Final Fantasy - My Retrospective of an Entire Series.

[CritialGaming]

All this content (from the main contributor) seems more the kind of thing you'd put on a blog rather than a forum. It's ok, I mean, put your posts where the relevant people see it - but if you are going to the trouble of writing all this in the way that you are, I hope you are putting it somewhere a bit more permanent where it won't get lost in the ether. That's not a dig or anything, I just thought since you are writing so much it deserves its own webpages. You could post links in a variety of places pointing to it then.

Blogs are too much work and nobody sees them unless you put a lot of effort into promotion. I'm lazy and I post most of these while at work.

 

[dscross]

All this content (from the main contributor) seems more the kind of thing you'd put on a blog rather than a forum. It's ok, I mean, put your posts where the relevant people see it - but if you are going to the trouble of writing all this in the way that you are, I hope you are putting it somewhere a bit more permanent where it won't get lost in the ether. That's not a dig or anything, I just thought since you are writing so much it deserves its own webpages. You could post links in a variety of places pointing to it then.

Blogs are too much work and nobody sees them unless you put a lot of effort into promotion. I'm lazy and I post most of these while at work.

True, but maybe you could paste it into a blog just for yourself so you don't lose it. Be a shame forget it all once you've finished.

 

[CritialGaming]

I bet you guys think the next game I played in the Final Fantasy series would be something like 4, or 5, or hopefully 6 right? WEll sorry, I didn't play a "new" game in the series (not counting spin-offs) until the glorious day when we finally got Final Fantasy XV. Yeah, Final Fantasy fif-fucking-teen is next on this list.

You know, I'm just going to come right out and say it, Final Fantasy XV is my second favorite game in the series. So all of you hoping for massive praise for VI, sorry, but that aint going to happen.

I loved everything about Final Fantasy XV, except the load times on my base-model PS4, but the thing that stood out the most to me was how fucking fantastic the main cast is. I mean Noctis, Ignis, Gladiolus, and Promto. These guys were done soooo well that I honestly can say that this is the first really cast to make me truly care about them. Their friendship, their love for each other, the way they interact, and the way the game sets them up on this fairly casual roadtrip just fits all perfectly. I would run around the massive world just to listen to them talk shit to each other. I can't think of a group dynamic that has been done better in any game before.

Then there is the gameplay itself. From navigating the open world, to letting Ignis just drive you where ever you want to go while you take a bathroom break, the game just feel right. In terms of navigation at least. I know people wished they could off road with the car, but I never found the lack of car control all that bothersome. I was free to run around where ever I wanted when I wanted to explore and the car was only ever a auto-travel device for me anyway.

I saw people complain about the combat and wished that it was a turn-based system like all the other Final Fantasy's before XIII, and frankly you "purists" are crazy. Look Final Fantasy has NEVER been about turn based combat (except a brief use in X). From the moment the ATB system was made, Square has constantly tried to push the combat into a more active system. I believe the combat in FFXV is the goal that they have been shooting for all this time. Action combat, with a wide array of abilities you can use to get in and out of combat, magic spells you can craft to exploit weaknesses in the enemies or the environment. Hell the sheer amount of interaction in combat is stupid impressive.

From parts you can break off of monsters that make them unable to continue to attack you with those parts (ala Monster Hunter), to the effects that appear around you when you use a spell. Hell try dropping lightning on a monster and be amazed as their bodies will be charred with electrical burns for the rest of the fight. That is fucking crazy! Not only is everything visually impressive, but everything creates advantages and disadvantages for you. It's absolutely wonderful.

I think the weakest part of FFXV is the story, but it is a good story and much easier to follow than XIII even if you played the game like I did without having seen the anime or movie beforehand. As I played through the story I realized that a lot of FFXV is based on the foundation that Final Fantasy VII made. I know I'm crazy but the Empire used Diamond weapon to destroy Insomnia. Diamond weapon! From VII! Then Weapon that blows up Shrina's tower in Midgar. Then later on Lunafreya is killed by the bad guy with a knife to the gut just like Aeris. In the middle of the big map is a Meteor that looks a lot like the FF7 logo. I mean obviously it is mere references but I picked up on all of it and I loved it. I even felt like FFXV could be taking place on the same planet as VII, and the lifestream used Titan to catch meteor instead of blow it up like we saw in the original ending.

Anyway beyond all that you have a decent story, then after you finish the game you have a ton of extra dungeons to explore, super bosses to fight, hunts to finish. And the best part, no stupid mini games required to make yourself overpowered.

Final Fantasy XV was worth the wait and I can't wait to play it again on PC with maxed out settings and a frame rate that doesn't suck balls.

 

[dscross]

snip (FFXV)

Do you mean you played FFXV next or did you just decide to talk about it off the cuff? You still have a lot of games to go so It can't be the next game you played can it?

I liked FFXV. My problem with it was not with the gameplay or characterisation, which were both great, but with the storytelling. I found the way they told the plot to be really poor, even after I'd watched Kingsglave.

It's a shame because I REALLY want to like it more and for it be higher on my list of FF games, but plot is so important to me in a final fantasy game, that I just can't do it. The reason I like 6 so much isn't for the gameplay, it's for the plot, which is very strong.

 

[CritialGaming]

snip (FFXV)

Do you mean you played FFXV next or did you just decide to talk about it off the cuff? You still have a lot of games to go so It can't be the next game you played can it?

I liked FFXV. My problem with it was not with the gameplay or characterisation, which were both great, but with the storytelling. I found the way they told the plot to be really poor, even after I'd watched Kingsglave.

It's a shame because I REALLY want to like it more and for it be higher on my list of FF games, but plot is so important to me in a final fantasy game, that I just can't do it. The reason I like 6 so much isn't for the gameplay, it's for the plot, which is very strong.

Reread the first sentence in my last post.

I hate to be the barer of bad news but I have never played FF6. And I only recently played FFV. Six is on the list but I haven't gotten to it yet due to not having anything but the crappy steam port. I am making a determined effort to go back and play the games I missed. By the end of the year I will have played all the FF games.

 

[404notfound]

Final Fantasy XII's story is...well...it's star wars. I guess. I'm not a Star Wars fan so I barely know the SW lore. Bu tI remember kinda being really bored with XII's story, rolling my eyes at Empire this, Rabenastre that, yada yada whatever. Honestly it wasn't far into the game that I just stopped paying attention to the story completely.

However the gameplay, oh man the game play is beautiful. Of course the first time I played this game was the American 1st edition, so I didn't get the fancy license boards or job system that would come in later international versions. I didn't know and I didn't care. I loved the gameplay. I loved running around and fighting enemies right in the overworld. No transition screens, no menus, just program your commands and murder shit. I loved it. Additionally to basic leveling, you used the license board to unlock a character's ability to equip better shit, use better abilities and whatnot. I really really liked it, and when I grinded I found myself going, "Okay 30 more enemies to get this skill or unlock that boost" it was addicting and I really liked it.

XII is the first Final Fantasy game where I really liked the side content too. At least as far as the hunts were concerned. I mean it was an excuse for more combat so of course I liked it.

If I was ranking the games based on their gameplay, then XII would be at the top of my list. However I'm not doing that. I'm ranking them based on how well they stuck in my memory, and since none of the story or the characters stood out to me, I can't honestly rank this on my top five list.

Recently I started replaying the Zodiac Age on PS4 and have made an effort to pay much more attention to the story. I'm not very far into the game, so I can't really comment on the differences in experiencing the game now versus however many years ago it originally came out. But we'll see in a few weeks when I can actually sit down and get through it.

I am so hyped at the possibility of getting to play XII again if/when Zodiac Age gets put onto PC. XII is in my top 3 FF games, along with VII and X. As you said: the characters are kinda.. unimpressive for the most part, particularly the "main" character Vaan (a gripe it has in common with X where the "main" character is the least likable and is hardest to get invested into imo) and Penelo. I enjoyed Balthier, Basch and Fran, though 3 interesting/likable party members is not a lot to go on. The gameplay and side content is out of this world good though. I loved the "I'm playing an mmo, but I don't have to deal with people" feel, and being able to just run up to a mob and start a fight? Sooooooooo goood.

But I will say that the hallway running didn't bother me, because I was used to in from FFX, and I don't give a fuck what you think, FFX was just as much of a hallway as XIII was end of story. The difference between them, is the hallway is forgivable when the rest of the game is great as well.

That is the first time I've heard X be described as a "hallway", nevermind being just as bad as XIII in that regard. I never got that feeling at all, like yeah the story has you on rails for a good while (not that that's uncommon in the series) but I always found the areas to be, mostly, pleasant and they give you the feeling of being able to explore, interact and and appreciate them. For me XIII felt like the world was purposefully kept out of your reach, everything was always in the background. I felt really restricted (more so than the usual plot railroad antics), I also don't think it helped that they decided to put all the information about things onto the wiki thing in game. (Admittedly I didn't play XIII alot, maybe like 5 hours before I decided enough was enough, so my gripes might have been dealt with).

Edit: forgot to say, sorry for being a few days late on these. I forgot to keep track of the thread after you had to go away.

 

[CritialGaming]

Edit: forgot to say, sorry for being a few days late on these. I forgot to keep track of the thread after you had to go away.

Good to see you. I felt so abandoned .

 

[Hawki]

That is the first time I've heard X be described as a "hallway", nevermind being just as bad as XIII in that regard. I never got that feeling at all, like yeah the story has you on rails for a good while (not that that's uncommon in the series) but I always found the areas to be, mostly, pleasant and they give you the feeling of being able to explore, interact and and appreciate them. For me XIII felt like the world was purposefully kept out of your reach, everything was always in the background. I felt really restricted (more so than the usual plot railroad antics), I also don't think it helped that they decided to put all the information about things onto the wiki thing in game. (Admittedly I didn't play XIII alot, maybe like 5 hours before I decided enough was enough, so my gripes might have been dealt with).

I haven't heard "hallway" be used for FFX either, but while it's the only FF game I'm played (so I can't compare its linearity to other games in the series), it still struck me as being extremely linear, especially when compared to other RPGs in its genre (Xenoblade, Golden Sun, etc.) It really hit me on the High Road section, after the laughing scene. Here we have this wide open area, but we can't explore it, we can only stick to the path at hand. To use your own terminology, the world also feels out of reach. I mean, take Bevelle for example. We spend some time in the city's geographic location, but never get to explore the city itself outside what the plot allows. There's a few areas that allow some sense of exploration (e.g. the Calm Lands), but they're the exception rather than the rule.

And look, at the end of the day, I still actually like FFX, flawed as it is, but as an outsider, it struck me as a bit odd that FF13 got so much flak for its linearity when FFX got comparatively minor criticism for its own linearity (well, outside Spoony at least).

 

[404notfound]

I haven't heard "hallway" be used for FFX either, but while it's the only FF game I'm played (so I can't compare its linearity to other games in the series), it still struck me as being extremely linear, especially when compared to other RPGs in its genre (Xenoblade, Golden Sun, etc.) It really hit me on the High Road section, after the laughing scene. Here we have this wide open area, but we can't explore it, we can only stick to the path at hand. To use your own terminology, the world also feels out of reach. I mean, take Bevelle for example. We spend some time in the city's geographic location, but never get to explore the city itself outside what the plot allows. There's a few areas that allow some sense of exploration (e.g. the Calm Lands), but they're the exception rather than the rule.

Yeah: The highroad section is where the plot railroads you hard (did refer to that in my post). But up til that point the regions are pretty open. Besaid lets you experience pretty much everything you could on a Caribbean-esque island; from the beach to the jungle road and the village, you can go into the houses and stores there, interact with people. Kilika is much of the same: the port area with a bunch of branches going off for houses, then the Woods which have multiple paths to take. Luca is also pretty awesome to experience I think. So many different parts of the city that you can visit. Then later on there's Macalania woods and Bikanel that I thought were nice, Thunder plains to a much lesser degree. Its not just the exploration though: I also mentioned how X lets you interact more with the world, and the things inhabiting it. All the towns and the people you can talk to, the ruins along the path when you're walking along that you can inspect etc. That all really helps with breaking up the linearity too. I don't remember XIII having alot of that going on, and opening the in-game wiki thing in order to get any information on the world and area you're in is just bad for immersion. In X everything is taught through interactions within the world.

 

[gsilver]

So, I was listening to a retro games podcast yesterday, and they were talking about Final Fantasy Tactics. Apparently, there is a fan made patch that brings the translation of the War of the Lions version into the PSX one.

I decided to jump on it, since it's a pretty good compliment to the Mario Rabbits game.
Tactics, welcome back.

 

[CritialGaming]

So Final Fantasy V then.

I reach the third world in this game over the weekend, and while I haven't beaten it yet, I feel far enough to give my overall opinion on this game.

Final Fantasy V marks the second time the series uses a true job system. Arguably this is the last time because while Zodiac Age does have job classes, I can't consider it a true job system because you job choices are locked and not freely interchangable once chosen. Final Fantasy V is a bit of an improvement over 3 but still suffers a lot of 3's problems with jobs. There are some jobs that are either useless outright, or useless unless you invest a lot of grinding time to leveling that job up to a useable state. So like in 3, I found myself with a job combo that works and never change anything up because I see no reason to do so.

Many of the jobs are not even fun. Beastmaster, Thief, Geomancer, Blue mage, all just seem shitty to me. Blue mage I heard is powerful as fuck, but requires a lot of work and game knowledge to get right, and I'm not willing to make that investment.

Storywise there is nothing special here. FFV is still going with the warrior's of light theme though this is the first time in the series that there seems to be a consistant villain for most of the game. Exdeath is cool looking, but his dumb lackey Gilgamesh is far cooler. For me the best part has been seeing how Gilgamesh started as he became a series stable from this point on. I kinda expected him to be more threatening, but his character makes up for his lack of being a real threat. In the three boss fights I had with him, he never put my party in any danger.

Speaking of Bosses, Final Fantasy 5 still does the old school SNES thing of randomly throwing you a mandatory boss fight that is way harder than it should be. Atamos on the top of the tower is a boss fight that comes to mind. The four crystals of power is another one that just shouldn't be that hard. Meanwhile certain big bosses like Gilgamesh, are complete pushovers. Hell in Exdeath's castle at the end of the second world, the generic random encounters and puzzles on the way to fighting Exdeath for the first "real" time, are far harder than actually fighting Exdeath. That's a problem with balancing, either because I didn't have the right party comp, or the numbers in the game are just all over the place.

If nothing else, FFV is tedious. Grinding is hard because random encounters never seem to give enough experience later in the game to make trying to level up worth the investment. This again is more problems with numbers.

Final Fantasy V just doesn't do much for me. It's tedious, and the job system isn't interesting enough to keep me invested. I'm trying to get through it, but if I die late in the final dungeon thanks to BS, I'll just walk away.

 

[Paragon Fury]

Well everyone I am back and it's time for my airport experience to be shared with ya'll. Oops, did I say airport? I meant Hallway. Errr wait...what thread is this?

Thirteen! That's right I meant to say Hallw...err Final Fantasy XIII.

So by now everyone has hate stories about FFXIII at this point. How the game is one big hallway, how the story is a custerfuck of nonsense, how the gameplay is a press "A" simulator. WE all know the deal, and frankly all those criticisms are correct. The characters in FFXIII suck, and if you were to look at all the general feedback about FFXIII you would assume the game is total dogshit because other than the graphics, everything about the game is a mess.

Then why do I fucking love it?

To me Final Fantasy 13 is a beautiful game, both graphically and gameplay wise. I know most people don't agree with me and I'm not going to try to convince anyone in this recap. But I will say that the hallway running didn't bother me, because I was used to in from FFX, and I don't give a fuck what you think, FFX was just as much of a hallway as XIII was end of story. The difference between them, is the hallway is forgivable when the rest of the game is great as well.

Even though I love XIII, the story is shit. The Fal'Cie fuck people over into L'Cie and give them a riddle in their mind that is like a quest they must finish or they become Ceth, or some shit. But the Fal'Cie really just want the L'Cie to destroy the Fal'Cie for some reason or whatever. I dunno, there are also two planets really really really close together somehow and one planet is good and the other planet is monster planet? The fuck even?

Doesn't matter, I love pressing A. Okay first off the combat to XIII has a lot more going for it than pressing A. While the characters pretty much control themselves, the player is required to be on their toes in order to swap characters into the proper roles for the fight with paradigm shifts. These shifts will swap the characters in the party into a list of different "job class" combos that the player sets up before the fights. These roles range from different types of damage in order to stack a break meter which will cause the enemy to take a large multiplier of stacking damage, to buffers, healers, and debuffers. There becomes a sense of strategy in how you start the fight, how quick you can get buffs and debuffs out, then swapping back and forth from dealing damage to healing and protecting the party. Some of the enemies are really though and you do have to be quick on your toes. During boss fights I find myself swaping roles and paradigm shifting so often that if I also had to select all the parties commands, there would be no fucking way I could do anything fast enough and the game would be impossible to finish. To me the people who call it a press A simulator clearly haven't played the game enough to know what the fuck they are talking about.

So I like FFXIII, so much so that I have beaten the game twice. I plan to play it again soon while actively trying to do all the hunts and such that appear later in the game.

FFXIII is by no means a perfect game, bad story, poor characters (Fuck you Hope you fucking worthless piece of shit), an obsession with Lightning so waifu-hard that they gave her 3 games, a mediocre leveling system that actively tells you when you've leveled enough, yeah FFXIII has a lot of faults. But it's gameplay isn't directly one of them, and at the core of having fun in a video game, gameplay means everything to me. So to me FFXIII was great, fantastic graphics (especially on PC maxed out oh my god it's fucking sexy looking), and great gameplay. That is all I need.

Next I played the debately hardest game in the series.

The overall idea for the story of FFXIII isn't bad - it's just incomprehensibly told it becomes bad. But if you read between the lines and take the time to piece things together, it becomes a lot better. In essence;

Spoiler

The Fal'Cie and Humanity as well as most of existence were created by their overall goddess (Mother) was in turn created by another God (who becomes important in the sequels). While the Fal'Cie were given specific, life-defining purposes and goals that they can't deviate from, Humanity was given free will and the ability to do anything they wanted. Humanity used this ability to achieve great tremendous things, while the Mother essentially wound up making the Fal'Cie sentient slaves to Humanity. The Fal'Cie hated this, and so the Fal'Cie rebellion/War of the Fal'Cie occurred. This fucked up the main planet pretty hardcore and severely reduced the human population. Still bound by their directives and missions, the Fal'Cie couldn't let humanity die so they created that second "planet" where they could keep humanity alive, but also under control.

The Fal'Cie still wanted their freedom though, and they couldn't think of a way to obtain it so they struggled internally. And most of them still hated Humanity, so the L'Cie happened as both a way for individual Fal'Cie to advance their own agendas and punish/reward Humanity in the same way Fal'Cie are bound to their missions. Eventually one of the most powerful Fal'Cie - Ophelion, the power source for the second planet - decides the best way for the Fal'Cie to get what they want is to reunite with their "Mother"...and to do that they need to basically apocalypse the planet. So he sets the events of FFXIII in motion, hoping that that one group of L'Cie will eventually complete their mission. Lightning and her group ironically almost do, even though they defy their original fate, by killing Ophelion and dropping the second planet into the first one. Fang and Vanille sacrifice themselves to save the world, thus basically shafting the Fal'Cie and freeing humanity.

 

[CaitSeith]

So I like FFXIII, so much so that I have beaten the game twice. I plan to play it again soon while actively trying to do all the hunts and such that appear later in the game.

I have never beaten the game (I think I stop at the very last chapter). I agree the graphics are pretty nice, but there are so many details in the gameplay that made it fall just short for my taste (specially how restrictive the paradigm system is for most part of the game).

For the most part though, I did enjoy FFIII. The game progress was fun, and once I had my jobs set to go, grinding was easy and fun. The final dungeon is fucking stupid and I'll never see the end, and the job system frankly sucks, but hey whatever, it's not like I'll need to worry about it again right?

Did you play the NES version or one of the remakes. I played the DS version while watching ProJared play the whole NES version, and I found the random battles easier (you only face 2 or 3 enemies each battle) and the dungeons less obnoxious, but the bosses were harder (they attack twice per turn, although you get fully healed after winning a boss battle). Also, thank god for the quicksave feature (being able to suspend the game anytime made the final dungeon more manageable).

I played Bravely Default after finishing FFIII, and weirdly enough, the former felt like a spiritual successor of the later.

I loved everything about Final Fantasy XV, except the load times on my base-model PS4, but the thing that stood out the most to me was how fucking fantastic the main cast is. I mean Noctis, Ignis, Gladiolus, and Promto. These guys were done soooo well that I honestly can say that this is the first really cast to make me truly care about them. Their friendship, their love for each other, the way they interact, and the way the game sets them up on this fairly casual roadtrip just fits all perfectly. I would run around the massive world just to listen to them talk shit to each other. I can't think of a group dynamic that has been done better in any game before.

My favorite game in the series will always be FFVI. That being said, I enjoyed FFXV a lot too. I found the amalgamation of real world-like aesthetics with Final Fantasy elements pretty charming. For me its low point wasn't Chapter 13 (I kinda enjoyed it tbh... before the patch. I haven't played it after the patch yet), but the level with Malboro (still, credits to Square-Enix for taking the risk).

SO, you haven't played FFXIV? Me neither. I heard it was rebuild from scratch because the original release was not good (to put it gently); and now it's pretty good. But it's an MMORPG, and nowadays I'm not a big fan of the genre.