Final Fantasy Megathread: I want all of this to stop

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deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

There's a typo in the OP where you accidentally added a "4" in FFXI's ranking, OP.

# ¿ Nov 4, 2021 02:42

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 22:18

deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

Hello Final Fantasy thread

I got access to dall-e 2 the other day and today I asked it to create a bunch of new Final Fantasy characters. So here you are;

Characters Who Would Appear In An A.I. Generated Final Fantasy game:

Characters Who Would Appear In An A.I. Generated Final Fantasy Game But They're Cartoon Characters:

Characters Who Would Appear In An A.I. Generated Final Fantasy Game But They're Sports Legends:

and finally - Characters Who Would Appear In An A.I. Generated Final Fantasy Game Where Everyone Is Elderly

# ¿ Jul 30, 2022 07:53

deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

One-Boned Angel

# ¿ Oct 16, 2022 02:09

deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

Mr. Locke posted:

IMO, the issue with WoFF's game play is that it hints at depth that it just doesn't have, or at least reward for experimenting with. You get the ability to manually unstack... except that unstacked characters are so frail and weak it's a throw to touch it and once it becomes an actual factor in fights you fight as hard as you can to prevent it. You get a bunch of monsters with abilities and moves that sound cool... but it's almost always more effective to just use your team with the biggest stats and highest damage moves and kludge the game in the face- Synergy payoffs are just way too slim. It takes too long to raise/run across many of the game's most interesting monsters. Etc, yadda, so on.

It shows a lot of shiny knobs and whistles to experiment with, but Plan 0: More Stats is nearly always the correct plan and it suuuuuucks.

Isn't a lot of this kind of true about (non-competitive) Pokemon as well, though? I also only played the first few Pokemons as a kid and then Sword/Shield recently, but those games are all easiest if you use literally nothing but your starter pokemon all game long and ignore the whole Types thing - the starter pokemon gets so far ahead in levels that it starts killing everything in one hit with an untyped attack, meaning it's technically less efficient to even deal with things like catching other pokemon.

# ¿ Dec 30, 2022 09:03

deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

I wrote this post for a different thread but I ended up writing waaaaaay more than I expected about FFXI and how much I enjoyed revisiting it in 2020. It has always been one of my favorite games of all time. so I figured it's worth posting here too, for anyone interested in a review/writeup about playing FFXI as a solo player (and/or as a singleplayer game) in the post-pandemic age.

quote:

I went back and played [FFXI] for a few months in 2020 and I had a blast, they've added a ton of systems to make it the whole game fully soloable - you now have a full NPC party whenever you want them (except in certain event zones), exp-boosting gear is plentiful from events that are running and change every month or so. Like, new events. Not just a repeating cycle of monthly events (though sometimes they do repeat), but there is still a dev team actively developing new monthly events and content for FFXI (or at least there was in 2020)

There's also a whole lot of end-game content that has been added. Like, it's the only MMO I have ever played where I felt like I never ran out of things to do at max level. Most of the end-game stuff still requires a party of players rather than AI companions, but I liked that because A) it maintains the sense of community FFXI always had and B) since it's only the level 99 end-game stuff, the entire playerbase is concentrated into the same bracket and it's not too hard to find parties (no matter what your role is). There are still a ton of people playing and the community on whatever server I played on was super friendly, helpful and chill. PUGs were regularly put together in jeuno chat by small teams of massively overgeared players who could carry everyone else through things like weekly boss kills with great rewards so it wasn't difficult to find footing at level 99.

I ended up leveling almost every class in the game to 99 (there's so much exp-boosting stuff that going 1-99 on a class beyond your first is one or two full days of playing solo, the first one takes 1-2 weeks as you work your way through missions and unlock level caps and stuff), and you can very affordably buy powerleveling from people for in-game gil that will take you from like level 20 to 99 in an hour or 2 - I ended up selling powerleveling to fund myself ). I even grinded out a huge amount of, I forget what they're called but basically bonus levels that you can gain at 99 that give you passive bonuses to make a class stronger. I mean I grinded like 500 or something of those levels on Rune Fencer, and at that point it was straight up like oldschool FFXI grinding (be careful with pulls, make sure your full party is attentive, grind for long hours).

At some point they added a really cool system that I forget the name of, but it's a series of personal missions that you follow from level 1 all the way to level 99 and well beyond, and what it does is guide you through the entire main story of the game, taking you through appropriately-leveled tours of pretty much every zone in the game, and every major mission - except with new additions: the characters from the newest expansion pop into the missions, cutscenes and dialog from throughout the entire game, so the cutscenes are slightly different than they were in the past, etc.

Following it provides a tooooon of QoL/utility/etc type bonuses (exp buffs, fast travel, high-end gear, all kinds of things). It lets you go through and experience all of FFXI as a well-packaged singleplayer RPG without all the tedium and bullshit that was in it back in the day. It gets pretty out there with its plot though, I forget the details but IIRC it was sort of like a weird meta-narrative introducing new end-game villains who knew that the world of vana'diel is just a game or something and these new characters are the techno-gods who programmed it. In the context of a lot of other games it would have been pretty dorky and dumb, but in the context of current FFXI it feels like a very appropriate send-off to the game, because at this point it's a 22+ year old MMO and it's sort of recontextualized as this new end-game content being an entirely new narrative and story that you lore-abidingly get rushed/helped through by all of these new QoL features and like, that 'remixes' the game's old content in neat ways. It absolutely shatters the 4th wall in several places and really feels like a love letter from the devs to all the players.

In a lot of ways FFXI right now is a sort of museum to what FFXI was and the things that made it unique among MMOs. The mission line mentioned above is like a guided museum tour that makes sure you hit all of the important notes of the story without needing another player's help. The gift shop is full of experience boosters and various other neat/helpful/convenient things that you buy for in-game currency. I legitimately think I had more fun with my 2nd go of FFXI than I've ever had with another MMO. (Also I'm weird and would already have said FFXI was the best MMO ever prior to that)

But I mean, caveat emptor - this is a 20+ year old PS2 MMO. It's a very unique kind of janky and I might have been overwhelmed by things like the UI and the controls if they didn't come flooding back to me in a massive nostalgia rush as soon as I booted up the PlayOnline launcher for the first time and heard that music. I played a lot of FFXI when I was young and made some good friends in it, and this return trip was more jam-packed with nostalgia than anything I've experienced before. Like, drat, every single zone in FFXI is oozing with personality. Everywhere I went brought back memories. I stepped into Yhoator/Yuhtunga and literally tasted mango juice because at whatever point in time I was leveling my WHM through there in the oldschool FFXI days I was drinking a lot of mango juice.

There's a whole pokemon system for collecting NPC party members (with some being way stronger than others, but harder to unlock). There are multiple event zones with neat gimmicks added through various expansions over the years. There's content that's still difficult. Everything still feels like an adventure.

Every single piece of pure tedium has been removed. You don't have to feed a chocobo 3x daily for a week to get a chocobo license anymore. There's a mod that lets you skip boat/airship travel times.

Anyway drat Writing all of that up kind of makes me want to resub for a bit.

deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 21:28 on Jan 23, 2023

# ¿ Jan 23, 2023 19:36

deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

FrostyPox posted:

FFXI is really good

Here is an ancient and magical curse that will remind every FFXI player of a better, more joyous age.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6mxRUKehtE

# ¿ Jan 23, 2023 21:29

deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

Asterite34 posted:

I have at times wondered what a game would look like that had a modern AAA budget and workforce and release schedule, but in terms of graphics and sound was limited to late 90s/early 2000s technical standards. Like instead of spending all those resources modelling someone's tear ducts and getting celebrity voice actors, you instead have PS1 graphics and text boxes and everything else was spent on making the game good in other ways that are frankly more important. We've reached the point where a SNES rpg equivalent can be made by a very talented single person, and a PS1 game equivalent can be made by a small team on an indie budget, but what the gently caress would that look like if Square Enix went and made a modern budget game without the standard high graphical standards eating up the manhours that could be spent on polishing gameplay and writing and stuff?

This is pretty much what Octopath Traveler is and it rules :tipshat:

e: But it's definitely a gameplay-over-story JRPG.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2023 19:10

deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

jokes posted:

I'm very bad at parrying don't worry you don't reeeeeally need it.

Yeah the parry in SoP can be entirely ignored. I beat the entire game with just Soul Shield + dodge

e: But I also spammed Haste on myself 24/7 which felt kind of like cheating

# ¿ Apr 10, 2023 22:53

deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

Tekne posted:

Here's a clip with new footage and somehow the Eikon battles are looking even more incredible.
https://twitter.com/PlayStation/status/1645894612693688320

It's looking like Asura's Wrath: Final Fantasy Edition and I'm super down for that

# ¿ Apr 11, 2023 22:59

deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

VostokProgram posted:

So why is stranger of paradise not a numbered FF game? Is it a tie-in to something else?

This is a definite plot spoiler of something that's cooler to discover for yourself IMO but It's a Final Fantasy pseudo-Isekai that includes bits from every numbered Final Fantasy game and has a meta-plot that's at least partially analogous to the story of a player playing through the numbered FF games today

For example Every numbered FF game (including 11 and 14!) has a dedicated mission based on it

deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 20:57 on Apr 12, 2023

# ¿ Apr 12, 2023 20:52

deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

Hence my Asura's Wrath comparison :colbert:

I started playing SoP again after several months away and it's hilarious how powerful Sage is. You can kill almost every post-game enemy in a single thrusting attack with your mace (which sends them flying into a wall and lets you explode them, which sends other enemies flying into walls)

# ¿ Apr 14, 2023 23:58

deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

dolphinbomb posted:

Turns out FF1 is a hilariously short game when you remove all the grinding. Turned on 4x gil and 4x EXP and had random encounters turned off for most of the game after the marsh cave. Between monster chests, forced encounters, and about 25 minutes of grinding for Warmech, I was in my late 40s by the end, and it took me all of 4 hours.

Kind of curious to see how much faster I can get it, especially since I wasted a good chunk of time looting a ton of chests full of gil that I didn't need and getting lost in the sunken palace.

I'm really surprised at how short FFVI feels, too - I haven't played it since I was a kid but I remember it taking me weeks to complete. Last night I played for a few hours and I'm already about 1/3 of the way through :kiddo:

Still great though

E: I'm attributing the speed mostly to the autobattle command and remembering inputs. No more needing to actually select Edwards tools or input Sabin's combos every turn.

deep dish peat moss fucked around with this message at 21:14 on Apr 20, 2023

# ¿ Apr 20, 2023 21:06

deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

Here's a palette cleanser of my bad FF hot take to get away from FFXIV canon chat

The best music in the entire series is in the launcher for FFXI

# ¿ Apr 21, 2023 20:04

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# ¿ May 21, 2024 22:18

deep dish peat moss: Jul 27, 2006

Mister Olympus posted:

What was the first FF without at least one stat that didn�t work, 10?

Evasion did nothing in the original SNES release of FFVI, everything was governed by Magic Evasion
(From what I read recently when starting FFVI Pixel Remaster, anyway)

# ¿ Apr 25, 2023 00:52

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