES, when every other game was about rescuing the princess or killing the evil wizard. This series has a proud tradition of being experimental with both plot and game mechanics. And even when most people see a swing and a miss (like the plot of FF8 or the mechanics of FF2), they usually manage to be a little interesting. Baku fucked around with this message at 10:17 on Jul 29, 2012 |
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Jul 29, 2012 10:07
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swamp waste posted:4 is super opaque about damage-- it's using the same attack and defense counters (where each of your guys has a fixed number of chances to hit or block per attack) as the NES games. but it DOESN'T show what you or the enemy actually rolled in battle, it just pops the resulting damage. I'm pretty sure you can see your characters' own damage multipliers (or number of hits or whatever) in the status screen somewhere, at least in the SNES/SFAM version. I definitely remember that number existing, and Cecil's being the highest. For monsters, yeah, I have no clue.
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Jul 31, 2012 21:40
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Azure_Horizon posted:The Vanille and Fang thing is subtly implied in the game with their sort-of-more-than-just-siblings touching and quite a few lines of dialogue with each other, not to mention the ending of XIII. It's not really a fan theory, and it's surprisingly progressive for a jRPG. Yeah it's basically the same thing as Balthier and Fran's relationship in XII, except Balthier's a total bro so you occasionally get the "I knew Fran didn't like being tied up, but this is ridiculous!!!" lines. Watching people try to rationalize against the Fang/Vanille relationship on sites like GameFAQs owned though, I just assumed the people in hardcore "here's six paragraphs" denial were straight nerds who felt like they couldn't jerk off to a lesbian anime or something.
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Aug 1, 2012 11:10
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Mega64 posted:Then yeah, just use a guide for Augments. I think the game may be even more difficult than the original, though I don't remember for sure since it's been a long time since I played. Having some of the party-leaving augments will be handy as hell. It's definitely harder than the original. I don't think any other version of that game is very difficult at all, actually. There's a few fights where going in without a clear plan or knowing what the boss is gonna do can sorta gently caress you once or twice (the Magus Sisters come to mind), but the game also does a pretty good job of giving you the right tools and never dicking you by leaving you without a healer or something. The DS version doesn't play games at all. I feel like it's gotta be intended for players who are already familiar with the game. But it's also the most well-constructed version, mechanically.
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Aug 5, 2012 10:27
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Camel Pimp posted:So... I'm playing FF13 and I think I'm reaching the point that people say it "gets good." My question is: is there anything worth spending money on except for the odd phoenix down? Is upgrading really worth it? You'll really want to upgrade your weapons somewhat, at least for three primary party members, and while they can all be upgraded to high stats some are definitely better than others. You can get away with not upgrading your accessories for the most part. Baku fucked around with this message at 07:04 on Aug 7, 2012 |
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Aug 7, 2012 06:44
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Cyberbob posted:Playing through FF XII Intl. version at the moment. I've only got the first Esper so far, but are they always this useless? Pretty much. For some reason they went overboard trying to fix how effectively you can lean on summons in some of the older FF games by making them pretty terrible in 12 and 13. Cyberbob posted:I can't help think that it'd be a better game if I just assume Balthier is the leading man, like he constantly suggests. Kicking myself for making him a Machinist though. Machinist is a fine class, it's really nice having somebody with the various item lores later and if you end up doing endgame optional content he can get Hastega and Slowga by taking Famfrit.
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Aug 7, 2012 07:17
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Boten Anna posted:Exactly, and with XI the long travel times at least are offset by incredible zone design that make you want to actually run around and explore, and just losing xp but no items and no "debt" was downright progressive at the time. And I have to say, I've tried EQ a couple times just to see what the fuss is and the graphics are eyebleedingly terrible to the point where I find it disorienting. Meanwhile, XI holds up today as being pleasant to look at at least, especially if you run it with a high background resolution and get some third party graphics packs to smooth over the fonts and UI a little. Yeah, I recently went back to 11 after getting a War/Nin to 50 at launch and petering out. A combination of the eased leveling speed and modern games having sane progression have made the stuff that isn't XPing seem even worse; you can still easily spend 30 minutes just running between point A and point B to do a quest that just involves carrying a thing from point A to point B. And like EQ they did a lot of content addition or changing old poo poo without taking into account how it'd affect new players, so you have stuff like level 20 missions from launch requiring you to sneak/invis through zones with level 85 monsters. It definitely still has its charm (I agree entirely about the art), and there's something to be said for games that are a little more relaxed and lazy than WoW where you aren't jamming a key nonstop the entire time you're leveling and can just chill and listen to music and talk to people and check on the dinner you're cooking or whatever without having to be perpetually "on". But a lot of the time that just translates into the game being loving boring. It's also still the opposite of most modern games in that leveling your first character up requires an insane amount of work, stopping every 5 levels to do long and tedious quests, and the like while leveling a new job on an old established character takes like two days. In an era where WoW is giving people free level 80 characters with flying mounts and bags just to resubscribe, this is a really tough pill to swallow. There's almost zero incentive for a new player, except this Destrier Beret thing that gives movespeed and regen/refresh, but only up to level 30 which any new player actually dedicated to leveling will achieve on their first job in a single evening. Also I couldn't actually get mine because despite accepting the reward code the game wouldn't give me the actual item due to a bug the entire duration of my free trial period. Including the last week of it, when the developers said the bug was fixed. It was tremendously better than EQ when it came out, but it's time for it to shuffle off to the Old MMO Retirement Home. EDIT: I've beaten every mainseries game at least once, done various stupid feats in them like grinding everyone to 99 in 6 and doing all the hunts in 12 (twice), played WoW off and on since launch and had multiple level-capped characters in endgame raid gear, etc and FFXI is simply too hardcore and too boring for me. It was when it came out (I remember literally falling asleep trying to grind Ninja through Jungle parties) and it still is now. Baku fucked around with this message at 02:31 on Aug 8, 2012 |
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Aug 8, 2012 02:25
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Ragequit posted:Edit: Not to mention the dozens of other great games for the system! As somebody who doesn't even own a PSP, it really is the best system for somebody seeking portable RPGs. Excellent versions of FFT, Tactics Ogre, Persona 2 and 3, Valkyrie Profile, and more as well as a lot of decent original games like Crisis Core. gently caress, I want a PSP now too.
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Aug 9, 2012 00:16
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Pasteurized Milk posted:On a similar note, I've been playing through FFIV Advance. Is the extra dungeon that opens up after you beat the boss worth running through? That depends. If you've really enjoyed FFIV to that point, the bonus dungeon is more content that does some interesting (if short) mechanical stuff and gives you an excuse to play around with old party members again. Nothing in it is amazing or essential though. Sex_Ferguson posted:On a somewhat similar note, I'm interested in playing FF Tactics War of the Lions because it's apparently an update of PS1's Tactics and I never got to play that title. Is War of the Lions a good update or should I just look for a copy of PS Tactics? War of the Lions is pretty much inarguably better except for some slowdown-type lag that pops up sometimes, including not having the PS1 loadtimes of the original. There's a fix for the slowdown, at least in the PSP version. Baku fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Aug 11, 2012 |
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Aug 11, 2012 03:41
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ShadeofDante posted:The only FF game I felt had Blue Magic as an actually useful class for the amount of hassle you need to get the spells was FFV. Seriously, after my FJF run this year, I have a new found appreciation for Blue Magic in V. It basically can do everything that White/Black can do (other than the ultimate spells) and for less MP or in the case of Mighty Guard/White Wind, better than the alternatives. Mighty Guard is a truly ridiculous spell (and is pretty awesome in every game with some iteration of it), but I don't really see what's so hot about White Wind; it's useful but I don't feel like it's any better than Cure 3. I feel Blue has really anemic offense endgame; stats are too low to put those swords to good use, Aero 3's damage isn't quite up to par especially MT, and stuff like Lv4 Flare requires too much doofy manipulation. Then again I had the opposite experience with the hardmode fiesta this year. I got Blue first, and I went in knowing how awesome it was, but I'd always sort of been under the impression that White Mage was only useful for healing. Holy ended up being the best attack for 3/4 of my characters (not only is the damage massive, but it's really efficient) and there's a lot of utility I'd never messed with before, like how the Confusion spell works to grab Mighty Guard in FJF. If I had to pick one skill that could enable any party, no matter how stupid, it'd probably be White Magic. Schwartzcough posted:I was always upset that FF Tactics didn't have a blue mage class- I mean, they even had the "learning by being hit" mechanic implemented, and it hardly even got used. Then they came out with the WotL version and STILL didn't do it. Bah. Replacing Geomancer with this would be a pretty good FFT improvement. Baku fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Aug 12, 2012 |
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Aug 12, 2012 00:42
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The White Dragon posted:Oh, okay, I am connecting to their server. It's just that it happens for about two or three seconds out of a minute and I only manage to pull down about 0.3KB/s. What the fuuuuuuuuck? It was going perfectly fine at my normal ~700KB/s rate for the first file and now it's like NOPE. The hilariously terrible way in which subscribing, unsubscribing, and patching FF11 has always been handled in terms of complexity makes me hellof wary about downloading anything from SE. If this was on Steam I might have already bought it.
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Aug 14, 2012 20:09
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Ugato posted:This kills any desire to ever buy the game. That trend needs to be killed with fire right now. Listen, they've gotta protect their intellectual property somehow. Sooner or later somebody's going to succeed in pirating this 15 year old game!
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Aug 14, 2012 21:07
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DeathBySpoon posted:I actually quit the game as a kid because of this. I tried so hard to beat that first battle with just Ramza Better: a friend of mine actually did beat the game all the way to the first Dorter battle (so like three or four battles) this way on his first playthrough. I discovered this when he declared it "impossibly difficult" and asked when he would get more party members.
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Aug 19, 2012 02:16
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Rolling Start posted:Square-Enix sure is teasing a lot of stuff lately: http://www.finalfantasy13game.com/astormgathers/ The suspense was killing me. On the bright side, I'm sure it'll be in the $20 bin as quick as 13-2, which was a pretty good buy at that price!
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Aug 22, 2012 10:44
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Pesky Splinter posted:6.7 Million units sold (worldwide) for FFXIII This is sort of sad to read even though I understand why, because 13-2 is such a better game.
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Aug 22, 2012 20:06
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Mega64 posted:But yeah, I'm definitely glad we're getting the next chapter in the Lightning saga everyone's clamoring for over instead of, say, FF15 or even Versus 13. Or for that matter a graphical/content/mechanics update of any of the games from 5-9. They keep remaking and rereleasing the wrong games!
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Aug 22, 2012 21:46
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Azure_Horizon posted:I'm excited for the next FFXIII game if it's as great as XIII-2 was, and only if Hamauzu-Mizuta-Suzuki are working together again for another aural masterpiece. Even if it's a decent game, it's just the least exciting possible thing they could've announced. I'd rather have a new mainseries game or a remake of pretty much any game from 5-9 or if they wanna get weird with it Theatrhythm style get fuckin' weird with it already and give us a kart racer, Wario Ware clone, and live-action adaptation of X-2 directed by Takashi Miike. Make something new, or something strange, or just appeal to my nostalgia lizardbrain. Anything but more Lightning Saga. Not because XIII-2 was terrible, but because I already know I'm going to wait six months on it to be $20 and pick it up and enjoy it a little bit but not a lot. They're mad stagnant. Baku fucked around with this message at 02:53 on Aug 23, 2012 |
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Aug 23, 2012 02:50
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My Lovely Horse posted:Making my way through FFV Advance right now, and it seems really easy. Most boss fight seem to boil down to: ninja attacks, Mystic Knight casts a spell, Gravity, Black Magic spell, and if he's not dead by then the Mystic Knight's next attack will surely finish him off. I seem to recall the SNES version being a bit harder. Did they rebalance it that much or do I just know the game too well and have too much routine? It's really just not very difficult. The variety of abilities, damage types, etc that your party can have access to essentially means there's an "easy way" to slaughter every boss in one round, not even counting abilities like Coin Toss that are amazing at bruteforcing through almost everything.
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Aug 23, 2012 15:44
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Azure_Horizon posted:The encounter rate in IX is almost exactly the same as VII or VIII, but I'll never understand why the (only 20 seconds) loading times for battles are enough to make the game not as lauded as the others, when it's pretty much better than all of them. Do you mean relative to VII and VIII, or relative to the entire series? Loadtimes are fuckin' annoying and add up over the course of a long game, and should absolutely be a factor in someone's evaluation.
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Aug 26, 2012 21:36
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Harlock posted:I still don't understand that design, or his in game model. He's stylized and exaggerated like everybody in IX! I mean, Steiner is obviously supposed to be human and looks ridiculous too. Amarant, aside from his weird skin tone, sorta reminds me of Middle Eastern guys in other Japanese stuff. Like Ganondorf, or the bounty from the second episode of Cowboy Bebop. Baku fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Aug 27, 2012 |
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Aug 27, 2012 20:24
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Endorph posted:Squeenix is in no way in dire straits. Like, at all. They're making literally All the Money. I think people are just looking at the quality, critical reception, etc of Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts and forgetting the non-JRPG poo poo they've got going. They published Deus Ex 3 and Sleeping Dogs, they're publishing the new Hitman, they've handled/are handling the Japanese ports and publishing for a bunch of huge western games like Modern Warfare 3, Black Ops 2, and Arkham City. They're definitely doing okay, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future (especially if either Hitman or Tomb Raider ends up being a home run).
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Aug 29, 2012 04:19
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Endorph posted:And, again, a lot of people dumb on FF13/13-2/the latest Kingdom Hearts games, but they're obviously still selling well. If Kingdom Hearts wasn't selling well, they wouldn't have milked it for every cent it was worth before making KH3. Man, forget FF, Kingdom Hearts is the thing that baffles me. The Giant Bomb Quicklook for KH3D sort of summed up my feelings on it: they're literally just selling those games to Kingdom Hearts Fans at this point and not trying to grasp new markets or draw in people who love Final Fantasy or Disney like they used to. The huge flood of main story KH games and the series' complex chronology and character relationships feel impenetrable to somebody who hasn't followed it, by contrast to something like FF, Dragon Quest, or Zelda where every single game is its own thing. KH1 is the only game I've played, and while I beat it and enjoyed it, I cannot ever see myself playing another one in part because of its continuity and the sense that I'd feel lost if I just picked a new game up and gave it a shot.
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Aug 29, 2012 04:25
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ImpAtom posted:Kingdom Hearts is cheap to make This strikes me as odd, I've always been under the impression that Disney is pretty hardcore about people using their IP so heavily, with regard to licensing fees and being huge sticklers about how the characters from their fiction are used. Like it seems way cheaper to make games that don't do that, but I guess the KH brand has some loyalty at this point and they've prolly got some kind of crazy contract or something.
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Aug 29, 2012 04:50
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A lot of people kind of brought up the way FF13 did an in media res thing, but that's really common for FF compared to other JRPGs. Almost every game in the series starts with some kind of immediate action: the unwinnable battle in 2, the cave in 3, the Red Wings raid in 4, etc. Sometimes they're shorter than others and sometimes they're unplayable (like Squall and Seifer's duel in 8), but it seems like part of the series design philosophy at this point. 6 and 7 have extremely memorable opening sequences.
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Aug 29, 2012 21:02
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Mega64 posted:That said, it's definitely a fun hack to play around with, and maybe I'll try again once I get a bit more time. I'd love to be able to beat that thing, but hey, getting to L65 of the thing on my first try ain't that bad either, I figure. That's 20 or 25 levels above when most people beat the normal game, what's the endgame on the hack anyway? Is there a bottom floor, and what's on it? EDIT: Waaaait, you meant "of the dungeon", didn't you? I guess my question still stands Baku fucked around with this message at 22:33 on Aug 29, 2012 |
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Aug 29, 2012 22:31
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One tip nobody else seems to have posted re grinding in FF2: don't really wear armor until late in the game when you have access to lightweight stuff with useful amounts of defense (or stuff with a flat out +10 Agility bonus that makes it give more dodge than the weight takes away). Wearing a bunch of mithril armor early on will reduce the damage you take quite a bit, but also effectively floor your dodge chance. You only gain Agility/dodge levels from dodging, so the higher those stats are, the faster they'll go up. If you keep your dudes in heavy armor through the whole game, their Agility and thus their dodge will basically never increase. You won't even realize you've hosed yourself until the final dungeons, at which point you'll have to backtrack and powergrind your Agility and dodge level. Summary: wearing armor actually decreases your longterm survivability. Yes, that is counter-intuitive as poo poo. It's one of the many reasons FF2 is such a crazy shitshow.
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Aug 30, 2012 09:48
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It really is. I've ranted about it in the thread before, and while I don't regret playing through it if only because I don't value my time and it's a wonderful curiosity to be able to talk about, I find it almost completely indefensible. When people say the DoS version is the good version, they really do mean in a relative sense. Final Fantasy 1 is also both buggy and mechanically busted as hell, but it's just nowhere near as unpleasant. Playing the DoS version of it these days is almost like a pleasant refresher course on the genre's roots. The one thing I will say for FF2 is that the keyword system and all that jazz is pretty ambitious and nice for an NES JRPG; it almost adds a little adventure-game style puzzle solving element and helps make the story better than most 8-bit games. But even that has some serious mechanical trouble and rapidly develops the adventure game problem of "oh dunno what to do now, guess I'll go talk to everyone about every keyword and key item until I trip a flag".
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Aug 30, 2012 10:26
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precision posted:The NES version, for sure. But I liked the Dawn of Souls version quite a bit. It's okay, I understand. precision posted:What? No way. I played DW2 when it came out and the only trouble I had was the final area, where I had to do a fair amount of grinding. DW2 was really fun, certainly a massive step up from DW1 which was just so... empty and dull. DW2 is definitely a step up in terms of gameplay from the original, but it has an interesting problem: a lot of the stuff it introduced to the JRPG formula (like vehicles and a full party) showed up in Final Fantasy first in the US because the ports for the later DQ games took so long. Dragon Warrior 2 came out six months after Final Fantasy and six months before Dragon Warrior 3, which is a real lovely position for a game categorically inferior to both to be in.
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Sep 1, 2012 00:47
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Dr Pepper posted:DQ2 came out almost a full 11 months before Final Fantasy. In Japan, but Final Fantasy beat DQ2 to America by about six months. I consider that important because FF shared similar innovations over the original DQ/DW with DQ2 (multiple characters and vehicles), leading the game to be comparatively more popular and revolutionary in the US than it was in Japan. I'd go so far as to suggest that the slow localization of DQ2-4 are part of why Final Fantasy has always been more popular here.
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Sep 1, 2012 03:27
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Somebody should totally upload a prepatched version of FF5 Ancient Cave because Jesus Christ every time I patch ROMs something goes wrong.
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Sep 2, 2012 06:39
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 07:58 |
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Thoughts/advice re: FF5 Ancient Cave hack! 1) I kinda expected this, but Geomancer is a really awesome early find if you've had bum luck with weapons. !Gaia provides a free, infinite-use attack that often times is less random than it seems like it'd be and might have some weirdness going on in the cave specifically (like there's a Lonka Ruin tileset floor where you can only use whirlwind and not the single-target wind attack or anything). It's a great crutch until you can get some good stuff going, and isn't the worst thing for your casters to lean on even pretty deep in. Conserving MP for white magic seems pretty important. 2) Not all the lava is actually damage floors. Give it a one step test, even if you don't have Geomancer. There's a pretty common floor (I think the tileset is the volcano from World 3) with like 10 chests you can only get by walking through lava that doesn't actually hurt you. 3) It's been said before, but remember that you can't change back into a Traveler (I think Bare is what this hack uses) until you actually find that job in the cave. This is important not just re: endgame, but becomes a pretty interesting tactical choice early on. If you find a powerful weapon before you have the appropriate class, it becomes a serious decision whether you want to waste ABP staying Bare or change that character into a Thief or Monk (the only jobs you've found) and give up that World 2 katana you got on the second floor. 4) Some of the "trick floors" and random stuff the designer put in are interesting, others are total bullshit. The 3 Chimera special battle formation on floor 44 is an especially big "gently caress you" if you haven't found a Coral Ring; it's very easy to die before you can even really act and there's no way to know this is coming the first time you get there.
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Sep 4, 2012 21:21
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