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Diggin' the shaved armpits on Auron's (re)intro scene. Samurai have to be meticulous about these things, you know? Seymour's aeon (don't think we've learned its name yet, so I'll hold off) is a great design. I think The Dark Id called it the "death metal album cover monster" or some such, which I think is exactly what the artists were going for. Its animations make it look like something out of Silent Hill. It also helps characterize Seymour, in that we learn his power isn't just political; he's got firepower on his side too. Really dangerous, hosed-up looking firepower. It gives first-time players plenty of things to wonder about- things like "where the hell did he get that", or maybe just "where the hell can I get that?"
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Mar 11, 2021 23:14
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I haven't really listened to the remastered soundtrack before, so I'm hearing most of them for the first time in this LP. And I'd echo the sentiment that for the most part it's... not great. A lot of them sound really over-produced, like when directors can't figure out what to improve so they try to make everything into some sweeping epic piece. It rarely works and almost always mangles whatever the original had going for it. I really like the original Challenge track and I think it holds up well. It has a sort of grungy, industrial texture to it, and it sounds almost brash compared to most of other tracks. The first minute or so is all a build-up, then you get this big drop and it's awesome. Here it is, beware of spoilers in the comments. The remaster doesn't work to the original's strengths at all and goes for... some kind of oddly crisp sound and superfluous drum fills? It spoils the whole feel of the track. What a shame.
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Mar 19, 2021 22:12
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I'm 99% sure the original FFX let you switch between long and short summoning scenes, which was rather considerate of them. As for your Venom Shot strategy, I remember doing something kinda like that because I wanted to see if I could get a goalie's health down to 0. I didn't even get close, but I'm sure I didn't go about it the optimal (or cheesiest, if you prefer) way.
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Mar 28, 2021 09:01
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Explopyro posted:I have to say, I keep finding the costuming really makes this game hard to take seriously. 100% agreed. There's a lot I like about this game, but some of the character design decisions are just exasperating. I liked the Zanarkand sim, it had some good atmosphere going... and then they introduce Yunalesca, and I just burst out laughing. Way to trebuchet me out of the moment, Square. What's the story here, did Sin attack while she was doing a porn shoot or something? This is stupid. The perving on Rikku is worse, I think, but this poo poo holds the game back. Which is too bad, because again, there is a lot to like.
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Apr 2, 2021 05:19
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I have no preference as to voting. As for why this affection mechanic exists in the first place, my guess is that they wanted the callback to older FF games. It clearly wasn't a high priority though, since its effects are pretty trivial. Seems like the kind of thing that has lots of cut ideas/content around it- cutscenes and story branches can get REALLY expensive in development time. Be interesting to know what kinds of discussions were had around it.
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Apr 6, 2021 00:55
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quote:Teah, yeah! She’ll tell us when she’s ready, so hold your chocobos till then, ya? Think you've got a typo there. I agree with you about Rikku's design, it's one of the few outfits that doesn't make me roll my eyes. Her characterization, on the other hand... well, I have mixed feelings. I like her generally upbeat energy and attitude, it contrasts well against the rest of the cast, who are varying combinations of serious, stoic, and clueless. Plenty of people find her annoying, but it didn't really bother me, then or now. I also teach middle- and high-school though, so maybe I just have a high tolerance for annoying kids.  I do think the writers leaned too hard into the "cutesiness" angle for my taste during this bit, but I dunno, maybe the Japanese audience found it endearing. And I'm not a fan of how the game's camera invites you to leer at her body- we've already seen her pseudo-strip tease, but, uh, there's more to come. Apparently it's even worse in FFX-2, which I never played, although I'm told it has a hot springs scene and that kinda says it all, doesn't it?
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Apr 8, 2021 05:10
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The Guado bodyguards during that fight were kind of a neat puzzle when I first played. You get nowhere fast if you try to brute-force it, and it feels satisfying to find their weakness and cripple their gimmick. It's one of the things that makes this one of the better and more memorable fights in the game, IMO, in that you have to actually use some of the tools the game gives you. I wish they had explored the idea further. As it is, this is one of only a few battles in which AI opponents interact with each other; they probably had to do all kinds of hacky custom tricks to get it working properly. That actually made me curious about what engine FFX used, but there's not a lot of info available, so I assume it was all custom/proprietary stuff. I remembered that someone figured out how to look at AI scripts and stuff in FF7, but that doesn't seem to be possible for this game. Oh well.
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Apr 14, 2021 03:42
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cant cook creole bream posted:I never really understood that sequence. Sin was chilling on the bottom of a frozen lake, listening to the hymn. Then the party crashes in, soon afterwards the fayth stops hymning, so Sin grabs them and puts them into a random desert island on the other side of the continent? How long were they out, anyway? This jump already felt forced when I played the game 20 years ago. It's not just you, this part and the next few hours of the game are pretty disjointed. Not sure if there just wasn't time to flesh it out better or if there was some other developmental snag, but it seems hastily stitched together compared to the early game. Alternatively, there was originally more and it had to get cut for whatever reason. Whatever the case, the lack of flow/polish is very noticeable. And yes, the deal is that Wendigo punched a hole in the ice, the party fell through and landed on top of Sin's head. The latter was hanging out listening to the hymn. Once it stopped, he woke up and dumped the party someplace else hundreds of miles away. Which he does sometimes, look at how Tidus wound up in Besaid in the first place. @OP: Decided to cut out the scene with Rikku, huh?  Probably for the best.
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Apr 19, 2021 01:18
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Unskippable cutscenes are a drag, but IIRC they were pretty much the norm at the time. I've played a handful of JRPGs of the era, and none of them let you skip movies. Granted it was only a handful. I definitely did my share of dying to some later bosses, and yeah watching the same cutscene for the 6th time was a drag, but I just kind of resigned myself to it. As far as minigames go, that was probably a carryover from previous FF games. I remember 7 in particular being full of annoying one-off activities. They generally weren't optional, but neither were they particularly difficult or frustrating. FFX made them optional, but also really irritating, so it probably worked out to be a step backwards. Not sure if they kept the minigame tradition going afterwards, I dabbled for a few hours with XII and haven't played an FF game since. It'd be interesting to know what lessons, if any, they took from the reception to lightning dodging.
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Apr 19, 2021 22:53
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Falconier111 posted:I have yet to figure out how the devs managed to hit home runs 50% of the time and nail themselves in the face for the rest. It’s like whoever did the design was constantly breaking up with whoever did the story and made decisions based on whether they’d hosed in the last three days. Yeah, FFX is a unique game to me in that I find its weaknesses and strengths equally interesting, and I wish there was more in-depth material on its development. I've read most of the English-language stuff out there, but I still wonder. Really would have liked to have been the metaphorical fly on the wall during their design meetings. Or the storyboard and editorial committees or equivalent.
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Apr 20, 2021 05:21
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