The Final Fantasy Thread

[Mike Stoklasa]

Yeah he lays it out in like 2 minutes then the rest is details without being tedious gripes. All of his complaints have a wider emphasis.

The part where he compares quotes on the different directors' thoughts on Sephiroth is damming as fuck.

 

[Berrakh]

Posting again for the new page. I like it because, iirc, it's not structured like a video essay with the important conclusion at the end, you could drop out at like 60% and have an ironclad idea of its shortcomings. He does praise the game too but it's overall a lesser narrative.

 

[Mike Stoklasa]

His casual distaste for the English is also nice.

 

[Dread First]

Jesus fucking Christ, the remake is worse than I could've imagined. I just thought it was gonna be more soulless SE drivel like their non-MMO endeavours have been for the better half of the last decade. I never expected it to be a fucking incoherent mess. Also, that comparison between the original director for FF7 and Nomura's intent for Sephiroth was hilariously pathetic.

I always knew that Nomura wasn't on par with the likes of Hironobu Sakaguchi, Kazuma Kaneko, and other such JRPG veterans but like... god DAMN, I wasn't expecting him to just flat-out admit that he had no other goals than to turn Sephiroth into a Michael Bay movie villain.

 

[Berrakh]

His choice of the rooftop banter to show how badly the ghosts are enmeshed with the plot was inspired. Since that talk involves discussing the Turks, by far the least insane thing they had just faced.

 

[Marissa Moira]

The part where he compares quotes on the different directors' thoughts on Sephiroth is damming as fuck.

That's not figuring in a Metanarrative where the Fans reacts to Sephiroth the same way Cloud does in game.

 

[You're The Man Now Dog]

If there's one thing about Final Fantasy that I honestly miss, it's the Job system. I know that XI and XIV managed to "perfect" the job system by integrating it into an MMO and honestly? I'm happy that such a cornerstone of early Final Fantasy still exists in some capacity. With that in mind though, I really miss the old-fashioned job system in single-player FF games.

I've been going through Final Fantasy V Advance for the first time as an adult and I was honestly taken aback by the sheer flexibility of the job system. You have incentives to experiment with and eventually master multiple jobs. Ultimately, this means that the endgame goal should be to master all jobs so that you can go to town on Neo-Exdeath/Neo-Shinryu with a Mime/Freelancer. This is a non-issue for me though, because I'm more preoccupied with the journey than the destination this time around.

It's such a shame that X-2 is the closest to a "modern" mainline Final Fantasy game that has a robust job system.

12 has a job system, and it's pretty decent. It's nothing like 5's, not even close, but you have 12 jobs to choose from and can pick two jobs per character, which can create some pretty interesting combos. The benefit it has over 5's is that you're not limited to a certain amount of commands, so you get the full gamut of skills and abilities relegated to both of your jobs. Plus the job board or whatever means you can create somewhat unique builds, at least in the midgame. By the end you'll have gotten everything on every board.

FF5's job system was, in my opinion, the pinnacle of RPG customization. Nothing has come close since. You can make a party that's a useless joke and mathematically couldn't defeat certain bosses, or you can make a single character who can one hit almost any boss by halfway through the game. Final Fantasy Tactics was pretty similar, but it's balanced a lot better so it's harder to completely break the game. Unless you use Calculator. Fuck that job.

 

[Coldgrip]

Final Fantasy Tactics was pretty similar, but it's balanced a lot better so it's harder to completely break the game. Unless you use Calculator. Fuck that job.

No, not really. Monk with two-swords will wipe the floor with most encounters, Blade Grasp makes you near untouchable, Ramza and magic guns, any physical fighter can be turned into a horrific beast by manipulating their brave stat which is super easy to do, and Cid completely makes the rest of the game a complete joke.

And that's just off the top of my head.

 

[Pissmaster]

I always knew that Nomura wasn't on par with the likes of Hironobu Sakaguchi, Kazuma Kaneko, and other such JRPG veterans but like... god DAMN, I wasn't expecting him to just flat-out admit that he had no other goals than to turn Sephiroth into a Michael Bay movie villain.

Nomura started out as a character designer, right? He's the reason so many FF characters look so whimsical, he's honed his design skills on aesthetics, not writing. That's more or less why his work is superficial bullshit.

 

[The Littlest Shitlord]

No, not really. Monk with two-swords will wipe the floor with most encounters, Blade Grasp makes you near untouchable, Ramza and magic guns, any physical fighter can be turned into a horrific beast by manipulating their brave stat which is super easy to do, and Cid completely makes the rest of the game a complete joke.

And that's just off the top of my head.

There was also a severe imbalance between magic and physical attacks in physical's favor. Magic attacks required a charging time that effectively became longer at higher levels (due to the higher speed stats at higher levels, more turns would elapse during a given charge interval). Even worse, the higher level spells had longer charging times to begin with. It became near-impossible to get off a spell at high levels, as either the target would walk up to your guys causing you to take heavy friendly fire or your mage would get one-shotted while casting due to charging up status negating evasion. (And this wasn't like FF15 where there was an accessory to turn off friendly fire on magic, either.)

The stat imbalance between Brave and Faith made this problem much worse, since high Faith was a double-edged sword where high-Faith units both inflicted and received more magic damage and non-Ramza units would desert if their Faith got too high, but high Brave had no downsides at all besides the trivial one that they would find worse quality items. And you could get around that by having a single designated low-Brave unit to pick those up, and once you'd picked up every treasure in the game you didn't even need them anymore. And of course being able to max out Brave with no downside is what enabled the absurd brokenness of Blade Grasp.

The only time that magic wasn't useless was after you'd spent a ton of time and JP learning a decent selection of it and putting it on a Calculator/Arithmetician with a good selection of abilities, then it was overpowered. (Calculated magic shouldn't have had its MP cost removed in my opinion.)

Monster units were neat but basically useless. Riding chocobos was fun, but the cost in units was too high, and there was no way to deploy a unit pre-loaded onto their steed, thus wasting some of the advantages of being mounted at all when you had to waste a turn moving your rider onto your chocobo.

Don't get me wrong, I loved FFT to pieces, but it would really benefit from a true remake that overhauled all of this.

As for the FF12 "job system", I disliked it so much I never picked up any of the later versions of the game that had it. The first implementation was a job system in name only, since the most important thing about a job system is the ability to change jobs, and initially you were locked in to your job choice. Most of the jobs were different (and we saw how much this bothers Final Fantasy fans when FF14 1.0 went over like a lead balloon). Part of this was because they were trying to shoehorn the job system into a game that was designed without it and thus just totally lacked a ton of classic job abilities like Jump. A real lost opportunity there.

 

[Mike Stoklasa]

That's not figuring in a Metanarrative where the Fans reacts to Sephiroth the same way Cloud does in game.

I do not remember Cloud squeeing when Sephiroth appeared five minutes into the game. Though Cloud is autistic so maybe he exhibits excitement in weird ways.

 

[Dread First]

Nomura started out as a character designer, right? He's the reason so many FF characters look so whimsical, he's honed his design skills on aesthetics, not writing. That's more or less why his work is superficial bullshit.

The surreal thing to me is that Tetsuya Nomura and Kazuma Kaneko both started off as prominent artists in their respective companies who both went on to become intimately involved with the development process of later games. All the more reason why it's hilarious to think that two artists who occupy similar roles wound up taking their respective companies in vastly different directions.

Maybe it's because Kazuma Kaneko always had a cogent idea for the stories he wanted to tell whereas Nomura is very much an artist and not a storyteller. It's so obvious whenever Nomura's been given creative freedom because all he ever fucking does is create overly flashy action sequences ripped straight out of a Michael Bay movie.

 

[Dammit Mandrake!]

Here guys, pick one:

Spoiler: Option One

Spoiler: Option Two

 

[Coldgrip]

There was also a severe imbalance between magic and physical attacks in physical's favor. Magic attacks required a charging time that effectively became longer at higher levels (due to the higher speed stats at higher levels, more turns would elapse during a given charge interval). Even worse, the higher level spells had longer charging times to begin with. It became near-impossible to get off a spell at high levels, as either the target would walk up to your guys causing you to take heavy friendly fire or your mage would get one-shotted while casting due to charging up status negating evasion. (And this wasn't like FF15 where there was an accessory to turn off friendly fire on magic, either.)

Yeah, the magic system was borked to shit. If you're going to go caster route then summoners are better because no friendly fire. Though the only way to get those summons out in any time is to use the Quick Charge from the Time Mage class.

Of course, you could just give Cloud Quick Charge and make sure he learns Finishing Touch. I don't know if it's a bug or a feature, but Finishing Touch having the same charge time as Braver or Climhazard makes the rest of the game a bigger cake-walk than it was when you got Cid.

Monster units were neat but basically useless. Riding chocobos was fun, but the cost in units was too high, and there was no way to deploy a unit pre-loaded onto their steed, thus wasting some of the advantages of being mounted at all when you had to waste a turn moving your rider onto your chocobo.

If you could preview the map before the battle begins, then I think chocobos would be a lot more useful. Having Mustadio mount one and then fly up to a hard to reach place to snipe is pretty useful, especially when it means you can use his move ability for something else.

I wish they did more with Worker 8. Seems like such a wasted opportunity.

 

[Grand Wizard Wakka]

I hate how to most people, the Dissidia versions of characters are the definitive editions. I hate how the pixel remasters are being positively regarded by most and considered superior versions to the originals, even though they're an obvious drop in quality and lack the shading of the originals.

Like how the Star Wars Prequels have now become loved and embraced with a generation growing up on them, I know that shit like Strangers of Paradise will be considered the definitive true origin of FF, in a matter of time, and the real FF1 will be erased and forgotten like pre-special edition Star Wars.

 

[Dread First]

I hate how to most people, the Dissidia versions of characters are the definitive editions. I hate how the pixel remasters are being positively regarded by most and considered superior versions to the originals, even though they're an obvious drop in quality and lack the shading of the originals.

Like how the Star Wars Prequels have now become loved and embraced with a generation growing up on them, I know that shit like Strangers of Paradise will be considered the definitive true origin of FF, in a matter of time, and the real FF1 will be erased and forgotten like pre-special edition Star Wars.

The problem that I personally have with the Pixel Remasters is the fact that they got rid of all the additional content that the GBA and PSP releases of FF1-FF6 had, along with some of the QOL changes all for the sake of being "authentic" to the NES/SNES versions. Truth be told, I was honestly looking forward to the Pixel Remasters of FF5/FF6 because the original steam releases were based off of the iOS/Android ports (and the UI suffered extensively as a result). However, what's the goddamn point of playing FF5/FF6 Pixel Remaster if the GBA ports not only have more content, but are also free if you decide to emulate it? The only Pixel Remaster worth playing is FF3, but that still doesn't change the fact that the PC version based on the DS port is the superior one by sheer virtue of having autosaves.

I'll be honest here: my introduction to Final Fantasy was through Crisis Core, but what really got me to go full on FF sped in my teen years was Dissidia. The Compendium was basically where I'd spend most of my time reading up on the lore of the other characters I was unfamiliar with, Summons that I've never seen before, etc. All of the information and callbacks to other games in Dissidia gave me an impetus to check out the other games.

 

[Jinmen]

I hate how to most people, the Dissidia versions of characters are the definitive editions. I hate how the pixel remasters are being positively regarded by most and considered superior versions to the originals, even though they're an obvious drop in quality and lack the shading of the originals.

Like how the Star Wars Prequels have now become loved and embraced with a generation growing up on them, I know that shit like Strangers of Paradise will be considered the definitive true origin of FF, in a matter of time, and the real FF1 will be erased and forgotten like pre-special edition Star Wars.

One of the things that bugs me most about the pixel remasters is the music. Its too grandiose and loud for the actual nes/snes era graphics and gameplay. I did buy a couple of the pixel remakes on steam but I modded them to hell, brought back the original music, power peninsula etc.


Also fuck people that diss the original Amano artwork.

 

[Cisna H. Scumale]

I hate how to most people, the Dissidia versions of characters are the definitive editions. I hate how the pixel remasters are being positively regarded by most and considered superior versions to the originals, even though they're an obvious drop in quality and lack the shading of the originals.

Like how the Star Wars Prequels have now become loved and embraced with a generation growing up on them, I know that shit like Strangers of Paradise will be considered the definitive true origin of FF, in a matter of time, and the real FF1 will be erased and forgotten like pre-special edition Star Wars.

What are you talking about? Pretty much no one cares about Dissidia's story and their characterization unless they were from the lamer titles like 2 and 3, even though they continued Cloud's compilation bullshit personality and made Terra into a wimp. Fan's still uphold the OG games as their definitive.

It's Kingdom Hearts that warped fan's view of characters like Squall that piss me off. The nuances of his personality built up in FF8 is reduced to a two-dimensional tough guy.

 

[Dread First]

It's Kingdom Hearts that warped fan's view of characters like Squall that piss me off. The nuances of his personality built up in FF8 is reduced to a two-dimensional tough guy.

You know the irony is that Dissidia's portrayal of Squall was actually much better than his depiction in Kingdom Hearts. At least in Dissidia, his character growth is mirrored from the original game through his growing friendship with Zidane and Bartz. It was hackneyed, corny, and also fucking cringy upon retrospect but hey! At least it was a callback of some sort to how it took multiple people to make Squall more sociable in FF8.

 

[Berrakh]

Zidane and Bartz are probably a better influence than Zell