Final Fantasy 2 is only good FF game

[Gravemind]

You are pokecapturing a digimon so you can play yugioh duels with them

"YuGiOh duels" makes Triple Triad sound way cooler than it actually is.

What you're really doing is playing Math Reversi with regional extra steps that either overcomplicate or dumb down the basic gist of Math Reversi.

 

[Well Intentioned]

I think is very self explanatory how you simply use the GF to enhance your powers without reading a tome of The Complete Historie of Guardian Forces. Specially when the plot is not centered around the GFs as ff6 is centered around espers, in the first mission where you get Ifrit you kinda get the gist of it, there are elemental spirits and you get to recruit them.

That's not quite what I meant. There's no real explanation as to why tearing up a bunch of Tents creates a bunch of Curaga spells or how you can turn creatures into Triple Triad cards and how you can also use those cards to create spells of your choice that you then equip.

Ironically the whole segment where you infiltrate the parade and face Edea is still one of my favorite parts of any videogame. FF6 is the one i actually quit before the last few segments out of boredom. I mentioned earlier but i never liked the 2d FF games very much, the ideas the game introduced were cool, the actual game is nothing to write home about.

My experience with FF8 is that it tries to create a sense of spectacle and huge, cinematic moments. But I didn't care about the characters or the story all that much, which made dealing with the mechanics of the game dull and left me underwhelmed when the game was trying to "wow" me. Just wasn't for me. Oh well.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

The thing that really annoys me about VIII is that unless you actively go out of your way to break the game, it's immensely tedious.

I recently tried the game out again, this time ignoring the Triple Triad stuff (unpopular opinion, but I dislike card games so grinding out Triple Triad is like pulling teeth for me and was also the reason I would always give up) and just blow through it normally. Just grind out spells that I ran across and junction them accordingly. If you do that though, character progression is absurdly slow. 6 or 7 hours in, my characters were still doing sub-100 attacks, and magic was only barely better. Enemy magic was still limited to low-level shit and I barely ran into any mid-level magic on my own. It didn't matter so much because the game's not challenging, likely because the developers thought to accommodate those who are stuck with low-level magic, but I felt like I wasn't getting anywhere. By that point in VII or IX, I'm doing attacks worth hundreds of points of damage.

What you should be doing, and something I didn't realize until way later, is that you need to refine items to get the mid-to-high level magic, which in turn gives your stats a huge boost. It makes the game much less tedious, but at that point you're a skip and a hop away from breaking the difficulty in two anyway. So either you play through the game normally, grinding out piss-weak magic and doing attacks that aren't worth a shit, or you take advantage of the refining abilities (which are so easy to exploit it's insane) and make the game your bitch. There's basically no in-between.

 

[Captain Syrup]

My experience with FF8 is that it tries to create a sense of spectacle and huge, cinematic moments.

Incongruent with the "school days" theme they went for.

It's addictive to read blogs and magazines and apply for promotions. It's surprisingly boring to go into space.

For all its faults, the Squall/Seifer rivalry has a build-up and payoff. I know where Seifer came from and what he's about. This might be why the "Battle of the Gardens" packs a stronger punch than the stuff on the Lunar Base.

 

[Drag-on Knight 91873]

Conversely, the GFs are introduced with very little context and then forgotten about. You could extract them from the game and lose nothing. It seems Shiva and Ifrit show up because it is expected of them at this point.

The revelation about everyone losing their memories could have been the result of SeeD brainwashing.

No kidding. The only way to read up about GF's being bad before the Orphanage scene (which is a stupid fucking scene in of itself on so many levels) was looking at the terminal where it briefly mentions that they might affect memory. Kind of a bad way to introduce OP spirits (relative to every other military force).

Which is tonally inconsistent with the "school days" vibe they went for. It's addictive to read blogs and magazines and apply for promotions. It's surprisingly boring to go into space.

For all its faults, the Squall/Seifer rivalry has a build-up and payoff. I know where Seifer came from and what he's about. This might be why the "Battle of the Gardens" packs a stronger punch than the stuff on the Lunar Base.

The other "cinematic" moments involve Rinoa. The translation shoulders a lot of blame, like BananaSplit said. A lot of dialogue that was intended to be innocent ("MEANIE!") got mangled and makes her sound like a dilettante who elbows her way into every situation regardless of how qualified she is to be there. Ironically, this caused a lot of players to exclude Rinoa from the party for a majority of the game or send her to the missile base, which will deprive her and Squall of some essential scenes; thus, many players complained that Squall's feelings 'came out of nowhere.' Long story short: Rinoa has a sizeable fandom in Japan. The Ultimecia = Rinoa theory still has legs in the west.

Short of rewriting the whole thing, Disc 2 and 3 really should be reversed script-wise. Lunatic Pandora is effectively what happens at the end of Disc 2 anyways, but not as good.

I suspect the primacy of the romance subplot had to do with James Cameron's Titanic, which was the biggest movie at the time. Unlike The Phantom Menace and how it inspired the excellent Liberi Fatali cutscene, romance subplots tend to work better as B plots in an action context. Rinoa is very much a manic pixie dream girl when it comes to Squall and it baffles the audience why she would be into him. Squall is not Genji, whom despite being effeminate, bangs ladies left and right. On what basis do other characters think those two hooking up is a good idea anyways? FF7 didn't do this and handled its romance subplot better because of it.

 

[Dark Edea]

I didn't agree with all of his opinions (he was especially hard on X)

Impossible. FF 10 is liquid shit and the point at which Final Fantasy could not be repaired.

FF 8 was also very questionable. But 9 looked like a course correction. Then 10 sent the series to hell.

 

[Coldgrip]

I think one of the major problems with FF8 that nobody really mentions is; it wasn't FF7. When FF8 was announced I think a lot of newcomers were expecting more of the same and when it wasn't, it made all the problems stand out even more.

 

[Captain Syrup]

Short of rewriting the whole thing, Disc 2 and 3 really should be reversed script-wise. Lunatic Pandora is effectively what happens at the end of Disc 2 anyways, but not as good.

Doesn't help that, after three discs, I still don't know what makes the LP so important.

I get that it's needed for the Lunar Cry. And it's a big crystal, because this is Final Fantasy. And it's wrapped up in some kind of hovercraft to make it easy to move, fine. I can even accept that Adel had it built as a weapon back when she was running things. After that, it gets hazy. Ultimecia keeps possessing Rinoa, even though her mission is to seek out a more powerful sorceress. So, essentially, we spend three discs freeing Adel with the LP. Adel is bested, and then Ultimecia jumps into Rinoa. It doesn't make any sense.

You can tell 8 was super rushed through production to help capitalize on the success of 7.

I suspect the primacy of the romance subplot had to do with James Cameron's Titanic, which was the biggest movie at the time. Rinoa is very much a manic pixie dream girl when it comes to Squall and it baffles the audience why she would be into him.

Draw me like one of your French girls.

But Squall is no Jack Dawson, that's for sure.

FF 10 is liquid shit and the point at which Final Fantasy could not be repaired.

It's the English dub. It's competent, but it's inferior to the original, so English speakers felt cheated.

It's a straight line for the most part and old-timers hate that.

 

[Dark Edea]

Dem titties, though

There is an old JAV of Rinoa taking the pipe. Quality.

 

[Tuxedo_Zemus]

I think one of the major problems with FF8 that nobody really mentions is; it wasn't FF7. When FF8 was announced I think a lot of newcomers were expecting more of the same and when it wasn't, it made all the problems stand out even more.

Well also because the series, at least in the US at the time, had an immaculate track record up to that point. Final Fantasy was the gold standard that towered over any other RPG at the time aside from Chrono Trigger. I remember my PS1 owning friend bought the game and told me it sucked, and I flat out refused to believe him.

Is that Dean in your avatar? You don't see him often.

 

[Captain Syrup]

Well also because the series, at least in the US at the time, had an immaculate track record up to that point. Final Fantasy was the gold standard that towered over any other RPG at the time aside from Chrono Trigger. I remember my PS1 owning friend bought the game and told me it sucked, and I flat out refused to believe him.

Even when I was a kid it smelled fishy. That's when strategy guides became a lot more common.

Chrono Cross is rightly hated. No I will not explain.

 

[Tuxedo_Zemus]

Chrono Cross was the subject of many spectacular rants among my friends and I. I really wish Spoony would have taken a run at that one back in his prime. That might be the most devisive game I've ever known. There certainly are people who love the game, but the main deciding factor seems to be whether they played Trigger first.

 

[Dark Edea]

Chrono Cross is rightly hated. No I will not explain.

Yeaaaah.

I do like Chrono Cross. But man, they overreached in some bad ways. The plot was the most convoluted mess and Belthasar basically needed a thousand events to go exactly the right way for his dumbass plan to work.

 

[Captain Syrup]

The plot was the most convoluted mess and Belthasar basically needed a thousand events to go exactly the right way for his dumbass plan to work.

JRPGs tend to have one or two useless "joke" characters. CC has at least ten.
While the idea behind the story wasn't half bad in honestly it played out like a kid just deciding to break all his toys a fit of manic fun.

I really wish Spoony would have taken a run at that one back in his prime.

He can rot In YouTube Hell along with Film Brain and Linkara.

 

[Tuxedo_Zemus]

Eh, let's give credit where it's due here. Spoony made some pretty good content before his meltdown and he showed a pretty good analytical eye for RPGs especially. I'll still occasionally watch his FF8 series.

 

[Bluey]

That's not quite what I meant. There's no real explanation as to why tearing up a bunch of Tents creates a bunch of Curaga spells or how you can turn creatures into Triple Triad cards and how you can also use those cards to create spells of your choice that you then equip.



My experience with FF8 is that it tries to create a sense of spectacle and huge, cinematic moments. But I didn't care about the characters or the story all that much, which made dealing with the mechanics of the game dull and left me underwhelmed when the game was trying to "wow" me. Just wasn't for me. Oh well.

Since I picked up a psychical version of FF7 and FF8 twin pack on the Switch, I plan on playing FF8. I think the twin pack was worth a purchase. I haven't played 8 since the PSX days and I remember wanting a Pocket Station for the Chocobo thing. It's been replaced by something with Rhinoa's dog from what my friend said. All I remember I liked the Laguna segments, because "The Man with the Machine Gun" Slaps.

I got my copy of FF X/X2 on the Switch as well, be it the European version, which my Twin pack is as well.

 

[Gravemind]

Since I picked up a psychical version of FF7 and FF8 twin pack on the Switch, I plan on playing FF8. I think the twin pack was worth a purchase. I haven't played 8 since the PSX days and I remember wanting a Pocket Station for the Chocobo thing. It's been replaced by something with Rhinoa's dog from what my friend said. All I remember I liked the Laguna segments, because "The Man with the Machine Gun" Slaps.

I got my copy of FF X/X2 on the Switch as well, be it the European version, which my Twin pack is as well.

Unless they fixed it (which, I don't recall there being any updates for FF8 Remastered on the Switch for a long while now), the Switch port suffers from horrible input delay that makes timing based things like Squall's Renzokuken stupidly fucking difficult to hit consistently.

 

[Sonic30]

Two characters who are shit in FF4. Cecil is whimpy and a pussy, screw him. And Kain insulted EDGE, the coward shit Kain. He gets less worse in After Years but he sucks in FF4.

3 wingman. Yang, Palom and Edge. Best characters. Whenever EDGE shows up. Its time to play this!

 

[Marissa Moira]

Been making my way through 10 again, I got the achievement for Chocobo racing on the first try.

 

[Broseph]

I know this is a bait post, but FF2 wasn't the worst Final Fantasy, despite what everyone says.

The worst Final Fantasy was FF9, because it was full of furries.

I haven't played FFIX in probably 20 years now (holy fuck I'm getting old) but IIRC only one character in the game was a furry but she was still a pretty likeable character in spite of that.