The Gaming Den

Nah, I kid. I mostly like this series.

However:

Am I the only person in the world who really hates the fucking shit out of Krile from Final Fantasy V? I hate that fucking Mary Sue from the shittiest pit of my bowels, yet...

[*] I've played this game several times now and she didn't start to piss me off until fairly recently.
[*] The version I hate her in the most (the GBA one) also has the best translation.
[*] I realize that this is a pretty weird complaint to make at all. It's a 4th Gen jRPG that doesn't take itself too seriously in the first place.

She has about as much personality as anyone else in FFV. Which is to say that Bartz is a blank slate, Faris is pulling the "lost royalty becomes an adventurer!" trope, and Galuf was Tellah the sequel. Not sure how much there is to hate, honestly.

She is awesome and you suck.

Can anyone explain to me the difference between what Noah did to Xande and me slowly poisoning my grandma for five years until she died from it?

I mean, don't get me wrong, Xande is in no way justified in destroying time and space because of his temper tantrum, but seriously, how is bestowing 'mortality' to an immortal different from slowly murdering someone?

She is one of the few blondies on FF that deserves her power and spotlight. Kinda.

• Cloud was... a cloud.
• Vaan is a boy involved in something HUGE, someone kill this kid ASAP (but Penelo is ok).
• Tidus is a dream, hah!
• Zidane is cool, at least Genome Thieves weren't a fever before him.

And i don't remember anyone else at this moment.

Wait what did Vaan do that was of any real importance? I don't really even think of him as a 'real' main character and I don't really believe he did anything special except hang out with 'real' main characters.

MGuy wrote:Wait what did Vaan do that was of any real importance? I don't really even think of him as a 'real' main character and I don't really believe he did anything special except hang out with 'real' main characters.

I think he was the "link" between player and Ivalice, a John Doe who doesn't know much of the world and... well, we can't simpatize with him.

MGuy wrote:Wait what did Vaan do that was of any real importance? I don't really even think of him as a 'real' main character and I don't really believe he did anything special except hang out with 'real' main characters.

He was suppose to be like a "Luke Skywalker" character and be the person who helps the player learn about the world. Problem, he was slightly annoying, and asked dumb questions and even if he was not there the information was given as though he wasn't there. This made him and Penelo completely pointless to the game. So he was pretty much that character type done wrong. Now the reason that he is in the game is because marketing said that the player wanted a younger main character instead of Basch.

We did? News to me. Everyone liked Han Solo better than Luke Skywalker, at least until the latter got his badass upgrade in Jedi.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:We did? News to me. Everyone liked Han Solo better than Luke Skywalker, at least until the latter got his badass upgrade in Jedi.

The key thing is it was Japanese marketing for an RPG.

... and?

When they made FF12, they purposefully made the story less focused on individual characters and more on the overarching history and lore of the world. I think part of it was from their experience with FFXI being an MMO with a built up world. Vaan became the lead 'cause he's someone who doens't know much so you can learn with him.

Looking at the best selling FF titles...
1) FF7
2) FF10
3) FF8
4) FF12
5) FF9
6) FFX-2
7) FF13
8) FF6
9) FF7: Crisis Core
10) FF13-2

FF12 is still high up there. Vaan is younger and less gruff than most FF protagonists though (Cloud's a merc, Squall's a merc, Tidus is... a pro athlete who has a crazy swordsman for a dad)

That FF13 outsold FF6 makes me a little bit sad. It was maybe the saddest excuse for a game I've ever played.

It saddens me to see 8 on the top 10 at all. Then again, my favourites (in order) are 7, 5, X-2.

NineInchNall wrote:That FF13 outsold FF6 makes me a little bit sad. It was maybe the saddest excuse for a game I've ever played.

Yeah, but over a decade is a long time for the industry to grow and get new players that'll buy things. It's almost inevitable that big name newer games will float to the top of the charts more easily.

So, given it's an RPG by SquareEnix that isn't Dragon Quest, I figure Bravely Default is close enough to talk about in this thread. Is it any good? Someone recommended I tjeck it out, and I'm not sure. On the one hand, I've kind of lost interest in jRPGs (tacticals all the way!), on the other hand, I do like games that let you pick your class/job, especially if you can do a little mix-and-matching.

Does it take particularly long to unlock the various classes?
Do your levels in the basic "starting class" count against being able to take levels in the later classes you unlock (other than "the amount of XP needed")?
What actually are the Brave and Default systems?

Lokathor wrote:

NineInchNall wrote:That FF13 outsold FF6 makes me a little bit sad. It was maybe the saddest excuse for a game I've ever played.

Yeah, but over a decade is a long time for the industry to grow and get new players that'll buy things. It's almost inevitable that big name newer games will float to the top of the charts more easily.

And then Nintendo bucks that trend. Pokemon RBGY generation sold like... 40something million copies total, it is still the best selling RPG ever.

NineInchNall wrote:That FF13 outsold FF6 makes me a little bit sad. It was maybe the saddest excuse for a game I've ever played.

If it makes you feel any better, check out 13-2's position to see how much faith 13 destroyed.

Koumei wrote:So, given it's an RPG by SquareEnix that isn't Dragon Quest, I figure Bravely Default is close enough to talk about in this thread. Is it any good? Someone recommended I tjeck it out, and I'm not sure. On the one hand, I've kind of lost interest in jRPGs (tacticals all the way!), on the other hand, I do like games that let you pick your class/job, especially if you can do a little mix-and-matching.

Does it take particularly long to unlock the various classes?
Do your levels in the basic "starting class" count against being able to take levels in the later classes you unlock (other than "the amount of XP needed")?
What actually are the Brave and Default systems?

Very good. It isn't any original, but the journey and the final boss are awesome.
But i just watched trough youtube, don't have a 3DS... neither the game...

Avoraciopoctules wrote:If it makes you feel any better, check out 13-2's position to see how much faith 13 destroyed.

Not enough faith destruction, good sir. Not enough. People, many who had played 13, bought 13-2.

NineInchNall wrote:That FF13 outsold FF6 makes me a little bit sad. It was maybe the saddest excuse for a game I've ever played.

Koumei wrote:It saddens me to see 8 on the top 10 at all.

These (and I lump them together because they're very related complaints) particularly surprise me around here. FF8 and FF13 (and to a lesser degree FF10) both elicit pretty strong reactions among JRPG fans, and I tend to think it's mostly for the same reasons. They're unconventional, character-focused stories in a series that is largely about event stories--in most FF games, "shit gets out of whack and plucky heroes go save the day" is the A plot, whereas both FF8 and FF13 treat it as a B plot. I played through FF8 again late last year and I think that they did a remarkable job until the "oh fuck we need to ship" fourth disc. On the other hand, I think I liked FF13 more for what it wanted to be than what it was, if that makes sense. Way too much ham, and the open-world section was a mistake, but I appreciated it and I think I learned a lot from it that's proven valuable in the conceptual design of my own JRPG (shameless plug). Plus its combat system is addictive as hell once you start understanding the model of it. Maybe a little too cerebral, but I enjoyed figuring it out as I played.

FF13-2, on the other hand, not just shit, but insulting shit--the character focus of the first game gets thrown out the window in the first fifteen minutes and the changes to the combat system slow it down a little and make it a lot less engaging.. FF13-3 tries to be a blend of Skyrim and Dark Souls and is a mess of competing incentives. As an RPG it's shit, but they managed to do one better than FF13 in its combat system and I thought that was pretty cool.

They're unconventional, character-focused stories in a series that is largely about event stories--in most FF games,

For me it wasn't that it was unconventional, it was that the characters were bad, or dumb, or annoying, or all three. The systems in 8 sounded good but ended up being broken. The combat in 13 seems engaging and mindless, 13-2 even more so. 13's plot is fucking stupid (I get what is happening, but why it is happening is so damn dumb)

Ed wrote:They're unconventional, character-focused stories in a series that is largely about event stories--in most FF games, "shit gets out of whack and plucky heroes go save the day" is the A plot, whereas both FF8 and FF13 treat it as a B plot.

This has nothing to do with why the game (13) is terrible. I don't even know why you would think along such lines.

On the other hand, I think I liked FF13 more for what it wanted to be than what it was, if that makes sense. Way too much ham, and the open-world section was a mistake, but I appreciated it and I think I learned a lot from it that's proven valuable in the conceptual design of my own JRPG (shameless plug). Plus its combat system is addictive as hell once you start understanding the model of it. Maybe a little too cerebral, but I enjoyed figuring it out as I played.

Okay, now I know you're just joking. Because to consider the combat in 13 to be cerebral in any way would require cerebral capacity so limited as to render impossible the cognitive function necessary for forming coherent sentences. The combat was flat bad. If not for exactly one fight in which you have a limited time to finish, you could spend the whole game with everyone in the stupid fucking defender mode (the name of which I can't be fucked to remember).

Seriously. The game was bad. You held up on the left stick out of combat and mashed the A/X button in combat.

Great game, that.

Leress wrote:

They're unconventional, character-focused stories in a series that is largely about event stories--in most FF games,

For me it wasn't that it was unconventional, it was that the characters were bad, or dumb, or annoying, or all three. The systems in 8 sounded good but ended up being broken. The combat in 13 seems engaging and mindless, 13-2 even more so. 13's plot is fucking stupid (I get what is happen, but why it is happening is so damn dumb)

I can agree with this. I don't mean to praise either game for being genius storytelling, more that I appreciate what they were trying to do. FF8 after FF7 was a pretty ballsy decision and I appreciate it more in hindsight than I did the first time I played it. That, coupled with the nostalgia (FF8 was the first game I bought with my own money from working an actual job), may make it mean more to me than other folks.

Totally agree regarding 13's plot--this is what I tried to convey with liking it for what it wanted to be more than what it was, I don't think it particularly succeeded at telling the story it wanted to tell but I did like that they tried. I found the game's minimalism appealing and not unambitious given S-E's size, though. I like to refer to the game as the "minimal viable JRPG"--there is not a whole hell of a lot in the game that you can remove and still really have a workable model of a JRPG. It isn't an unqualified success by any means, but I appreciated what they were trying to do, and for me that means a lot.

NineInchNall wrote:Okay, now I know you're just joking. Because to consider the combat in 13 to be cerebral in any way would require cerebral capacity so limited as to render impossible the cognitive function necessary for forming coherent sentences.

I found switching between paradigms and balancing buffs/debuffs versus stagger versus damage output versus defense to be a lot more engaging than any prior Final Fantasy combat system and for me it wasn't really close. For me, the "hold A" criticisms don't really hold as well because that's pretty much exactly what I'd done for most of the series--go from shift to set, find the optimal pattern, hold A. I felt a lot more engaged when FF13 abstracted away the specific actions in combat in favor of higher-level strategic options.

The combat was flat bad. If not for exactly one fight in which you have a limited time to finish, you could spend the whole game with everyone in the stupid fucking defender mode (the name of which I can't be fucked to remember).

It's possible to game the system (though it's not super easy to do so). I usually shy away from doing so, consciously, and tend to approach games in the spirit they intend (which is why I don't play competitive multiplayer games anymore). If you play in an optimizing way--and that isn't a dismissive comment, it's just different from how I play--then I can see how it didn't work for you. I was able to find the same wavelength as the designers regarding the combat system and it did for me. Which isn't the same thing as thinking that implementing the combat in that way was a good idea, because their market was not "me", but I was able to derive a lot of enjoyment from it.

Ed wrote:I found switching between paradigms and balancing buffs/debuffs versus stagger versus damage output versus defense to be a lot more engaging than any prior Final Fantasy combat system and for me it wasn't really close. For me, the "hold A" criticisms don't really hold as well because that's pretty much exactly what I'd done for most of the series--go from shift to set, find the optimal pattern, hold A. I felt a lot more engaged when FF13 abstracted away the specific actions in combat in favor of higher-level strategic options.

While abstracting to higher level strategies rather than focus on low-level tactics might be interesting, that's not what 13 does. What 13 does is trade one sort of tactical decision for another, and it does this while simultaneously robbing you, the player, of the ability to make potentially critical choices of when to use individual abilities.

Yes, in most JRPGs you identify the optimal tactics and then repeat them from fight to fight ad nauseum. That's also bad. A good game will have sufficient variety and flexibility such that A) optimal tactics differ with significant frequency, and B) there will be multiple sets of tactics with similar optimality.

It's possible to game the system (though it's not super easy to do so). I usually shy away from doing so, consciously, and tend to approach games in the spirit they intend (which is why I don't play competitive multiplayer games anymore). If you play in an optimizing way--and that isn't a dismissive comment, it's just different from how I play--then I can see how it didn't work for you. I was able to find the same wavelength as the designers regarding the combat system and it did for me. Which isn't the same thing as thinking that implementing the combat in that way was a good idea, because their market was not "me", but I was able to derive a lot of enjoyment from it.

Game the system? The system is a game.