The Final Fantasy Mega Thread - Now playing FFXV

Namon said:

Oh I'm with you 100%. The sphere grid honestly should have been adopted as the go to leveling system of pretty much anything RPG in my opinion, especially games that have pre made characters and parties. X is actually my favorite game in the entire series. The point I was trying to make was, that it was the first final fantasy outside of VIII's smaller changes that was a real departure from the basic mechanics the entire final fantasy franchise. Up until then, they were all level based, they all had over worlds, they had been mostly been building on the jobs through equip-able items (Espers in VI, Materia in VII, ... I don't know about VIII it just sucked, and Equipment in IX). The battle system was largely the same since the introduction of ATB in what? III? And since then the game systems in the franchise have all been completely reworked at best or at worse totally gutted and something completely new was brought in instead.

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I liked the sphere grid because it reminded me of 7 a lot in that the design was you could essentially completely customize your party, didn't have to have set jobs, but you had to really get late game/grind in order to open that up. Materia system was similar in that it didn't let you have everyone able to do everything b/c the characters weren't learning the abilities themselves, it was the materia that leveled up, and you didn't get access to the All versions of the materia (not the support All, the full leveled up All of summon/magic/command materia) until virtually the end of the game.

The Espers in 6 let you teach the magic to everyone as you went, so despite having their own individual skills, most of the characters who weren't OP on their own like Sabin became do all magic casters. As broke as the combat was in that game (at least the SNES version), being able to permanently give each party member the spread of spells you could as early as you could made a lot of the game trivial. 9 was different in that you were locked into their "jobs" for their skills, and only could learn skills from their specific weapon types. 8's system you could really just break in a lot of crazy ways. Some people really love that, I personally didn't.

Damn FF rabbit hole. This always happens. Guess I'll avoid XV for now, and try one of the remasters. Probably IX or X, easiest for me to get back into.

Merrith said:

I liked the sphere grid because it reminded me of 7 a lot in that the design was you could essentially completely customize your party, didn't have to have set jobs, but you had to really get late game/grind in order to open that up. Materia system was similar in that it didn't let you have everyone able to do everything b/c the characters weren't learning the abilities themselves, it was the materia that leveled up, and you didn't get access to the All versions of the materia (not the support All, the full leveled up All of summon/magic/command materia) until virtually the end of the game.

The Espers in 6 let you teach the magic to everyone as you went, so despite having their own individual skills, most of the characters who weren't OP on their own like Sabin became do all magic casters. As broke as the combat was in that game (at least the SNES version), being able to permanently give each party member the spread of spells you could as early as you could made a lot of the game trivial. 9 was different in that you were locked into their "jobs" for their skills, and only could learn skills from their specific weapon types. 8's system you could really just break in a lot of crazy ways. Some people really love that, I personally didn't.

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See yeah, FF VII was too long ago. I just remembered most stuff derived from the Materia and you had to equip them. I had actually stopped playing it and never really beat it, due to the rose tint of my absolute love for FF IV (II at the time) had completely soiled my experience with both VI and VII. VII especially because I had toiled through years and 3 previous games that were considered really niche and support for the series was hit or miss and now all of a sudden this one was immensely popular and I felt it paled in comparison to the past. It was completely dumb and I missed out on a great experience on its own.

With that said, I say go for it and get IX or X to scratch the itch, sure. But they are coming out with the GOTY version of XV in March, and I would say it's definitely worth picking up with all the DLC and improvements. I'd just ignore the title though, that is for sure.

Namon said:

See yeah, FF VII was too long ago. I just remembered most stuff derived from the Materia and you had to equip them. I had actually stopped playing it and never really beat it, due to the rose tint of my absolute love for FF IV (II at the time) had completely soiled my experience with both VI and VII. VII especially because I had toiled through years and 3 previous games that were considered really niche and support for the series was hit or miss and now all of a sudden this one was immensely popular and I felt it paled in comparison to the past. It was completely dumb and I missed out on a great experience on its own.

With that said, I say go for it and get IX or X to scratch the itch, sure. But they are coming out with the GOTY version of XV in March, and I would say it's definitely worth picking up with all the DLC and improvements. I'd just ignore the title though, that is for sure.

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Yeah I started way back when with the original, never played 2 or 3, and I've never played any remake or new port of any of the games other than V since it didn't get released here on the SNES. I think that's weird that your rose tint for IV ruined VI for you. People with nostalgia for the 16 bit SNES era games (4 and 6) I get when they don't like (or decide not to like) VII and beyond, but I view IV as a huge step forward from 1. IV is probably my nostalgia FF game, but then VI came along and did everything it did even better. Shit I remember the lunch room debate at the time was whether VI or Crono Trigger were the best game of all time. Then VII came along, and despite being a Nintendo guy who originally wanted to hate it and never buy a Playstation...it came and redefined JRPG's for me and topped everything. But for many who love VI, they don't like VII...or played it way later when honestly the graphics don't hold up as well.

pharmakos said:

those are the absolute worst versions of those games, tho. if you've never played the GameBoy Advance version of 5, do yourself a favor and emulate it. leaps and bounds better than the PSX version.

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Yeah I never played the anthologies version of VI since I have it for my SNES. I don't own a GBA so I'd need to find an emulator. I thought V was okay on PSX, I mean the story wasn't the best, but as many have said about it, the job system was just a blast to play with.

pharmakos said:

the loading times on the PSX version were atrocious, and the translation was even worse. most glaring example being that they gave Faris a ridiculous, over the top, pirate accent that wasn't at all in the JP version. the GBA version fixes a bunch of bugs, too, and has a really awesome bonus dungeon with four extra character classes at the end of the game.

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Okay that does sound worth it. Some of the original translations for these games are so bad they're hilarious.

pharmakos said:

Vimm's Lair: Preserving the Classics best place to download ROMs and emulators

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Much appreciated!

I love real FF2, but I also love Castlevabia 2 and Zelda 2.

Before we go there - as we always do - FF8 sucks

Noodleface said:

Lenas there's dated mechanics and then there's boy band driving a car on autopilot. Come on

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Well, I didn't mention 15. I agree the car driving was dumb, even more so once you can fly with invisible walls and the ability to crash. However, the combat was something fresh even if it wasn't great and the summons were absolutely spectacular. The most impressive and powerful feeling summons of any FF to date.

Merrith said:

Yeah I started way back when with the original, never played 2 or 3, and I've never played any remake or new port of any of the games other than V since it didn't get released here on the SNES. I think that's weird that your rose tint for IV ruined VI for you. People with nostalgia for the 16 bit SNES era games (4 and 6) I get when they don't like (or decide not to like) VII and beyond, but I view IV as a huge step forward from 1. IV is probably my nostalgia FF game, but then VI came along and did everything it did even better. Shit I remember the lunch room debate at the time was whether VI or Crono Trigger were the best game of all time. Then VII came along, and despite being a Nintendo guy who originally wanted to hate it and never buy a Playstation...it came and redefined JRPG's for me and topped everything. But for many who love VI, they don't like VII...or played it way later when honestly the graphics don't hold up as well.

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It was mainly that IV was the first story focused game I ever played and it blew me away. VI wasn't necessarily worse just different. And to me, the second half of the game didn't really feel all that epic to me. It felt like you were just chasing Kefke around to the next spot. I had way over hyped the game to levels noone should go, so even a masterpiece was a let down.

And yeah all the remasters until 10 have been pretty lame.

gshurik said:

For all of the flaws in XV, I did find it pretty comfy to play. I liked the whole open world part it just started sucking balls once it became linear.

The overall plot (the world slowly losing light) was actually really cool too, but Noctis and crew just didn't have an interesting story behind them. A better cast in that world would have been phenomenal.

Battle system was ok.

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And in the flip side if they actually wrote a story that was actually more suited for 4 Bros on a road trip, I think the cast would have been great as well. Like if the quest to get money to pay for the repairs had them stumbling on a base where a plot was being planned out and they try to stop it and when they partially foil it, they fix the car and slowly start to unfold it, to find that the empire is planning on bringing down their city. And they alter their plans and travel around the areas to get to the bottom of the plot, I think it would have been better.