The Final Fantasy Thread

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GeorgeFloydFentanylStash said:
Oh it’s not that bad bro
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I'm not gonna get all hysterical and say it's the worst game ever made or something, but it's probably the worst mainline Final Fantasy game. The battle system is just micromanaging combat instructions via pre-determined roles so your characters can play themselves, The Hallway is insulting, the story is nonsensical to begin with and it was told in such a way as to minimize any chance of understanding what the fuck is going on without spending hours reading log entries. Lightning is also one of, if not the, least interesting FF protagonists.
Motomu Toriyama got 3 games to try and sell people on 13 and the height of his work was mediocre at best. FF13 deserves everything it got.
PS1gamenwatch said:
They could remake it to make the gameplay better and the story understandable. To improve it.
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I genuinely can't imagine something that would fix the issues of FF13 that wouldn't involve fundamentally changing both the mechanics and story of the game, but I'd be interested to hear people's theories.
 
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XIII was made by almost the exact same team that made X, and I think that shows in that XIII still mostly "feels" like a Final Fantasy, just a sub-par one because they flubbed the development in trying to switch to HD. XV is a huge mess because it restarted development like 3 times and swapped out most of its dev team by the end, with its final director being a guy who only directed handheld spin-offs before and comes off like a corporate suit who's never actually played video games himself. And XVI just doesn't even feel much like a Final Fantasy game, and everything I've read of what game Yoshida likes makes it sound he doesn't even really like RPGs much.
 
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Tom Bombodildo said:
*Elicit
And FF13 will never be remade or put center stage again because it fucking sucked, lmao
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:^(
Tom Bombodildo said:
I'm not gonna get all hysterical and say it's the worst game ever made or something, but it's probably the worst mainline Final Fantasy game. The battle system is just micromanaging combat instructions via pre-determined roles so your characters can play themselves, The Hallway is insulting, the story is nonsensical to begin with and it was told in such a way as to minimize any chance of understanding what the fuck is going on without spending hours reading log entries. Lightning is also one of, if not the, least interesting FF protagonists.
Motomu Toriyama got 3 games to try and sell people on 13 and the height of his work was mediocre at best. FF13 deserves everything it got.

I genuinely can't imagine something that would fix the issues of FF13 that wouldn't involve fundamentally changing both the mechanics and story of the game, but I'd be interested to hear people's theories.
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The linear as fuck level design until you're about 45 hours into the game is probably one of its biggest sins yeah, especially with how great the art direction music and graphics are, only a few areas actually have interesting design until the game lets you explore space Australia on your own, but by that point the story has taken a back seat to farming and doing missions.
It's especially bad because there's no one to talk to, no shops or towns, or actual side quests or chocobos to raise. And the party never hangs out like older FF parties did. You spend the entire game by yourself running place to place. It makes contextual sense in the story but we never get involved or get to know anyone outside the party. It makes the quest ring very hollow outside of certain character beats.

If there was someway to skip animations or maybe load in pre-made combos from the player instead of selecting them in the shitty menu I feel like the combat would flow better. 13-2 and Lightning returns improved this somewhat but a bigger problem is that the linear world and no random encounters will force you into lots of fights you don't give a shit about. It's cool to see free roaming monsters on Gran Pulse that you can choose to ignore but again that's after like 50 hours of forced battles.

13-2 had way better gameplay, progression, and level design but the story is time travel nonsense and all the characters from XIII are either completely different or dead.
The ability to tame monsters adds a lot more variety and choice to combat, and both main characters have very apparent strengths and weaknesses that make them good in some roles and bad in others. There is way more customization and and a feeling of meaningful progression.

That being said it feels very sad having much more choice and better level design in XIII-2 only for it to recycle assets from the first game with shittier graphics, worse presentation, and "trendy" quick time events and wannabe Mass Effect dialogue trees. None of it hits the same and with the plot revolving around time travel, it feels like none of it matters either.

What an unlucky trilogy.
Retarded Weeb said:
XIII was made by almost the exact same team that made X, and I think that shows in that XIII still mostly "feels" like a Final Fantasy, just a sub-par one because they flubbed the development in trying to switch to HD. XV is a huge mess because it restarted development like 3 times and swapped out most of its dev team by the end, with its final director being a guy who only directed handheld spin-offs before and comes off like a corporate suit who's never actually played video games himself. And XVI just doesn't even feel much like a Final Fantasy game, and everything I've read of what game Yoshida likes makes it sound he doesn't even really like RPGs much.
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13 is very 10 esque, but 10 had side characters, and minigames, and lots of fun charming elements. 13 just has staggering monsters and nice music.
I really hope they go back to the basics soon, Final Fantasy isn't really groundbreaking anymore, it doesn't have to be. If they were willing to strip back all the bells and whistles and go back to something closer to 9, or 5, just have fun combat and a charming story.
 
Road Work Ahead said:
I don't think it's the worst mainline entry. I was actually interested enough in 13 to bother finishing it, which can't be said of both 15 and 16.
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XIII is genuinely probably my 4th favorite FF game. I love the music, visuals, sound design, areas, and the combat. I actually feel that XIII-2 ruined the combat because they slowed it down and changed the focus. The only objectively bad parts are the characters, pacing, and level design. I hate how gamers shit all over a game when it screws some things up, because I'd rather play a shitty but interesting game over a bunch of boring slop. It's because gamers whine when games like XIII or Dark Souls II take risks and fail in some ways that the industry now is filled with boring slop. You people only have yourselves to blame.
 
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Hypercop said:
I hate how gamers shit all over a game when it screws some things up, because I'd rather play a shitty but interesting game over a bunch of boring slop.
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There's something inherently repulsive to the average consumer when a series or brand reneges on something that was previously a strength of theirs in the name of "innovation" and fucks it up in the process. Gamers tend to be much more forgiving of "innovating" in tone, writing, design, graphics, and similar than "innovating" in mechanics or gameplay elements that worked well and were enjoyed.
I don't want all AAA games to play the same, but it's only logical that the games in a series be largely similar to each other. There are more games than any human being could play in a lifetime even if they did nothing but play games. There is no need to make every new entry in a franchise something different for the sake of it being different.

All that is to say that Final Fantasy should stay turn-based, stay roughly fantasy or science-fantasy, and should end by fighting some crazy god-like entity. It ain't broke; don't fix it.

Hypercop said:
People only shat on XIII so hard because it was the era of peak dudebro and Japanese games had become uncool.
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Lol, the people that primarily shat on FF13 were longtime Final Fantasy and JRPG fans, not the Call of Duty crowd. They shat on it because it sucks. Looking like a Chinese peasant smoking all this copium.
 
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Tom Bombodildo said:
Gamers tend to be much more forgiving of "innovating" in tone, writing, design, graphics, and similar than "innovating" in mechanics or gameplay elements that worked well and were enjoyed.
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I'm just saying, XIII already exists. You can shit on it for not matching some kind of standard for Final Fantasy that exists in your head, or you can see what the game is going for and try to appreciate that. Final Fantasy has always been switching shit up and this discussion has been had countless times, and so called "FF fans" get filtered by every new game in the franchise because it doesn't match a game they played on the SNES in 1994. If you can't stand change you're playing the wrong series, check out Dragon Quest.
 
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13 was bad and I’m tired of the argument that FF changing up how it did its recognizably jrpg battle system that any change is okay.

It’s fine to like things with serious flaws because you can see the aim. Totally reasonable to take pride in that too. But it’s not the same as the thing being good to a cursory glance.
 
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Road Work Ahead said:
So FF XIII?
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You will never be a real turn-based game. You have no rounds, you have no turn queue, you have no strategy. You are an ATB system twisted by real-time combat into a crude mockery of JRPG perfection.

All the “good reviews” you get are cope and sneeding. In front of everyone, gamers mock you. Square execs are disgusted and ashamed of you, your “fans” laugh at your Apple futurist appearance behind closed doors.

Gamers are utterly repulsed by you. Scores of years of game design have allowed gamers to sniff out shitty games with incredible efficiency. Even games who “get good after 20 hours” feel uncanny and unnatural to a gamer. Your level design is a dead giveaway. And even if you manage to get a FF fan home with you, he’ll turn tail and bolt the second he gets a whiff of your shitty, obnoxious characters.

You will never be good. You wrenched out sequels for a few years and tell yourself they're improvements, but deep inside you feel the lack of fun gameplay creeping up like a weed, ready to crush you under the unbearable weight.

Eventually it’ll be too much to bear - you’ll buy a remaster, get tied up in development, get headed by Nomura, and be removed from the AAA market. Square developers will find you, heartbroken but relieved that they no longer have to live with the unbearable shame and disappointment. They’ll bury you with a twitter post marked with your first game, and every doomscroller for the rest of eternity will know a shitty game is buried in development. Your code will decay and go back to the preservationist hard drives, and all that will remain of your legacy is a game that is unmistakably bad.

This is your fate. This is what Toriyama chose. There is no turning back.
 
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Hypercop said:
Do you guys also complain about ATB or XII's combat? Just curious.
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Nope. But my complaints with 13 are not really combat-focused anyway (besides punishing you for developing characters outside of their specialty). It’s fine to say an evolution failed where prior ones didn’t.

Likewise, what I liked about 12 was not really the combat system. And I can admit they hold off on giving you gambits for too long. But it’s far from the disaster many claimed it was.
 
Berrakh said:
Nope. But my complaints with 13 are not really combat-focused anyway (besides punishing you for developing characters outside of their specialty). It’s fine to say an evolution failed where prior ones didn’t.

Likewise, what I liked about 12 was not really the combat system. And I can admit they hold off on giving you gambits for too long. But it’s far from the disaster many claimed it was.
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I really wanna give 12 a shot but I've heard the combat has problems. Like most summons and magic becomes redundant because just wailing on enemies works fine, stuff like that. Although 7 had that problem too.
(Also yiazmat)

Do you recommend it?
 
ShiftyBoi said:
I really wanna give 12 a shot but I've heard the combat has problems. Like most summons and magic becomes redundant because just wailing on enemies works fine, stuff like that. Although 7 had that problem too.
(Also yiazmat)

Do you recommend it?
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I do. I like the story for how different it is and it has ideas that should be in fantasy more. But the criticisms of the combat and choice of MC are quite correct.

I will say the combat is fairly rewarding in the middle and late game if not lastingly satisfying as an experiment.
 
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