At least with the menu-based games, there were always tactical choices to make in battle. Each character's turn was precious, and you had to choose the best action to take to survive.
...At least until you farmed up the godly weapons and spells and shit and made everything a cake walk. But that's really neither here nor there.
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Maradon! wrote this stupid crap:
I could not more emphatically disagree.
I think it's worth playing without the mindset that it's a Final Fantasy game. But I think there's enough to make it passable as a general purpose RPG.
I took a week off work to play XIII and I don't regret taking the time for that. It just didn't completely live up to the expectations I had for a Final Fantasy game.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
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And I was all like 'Oh yeah?' and Densetsu was all like:
Granted that I never made it to Pulse before I kinda fizzled out on it (I'm at the part where "real l'Cie" get trained or whatever), but I found myself just mashing X when not swapping paradigms more than almost any other FF.
It was probably a lot my team setup, since I used mostly Lightning, Hope and Fang once they were all available, but I didn't find myself mashing X very much because I was *constantly* swapping Paradigms in battles. That was one thing that really redeemed the game for me, because battles was so much more interesting and active than the menu-based RPGs.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
Forget the standards of a Final Fantasy or even those of an RPG, even when you don't hold the game up to the standards of a video game, the individual elements are still mediocre at best and offensively bad at worst. The story is fractious and poorly written, the characters are unsympathetic and soulless, and the "combat system" is just an excessively automated version of the same old ATB system we've always seen.
The graphics are excellent for a video game, but bad for a movie or handful of CGI clips. We're usually shown a masterful computer rendering of a painfully boring and unimaginative scene, so even at their best, they're wasted.
It's not even worth wasting a queue spot on your rental service.
First J-RPG game in a long time that's actually made me care about the characters. The dream/lost memory sequences are also chock full of emotion and you'd have to have a heart of stone not to feel something while playing through them.
Fantastic game.
-Infinite Undiscovery. What it looked like: action-RPG with dynamic action game elements. What it was: pressing one button and hearing a little nancy boy scream "RONDO OF WIND" instead of selecting it from a menu, shitty plot about people trying to steal the moon.
-Eternal Sonata. One of your main party members is an 8-year-old child dressed in a sailor suit who attacks with an old-timey camera.
-Last Remnant. The only game to see FF and decide that more menus were needed.
"Ok, Mechanics X, Y and Z. Got it. Now how do I horribly, HORRIBLY break this shit?"
There seems to be more fun in finding ways to do shit that the game doesn't want to let you do than there is in playing the game straight up.
can't you respect matusada's masterpiece
Every one since that has had some kind of post-end play or otherwise harder-than-final-boss optional. I figure if I can beat that before I go to the end boss, I'll be in good shape. Except for 13 where the boss randomly like to Death people. That shit's not cool, yo.
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When the babel fish was in place, it was apparent Nina said:
Gee, I can level my characters and collect items for hours on end in order to defeat this entirely optional boss and then the non-optional boss is too hard! THIS GAME SUX OFMGGGGGGGGGGGG
When VII shipped theconcept of optional bosses in RPGs didn't exist really... unless you found a way to skip one that was usually a bug or exploit (or hack). I saw the targets, I worked my ass off to beat the targets and I did it before anyone said "Dude.. those are optionals.. You don't have to go near them to beat the game." At the time I remember being very let down by that last fight as I expected something REALLY badass after the previous 2 fights. Hell, the "let's walk around for a few hours and farm XP and coin before we go to the next chapter of the game" was pretty well ingrained in most RPG players, especially the early 8bit types.
Now it's just me fucking around with it.
And speaking of things FF related... Who's picking up 012?
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How.... Lyinar Ka`Bael.... uughhhhhh:
I took a week off work to play (a video game) and I don't regret taking the time for that.
This hurts my brain.
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Everyone wondered WTF when Random Insanity Generator wrote:
When VII shipped theconcept of optional bosses in RPGs didn't exist really...
Actually that's not true. Just in Final Fantasy itself, V had that dragon and VI had Atma. And there are other same or earlier generation RPGs that I remember having optional boss fights. There were some that had entire optional dungeons. I believe one of the Dragon Warriors was like that.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
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All-Bran Saved My Life obviously shouldn't have said:
This hurts my brain.
I'll do it again the next time another game I really want to play comes out. I never take off, and I get 3 weeks each year, with the ability to carry over a week from the previous year. So I always have lots of vacation time to spare.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
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Lyinar Ka`Bael had this to say about Cuba:
Actually that's not true. Just in Final Fantasy itself, V had that dragon and VI had Atma. And there are other same or earlier generation RPGs that I remember having optional boss fights. There were some that had entire optional dungeons. I believe one of the Dragon Warriors was like that.
Prior to jumping hardware platforms (and while still bearing the name Warrior, not Quest) they were pretty much "Do Everything" before reaching the final boss.
And from what I've heard from most people, the optional boss in 6 was optional if you worked your ass off to avoid it. If you did lots of grinding and such and were over-level for the end you didn't have to do it. Otherwise the drops that it offered were effectively a trade for levels. How optional is that? 7 gave you no chance at all of beating the optionals without TONS of work. Far more than was ever necessary for the final boss battles.
5 not being released state-side until after the fact (7 hit US in late 97, 5 hit the US on the PS1 in 99 for the first time) kinda takes it out of the picture.
I don't call that wierd.
I call that Deth being quite lucky.
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Random Insanity Generator probably says this to all the girls:
Prior to jumping hardware platforms (and while still bearing the name Warrior, not Quest) they were pretty much "Do Everything" before reaching the final boss.And from what I've heard from most people, the optional boss in 6 was optional if you worked your ass off to avoid it. If you did lots of grinding and such and were over-level for the end you didn't have to do it. Otherwise the drops that it offered were effectively a trade for levels. How optional is that? 7 gave you no chance at all of beating the optionals without TONS of work. Far more than was ever necessary for the final boss battles.
5 not being released state-side until after the fact (7 hit US in late 97, 5 hit the US on the PS1 in 99 for the first time) kinda takes it out of the picture.
You never said anything in your original post about stateside versus only in Japan
I played a lot of translated games on emulators that had optional bosses or areas long before Final Fantasy VII. So the concept was out there well before VII came along. It just hadn't been introduced en masse in our area.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
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Mortious spewed forth this undeniable truth:
A girl who takes time off to play video games?I don't call that wierd.
I call that Deth being quite lucky.
Lyinar Ka`Bael, Piney Fresh Druidess - Luclin
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Lyinar Ka`Bael had this to say about Matthew Broderick:
You never said anything in your original post about stateside versus only in JapanI played a lot of translated games on emulators that had optional bosses or areas long before Final Fantasy VII. So the concept was out there well before VII came along. It just hadn't been introduced en masse in our area.
And did you play VII at release or did you delay playing it? If you want to include "all RPG's, all areas" then you're going to have to include table top RPG's and well.. there are metric fucktons of 'optional' bosses in there depending on what the DM wants to throw at you and where the party decides to go. I made a logical limited assumption given the number and type of people here. I wouldn't expect 95% of people attached to this forum to even attempt to try and dig up fan translated rom images for jRPGs much less play them...
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Die, Random Insanity Generator! You don't belong in this world!
And did you play VII at release or did you delay playing it? If you want to include "all RPG's, all areas" then you're going to have to include table top RPG's and well..
Now you're just being pig-headed. Final Fantasy was specifically mentioned in your post, and she used examples from Final Fantasy.
In some form or another, every mainline Final Fantasy has made it stateside by now. There is absolutely no reason to disclude any of them in any discussion of Final Fantasy simply on the basis that they were not released in America in proper order. That's just silly.
