The Final Fantasy Thread

[Bongsnake McGee]

I wish I could find an FFXIV free company that wasn't full of trannies so I could raid.

Just do what I do and smash your face against partyfinder groups. Eventually you'll either get your clear, or find a group of autists you can get along with, or both. And then you know the fights, and get to be elitist in farming parties, and not feel bad about dropping after one or two wipes.

<snip> is it worth giving ffxiv a shot again?

The new expansion is unironically one of the best FF stories of the past ~15 years. The gameplay really does pick up around ~50, but then again, you might want to wait until they do something with the first part of the game - which Square acknowledges is a slog, and might end up reworked. There's are leveling/story skip potions that can let you skip directly to any of the expansions... but that may defeat the purpose for ya.

Is the game really that infested? I plan on raiding either as a melee dps or tank and I’d hope to avoid troon insanity.

Yes, and no. I hear the Crystal Datacenter is pretty bad about it. As a tank you pretty much get to call the shots, so you can avoid that shit. The thing is, shitters in this game generally make it really obvious that they're shitters. So filtering/ignoring them becomes fairly easy.

 

[AlexJonesGotMePregnant]

You mean like the cup-noodle product placement?

That wouldn't crack the top 50 most embarrassing thing in FFX.


There's a bit in FFX where you crash through a lake of ice and wake up in a desert, which only happened because the next cutscene had an airship blow up a base in a desert.

Nothing at the gay bar in FFVII was that preposterous.


Grinding takes actual skill in the Soulsborne games.

But even in games where it doesn't, every RPG where it's possible to die, and not on purpose, at any point during a first playthrough is already harder than FFXV by a significant margin.

And Namco and Atlus would like a word with you about it being difficult to make a challenging RPG that's not a Soulsborn game. Every Tales or SMT game ever made is harder and more rewarding than FFXV. Even the Pokémon games are harder than FFXV if you turn off the feature that lets you know who your opponent'll throw in next, and those games are made for eight-year-olds.

Grinding in the soulsborne games works really differently from FF games- soulsborne rewards players of higher skill by allowing them to progress without any grinding, but grinding is present for lower skilled players to make it through and beat the game just the same. Most FFs require something of the same- without a speedrunning route design or similar approach, you're inevitably going to be wasting an inordinate amount of time in random battles wasting your time. I know that's part of the JRPG legacy but I really wish FF would leave that behind. FFVIII came pretty close to not requiring a ton of grinding and I liked that a lot.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

Unpopular opinion but...I always preferred Dragon Quest to Final Fantasy.

 

[John Titor]

Final Fantasy 14 KFC Event Trades a Chocobo for Tons of Chicken

A Final Fantasy 14 KFC event in China is giving fans a free chocobo mount in exchange for a specific purchase. The problem is, that specific purchase is massive.

www.playstationlifestyle.net

As my adventures in Final Fantasy XIV continue, I have been happily bumbling about the Eorzean countryside on my Fat Black Chocobo mount. He’s a real chonkster, as the kids like to say, and is ludicrously adorable with his little crown, hopping ever forward in pursuit of my character’s dangling gysahl green lure. For me, getting this special mount was as easy as buying a Final Fantasy XIV time card on Amazon. But for Final Fantasy XIV players in China, well, I fear deeply for the structural integrity of their arteries.


image: https://cdn1-www.playstationlifestyle.net/assets/uploads/2019/07/final-fantasy-14-kfc-2.jpg

Here’s the deal. In order to get the Fat Black Chocobo mount in China, Warriors of Light have to travel to their local KFC, and purchase a dine-in family package. As translated by Reddit user Cozywolf, the KFC family package contains the following:

1 * Double Chicken Burger
1* Vegan Mushroom Burger
1* 5-piece Chicken Nuggets
2* Original Recipe Chicken
1* 2-piece New Orland Chicken Wings
1* Old Beijing Spicy Duck Roll
2* Pepsi (Large)
2* Peach Oolong Tea (Large)

Now, there are a couple things to clarify. At first, Cozywolf was under the impression this meal had to be finished in order to get the code. This ended up not being the case, so it was totally fine to buy the thing, get the code, and leave with leftovers and your dignity/health relatively intact. However, the codes were briefly limited to 300,000, before the popularity led to Square Enix lifting that limit. As a result, there was a mad rush at first to get codes, and brave Warriors of Light formed parties to tackle this (largely self-imposed) challenge. The results are pretty hilarious.
The KFC Black Chocobo Challenge is now a hearty meme in the Chinese Final Fantasy XIV community, with many Warriors of Light sharing their strategies for Naoki Yoshida’s most challenging raid to date. This includes job and DPS strategies, suggested rotations, and of course tragic tales of failure.
Cozywolf was also cool enough to translate some of that fun, so check out our source link for some of that primo meme content.
Read more at https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2019/07/16/final-fantasy-14-kfc/#eLthqSksKKzkWLi7.99

 

[Emperor Julian]

I'm trying to think of the moment my fondness for the FF franchise shifted to overt distaste. It's either final fantasy 13 in general or thinking about that time I wasted setting up a band for Squall and Rinoa/the gay card game when I could have doing anything else.

 

[Freya]

I'm trying to think of the moment my fondness for the FF franchise shifted to overt distaste. It's either final fantasy 13 in general or thinking about that time I wasted setting up a band for Squall and Rinoa/the gay card game when I could have doing anything else.

Everything started going downhill after 7. I played the first disc of 8 but it bored me and i barely remember anything that happened

 

[WEEDle]

Unpopular opinion but...I always preferred Dragon Quest to Final Fantasy.

Dragon Quest is just as if not more popular than Final Fantasy in Japan.

 

[LazarusOwenhart]

Dragon Quest is just as if not more popular than Final Fantasy in Japan.

Yeah to be fair the Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy argument is Japans equivalent of CoD vs Battlefield in that most people in public will screech for one or the other but behind closed doors happily play both.

 

[Tanner Glass]

Yeah to be fair the Dragon Quest/Final Fantasy argument is Japans equivalent of CoD vs Battlefield in that most people in public will screech for one or the other but behind closed doors happily play both.

If memory serves Dragon Quest is the more popular series.

Dragon Quest was so popular (and probably still is) in Japan that Nintendo and/or the Japanese Government asked (it isn't a law as some people say it is) for them to not be released on Tuesdays or any other weekday because so many people would call out/no show to their jobs to play it (and for a few days) that it created some real logistical headaches for a lot of businesses.

 

[LazarusOwenhart]

If memory serves Dragon Quest is the more popular series.

Dragon Quest was so popular (and probably still is) in Japan that Nintendo and/or the Japanese Government asked (it isn't a law as some people say it is) for them to not be released on Tuesdays or any other weekday because so many people would call out/no show to their jobs to play it (and for a few days) that it created some real logistical headaches for a lot of businesses.

I never understand why games (or anything else for that matter) get released any day other than Friday, at least in the UK. Friday is pay day for a lot of people here who get paid weekly, who tend to be young and therefore the target market. There's probably some weird reason, but still.

 

[Bluey]

I wonder if any FF fans know of the other RPGS that SE has made., besides Kingdom Hearts. I met several people who dismiss other SE titles as "shit' and not in par with their pretty styled FF games that lack soul in their characters.

I found Octopath and Bravery Default superior to most new aged Final Fantasy games. I just think most will dismiss these because they aren't "Final Fantasy".

I am glad games like Dragon Quest and the Mana series is getting attention in the west, because the latter is really an amazing series. Now if the SaGa series makes a come back, since it has a cult following in the west as well.

Everything started going downhill after 7. I played the first disc of 8 but it bored me and i barely remember anything that happened

Eh, I felt it went downhill after Final Fantasy X IMO. Grant it, I low key like Final Fantasy VIII, because I liked that stupid card game. FF8 is a game I cleared once and don't wish to return to it. Same goes with 9. 7 I can go back to over and over and nearly break the game. FF7 is also very easy and you can beat the last boss with default weapons such as Cloud's Buster Sword and Barret's gun. Speaking of, Barret is by far one of the strongest characters in the game, his Level 3 Limit Break, Angermax is pretty much a game breaker. That and you can breed a Gold Chocobo without racing when Cid is your main party member.

Call me old fashioned, I felt the sprites had more emotions to them, I.E Final Fantasy 6's reactions and Chrono Trigger than 3D models that don't emote well and sometimes look uncanny. I kind of think that newer FF games are trying to stay away from the animeish looking characters. Which FF7's older artwork had. Cloud and co had more animeish eyes before Advent Children came to be.

 

[PL 001]

I'm trying to think of the moment my fondness for the FF franchise shifted to overt distaste. It's either final fantasy 13 in general or thinking about that time I wasted setting up a band for Squall and Rinoa/the gay card game when I could have doing anything else.

FFX was the last truly good FF game in my eyes. I grew up with the NES and SNES Final Fantasy games, and had lots of fun playing those. FFVII is a good game, but hideously overrated. FFVIII was 'meh' I beat it once and have no real desire to play it again. IX and X were the last games I was really excited to play. I ended up getting X-2 for Christmas and being very disappointed with it, aside from bringing back the job system. I haven't played XII but I hear it's a "you either love it or you hate it" kind of game. XIII was just awful and pretty much the nail in the coffin for me. I haven't been that interested in the series since.

 

[Overcast]

Honestly? In my opinion VI and VII are pretty much of equal quality to me. Both have their issues, but both have their really strong moments. Part of VII's problem I feel is that (like most games that are deemed overrated), its reputation instills expectations in people, and everyone's expectations will be different. When they don't match with the game they're playing, they become disappointed. Happens with me, happens with everyone.

Haven't played VIII, but I have watched an LP of it and the story is pretty much all over the place. But the music is fucking banging. (As expected of Uematsu).

Really I feel IX (my favorite) and X were pretty much when the series peaked for me. IX just feels refined in almost every way and X just has this unique vibe to it that none of the other games have really replicated for me. Sure, it's a bit rough around the edges, but I still found it to be a charming game.

XIII was a game with cool ideas, but the excessive linearity and the requirement to read an in-game codex to understand half the terms being thrown around instead of learning what they mean naturally through the dialogue and environment really bogged it down. I don't think it's as terrible as most people say it is, but there's a lot to criticize about it.

Can't really say much about XV, but from what I can see, it looks like a knee jerk reaction to XIII's bad reception in the West. Instead of excessive linearity, we have excessive openness and lots of side quests that just involve killing and collecting stuff like an MMO. And to top it off, it wasn't even completed when released. No thanks.

 

[Duncan Hills Coffee]

Honestly, I could never get into VI and I personally find that one to be the overrated one over VII. I get what it's going for with the whole ensemble thing as opposed to following one character with a bunch of side characters, but the SNES translation feels too hokey for my tastes and the story isn't all that engaging. That and I feel the game was hampered by technological constraints; the game has multiple instances where there will be a generic dialogue box that's supposed to represent one of the characters speaking to get around having to specify which characters are speaking, but this can get distracting when you have characters like Gau and Cyan in your party who have different speaking patterns. If the game were made during the PS1 era where there could be more character-specific dialogue a la VII or IX, I'd be singing a different tune, but as it is it feels like it weighs the game down.

Part of it might be because I played VII first, along with IX and IV, but VI feels underwhelming to me general. I have heard the GBA port has a better translation (and corrects many of SNES version's glitches) so who knows, I might check that one out.

 

[Violence Jack]

Part of it might be because I played VII first, along with IX and IV, but VI feels underwhelming to me general. I have heard the GBA port has a better translation (and corrects many of SNES version's glitches) so who knows, I might check that one out.

Part of the reason why I like it is why you don't. Yeah the GBA version has a more accurate translation (and more content), but i feel that it lost some of that Saturday morning cartoon charm because of it. Then again that's mostly because it's an artifact of the time rather than any loyalty to woolsey. I guess I'm of two minds about it.

Just don't pay 26 dollars for a cart of it at a gamestop like I stupidly did (save it for V the actual best).

 

[I Love Beef]

In response to people who are likely long gone at this point:

Fabula Novus Crystalis was flawed since birth, because the person who made the mythology has never studied theology or religious psychology.

Everything about its mythology is utter shit because there is no thematic or objective element to its gods other than them easily being replaceable creator and destroyer deities. There's little to anything that deals with actual properties of crystals, and it's an atrocity because it's in the fucking namesake and they're the core element of the series entirely. Instead, their properties are used to make everything look pretty and fancy without substance.

I also had very high hopes that XIII would had been a great game with a great story. Everything about its current release though feels more like a lazy beta build. While the gameplay is alright in its basics, it is barely with the kind of variety that games like X, XII, and VII had, or the teamwork and character unique dynamics of IX. The story is atrocious because there is absolutely nothing interesting about Cocoon or Pulse because there are little details said about either worlds and nothing to explore; it feels like wasted potential. I could care even less if it was a ripoff of the 2000s Aeon Flux movie; THAT movie has more interesting concepts and content than XIII's flash and no substance story and world.

Art direction and visuals wise, I can't put my finger on it, but it feels lazy for the most part. "Magic" technology, and magic high technology should look more fantastical if you cross examined it from an actual science fiction backdrop. Say what you will about VIII and VII, those at least had class and a focus to aim for respectively; hell Zanarkand from X was gorgeous and had a magical feel to it along with its hi tech metropolis design. XIII was likely a cry to want to make another Front Mission game or a sci fi game.

I could care less if it was Tunnel: The Game. I care more if you got details to the brim to learn about the world and its importance to the story and if it was fun and rewarding to grind and move along into the tunnel.

I have even more to say about XIII-2 and the rest of Fabula Nova Crystalis, but that will be for another day.

 

[John Titor]

If memory serves Dragon Quest is the more popular series.

Dragon Quest was so popular (and probably still is) in Japan that Nintendo and/or the Japanese Government asked (it isn't a law as some people say it is) for them to not be released on Tuesdays or any other weekday because so many people would call out/no show to their jobs to play it (and for a few days) that it created some real logistical headaches for a lot of businesses.

I'm questioning if that really happened. I'm sure kids did play hookie but I think Enix just released them during days that made sense without government intervention.

I wonder if any FF fans know of the other RPGS that SE has made., besides Kingdom Hearts. I met several people who dismiss other SE titles as "shit' and not in par with their pretty styled FF games that lack soul in their characters.

I found Octopath and Bravery Default superior to most new aged Final Fantasy games. I just think most will dismiss these because they aren't "Final Fantasy".

I am glad games like Dragon Quest and the Mana series is getting attention in the west, because the latter is really an amazing series. Now if the SaGa series makes a come back, since it has a cult following in the west as well.



Eh, I felt it went downhill after Final Fantasy X IMO. Grant it, I low key like Final Fantasy VIII, because I liked that stupid card game. FF8 is a game I cleared once and don't wish to return to it. Same goes with 9. 7 I can go back to over and over and nearly break the game. FF7 is also very easy and you can beat the last boss with default weapons such as Cloud's Buster Sword and Barret's gun. Speaking of, Barret is by far one of the strongest characters in the game, his Level 3 Limit Break, Angermax is pretty much a game breaker. That and you can breed a Gold Chocobo without racing when Cid is your main party member.

Call me old fashioned, I felt the sprites had more emotions to them, I.E Final Fantasy 6's reactions and Chrono Trigger than 3D models that don't emote well and sometimes look uncanny. I kind of think that newer FF games are trying to stay away from the animeish looking characters. Which FF7's older artwork had. Cloud and co had more animeish eyes before Advent Children came to be.

Bahamut Lagoon is criminally underrated and I can't believe there hasn't been a remake.

 

[Bluey]

I'm questioning if that really happened. I'm sure kids did play hookie but I think Enix just released them during dares that made sense without government intervention.

Bahamut Lagoon is criminally underrated and I can't believe there hasn't been a remake.

It deserves it. Same with Live a Live. As long it has Octopath's Visuals rather than 3D models that stand there and do uncanny faces.

Though LaL's case is tricky, since it is co owned by some other company, since the game had a team of artists collabing each character's scenario. One went off and worked on G Gundam.

 

[Marissa Moira]

The Last fully good Final Fantasy game was Lighting Returns.

It gets shit on because 13 and 13-2 were not really good. But it's really one of the better games in the whole series. The Time limit isn't really much of an issue because you can pause time with certain consumable items. It's got a massive world to explore and it has a ton of very well designed quests(but all the quests are time sensitive and you need to complete a specific number in order to unlock the true ending/final day IIRC)

It also has next to nothing in relation to Final Fantasy 13 and 13-2. Now I've completed 13 and 13-2 100% and got the secret ending to 13-2. Everything in those games that was being built up to some major event in the third game (including the lack luster secret ending in 13-2) has no payoff or even a proper continuation in Lighting Returns.

You can effectively play LR without the other two games needed.

Now 15 had some good elements like the open world exploration and roadtripping, it was kind of like exploring a US National park for the most part. But After collecting all the Royal Weapons there's not a whole lot left to do and the story rams you through disjointed events because shit was cut or something due to poor project managment and it ends in a very unfulfilling way.

The worst part is, is that the flying car is post game when there's not a whole lot left to do to actually justify it, it would have been better to get mid game.

Now the FF12 remaster is good. I played it originally on the PS2 to completion but the extra shit in the remaster like the 100 level dungeon trials(which you can start and restart at any time even during the beginning part of the game) are pretty good and are a better way to level up and equip your party with items. For the remaster I even did all the optional sub-bosses and Endgame bosses which were rather interesting, and the speed-up options were very useful. There's also the bestiary which you have to finish to 100% the game by killing 1 of every type of enemy.

The only bad part remains The Chops you need to collect in order to access the rest of the city. All those quests are still tedious and the merchant you can actually buy them from has them all be super expensive. That's the only real low point in the game. Stuff like the Monster Bounties and those types of quests are very fun though.

 

[Scarlett Johansson]

I'm curious about the upcoming remaster. It looks fun. Interestingly enough the main villain is female for once