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The unexpected best of final fantasy.
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0
 05.06.2012 9:56am
Thread Creator

Xavier
Registered Member

 Hey guys! I've just found this forum and first wanted to give an introduction.

Allow me to preface with, I've been an avid Final Fantasy fan since the beginning. At this point I've played through them all, and many of them multiple times!

As such, I've got to say that really, for a long time my favorite final fantasy of the franchise was VI, closely followed by VII and IX. Really though, the margins of "like" between all of the final fantasy's have been pretty small for me. It would be easier to expose my frustrations: such as FF II's original battle system (which I had played with some English translation on a ROM loader, along with III before their USA release).

There are so many moments in Final Fantasy that I can't begin to describe the epic feeling of them all:

The world being destroyed in VI. The hopeless feeling in face of an epic empire at the hands of a madman. From start to finish: from the opening march with Terra...to the tense relationship between Sabin and Edgar all the way to the opera scene.

In IX the opening theatrics was beautiful! The path of vivi and the manufactured mages, to the epic arrival at Lindblum as refuge and the whole development against Alexandria and the other world. Garnett and Zabine played enormously well together.

In VII following the broken relationship between Cloud and Sephiroth, probably one of the most epic stories of how two friends can end up on such opposite ends of the spectrum and become enemies of fate...the death of Aeris...

In V the relationship between the four and the awesome leveling system. marching to the other world and undertaking the battle of the bridge. 

In IV, the epic journey of Cecil. Really this game quite easily ranks as top notch in story delivery and journey through the whole process...the summons being gorgeous, the launching of the airship fleet and the moments of flaw in dark knight Cecil as he seeks redemption. Rydia trapped in the world of summons and coming back to save the party. Only VI rivals IV for moments of despair and annihilation of the party.

The charm of the original. The Easter eggs to Zelda and the journey of transformation to save the world. Building g parties flexible and the fact you basically had no guidance in the game just hunches.

II really had one of the best stories, following the new orphans in immediate war torn and invaded world. The story of this game is really s true precursor of IV, VI and VII, as it was the first to introduce so many famous elements: the clash of friends. The overbearing empire. The epic story.

III had the first great leveling system, and had a story that managed to mix some of the best elements of II while hardening back to the original story of I. It's like III is the refined version of what the original should have always been.

X had the mystical feel of a world entirely foreign to final fantasy, the dream state and heart felt connection in characters with the undertone of massive sacrifice to savetp the future.

VIII playing off the two friend theme again - if I were to say I had a least favorite, this would be it. Although the game was fairly solid.

XII was an excellent t way to bring us into the world of tactics, and Had the novelty of bringing us back to the renegade team.

But I have a dirty little secret...

Final Fantasy XIII and XIII-2 might quite possibly have been the best final fantasy's in the series.

Before I go further, let me cover some of the flaws:

1. Great story. I'd say phenomenal even. The intro was powerful and succinct to a level I haven't experienced since IX, VI and II.

Unfortunatley, as the world was so completely new to FF, important details were left out in the story telling...we really needed someone to explain fal'cie, l'cie and why cocoon and pulse existed, and why cocoon fears pulse so much. This little backstory without having gone through the data log to find out would have solved a lot of early confusion.

2. There really isn't a two. I'd say "linear," but I didn't mind that much because we were following a very specific path for the story which non linear gameplay just made no sense.  Im also not a huge fan of games like sky rim which just leave the game totally open with little real story. You just get lost and end up doing a lot of mindless stupid tasks, which if I wanted to cut wood, I'd go chop some in real life.

So here's why I consider FF XIII series quite possibly up there with the best:

1. Amazingly fun to play. The battles have an unforeseen level of dynamism and tempo to them, with an intensity for strategy and approach to fighting. This is a fair departure from the style of previous FF's and I think many people struggled with the transition. In prior games it was popular strategy to just power yourself up and go through with relative ease: a tank that soaks damage and deals a lot of damage (knight) with a summoner / bm that does powerful magic, a white Mage that kept everyone alive and another dps or tank type. XIII forced a more adaptive to the situation mindset by forcing paradigm mastery - you couldn't just have a static party and needed to craft parties to be strong on multiple fronts.

2. Lightning is quite possibly one of the coolest characters ever. I rolled with Vanille, Fang and Lightning, for an ultra-dps and de-buff approach that focused on getting a stagger ASAP.

3. The story is refreshing, new and riddled with awesome references to older games - I had a "nerdgasm" when the cutscene introducing Cid on the Lindblum mega airship occurred. The sense of urgency never left you in the game and you felt a great deal for each characters dilemmas and very human struggles with the situation - and how they all became larger than life. The motif of sacrifice being huge. This departure from classic FF stories was amazing.

4. The graphics ( and I usually never judge this piece of criteria as I hate it when developers focus more on graphics than the story) are absolutely stunning, every cinematic is epic and gripping to the point of wanting to play through the game just to see them again. Cliffhangers in this game were excellently well done.

5. The sequel was a great game, taking and expanding the story further, albeit shorter in length, I actually didn't mind the switch to Serah. The same motifs carrying over consistently were well done and cameo appearances were executed in good fashion. I won't go into much detail because it's still fresh.

Ultimately, of all the FFs, I have to be honest in saying, XIII is truly one which I love replaying and maxing everything out in, much more so than the prior games, and that's something special. I really don't understand the hate / disappointment with the XIII universe so far...




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0
 05.06.2012 11:12am


The Hulk
Good Boy



 I can only speak for my disappointment, not everyone else's, but my big issues were:

1. Shit story

2. Shit characters

3. Shit world.

I never cared about what was happening to anyone, anywhere at any time.  Couple that with battles where you're just hitting X repeatedly, and you've got yourself a shitty game.  And, given that the bigwigs at Squenix seem to think all of this is the way to go in future, I really think it effectively killed FF forever, for me.




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0
 05.06.2012 11:28am


Fincher
Deep Water Horizon



 Welcome to the forum.  A lot of us aren't too crazy about XIII, but I know there are some fans around here.



Currently playing: Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box, Picross DS
Last played: Time Hollow (good)
Last watched: Agent Carter (very good)
Me on Favslist




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0
 05.06.2012 1:04pm


Blayze
Registered Member

 My main issue with XIII was the battle system.

When I'm playing an RPG, I want to see what damage my attacks are doing, how much HP the enemy is taking from me, and have a little time to account for enemy weaknesses and then attack accordingly. XIII allows me to do none of this. The enormous numbers are flying all over the place at such a speed that I never have a clue who's dealing what damage, whether Ruin or Attack is more effective, what elemental weakness the enemy has etc. Everything just happens in such a ridiculously fast flurry of numbers that they barely have time to register with me as my team strings together 15 hit combos or huge numbers all merging together, while I try to keep track of the Stagger gauge, Stagger percent, my HP, their HP, my Buffs, his Buffs, and I find the whole thing utterly frustrating not fun.

If they'd simply taken a zero off every number things could have been more palateable for me; I enjoyed the simplicity of IX where early attacks dealt tiny amounts of damage yet this was evened out by everyone being much weaker; it gave characters more of a sense of growth and development when they finally starting dishing out more significant damage.

Another issue, and linked closely with the frenetic pacing of battles was that I felt everything was done for me. Sure I don't have to choose Auto-battle, but with the speed of everything else in battle means I'd be at a significant disadvantage if I chose what attacks I was linking manually. I never even need to Scan/Sense and then hone my elemental/status attacks accordingly in this game; just choose auto battle a few times and my characters will forever know what attacks to use each time.

Finally, I like having control of my whole party; being forced to take control of just the one character limits me and my feeling of control over the game - I want to be the White Mage, the Black Mage, and Warrior and the dancing moogle, not just one. However this would obviously require a far slower battle speed in order to take control of more than one character.

For me, the most advanced battle system was X, and Final Fantasies have regressed significantly since then. the battle against Yunalesca and the boss shortly after the Gagazet caves who made clever use of Reflect were both fantastic battles which forced you to really consider your attacks and plan according to the enemy's unorthodox use of statuses.




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1
 05.06.2012 2:53pm
 (Edited on 05.06.2012 at 7:30pm)

Free Spirit
Zetta Member



 I enjoyed the FFXIII battle system. The problem people have is with it is that it's focus is not on individual battle tactics like which attack you'll use. That's why they put Auto-Battle in there. The battle system focuses on the larger aspect of managing battle flow, like a general. When people talk of battle strategies in FFXIII they don't talk about which attacks to use, they talk about their paradigm setups, and when to switch to what. I understand this transition isn't for everyone, but I enjoyed it for what it was. I certainly wouldn't mind the series taking a different approach that allows a more hands-on battle system in the future, but it looks like that will probably never happen.

The story was a mess. I'm not gonna lie, there's very little good about FFXIII's story besides the potential. They had all the ingredients, but they only utilized half of them, and the ones they did use, they used badly. There's so, so much I wanted to see from FFXIII as the story unfolded that just never got addressed. So many necessary questions left unanswered, so many awesome battles never encountered, so many threads left dangling. So many awesome moments that should have happened but didn't. And you know what? FFXIII-2 was supposed to fix these things, and it didn't. Besides getting to fight Zenobia properly(a very small thing indeed), I can't think of a single thing FFXIII-2 did that addressed any of the missing potential of the first game. If anything, it only added more wasted potential to the pile, as unbelievable as that seems.

The characters all overacted to everything, and endlessly spouted off about their emotions and problems. Real people don't do that. Enjoyable characte's don't do that. I liked Lightning precisely because she more or less kept her mouth shut and didn't really complain or explain herself. She was a good soldier character, and one of the few redeeming faces of FFXIII's cast. That's not to say I didn't like FFXIII's cast. I did. I like Snow. I like Vanille. But, I don't like the way the game handled them. They needed to shut up and show me their character instead of being bleeding hearts that told me what their character was in unbearably drawn-out cutscenes full of schmaltz.

The story itself was ridiculously linear. I know, the actual story sort of demands this because you're on the run and being hunted the entire game. Then change the story so it doesn't demand this. A good RPG needs exploration. Not sandbox exploration, but just good old fasioned "when I walk into a new area, I want to look around a bit, find some secrets, talk to some people, examine some things, solve some puzzles" exploration. Square could have done something to address this in FFXIII without sacrificing the story if they really wanted to. FFXIII-2 is better, but it suffers from the FFXII syndrome of 90% of what you find when you explore being totally useless crap.

The graphics were, well, awful! Technically speaking, they were superb. But speaking from an actual aesthetic perspective, they were jarring, confusing, garish. Most of Cocoon was completely unintelligible to me as I walked through it, and I really had no idea what I was looking at most of the time. Same goes for the enemies. I usually couldn't describe the wacked out cyborgian designs even if I had the scan page right in front of me. And the FMV cutscenes? A horrible mess of art direction that left me with a headache more than anything else, and typically had no substance whatsoever. FFXIII-2 I have to admit, was light-years better in this regard. I don't know what it is, but I didn't have any problems with the world design, the monster designs(despite them seemingly being the same from FFXIII, I somehow was able to appreciate their nuances this time around. I dunno what to say here.), and the cutscenes were all done much better this time around.

All in all, FFXIII was a mess. It was a glorious mess, and one that I did enjoy quite a bit overall. But I won't lie and say it wasn't burdened with a massive amount of flaws. Moreso than your usual FF. FFXIII-2 fixed some of the messiness, but brought in a heaping helpful of its own, and in the end, stands about the same. I love them both, but I love them the way you love a handicapped child. You know they are flawed, and "less" than the others, but you can't help but love them for what they are, and what they try to be, even if they end up failing. They could have been great though. Really, truly great games for all time. But instead, they're just decent romps through a world that is interesting, but never properly explored.

Oh, and I have to add that those ending pop songs by Leona Lewis and Charice are the worst things I have ever experience in a game. Yes, even worse than the laughing scene from FFX. The Charice one at the end of FFXIII-2 being by far the worse of the two. Pop songs do have their place every once in a while in a FF. Not often, but there are moments. The climactic final scenes of the games are not one of those moments, and I struggle to think what braindead, tone-deaf hack thought that was a good place for these songs not once, BUT TWICE. For shame, Square. Of all the things you've screwed up with the series over the years, the misuse of these songs are the most shameful.




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0
 05.06.2012 6:52pm


Milky Ore
Kickin' it old school



 Goddamn it, wrote about 3 paragraphs in and lost my shit I tried to google something.  Oh well...

BASICALLY, it's not a crime to like 13 and 13-2, but it is surprising someone would consider them the best game.  For 13, I enjoyed the paradigm system, and some smaller things like the rating system were nice touches.  But the characters were crap, sure Lightning was great, but others ranged merely good (IMO Fang and Sazh) to poor (Snow and Hope) to pitiful (Vanille).  Like FS said, there was just TOO MUCH TALKING.  Notice how most people's favorite characters talked the least, and most people's least favorites talked the most.  Coincidence?  And yes, the lack of exploration is abysmal.  Oh, and the eidilons.... just lol.  I can only imagine that meeting.  "Hey, you know what's popular.  TRANSFORMERS.  I bet it'd be awesome if we made our summons into TRANSFOMERS.  In a FINAL FANTASY game."  The only explanation is that they must've had a 5-year-old making their design decisions.  I can't imagine anything else.

For 13-2, they did address and improve a few things.  They obviously added back in exploration -- interesting what FS said about the rewards being crap -- now that I think about it, it's true, but I never even noticed because I was so happy to have it back.  They also added some non-linearity (or a semblance of it) to the storyline... which they accomplished by blatantly riping of Radiant Historia.  But they also ruined some aspects... like having only two party members.  Ugh.  Thankfully Noel and Sara are actually OK characters.  Oh, and the encounter rate in some zones is ludicrious.  Academia 400 was a hell hole.  I've explored the hell out of every zone before that, but holy shit @ the encounter rate, as well as terrible enemies -- either stupidly easy and you spend more time loading/unloading the battle to kill, or still stupidy easy and takes even longer to kill.

So yeah, for me, it was worth a playthrough.  But after XII and XIII and now XIII-2, I've pretty much lost hope that FF will ever make a game even as good as X, much less VI or VII, ever again.  Here's to hoping they prove me wrong.




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0
 05.06.2012 7:33pm


Free Spirit
Zetta Member



 Damn, I forgot an honorable mention for Sazh.  He's possibly the best thing to come out of FFXIII.  "Dad's are tough, too!"




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0
 05.06.2012 8:16pm


Ladile
Medic!



 I've not completed FFXIII and haven't touched FFXIII-2 so I can't really weigh in, but I will mention that my husband really enjoyed both games and said that FFXIII might be his new favorite FF game.  He could explain his reasoning better than I can, but I did want to mention that there *are* fans of both games out there, though they seem to be in the minority.

Then again, I liked X-2, so... :P




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0
 05.06.2012 9:33pm
Thread Creator

Xavier
Registered Member

 It's totally okay to not like a game for any reason - it's all personal experience and preference. The only reason I wanted to weigh in here is that it does seem the majority doesn't like FF XIII, and I wonder sometimes if such things are because it's the 'cool thing to do,' (which I've certainly been guilty of. I used to hate FF VII because it was many people's first experience with the genre and they claimed it as the best game, and of course you couldn't convince anyone to look past the graphics of VI to see the obvious superiority!! 


Maybe I've just gotten older and more relaxed about being hardcore.

I played about 10 years of MMOs as well, from EverQuest to WoW and SWG, and CoH/V and on and on. Many of these games played at the highest levels (high-end raiding), so a completely open world just doesn't appeal to me anymore. 

I totally admit with flaws in FF XIII, but I just found myself so amazingly enjoyed with this game, so drawn in and so wanting to keep playing that I just found myself going "you know...this game is the best FF I've played." 

And it's not that it's the best FF ever - but it's that it's a game that, like IX, like VI rekindled a sort of love with the series. XII was fun, but felt a bit monotenous in playing the FF through to play through it, if that makes sense.

By now I've played through the originals enough times that I'm just sick of them. And I've aged to want to move on to things that are just more up to date. This doesn't take away from the games, but it's a "yeah, i've been there done that, and it's cool to reminisce."

In a modern gaming landscape where there's truly nothing out there for like RPGs except for a few games (Neptunia was a fun game, Star Ocean was absolutely amazing), it's just epic to be in "Final Fantasy," again. And for it to be badass. 

I actually thought the soundtrack was really well done and put together really well. 

The game mechanics were much more dynamic and the fast paced part of it made it fun. There were many moments where you just had to go in with a "I'm going balls to the wall here, and I'm ?going to have faith that I will live through that next hit." 


Stacking a Paradigm Deck and manipulating which weapons to customize stats and gear was incredibly dynamic. It meant you have total control over how you play and how you attack a situation, which adds a whole new level to difficulty in the game. 

I think for many, the issue might come down to in classic FF, the strategy has been "if the boss hits me hard and I die, then I go out and level to get past it and power through it."

The fact that you couldn't -really- do this without significant pain and suffering time in FFXIII was absolutely thrilling for me. 
I love a gripping boss fight where you're skin of your teeth non stop and the only thing you have is a loose rhthym to go by.
I love it I walk into a boss and that "god-like" figure teaches me a lesson. Makes me go "okay, yeah, you DO have a premise to talk like you do."

I'll even maintain that the cinematography, art, and everything was still fantastic and a true experience.

?Ultimately, I think it comes down to this: the Final Fantasy that we grew up on has become dated and the system has changed. Thus it makes FF XIII just not "feel" like a Final Fantasy game (and rightly so), but had it not had the Final Fantasy tag on it, I bet it would have proven to have much higher reviews.




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0
 05.06.2012 10:22pm


viator
Registered Member

 I don't think that the Final Fantasy we grew up on has become dated. A lot of people enjoy retro, as well as consistency within series. Square Enix took their innovation "policy" too far, as well as emphasis on technological accomplishments. The change was present within Final Fantasy since the beginning, because each game brought its own mythos, I don't believe it was ever demanding they approach every game in almost entirely new manner (within the JRPG genre).

The character development is also a big issue in my opinion--when they choose to portray Terra, the strong and decisive character that she is in Final Fantasy VI, as a weak little girl in Dissidia Final Fantasy (nevermind the general dumbing down of the characters in that game), it speaks a lot of their character development skill. Aya Brea (Parasite Eve) in The 3rd Birthday (nevermind the plot) supports this, as well as the complaints on Final Fantasy XII's and XIII's characters.

My general conclusion is that the company lacks the management of a visionary, like the series' creator was. Someone who would simply direct them.

I mostly just wish there were more games of the PS1 Final Fantasy type. While I appreciate those game the most, I never got over the fact there wouldn't be more of games like those. However, iOS games sparked some hope, as the platform is right on the level for such games to be developed--while I haven't played it, the Chaos Rings series reminds me, in a way, of PS1 Final Fantasy games.



dissidia.net




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0
 05.06.2012 10:31pm


Mavilu
Yep, still gaming



 Welcome to the forums, Xavier!.

As for me, nah, I didn't like it, I'm trying to think of a single thing I liked about it and I can't find a single thing except that the world vaguely reminded me of FFX.

I think for many, the issue might come down to in classic FF, the strategy has been "if the boss hits me hard and I die, then I go out and level to get past it and power through it."
Funny you should mention that; I'm currently replaying Lost Odyssey, where you certainly can't relay on that strategy either and it's very well liked as a game because of that, among other things.




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0
 05.06.2012 10:37pm


Rhaegar
World Warrior 21007
Xavier said:

?Ultimately, I think it comes down to this: the Final Fantasy that we grew up on has become dated and the system has changed. Thus it makes FF XIII just not "feel" like a Final Fantasy game (and rightly so), but had it not had the Final Fantasy tag on it, I bet it would have proven to have much higher reviews.
Uh, FFXIII has a Metacritic rating of 83. For a game that pisses on everything that made Final Fantasy great in the past, I'd say that's a pretty solid critical rating. I'd argue the opposite of what you're arguing, i.e. that simply having the Final Fantasy name on it (and Square Enix's advertising money) has given it much better review scores than it deserves.




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0
 05.07.2012 5:20pm


kirbenvost
Give Life Back To Music



 Welcome!

As for me, I enjoyed FFXIII well enough (a lot more than FFXII), but I'm enjoying FFXIII-2 a lot more.

Positives:

-Sazh, Fang, Vanille
-The world (I like futuristic stuff)
-Paradigms
-Fast battles
-Music was better than I was expecting
-Character/monster designs

Neutral:

-Lightning.  Yeah, she was a badass with a good heart, but maybe a bit too much of a bitch at times?
-Linear.   I would've liked more exploration, but it was fun anyway
-Snow.  Kind of an ass.  Again, good intentions, but people need to stop enabling his irresponsibility and arrogance.
-Info from the Datalog.  I'd rather hear about it in the game.  I guess lore is okay, but some of this needs to be explained by the characters.

Negatives:
-Hope.  Stupid angsty kids.  So friggin' annoying.  At least they made him better in the sequel.
-Leader death=Game over.  This made no sense.  In every other FF your other characters could revive your leader, why not here?  FFXIII-2 addressed this, thankfully.
-NPCs/villains.  They were honestly very stereotypical, bland RPG characters with little personality.  Not well done.
-Sidequests.  Just killing monsters is only fun for so long.  And it's way less fun when it takes so long to defeat them.  Some of them were extremely difficult to defeat.  I ended  up getting frustrated/bored and just beating the game and forgetting about sidequests.
-Weapon Customization.  Ridiculous amounts of time and effort needed to be put into obtaining the best weapons.  No thanks.


So overall, I liked it, but I wouldn't rank it among my personal favorites.  FFXIII-2 does a lot better, but it's still not as good as the classics.




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0
 05.08.2012 2:59am


Rhaegar
World Warrior 21007



 Vanille's a positive and Snow's a, uh, fucking nonnegative? Since when?




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0
 05.08.2012 3:38am


kirbenvost
Give Life Back To Music



 Since I played the game and decided I didn't hate them?




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