Final Fantasy

[Tsubaki]

Ah... perfect topic...

I've played FF 1-3 US, FFV Jp, little of FFVII US, watched a little of FFVIII + X, and played through half of IX (and continuing). While I can say I enjoyed some of the games at one point or other, playing FFIX really opened my eyes to what I hate about Final Fantasy. Not that IX is a horrible game. I don't believe so. But it's built upon a horrible engine. And it's the only recent FF I've played this much, so it allowed me to analyze.

Problems with FF 7 and on:

1) Viewpoints.

In FF 1-6, there was 2d technology, so the best you could get is an overhead perspective like Zelda. In FF7+, no more. Instead, Square tried for the cinematic approach, where each "screen" has a different static viewpoint. What this means is:

a. Less exploration. Whereas in 2d RPGs, exploration is done by clever dungeon design, FF7+'s dramatic viewpoints only give you so many places to go. The whole focus is now shifted on what you can or cannot see, as opposed to where you can go. In fact, FF7+'s exploration is many times limited to what you can't see on screen (ie the view obscures something and you go behind that something and press X-button... ooh! a chest!), which IMO is a lame way to promote exploration within the new viewpoints.

b. View shifting. Am I the only one bothered by the constant view shifts? This isn't Resident Evil here. FFX fixes one problem by allowing you to continue holding the same direction on the D-pad to go where you need to go, once the shift happens. But still, I find it irritating and disorienting to have the view shift on me 3x within walking a few steps.

c. Interaction? What pisses me off more about the views is, you have no clue if you can interact with the backgrounds. You see a building with doors. Is that a real building with a door you can walk through, or is it just part of the decorational background? Well, you've got no choice but to walk there and see. There's no intuitiveness about it. Sometimes you'll be able to walk thru the door, and other times you'll be hitting a "wall".

d. Speaking of backgrounds, they are often rather beautiful. FFIX's backgrounds are mostly handdrawn and look great. And then you look at the foreground characters, Zidane, Eiko, etc and they're pixellated blobs. I didn't even know what Eiko was supposed to look like until an hour and a half later when they showed her in a FMV clip.

2) Loading and such.

Yes, obviously we're not dealing with carts here, but load time and impatience is an issue. This isn't a complaint exclusive to FF, mind you, but one thing about FF is they haven't implemented a skip system for spells and summons yet.

3) The big strike against recent FFs is they're based upon a crappy engine. I mean, I love what they did in FFX with the sphere board system. That's a huge step in the right direction. But the game is built upon a flawed engine.
-----------------------------
Problems with FF I-X engine

The core issue here is that "Final Fantasy is not fun." You can say all these things about story and presentation, all you want. But the game itself is not fun to play. Square has done little in the last 15 years to change this.

Random battles suck. FF has that.
Random battles suck more because of load time. FF has that.
Random battles suck even more because of a horribly dull battle system. FF has that.
And what's worse is that just like FFs of old, they for you to play more of them because you can't progress without you having to sit there and just walk back 'n forth to level. FF HAS THAT!!!

Why is it that almost every other company has put significant effort into making battles enjoyable, but Square does not? Panzer Dragoon Saga has you carefully consider position, and the cost of moving your unit is that your option of attacking is delayed a bit. The Lunars are like SRPGs without the grid. The Grandias also have you consider timing, where what you do affects the enemy. The Growlansers have a similar system, except you can change your command at any moment. The Tales series has more of a real-time combat system, etc etc.

Why is it that Square still has the standard Fight, Defend, Item, Run menu? Heck, they don't even have an automatic attack command that most other standard engines employ now. Like the only thing they've added in the last 10 years is the ability to swap characters in FFX. But like jamming on the X-button to attack attack attack is fun...

And on the subject of random battles, why does it even exist anymore? Is it fun to get pelted with enemies every few steps as you're going from Point A to Point B? It's kind of funny how Square created Chrono Trigger and that totally changed the RPG world, and became an instant classic. Then as they continued making their FFs, they didn't do a darn thing. It's like "Oh yeah, we encourage you to play and to explore, but we'll punish you by making you fight needless and dull battles every five seconds."

How the heck is this series fun? This was fine back in the NES days, and maybe even a little tolerable during the SNES days. But now, in 2002, how on earth can you stand playing a 15-year old game with prettier graphics?

RPGs, to me, are composed of three elements:

1. Story
2. Exploration
3. Battles

Final Fantasy I-VI may have done 1&2 right. FFVII-X only have 1. Yeah, maybe the FFs do have good stories (up to debate). But I don't see how anyone can say they're good games. Just crappy games with good stories in that case.

Thing is, maybe the reason Square doesn't make their games fun is because they don't have to. The fanboys will eat it up anyway.

[Werewolf]

My favorite summons is Infrit Second would be Bahamut, the 3 versions in Final Fantasy VII where the best

Some of my favorite Final Fantasy charcaters:

Final Fantasy IV: Kain, Cid, Edge and Yang.
Final Fantasy V: Kelgar and Faris.
Final Fantasy VI: Just about all of them ^_^
Final Fantasy VII: Sephiroth, Cloud, Red XIII, Aeris, Rufus and the Turks.
Final Fantasy VIII: Squall, Seifer, Laguna and Zell.
Final Fantasy IX: Zidane, Freya, Steiner and Kuja.
Final Fantasy X: Auron, Kimahri, Tidus, Rikku and Wakka.

I am sure I missed some Cookies to anyone who knows who Kelgar is in Final Fantasy V

[Captain Vegetable]

Originally posted by BioMechanic
Thanks Cap'n, but wait a sec - you wouldn't call PE or VS RPGs? How come? They've got random combat, levelling up, "dungeons", stat improvement, item collecting, complex character-driven plots....what are they missing? The only RPG convention I can think of that they don't contain is a party...unless I'm missing something obvious.

I'd kill for a sequel to PE or VS (heck, Skies too!).

One thing that turns me off from RPGs is their length, and since I don't have a lot of time for gaming, I have to be super picky.

I see them as kind of hybrids. Action/RPG. Heavy in the RPG area, but not enough to call it a pure RPG game...but maybe I'm just picking nits?

[MechDeus]

Originally posted by FirstBlood
but the best cast has to be from FF9, since Vivi is the coolest character ever!...

Amen to that.

d. Speaking of backgrounds, they are often rather beautiful. FFIX's backgrounds are mostly handdrawn and look great. And then you look at the foreground characters, Zidane, Eiko, etc and they're pixellated blobs. I didn't even know what Eiko was supposed to look like until an hour and a half later when they showed her in a FMV clip.

Actually, they're amazingly high-poly characters that look incredible, but the PS resolution is so pathetic that you can't tell. Run the game through an emulator, like ePSXe, and you'll see character models that don't look like they should be possible on the PS. Same goes for Chrono Cross.

1. Story
2. Exploration
3. Battles

Final Fantasy I-VI may have had 1&2. FFVII-X only has 1.

I'd say FFX only has number three. Same goes for FFVIII.

[EThugg]

Outside of Vivi, I hate all the characters in every FF, the stories in all of them, and the boring battles. The exploration part is just about the only thing I ever liked about FF.

[Regus]

I'm sorry, but playing through a game with 70+ hours of random battles is not my idea of fun.

[Punky Skunk]

FF7 was by far my favorite and I often cite it as my favorite game. It just came at the right time for me, a time when I was only playing a few games a year and hadn't really played an RPG before (besides the first FF and a demo length session here and there of a few others). It was incredibly atmospheric, with great soundtrack and highly detailed environments (which I had never seen anything like before). The game was long, the story was great and there were lots and lots of detail-work done by Square to make the game more "real" and fun (minigames galore). I think the time spent on this game is obvious.

I got to play FF5 and 6 afterwards and while good, I only got into FF5 for more than 5 hours and still didn't finish it. FF7 will forever be the best FF to me.

[OmegaFlareX]

Originally posted by Tsubaki
Random battles suck even more because of a horribly dull battle system. FF has that.

After using the same battle system for 6 games in a row, I somewhat agree with you. However, realize that when FFIV came out and introduced the ATB system, no one had ever seen anything like it, especially US RPG players (I have no knowledge of the retro Jap-only RPG scene, but I'm quite certain ATB was the first of its kind for Western gamers). I think one of the reasons I liked FFIV so much was because of the battle system. It was so much more engrossing than Dragon Warrior's 1st-person, no-special-effect, lots-of-text battle engine.

With that said, my favorite FF has got to be FF2/4. In fact, I like the game so much that I'm going to import Final Fantasy Anthology: European Edition so that I may play a well-executed port in English. The US version really disappointed me with all its technical problems, and I heard that most of the kinks in FFIV and V were ironed out for Euro release. I hope my TV can accept a PAL refresh rate!

I do like the post-16-bit FFs, but certainly not as much as the older titles. Actually, in FFVIII and IX, one of the few things I liked about the games were the huge amount of cool side-quests to accomplish. I'm a side-questing fiend. I guess that would explain why I played Dragon Warrior VII for 130 hours before finally moving onto something else.

[Tsubaki]

However, realize that when FFIV came out and introduced the ATB system, no one had ever seen anything like it, especially US RPG players (I have no knowledge of the retro Jap-only RPG scene, but I'm quite certain ATB was the first of its kind for Western gamers). I think one of the reasons I liked FFIV so much was because of the battle system. It was so much more engrossing than Dragon Warrior's 1st-person, no-special-effect, lots-of-text battle engine.

Right, I didn't mention the ATB because while it was introduced in FF2US, I didn't think the potential was fully realized until Chrono Trigger. But anyway, my writeup above wasn't dissing old Square really. It's more of a diss of how even recent Final Fantasies cling to 10 year old battle engines, when nearly every other company has made strides in this department.

I do like the post-16-bit FFs, but certainly not as much as the older titles.

And I, OTOH, can not like them at all, as they not only have the same recycled engine but have new problems on top of that.

I guess that would explain why I played Dragon Warrior VII for 130 hours before finally moving onto something else.

I initially wanted to play DQ7 but then realized that I really wouldn't play any random-battle RPG if I can help it. After playing Grandia 1-X and the Lunar remakes, I simply can't go back. *curses Lunar Legend for being Final Fantasized*

[Werewolf]

Originally posted by Tsubaki
*curses Lunar Legend for being Final Fantasized*

Lunar was originally a random battle game... I guess you never played the Mega / Sega CD games and Final Fantasy wasn't the first game to use random battle so Final Fantasized in so not right