Final Fantasy Bias

[Deeth Irteen]

Here's something to try. Pick a game in the series. Write a paragraph that absolutely praises the game. Next, write another paragraph that makes the game look like absolute garbage. I'll start with FF1:

Paragraph 1:

Of all the games in the Final Fantasy series, none have reached the fame of Final Fantasy 1! The game's 24 main characters (4 Warriors, 4 Thieves, 4 Black Belts, 4 Red Mages, 4 White Mages, and 4 Black Mages) were given no background whatsoever, allowing countless fans to create their own backstory! Also of mention is Garland, a villain who not only has the most famous quote iin the entire series ("I, Garland, will knock you all down"), but is the first villain to attain true godhood (suck it, Kefka and Sephiroth!). From the mysterious race called the Lefein, to the four Elemental fiends, never has an RPG captured the experience that FF1 does!

Paragraph 2:

Ugh, Final Fantasy 1. This game sucks the most in the entire series. The main characters are lifeless robots, Crappy engrish abound, an idiot reference to the legend of Zelda, and the worst villain in history. C'mon, "I Garland, will knock you all down"?! What kind of villain says that?! ANd don't even get me started on the 4 elemental fiends! The elemental fiend of fire's name is KARY!Ooooooooh, scary. NOT! How this turd on a cartridge started one of the biggest franchises in recent history I'll never know. But it probably involved the coming of the Antichrist.

[marcus]

Re: Final Fantasy Bias

Final Fantasy 12: A visually stunning game about the effects of war on the people involved with it. The NPC's change as the game continues allowing the player to follow the lives of the otherwise unimportant side characters. The game is quite lengthy with huge locations to explore and an indepth system of abilities. A fun and challenging battle system sweetens the deal and dozens of indepth side quests like monster hunting expand on the game's detailed world building.

Final Fantasy 12 sucks: The story is juvenile, poorly written, and glosses over details. The boring characters are made even more terrible by the sheer lack of narrative in comparison to the amount of gameplay. Ridiculously long dungeons with no interesting features save several dozen roaming monsters (some that regenerate at annoying speeds) and random chests build up to a crescendo of monotony by the 20th hour. Watch five minute cutscene, run halfway across the world for five hours with a single save point inbetween, watch another five minute cutscene, repeat.

[Perversion]

Re: Final Fantasy Bias

FFTA: In terms of depth in character customization, relatively short, fun battles, and just an overall enjoyable experience with just the right difficulty level, this game stands head and shoulders above just about any other SRPG on the market. The amount of detail you can go into with each character, outfitting them not only for the challenges ahead, but also for the new skills and eventually new jobs they will confer upon you, is peerless. This game is a micromanager's dream come true. Every battle, no matter how simple (if you are just grinding, for example) or difficult (some of the later story-based battles) always leaves you with a sense that you accomplished something. And excepting perhaps the uber skills, there was never a feeling that you had to leave any particular weapon or armor equipped for too long where it is no longer powerful enough for the enemies you are currently facing. Just when you get into a rut and are just grinding for the sake of learning (permanent) new abilities, chances are a new weapon or skill or job will become available, allowing you to become excited all over again, until the next rut. And the cycle repeats.


In short, the balance between time invested vs reward is perfect. And this allows one to easily drop over 100 hours into the game (as I did on my first partial playthrough) without even blinking. And I'm not even gonna touch all the job-specific challenge playthroughs that the hardcore can undertake.



HOWEVER, the game starts with a tutorial of sorts involving a snowball fight. A FREAKIN' SNOWBALL FIGHT!!! And that kind of clues you in to exactly how the story is gonna turn out. Which is to say, it has none of the political intrigue of the PSX original (or even better, the newly translated PSP version, whose story may as well be the second (or fourth) coming of Ogre Battle).

Then you have the much-maligned judge system. I personally have no major qualms with the system, but a lot of people do, and for good reason. When you are forced to fight those blue and red slimes without using any magic, and every weapon does at max 3 damage, and there are 4 of them on the map, the fun is seriously diminished.


And even though I actually prefer the instant spell effects, I can again see why people have qualms about it. It removes a huge layer of strategy the previous game had, as you now no longer need to think that far ahead and anticipate enemy movements, and position your characters accordingly at the end of each turn. Due to this, the game devolves to a simplified SRPG version of a hack and slash...do your damage quick and do it now, as for the most part, there are no adverse consequences for going in fast and hard with your tanks.


Combine all the above, and you have what amounts to "My First SRPG: The Game." Everything is so dumbed down that you barely have to rub two brain cells together in order to breeze right through it. And as there are always random battles to fight, and no limit on number of abilities, all that a bad choice of ability will cost you is the time it takes to grind a new one. It's like if they took everything that hardcore SRPG players want, and then incorporated it into a kiddy version that makes a mockery of the genre.

[LunarWingCloud]

Re: Final Fantasy Bias

Final Fantasy VII rules:

Final Fantasy VII remains one of those games other RPGs are compared to. If you share no light with it, you can expect to become nothing. If you emulate it, you become a poser. Have fun, developers. The battle system is so fine-tuned and the graphics are over the top. Diehard fans and players hoping to try something new will find a lot to love with Final Fantasy VII. It is too good to pass up.

Final Fantasy VII sucks:

Damn you, emos! All I hear is "Sephiroth's cool", and "Sephiroth's got a big sword". Well, I can tell you where that big sword'll end up if you guys keep loving this piece of crap. You are the reason this game sucks. YOU are the reason no one likes that goddamn mama's boy Sephiroth. You all make me sick, stupid emos. GOD! I can barely keep a calm face around you guys. It's like, take a hammer to your heads until your brains gush out! The game sucks! Stop loving it! You guys love it because of the gay costumes everyone wears!

[salamander]

Re: Final Fantasy Bias

Final Fantasy 9:
This game is very well balanced between gameplay and storytelling. There was rarely a moment throughout the whole game I wasn't completely engrossed in what was going on. When there's action happening, you're on the edge of your seat. All of the characters are likable and have their own unique appeal. This also deserves praise for having the most humor and lightheartedness out of all the FF games. After playing it years ago, I can still remember some awesome scenes such as the entire 'I want to be your canary' play, Kuja completely obliterating that one place (can't remember the name), and the whole loveletter thing in Alexandria. It's one of the only FFs that, when I replayed it, I purposefully didn't go to the last area because I didn't want it to end. Out of every FF villain ever created, Kuja still oozes the most awesomeness. Sure, he may be the most flamboyant looking, but he's not a pushover sissy boy (cough-Seymour). Kuja's just cooler than you and he knows it. If I had to choose a pre-PS2 Final Fantasy to remake for current systems, this game would definately be it, hands down.

On the other hand, it's not entirely without faults. The biggest problem I had was the balancing of the characters and their personalities. I felt like it needed more 'cool guys' in your party (Zidane is the only one; Amarant...is just creepy) It also needed another female character that wasn't a marsh creature or a 6-year old girl; Rat girls don't count. All of the characters in the game look 5 feet or shorter, as well. It just adds a cartoon-ey flavor to the whole game. The one thing I hated more than anything was the random encounters. It's just endless repetition; but that was the norm in the day, so it was tolerable most of the time. The only other downside to this game is the lack of extra stuff to do. Sure there's some, like the mogmail and getting all the chocographs, but it pretty much ends there. There's no real extra or secret dungeons at all, and only one or two extra bosses. In this regard, it feels linear at times when you play.

Despite the pros and cons of Final Fantasy 9, I always turned the game off with a smile on my face.

[Dallas Alvis II]

Re: Final Fantasy Bias

Final Fantasy VIII (+) = The enemies leveled up with you, which seemed to keep the game challenging and that didn't get all that boring. There wasn't a lot of "squash battles" in the game. It was really tense as far as some of the bosses went. And the GF system was awesome, I think. And you get cards you can collect! And Squall was initially a jerk, I liked that.

Final Fantasy VIII (-) = The enemies leveled up with you, so you never really felt badass. No matter how far you grew it seemed like, you never get the feeling like you've developed into something powerful EVER. EVER. EVER...........EVER. The same creatures you killed over and over take roughly as long to kill later on. You'd think after gaining experience points from these things, they'd learn faster ways to kill the same creature. And it so happens that, the mini-game you actually played with those collectable cards sucked.