The Final Fantasy Rant

[AmazingPjotrMan]

Oh look, I found some place where they explained it really well. Too bad I didn't find it... them years ago when I actually played the game!

[Gordon Fearman]

WHERE!? Link me bro.

[Machalllewis]

I dont get why everyone hates on the optimistic, upbeat male characters. I really liked Zell AND Tidus. I dunno it was just cool to see characters who wern't totally doom and gloom.

[AmazingPjotrMan]

http://www.squareinsider.com/forums/top ... ix-necron/

Some pages in. Thinkers among forumites right there.

[What?]

Having played all of the Final Fantasy games (except 12, because I never did get another optical audio cable for my PS2), I only have this to say:

I liked 10-2.

NOW WHAT GUYS. OH YEAH.

I see your X-2 and raise you a Dirge of Cerberus. I don't care what you say, that game was awesome.

[Gordon Fearman]

I liked Advent Children. But as Metal Sabe and I agree, Advent Children is a better game than Dirge of Cerberus.

[Darkobra]

Was there an Advent Children game too? Or did you mean Crisis Core?

[Arius]

Ha. If he meant Advent Children, that would be a pretty good put down to DoC.

[Gordon Fearman]

I completely meant Advent Children.

Arius got the joke.

[Hakaryu]

I don't think anyone, developers included, knew who the hell Necron was.

Amen to that. The battle with Kuja was fun, but what the fuck? Throwing in an unknown character as the last boss at the very last second is a game killer.


As for my two cents about this whole debate. I love my FF but Xenogears has the best story of any RPG. Social commentary on drug addiction, aristocracy, religion, reincarnation, trying to find god and possibly be a god. The psychology in that game was so deep you could write a book about it.

[Sieg Reyu]

No more talking from you, Sieg. Sorry, but the romance from 8 reflects real life a LOT more than any other game I've seen. It's moody and involves a lot of miscommunication and uncomfortable moments. If you'd ever seen a girl in real life you might understand that this is the way that many people act. They do not go "Hi, I am going to date you now, ok?" to which the girl responds, "Ok!"

God I WISH that's how it worked.

Rinoa clearly wants in Squalls pants and EVERYONE knows it. But squall is all retarded and pushes her away. I don't care how "real" it is, its grade A stupidity. If I knew a guy being chased by come hot chick, but he rejected her again and again, that wouldn't be something I felt for. That wouldn't be something I would be interested in, and wanted to learn more about. I would murder him, take off his face, pretend to be him, and start dating her. That was a joke. But it really happened.

And the game was too short. Most of that disc space was occupied by cut scenes. If it wasn't so short, why would they give you a sword for getting to the final dungeon in 10 hours or less.

I will not dispute ff7's Cid right to being awesome, but IX's was inherently more awesome. He was some sort of gay fishfrog and eventually turned human, but all the time he had the GREATEST STACHE OF ALL TIME

[Gordon Fearman]

And the greatest thing is that the 'stache is a plot point. It's hilarious. Steiner fucking punches the regent and then Garnet's like "woah, that oglop has Cid's mustache. It has to be him."

That was awesome. My favourite part of the game, though is the Super Tornado Tantalus Punch/Crime and Punishment ATE in Treno.

"MEE!?"

[ThrashJazzAssassin]

If you make all the characters in a game capable of being totally equal, then at best you render the reason for selecting one over another indistinct, and at worst you make having different characters meaningless.

The solution to this is to go back to a party of four main playable characters (which, weirdly enough, appears to be the case in FFXIII).

FFV technically had complete interchangeability, but because each skill had to be levelled up you couldn't instantaneously swap their roles the way you could in FFVII, so the characters stayed distinct. Coupled with the fact that you didn't have so many characters that role duplication was inevitable, it worked fine: picking new abilities that fitted my impression of each character was actually one of my favourite parts of FFV. In fact, it was almost like - *gasp* - roleplaying! I'm sure the job systems in FFX and FFXII would have worked better if Square Enix had looked at what they needed to sacrifice from other areas in order to make levelling and role development enjoyable, rather than a necessary evil.

[Perianth St. Claire]

wow getting into this conversation really late.

I'm not about to debate the merits of Cid, because his being stupendously awesome is something we can all agree upon. That said, FF7 opened up the trap that FF8, 10 and 12 fell into (along with a bunch of FF clone games since). If you make all the characters in a game capable of being totally equal, then at best you render the reason for selecting one over another indistinct, and at worst you make having different characters meaningless.

i'm not sure what you mean with 10. you definitely have to choose one over another constantly. for instance having wakka be best to deal with flying monsters and auron dealing with armored ones. is it just because you are basically playing with all of these characters at the same time rather than having a select party of three that selecting one over another becomes meaningless?

and also,

I see your X-2 and raise you a Dirge of Cerberus. I don't care what you say, that game was awesome.

is that supposed to be a joke? what exactly was it about dirge of cerberus that you liked? was it the terrible plot? such as, the horendous love story that much of the game focused on. or did you like the fact that vincent has got to be the lamest and least likable main character i have yet to play as?

allow me to expand:
present events in the game are interwoven with vincent's time with lucrecia and how they tragically love eachother. but here's why i don't care. lucrecia is a pain in the ass. she is an exact copy of yuna. her personality is very similar, she looks similar, hell, she even sounds similar. she's basically yuna in a different setting. i don't see how anyone can be attracted to her since she lacks any sort of assertive qualities that would make her interesting. oh and she locked herself in a crystal.

and vincent, oh man, do you remember playing ff7 and thinking "wow vincent is the most awesome and badass character ever". i know i did. i thought he was definitely cooler than cloud since he could turn into monsters and he was found in a coffin. well then it's too bad that in dirge of cerberus his emoness and badassery is brought so over the top that he's completely ridiculous. one problem that i had with dirge of cerberus is that i wasn't allowed to kill anything because a cutscene would be used to show vincent finishing it off in some cool way. for instance, the first boss with the plane, vincent finishes that off. or how about the second boss with that red wolf thing? remember when you fill it full of lead and you get experience for killing it and then there's a cutscene showing it get up and then vincent shooting it again? why don't i get to kill a boss? there is so much time spent trying to make vincent look cool it's ridiculous. he can't even sit like a normal person.

another question: how come the only character i get to play as besides vincent is cait sith? no one wants to play as him. i want to play as cloud! or arguably since it's a shooter game at least let me play as barrett. not cait sith!

[Emperor Gum]

I have played VIII, X, Revenant Wings and some of VII and I enjoyed X the most. I ADORE the music to VIII but found it frustrating for the technical reasons stated already. RW benefits from keeping things straightforward unlike most FFs, but has a slightly unresponsive battle system and towards the end the fan service left me cold because I haven't played XII. "Look kids, Larsa's here!" "Who's Larsa" "He's Emperor!" "Why do I care?". I haven't played enough of VII to really compare.

I enjoyed X the most because it seemed to flow very well and just felt like a game with very few problems. Also, I sent Kimahri Yuna's route and Yuna either Wakka's or Lulu's.

[Matt]

i'm not sure what you mean with 10. you definitely have to choose one over another constantly. for instance having wakka be best to deal with flying monsters and auron dealing with armored ones. is it just because you are basically playing with all of these characters at the same time rather than having a select party of three that selecting one over another becomes meaningless?

Except that you always have access to all to them so it doesn't matter who you take into battle, and by the end of the game you've covered enough of the grid with them all that they're all fundamentally equal.

They all do the same phys damage, and all have magic, so their combat strengths are factored out of the equation.

The game's levelling and combat system ends up defeating the strategy they tried to implement, and ultimately just artificially draws out battles.

-m

[Perianth St. Claire]

Except that you always have access to all to them so it doesn't matter who you take into battle, and by the end of the game you've covered enough of the grid with them all that they're all fundamentally equal.

They all do the same phys damage, and all have magic, so their combat strengths are factored out of the equation.

The game's levelling and combat system ends up defeating the strategy they tried to implement, and ultimately just artificially draws out battles.

since they all the characters initially and for most of the game have a clear defined role then i think the strategy they were trying to implement was successful. sure you have access to all of them but you switch between them often duing boss battles and from regular random encounter to random encounter.

it also takes a long ass time for them all to be equal and interchangeable. yuna, lulu, and rikku always have low physical attack unless you finish their spheres and aurons.

[Matt]

But that's beside the point. My point was that despite making a attempt at differentiating the characters - they made it so that ultimately they could all become effectively equivalent, and they never limited your ability to swap one in for another - so any real strategy-based party selection fell aside.

I'm not saying that its' THE SAME as 7/8/12/whatever - I'm saying it had a similar outcome.

-m

[Jillers]

Well, looks like a debate I would have been well versed to partake in, had I been here earlier... but Matt pretty much summed up 9 perfectly as far as I'm concerned.

Though, I'm wordy and can think of one other thing to say.
9, like it's SNES predecessors, presented what seemed to be a simple story, and it was, except that the game also expected its players to think for themselves, to put themselves in the place of the characters and think about what they'd feel. There is more going on in any story than what is actually told to you (for the most part). It's not the storyteller's job to explicitly state what's going on - that would be boring (show, don't tell). And I think FF9 does that well. One of my favorite scenes is the You Are Not Alone scene, the music is perfectly scored, and Zidane's body language, plus everything we already know about that character up to that point, leads us to know why he's saying what he's saying. If we just went by his dialogue alone, we'd think he's a major emo douche.

I wonder, personally, how many people who love 8 and hate 9 played the original Final Fantasies, and in fact, any Final Fantasy before 7. Just in my own life I've noticed that the people who started with 7 loved 8 and hated 9, whereas I, and others of my ilk, whose first Final Fantasy was either 1, 4, or 6, liked 7, and loved 9 (sometimes naming 9 their favorite, and sometimes not).

[Perianth St. Claire]

I wonder, personally, how many people who love 8 and hate 9 played the original Final Fantasies, and in fact, any Final Fantasy before 7. Just in my own life I've noticed that the people who started with 7 loved 8 and hated 9, whereas I, and others of my ilk, whose first Final Fantasy was either 1, 4, or 6, liked 7, and loved 9 (sometimes naming 9 their favorite, and sometimes not).

i actually started with 7 and never played the earlier games before getting to 9 and one thing that i particularly liked about 9 over 8 specifically is the distinct personality that each of the characters have. i guess that's just more apparent in 9 because there is more interaction between the characters and zidane and the characters with eachother in ATE's. In 8 there's much less of that mainly because Squall is so inaccessible as a main character.

[Matt]

there's also the fact that none of the characters in 8 actually had any character.

-m

[Cybren]

what? no way irvine totally
uhh

had a hat?

[Perianth St. Claire]

selphie likes trains.
rinoa likes squall.
squall likes nothing.
and zell:





fascinating.

if only you got to play as laguna, kiros and ward more often. they seemed more like people instead of cardboard cut-outs.

[Cybren]

Yeah laguna was a coward who kept advancing in the military somehow,
ward was a big strong mute guy,
and kiros:

fascinating

[Perianth St. Claire]

yea but at least kiros had knives for hands. and sure laguna was a coward but at least he wasn't a dipshit.