Poll: Final Fantasy and the Sin of over customization

[BrotherRool]

Let me again re-iterate I LIKE all these games, and I KNOW these are supposed to be story driven, my argument is that
battles are a major part of the game as well and if you make your game so that party members are essentially
swapable at will you don't get the sense of bonding to the chracters because you've played through the whole
game, laughing as your thief failed to steal again, or crying as the 8493 Flare your black mage did was only a few points
short of killing the boss or your fighter being the only character left with like 4 health and you having a heart attack then
wooping in joy as his last attack killed the boss.

Now in responce to people who have commented on this with their own opinions, here are my replies.

BrotherRool I'm not praising 10-2, just pointing out it's semi lack of customization. Yes they could switch
on the fly but that took a turn and as I said before, they have to lose the talents of the class they left.
Yes I know there is subtlety to the systems in all of them, and I do get all of them, I didn't mention them
because there was no reason to, if you're reading this you KNOW what they are.
As I said, I never played 10

Well I think that answers my question (this is a character thing more than a strategic thing right?). And I didn't mean you were praising FFX-2 as a game, but that you were saying it had a battle system with the level of customisation more in line with what you thought was appropriate.

It was confusing me, because I think X-2's thing is slightly different from your main idea. There's the one idea where a battle system builds up relationships with characters over the long-term in a way that supports the story by making it so that they're useful in specific roles over the course of the game. You think of Snow as your sentinel and in your battles you'll be thinking about how you're specific sentinel has done and how he's grown in the role etc.

And then in X-2 we've got the idea of characters having specific roles in the short term, where you build up a relationship in that battle because of the certain thing that someone needs. The thing is the materia system has that too because you can only have someone kitted out to do certain things within a battle and you need a diverse selection so you have to put certain people into certain roles.



The worst game in the series for it is FFXII by far, the license grid means anything goes, there's almost no prodding into any roles at all and by the end of the game most characters will be able to do almost everything. So it breaks the long-term thing and the short-term thing

 

[Scars Unseen]

The only way that you end up with everyone in FF6 as being clones of each other is if you grind a lot(which I did the first time I played. Ah, the days of only having one game to keep me occupied for months on end). It is true that the potential is there, but it has to be exploited. Until you have everyone with all the best spells and max magic stats, many of the characters have unique abilities that are the better option(though some of them are very specific in their application).

But really, I never considered FF6 to be especially good because of its game mechanics. It is a pretty basic JRPG in that regard no matter how you look at it. FF6 stands out for because of its characters, its story, its music and its main antagonist. All the things that once were SquareSoft's strengths(and more so in FF6 than in most of the franchise to my thinking). The gameplay was merely the vessel that carried the story.

 

[Something Amyss]

Even with FFVII, you CAN deck out any character to fit a given role, but you won't get the same results. Kind of like some of the examples given of games that "don't" do this.

 

[crimson sickle2]

Roleplaying games can either have unique characters and story or, more commonly, have an interesting world and customizable characters to fit the player's needs. I know we're talking about Final Fantasy here, but for the genre, customizable characters are the norm. As some examples: Elder Scrolls, Dark Souls, or Fallout allow the player to fully customize their character for any style of gameplay; in the middle are games like Persona 3-4, FF10, and Dragon Quest 8 with characters given premade classes and customizable builds. The only games without any customizable character abilities that come to mind are old-school Dragon Quest games (might be wrong on that) and Final Fantasy 4.

Although I don't understand what we're agreeing or disagreeing about.

 

[excalipoor]

The only Final Fantasy where this is a problem before you reach the endgame and start maxing everyone's levels and whatnot is Final Fantasy VIII, where the literally only difference between characters is their levels and limit breaks. And I do think this is a huge flaw.

However, while you could argue that the characters in FF2, FF3 and FF5 don't have predefined roles, they will eventually grow into whatever roles you want them to. Even then certain characters are just more suitable for certain roles, they're hardly interchangeable. The only way to make them palette swaps of each other is to max everything, and at that point you've broken the game anyway.

I do feel that the magicite system in FF6 is mostly superfluous, as every character has a nice niche they fill, and in FF6 equipment alone allows for a good deal of customization. While the natural spellcasters will have magic superior to everyone else for a good while, at some point equipment available to a character becomes a more important factor than their abilities. But even that's only from a min-max standpoint.

Final Fantasy VII... Let's see, Barret has naturally high vitality and HP, and most of his weapons are ranged. Put him on back row and slap Counter Attack and Cover materias on him, and you have a great tank. You COULD use him as a healer if you so wanted, but he'll be much less efficient than, say, Aeris. Unless of course you're smart and instead of spamming Cure, you get White Wind. Again, all this goes out the window once you get to a certain point, but that's all third disc problems.

Final Fantasy X only has this problem once you've finished everyone's paths, and you can beat the game well before that. Until then, just like FF4 and FF9, each character has a preset role they fulfill in battle. Tidus has buffs, delays, and can hit fast enemies; Auron has debuffs and armor piercing, Wakka has status effects and can hit flying enemies, Lulu has elemental magic, and Yuna is the designated healer. Kimahri is the blue mage (which in this case means you can do whatever you want with him), and Rikku the thief (and also your ticket to breaking the game).

At the risk of sounding like a broken record: just because you CAN fill any role with any character, doesn't mean they're anywhere near optimal for it. Unless, you know, you max ALL your shit.

 

[rednose1]

I rather liked the over customization, as I could pick teams/characters I liked, not just ones because they were "needed". Plus I kinda feel it goes with the mantra of "you can be whatever you want to be" kids are told nonstop.