The Final Fantasy Thread

[TheDarknessGrows]

I also like ARPGs

ECH!!

 

[Michael Wade]

Dumpster dived waifu​

Cant directly reply, but yeah I agree FF7 is a relatively small world. There's only really 2 factions and a small landmass. It's why I like all the expanded characters in motivations in the Complicaiton.

@Dumpster dived waifu
I actually forgot Cid was a character in 7. He really blends into the background.

Not if you bring him along for everything like I did, and even if you didnt.

Spoiler

He takes command when cloud's in a coma and becomes the main character for a bit. It was awesome.

Literally just Nomura.

Spoiler: Kingdom Spergs ft. Goofy

• Kingdom Hearts DDD was an entire video game dedicated to explaining how time travel functioned so that all the bad guys you spent the previous 10 years killing could come back.

• Birth By Sleep tried to explain how Kairi made it to Destiny Islands by Aqua placing a charm on her necklace: totally forgetting that he already explained in KH1 that Kairi made it to Destiny Islands because her pure heart was naturally drawn to the Keybearer (back when there was only one).

• Birth By Sleep also tried to explain that killing a person's Heartless and Nobody resurrects the original person, but the first person this rule applies to already breaks it by virtue of being resurrected into his old man body when the Heartless and Nobody Sora kills was from Terra's hijacked body.

• Union X tried to retroactively change the context of a scene in KH1 15 years prior by explaining that, when Riku stabbed Maleficent to unlock her power, she remembered that some dude said that that's how to time travel and ended up in - and I'm not joking when I describe this as such - a 'Sleeping Disney World of Data'.

• KH 0.2 dedicated a 10 minute cutscene to explain why Mickey Mouse was shirtless in KH1 but had a shirt again in Chain of Memories.

• There is a 15-20min scene in KH3 Re:Mind where all the bad guys stand around in a circle and establish who has come from the past, who is a clone, who is made of data, who is real, and who is on the sidelines to 'tag in' like an NBA team.

Nomura has this terminal illness where he will actually implode and die if he doesn't either establish that all characters had this wacky serendipitous history all along or if he doesn't convolute the simplest idea to the point where it just becomes impossible to digest.

I can almost guarantee you that Crisis Core: Reunion will have a secret extra cutscene that wasn't in the original game that directly ties to the FF7R storyline, and that Ever Crisis will try to re-frame the original Anthology to better fit what he wants to do with the FF7R story.

I blame the writing team for that more then Nomura . FF7 and stranger of paradise have established that he has good concepts and ideas, its just the execution of them can be lacking at times. Remember he doesn't write out all the dialogue or build a house of cards. He's more in charge of concepts and general set direction.



Im gonna rant about the Fabula franchise here for a bit so bear with me.



The main thing you need to understand about Fabula Nova Crystallis, Is it has a lot of issues with presentation. It has probably some of the most needlessly convoluted lore and terminology in FF franchise history. And on top of all that, a lot of the localization was absolutely fucking terrible. With important details being altered, omitted or just mangled to make the experience even more confusing then it needed to be. Especially for Type-O, which had the worst english voice acting ive ever heard in a FF game. Lighting Returns in particular changed the big bad's motivation and lines so drastically he became a generic doomsday villain.

Despite this, I think there is a lot of charm and interesting stuff in the game's story. I cannot speak for the gameplay, as I never tried it. But out of curiosity I have watched the entirety of the plot for the 13 trilogy (dubbed) and Type O (Subbed, they blew the voice acting budget on getting a shit ton of A list jap actors)


There's about 2 major concepts you need to familiarize yourself that tie into all the games.

The concept of a I'Cie, which is basically an ordinary person given immense power at a Faustian price. In 13 that price is a time limit on their life until they can complete their goal, If they fail they become a monster, if they succeed they turn into a crystal. (my understanding is they are woken out of the crystal... after a couple thousand years) Most do not succeed, because the insane Fal'Cie (robots/angels created by a some asshole gods) that give them the power are unhelpful dicks. In type O the price is their soul and they become mindless killing machines for their respective country's. I believe this concept was supposed to be in Versus 13, but I dont remember if they said what form it would have taken.

The Goddess of death Etro. She's supposed to be a big ass deal across all the games, but she only makes a physical presence in type O. Very mysterious and nebulous in her motivations. She's responsible for some good stuff and occasionally helps the main characters's, but she's also supposed to be responsible for a lot of the crapsack nature of the worlds. They were building up to her having a bigger focus in later games like Versus before they cut her out.



FF13 is surprisingly really good plot wise, I think it might be the best one. It's unique for being an FF game where the main party completely fucking hates each other for the first half. They end up splitting up for a while and then converges at the end after facing their demons. Once you understand the terminology and the fact that there's been a thousand year war between Sky dwelling angel robots called Fal"Cie and the land dwelling pulse Fal"Cie It's not that complicated. They dont give a shit about humanity and are using them as pawns to fulfill their antiquated directives. If you dont think too hard its a pretty fun ride, especially sense everybody loves BEATING THE ABSOLUTE SHIT out of each other. Seriously it reaches zeta gundam levels of slaping and punching and everything in between.

FF13-2... is the worst one in the trilogy. Not as bad as Type O in terms of presentation and the time travel plot is really neat, but they picked the wrong main characters. They pull an MGS2 with lightning where you want to play as her, but instead your playing as her wimpy sister and the most lame and generic protagonist in FF history (Voiced by Rosh from Jedi academy. ugh)

However, it does have an EXCELLENT villain in Caius Ballid.

He is really too fucking good for this game, with a fantastic motivation and backstory. Dude is canonically one of the strongest, smartest, most powerful FF bad guys but he is always, ALWAYS screwed. No matter what he does, he cannot lose and he cannot win. he's trapped in a cycle of getting fucked over and I love it. Etro plays a huge part in this, as Caius wants to kill her for what she did to him, but she's not shown.

Spoiler

Not even when he apparently kills her

It also probably has some of the best lore of the franchise.



FF13-3 Lighting Returns is a lot better then 2 and has some really cool stuff going on. It's in a world where the flow of time has stopped right before the rapture/apocalypse was supposed to happen. Everybody's a degenerate or depressed immortal and Lighting has become (a) god's hitman in order to collect as many souls as possible before the world ends Majora's mask style. There were a lot of elements lost in translation sadly, but It still had a solid arc where you would come across your old party members from 13 and try to help them pass on. I really dug how weird and meta the ending was.

Spoiler:

If im reading the room right, there's basically a non zero chance Lighting wont come back in KH

Type O on the other hand feels like a cross between a documentary and an episode of the twilight zone. It's very weird and clearly has the weakest story direction, but I really like what they were trying to do. It's a world where death has no meaning, because no one remembers the fallen. Your pet, your best friend, your lover. If any thing dies it is instantly forgotten and thrown away like trash. Consequently war is commonplace and endless. Peace has no meaning when life is worth dirt. It's a very dark and interesting tale, and I whole heartily recommend the prequel manga "The Reaper of the Icy Blade" That does a very good job of showing how horrific and meaningless the conflicts of this world are.

Unfortunately a lot of that isn't as obvious as it should be, and the lack of focus on any kind of main character really hurts the game. There's 12 main characters and none of them are particularly charismatic enough to stand out on their own. I dig how randomly weird and fucked up the ending chapters of the game are when Tempus Finis happens, but what should be a shocking and horrific moment is ruined by the documentary style narration dryly report on what's happening. Etro plays a character named Dr. Arecia Al-Rashia and is observing events quite passively. She cares about the main characters as if they were her kids, but doesn't really give a shit if the world blows itself up in a ground hog day loop.


FF13 Versus is a pretty dam sad tale of what could have been. What we got in 15 was straight up a hollow shell of the original title, and the original would have been a lot fucking better even if you only striped out the Fabla elements. We were supposed to have a bad guy main character, who was the son of a magical yakuza gang boss going on a fucking revenge quest. It would have been metal as fuck. But a lot of shit happened behind the scenes and we had to make due with boy band adventure time. Etro was supposed to have a MAJOR role, but that got axed, along with a lot of terminology, monsters, characters , weapons and everything but the basic bitch stuff.


In any case I enjoyed the ride, even if it had its flaws. I feel like there's enough gems in it to make it worth a look. Especially considering Nomura seems to be dead set on bringing back elements of it into the mainstream titles.

 

[Berrakh]

@Dumpster dived waifu
I actually forgot Cid was a character in 7. He really blends into the background.

Everyone REEE this man!

 

[Dumpster dived waifu]

@Michael Wade Can't agree more on the Caius stuff. Guy is an amazing tragic antagonist trapped in a bad game. He has 2 goals (kill goddess of time as a fuck you, and die), he doesn't care which he achieves, and when he accomplishes the harder sounding one to do, he's left even more fucking miserable and worse off than he ever was before.

 

[Silvana'sPickle]

I always loved Garland from the first FF. Haven’t played any of the Dissidia games, but how badly did Stranger of Paradise fag him up?

 

[Berrakh]

I always loved Garland from the first FF. Haven’t played any of the Dissidia games, but how badly did Stranger of Paradise fag him up?

People seemed to like Strangers of Paradise, for what it is. But idk.

 

[PuffyGroundCloud]

I always loved Garland from the first FF. Haven’t played any of the Dissidia games, but how badly did Stranger of Paradise fag him up?

He become even more Chad than before

 

[verissimus]

Random tidbit, but Final Fantasy Tactics apparently got a feature article on Wikipedia for June 20th.

 

[Berrakh]

View attachment 3405531

It was wtfneedsignup

 

[Captain Syrup]

I actually forgot Cid was a character in 7.

Cid appears in all of the compilation games, but he's almost always a supporting background character at most.

I hate how everyone acts like they pulled Cid out of the retirement home when he's only 32. He displays signs of having a mid-life crisis and falls asleep at random times. He's not even the eldest in the group. (Barret is 35.)

Anyway, aging is a Hell of a drug in the FF universe. In comparison, Auron was only “35” but looked, spoke, and acted more like 55.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

Anyway, aging is a Hell of a drug in the FF universe. In comparison, Auron was only “35” but looked, spoke, and acted more like 55.

Doe it include the time he was dead?

 

[Marissa Moira]

I wonder if they're going to age up Cid to actually be 50 instead of 32.

 

[cream pie]

I see a lot of retarded faggots in here

Let me tell you a few things.

Final Fantasy X is a piece of shit, this is fairly obvious to most people who arent children. Im saying this as someone who enjoyed the game when I was a child. I played it again and guess what, it's a fucking piece of shit.

Sphere grid is easily the most boring and unrewarding leveling system in any FF game I've played ,

The US version of the game starts your characters out in a set spot in "their" part of the grid. This means that until you start obtaining teleport spheres you're just fucking going to the menu every 3 or 5 levels and moving this bitch around a circle. If you try to be a smartass and deviate from the obvious few paths it gives you on the sphere grid, you'll quickly discover that you've set your character back with zero benefits. This is because each character has a "class" dictated by their stats (and their sphere grid is supposed to conform to it), and if you deprive them of their "class" then there will be enemies that just rape your party. The only solution if you deviate is to either grind backwards like a good little bitch, or grind forwards (takes 2 or 3 times as long) long enough to get some decent progress in another character's grid area. There is literally no point in doing this, obviously, because you already have a fucking character there who is already stronger than and more specialized than the one you're watering down.

Which leads me to the next criticism of the sphere grid. in the International version of the game, which I think is the PAL and NTSC-J versions that were released, (not available in USA until the HD-Remix came out for Vita) the game allows you to choose which Sphere Grid mode you want to play. You can choose "hard mode" where all the characters start out in the same spot of the grid. This might sound like it fixes the problem I've been bitching about, and that it's gonna be fun, but all it does is make it worse and more frustrating. You're guaranteed to turn up with shit characters until the game starts ending. Again, the enemies in the game are tailored to be able to be dealt with particularly by a certain "class" . Like way more than any other RPG i've ever played. So much that It is not fun to deal with, because there's no creative way to circumvent it . It is not a challenge if you choose to dick around with the sphere grid, unless you want to spend 6 hours moving around on this stupid ass giant chinese marble map and try to figure out some kind of plan. I'd personally rather hang myself than try to keep track of any kind of "plan" on this map that i can't even discern the symbols for very easily , for a game that has a battle system that's so fucking boring.

The only point at which the player benefits from moving to other parts of the sphere grid is after they complete a huge section of their own. By the time you're ready to do this, the game is nearly over, so while its at least nice that you can do it at that point, the game fails at carrying its suggestion that you can creatively deviate from a linear path. Which makes the sphere grid nothing but a tedious chore at best, a game ruining prank at worst

I will admit that I did have some fun grinding for the end-game sidequests, monster arena stuff, etc. but I was 13 years old when I enjoyed that. It's not worth getting there.


The story is stupid. The characters are dumb and mostly annoying, none of them have good stories and having to watch them awkwardly polygon-float their way through the world in voice acted cut scenes is a massive slog. The cut scenes never end. I see some idiot fucks in here acting like the voice acting was somehow a good thing, you are gay-pilled AF Linear paths, mini-map with big flashing radar dots ensure that you'll feel the maximum amount of linearity possible in the small portions of the game that exist inbetween the cut scenes and the battles.

The battles, aside from the rigidness of the monster types that are suited aggressively for a certain character (try killing a bird enemy with any character besides Wakka, it's a steep, steep % failure , not worth it ) are pedestrian trash. They utilize a turn based system that forces you on a "wait" ATB (read as: easy mode) not to mention they straight up show you a list of all the upcoming turns, and who they belong to. You can switch characters out at seemingly no penalty to the order of turns. Its so easy and formulaic that it is not fun

Also, using magic is both a necessary labor (again, due to the stupid enemy types that reject all other attacks) and an exercise in futility. You can spend your whole game maxing out on magic because you thought you found a way to game the system and nuke enemies with a consistent few characters. Wrong. You will find that once you get weapon abilities for "Break Damage Limit", magic is immediately fucking useless. Because you can't break the damage limit for magic. Ultima does 9999 damage, Quick Hit does 10,000 - 99,999 . Cast haste on yourself and use Quick Hit up to 7 times in a row or some shit with just one character. So freaking fun bro.

All in all, I don't get the love. It's a serious chore to replay it. I was super into it when I was a kid, drinking this JRPG kool aid and all the time in the world, good memories with it and stuff, but yeah

Play anything from FFI to FFVII and you'll have some fun, with reasonable anime garbage in FFVII. VIII is pushing it. Junction system is surprisingly enjoyable despite the bad rap it gets, but I wont actually defend it, I just personally enjoyed junctioning & drawing for some reason.

FFIII and FFIV stand out to me as awesome classics. FFIV in particular on the PlayStation, turn the battle speed up and put it on ACTIVE battle mode and you'll find yourself fairly challenged, you'll die quickly if you don't keep up, this is an enjoyable game.

 

[Captain Syrup]

Final Fantasy X is a piece of shit, this is fairly obvious to most people who arent children.

As a fan of ass and titties, I can heartily recommend 10.

The characters are dumb and mostly annoying

I disagree. Especially Yuna, who is an improved version of Rinoa.

You will find that once you get weapon abilities for "Break Damage Limit", magic is immediately fucking useless

You may be minmaxing yourself to frustration. You need tons of DPS to beat dark aeons, but that's in the endgame.

none of them have good stories

Storywise it's the same paper-thin premise involving crystals. Square didn't really get serious about plot again until 12.

 

[cream pie]

Yuna and Rinoa are both terrible characters. Both X and VIII feature the worst casts and stories of the Squaresoft era. I'd argue that VIII is slightly worse in those regards , they both (the characters and their respective game as a whole) suffer similar problems throughout the game with tedium and a storyline that blows monkey dick .

I agree, in terms of the image you posted, that FFX would be slightly more amusing if Yuna more closely resembled a post-op tranny instead of a boring wapanese princess who needs an ensemble of tards to let her summon meat shields whose only purpose is gimping limit breaks out of before they topple over

I never played far into the international version because I was no longer drinking the kool aid and finishing the game to the extent of fighting the dark aeons wasn't desirable. I do wish that I had the international version to start with when I originally played the game. But no, when I played the game, I found that casting Auto-Life and using Quick Hit 8 times in a row for 99,999 beat the hell out of spamming black magic for 9999 damage.

 

[IDanceonTrannyGraves]

Fuck, the FFVII Remake on Steam is over 90 gb. And fucking $70. ($39 on Green Man Gaming though). Is this worth getting?

No. The remake is fucking shit.

 

[Overcast]

Only thing I disliked about X is how the international version's post game content basically requires you to turn your characters into almost clones of each other and how only a handful of them are viable. Not sure why that stuff never made it into the NA version, but that was probably the correct choice. Also yeah, magic being made useless by the Break Damage Limit ability was also a problem.

 

[The Penultimate Warrior]

Only thing I disliked about X is how the international version's post game content basically requires you to turn your characters into almost clones of each other and how only a handful of them are viable. Not sure why that stuff never made it into the NA version, but that was probably the correct choice. Also yeah, magic being made useless by the Break Damage Limit ability was also a problem.

And the Chocobo minigames, which are the worst things mankind has invented since anthrax.

 

[Overcast]

And the Chocobo minigames, which are the worst things mankind has invented since anthrax.

The amount of times I’ve seen people post pics of themselves just barely missing the par time on the FF subreddit is hilarious.

 

[Road Work Ahead]

The amount of times I’ve seen people post pics of themselves just barely missing the par time on the FF subreddit is hilarious.

My favorite is when you hit 0 seconds exactly and it doesn't count because you have to be UNDER 0 seconds total