If you didn't get through Terra then you missed out on some very key (awesome) scenes with Kuja that flesh out his character. The difference between Kuja and the Black Mages is that the Black Mages had no knowledge of their lifespan, but also had no mind to actually conceive their own existence (unless you were Vivi or lived in Black Mage Village). Vivi questions whether or not he is a real being or not, which I think is a very strong allusion to the Replicants from Blade Runner.
With Kuja, though, it's about whether or not he is invincible (i.e. God, the director) and immortal, only to find out that he is neither.
Interesting. That would also draw a pretty neat parallel between what the Black Mages (IIRC) ended up doing about the realization of their mortality (they just accepted it and tried to make the most of what little time they had) and the villain, with the former obviously being the more heroic.
Although I personally think that FF:T has the best villains in the series. Not so much the Lucavi but
Wiegraf, Dycedarg and perhaps Delita.
The first is the tragic hero who succumbs to his own pride and refusal to give up his revenge, the second is the classic Machiavellian chessmaster who shocks you with just how far he's willing to go. The last one's villainous status is debatable, of course, but he's an excellent example of a flawed hero who's ultimately their own undoing. Such a great character, especially for a video game.
EDIT: I would also add that Ramza is probably my favorite protagonist, because he really breaks the mold of a lot of RPG characters - he realizes that, ultimately, his struggle won't make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. The war is unavoidable, the people are going to get screwed over, and a lot of innocent people are going to die for reasons they don't even begin to understand. But he fights anyway, because even making a little bit of difference is better than nothing. Such a great game.
You know what, I just can't bring myself to say I dislike as a whole any of the FFs I've played.
If nothing else, high production values past a certain point make them generally better than the vast majority of other games.
Hmm...
Top annoyances:
I (iPhone): too many random battles!
VI: see above
FFT: efficient leveling too grindy
VII: characters too samey stats-wise
VIII: overcomplicated system + limited abilities equipped =
IX: not quite complicated enough, huge delay between command and action
X: some endgame content ridiculous to reach
X-2: terrible premise, too much missable content
XII: Vaan is terrible; RANDOM CHESTS
XIII: sooooo linear; bad tutorials (ironic, isn't it?)
I've seen the quote from Roy Batty (you know what I'm talking about) plastered all over the net.
Yeah, I had heard it tons of times long before I ever saw the movie.
Vincent Grayson on
0
NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
edited August 2010
So I've decided to play through 12 since I purchased it about... 3 years ago and booted it up exactly 3 times since then and I've got nothing to really play till the 14th.
I'm really not liking Vaan and we just landed at Bhujerba. I wonder if I would have enjoyed him more if I played this when it first came out and I was still big into anime.
So I've decided to play through 12 since I purchased it about... 3 years ago and booted it up exactly 3 times since then and I've got nothing to really play till the 14th.
I'm really not liking Vaan and we just landed at Bhujerba. I wonder if I would have enjoyed him more if I played this when it first came out and I was still big into anime.
Vaan's just lame. I don't think it would matter how into anime you were; I've never heard anyone say they thought he was in any way interesting or well-developed.
He was clearly shoehorned into the main plot, what little character development he does get is boring and cliche, he usually doesn't do anything important, even in cutscenes, to significantly impact the course of events in any kind of meaningful way. When he actually does do something it's usually a lame attempt at comic relief. You could very easily take him out of the story and nobody would really notice.
FF12 is probably not as bad a game as many people (including myself, at times) have made it out to be, but one thing I think definitely rings true is that it's probably the most forgettable main-title FF game ever released. That's pretty incredible when you consider the unprecedented amount of time, money, and work that obviously went into it, but there's just really not much about it that stands out in your mind if you haven't played it for a while.
Duffel on
0
NocrenLt Futz, Back in ActionNorth CarolinaRegistered Userregular
edited August 2010
Well, considering the only FF games I've completed are
1 (on NES, and after the battery had died too so I had to leave my system on)
4 (on DS)
6 (SNES and GBA)
and 7 (with Gamesharking a few things. After a year, I just said "fuck it, I'm finishing this.")
but I've also played 8 (got to the second disc) and
10 (Seymore's second form? The one where he casts zombie on you then life during the same turn. It was a battle on top of a mountain.)
But yeah, I'm seeing that Vaan really doesn't belong in the game. Like, he's there to move the plot forward but he's not the main character, just the one you primarily control.
1 (on NES, and after the battery had died too so I had to leave my system on)
Oh god I'm not the only one who did this
To be fair, I finished it during the summer of 1999 on my original NES that I got back on 84/85. And I think I got the game in.... damn, 90? Maybe earlier...
Besides, I remember hearing that those cart batteries only lasted ~5 years. Took me 2 restarts to figure out what happened.
Stopping on disc 2 of VIII means you missed the most hilariously stupid scene. As much as I love the game, it's completely and utterly ridiculous.
All the characters grew up in the same orphanage and Edea was the matron. They all forgot because apparently GFs cause memory loss when you use them a lot, and only Selphie remembered because she only just started using them.
Stopping on disc 2 of VIII means you missed the most hilariously stupid scene. As much as I love the game, it's completely and utterly ridiculous.
All the characters grew up in the same orphanage and Edea was the matron. They all forgot because apparently GFs cause memory loss when you use them a lot, and only Selphie remembered because she only just started using them.
No, I got that far. That's about where I threw the bullshit flag and turned off the playstation.
But, the way I look at it - in the late 90s/early 2000s, a lot of what Square was doing vis a vis gameplay design was throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck. Almost all of their games from that era (besides FF9 I guess) were very experimental and tried to do something that would refresh the genre. Chrono Cross, Vagrant Story, Legend of Mana, all of them made pretty radical design changes to the standard JRPG model. Even Bushido Blade was a drastic change to the standard fighting game formula, and I really wish that series had taken off better than it did, but for some reason it didn't.
So yeah, draw/Junction blows. Even without the weird quirks (the oft-mentioned weakening through magic use, or the fact that, with the easy accessibility of overpowered Limit Breaks, pretty much the only spells you ever needed were Cure/Cura/Curaga and Aura anyway), drawing and junctioning is simply not fun.
But, you know, at least they were trying something new. And, as much as people complain about the story, it's really not much more incoherent than about half of the other JRPGs that I've played. Up until Disk 2 it's actually pretty good, and all FF games have a tendency to slacken the story the closer you get to the end.
Very very true. I love to see them making a conscious effort to try something new and not try the same thing twice. The Junction system had the potential to be a really great, fairly strategic way to customize your characters, if they actually balanced the game properly around it; the problem is that they didn't. Oh well, live and learn.
This is also why XIII doesn't bother me that much. They gave us a battle system which some people love and some people hate, but which nonetheless is different from every previous FF game (I happen to think it's pretty cool, once you get the hang of it). They gave us better voice-acting and better-written characters than we've had. And they gave us a world that's rendered in more detail than we've ever seen before -- it's really stunning the way that XIII makes even XII look lo-fi, after XII did the same for X, and X did the same to IX. So they took away our freedom to wander to give us a more tightly-integrated story and a more high-definition world. Does the linearity suck? Yeah. Is XIII the worst FF game ever? No, just not the best. Is S-E going out of business? Nope! And presumably they learned something from XIII, so I fully expect FFXV to come out and combine some of the best stuff from X through XIII with some of the best stuff from I through IX, along with some new shit, and I fully expect it to be, at the very worst, a pretty good game that shows off its many-million-dollar budget.
So I've decided to play through 12 since I purchased it about... 3 years ago and booted it up exactly 3 times since then and I've got nothing to really play till the 14th.
I'm really not liking Vaan and we just landed at Bhujerba. I wonder if I would have enjoyed him more if I played this when it first came out and I was still big into anime.
Yeah, stop trying to like Vaan. It's okay, he's not important. He's just there.
As for X... okay, I agree, Seymour Flux is one of the hardest battles ever the first time it comes at you, but it's totally beatable, and you'll feel like you accomplished something when you did. Not to mention, when you come down the other side of that mountain you're treated to one of the beautiful FMVs that FFX is so good at.
And then you're only a stone's throw (well, a stone's throw and another hard boss battle involving Zombie status) away from getting the airship and spending more time on optional sidequests than you could ever possibly spend on the mandatory part of the game... if you're into that kind of thing. Some of the better sidequests even reveal fairly juicy bits of story (which, on the one hand is a little bit cruel that they're withholding the full story from the casual player, but on the other hand it's nice that the sidequests earn you something besides a bigger sword and the thanks of a digital person.)
So I've decided to play through 12 since I purchased it about... 3 years ago and booted it up exactly 3 times since then and I've got nothing to really play till the 14th.
I'm really not liking Vaan and we just landed at Bhujerba. I wonder if I would have enjoyed him more if I played this when it first came out and I was still big into anime.
Yeah, stop trying to like Vaan. It's okay, he's not important. He's just there.
As for X... okay, I agree, Seymour Flux is one of the hardest battles ever the first time it comes at you, but it's totally beatable, and you'll feel like you accomplished something when you did. Not to mention, when you come down the other side of that mountain you're treated to one of the beautiful FMVs that FFX is so good at.
And then you're only a stone's throw (well, a stone's throw and another hard boss battle involving Zombie status) away from getting the airship and spending more time on optional sidequests than you could ever possibly spend on the mandatory part of the game... if you're into that kind of thing. Some of the better sidequests even reveal fairly juicy bits of story (which, on the one hand is a little bit cruel that they're withholding the full story from the casual player, but on the other hand it's nice that the sidequests earn you something besides a bigger sword and the thanks of a digital person.)
I've always felt like FFX did so many things right...and then they went and tied in-game rewards to all those terrible minigames.
Liking anime will not make Vaan an interesting character.
The story I have oft heard repeated in this thread is that Basch was the hero until they got to focus testing in Japan and the focus groups (especially women) wigged out over not having a more standard bishie hero. And so Vaan got shoehorned into the game to appease the Japanese I suppose.
Which is an interesting story if true, but that still doesn't explain why the fuck Penelo exists, as she is even more useless than Vaan.
Arkady on
LoL: failboattootoot
0
BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
But, the way I look at it - in the late 90s/early 2000s, a lot of what Square was doing vis a vis gameplay design was throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what stuck. Almost all of their games from that era (besides FF9 I guess) were very experimental and tried to do something that would refresh the genre. Chrono Cross, Vagrant Story, Legend of Mana, all of them made pretty radical design changes to the standard JRPG model. Even Bushido Blade was a drastic change to the standard fighting game formula, and I really wish that series had taken off better than it did, but for some reason it didn't.
So yeah, draw/Junction blows. Even without the weird quirks (the oft-mentioned weakening through magic use, or the fact that, with the easy accessibility of overpowered Limit Breaks, pretty much the only spells you ever needed were Cure/Cura/Curaga and Aura anyway), drawing and junctioning is simply not fun.
But, you know, at least they were trying something new. And, as much as people complain about the story, it's really not much more incoherent than about half of the other JRPGs that I've played. Up until Disk 2 it's actually pretty good, and all FF games have a tendency to slacken the story the closer you get to the end.
But why didn't they use all that experience and brought out a master peice yet? I mean, DQ9 used the acumlaited experience of previous games; people were bothered by the alchemy taking to long? lets make it instant!
Why can't FF see good choices that they've done before and do them again?
TheOrange on
0
BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
Also, Basch was originally supposed to be Manly McBeardo in near full armor like a FFT character before they shaved him, gave him a perm and gave him that silly red vest with the pot-holder on it.
Unfortunately Japan is all "Lol dude that's so gay" at the thought of men looking like men for some reason.
Stopping on disc 2 of VIII means you missed the most hilariously stupid scene. As much as I love the game, it's completely and utterly ridiculous.
All the characters grew up in the same orphanage and Edea was the matron. They all forgot because apparently GFs cause memory loss when you use them a lot, and only Selphie remembered because she only just started using them.
I still say that was an interesting idea handled poorly.
Blackjack on
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
0
BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
edited August 2010
You'd think Irvine would've piped up all "Oh hey I remember you jerks! Especially jerkface with the jerkiness!" or "Oh hey remember that time we set Robin Willi-I mean, Cid's favorite chair on fire?"
Huh, those are exactly the same two spots where I stopped playing 8 and 10.
I stopped playing there as well I think.
On the snowy mountain right? With all the platforming jumps and shit?
Stopped right there.
I did pick it up about a week later again and played through, but it's weird that I stopped at the same part.
I really wish they would do a rugged, old warrior as a main character. There is so much untapped potential there for the right writer.
Auron was really a step in the right direction. He was my favorite 10 character. I'm probably not the only one.
Liking anime will not make Vaan an interesting character.
The story I have oft heard repeated in this thread is that Basch was the hero until they got to focus testing in Japan and the focus groups (especially women) wigged out over not having a more standard bishie hero. And so Vaan got shoehorned into the game to appease the Japanese I suppose.
Which is an interesting story if true, but that still doesn't explain why the fuck Penelo exists, as she is even more useless than Vaan.
The silliest thing about Vaan is that his much-lambasted fruitiness would have been cut down by about 90% if they'd just given him some kind of shirt under the vest.
I also thought it was kinda weird that all the Dalmascans we see (or at least the ones that are members of our party) are all pale and blonde, considering that it's a desert country.
I've heard that originally the characters in FF12 were going to have more depth (Vaan was originally going to be Ashe's cousin or something like that, so they actually had a relationship and a reason for travelling together; Penelo had a brother in the resistance that she was fighting on behalf of; other stuff like that). I'm not sure why all that got cut out. I mean, there's always something going on in FF12, it's just that it's usually boring and not worth paying attention to. Why not fill all those cutscenes with something people might actually care about watching?
Also, Zidane wasn't really "manly", he was just kind of a rogueish womanizer.
Stopping on disc 2 of VIII means you missed the most hilariously stupid scene. As much as I love the game, it's completely and utterly ridiculous.
All the characters grew up in the same orphanage and Edea was the matron. They all forgot because apparently GFs cause memory loss when you use them a lot, and only Selphie remembered because she only just started using them.
No, I got that far. That's about where I threw the bullshit flag and turned off the playstation.
Hey, it's my favourite scene to complain about!
This is what totally made me lose all respect for the game although I'm sure every FF game has a point like this.
Posts
With Kuja, though, it's about whether or not he is invincible (i.e. God, the director) and immortal, only to find out that he is neither.
Although I personally think that FF:T has the best villains in the series. Not so much the Lucavi but
The first is the tragic hero who succumbs to his own pride and refusal to give up his revenge, the second is the classic Machiavellian chessmaster who shocks you with just how far he's willing to go. The last one's villainous status is debatable, of course, but he's an excellent example of a flawed hero who's ultimately their own undoing. Such a great character, especially for a video game.
EDIT: I would also add that Ramza is probably my favorite protagonist, because he really breaks the mold of a lot of RPG characters - he realizes that, ultimately, his struggle won't make much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. The war is unavoidable, the people are going to get screwed over, and a lot of innocent people are going to die for reasons they don't even begin to understand. But he fights anyway, because even making a little bit of difference is better than nothing. Such a great game.
Though the movie put it best, "It's too bad she won't live, but then again who does?"
If nothing else, high production values past a certain point make them generally better than the vast majority of other games.
Hmm...
Top annoyances:
VI: see above
FFT: efficient leveling too grindy
VII: characters too samey stats-wise
VIII: overcomplicated system + limited abilities equipped =
IX: not quite complicated enough, huge delay between command and action
X: some endgame content ridiculous to reach
X-2: terrible premise, too much missable content
XII: Vaan is terrible; RANDOM CHESTS
XIII: sooooo linear; bad tutorials (ironic, isn't it?)
OMG! Thx for the the blade runner spoiler jerk!
</sarcasm>
I am Jack's Multiple Personality Disorder?
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Platinum FC: 2880 3245 5111
So in that sense it shouldn't really be a "surprise".
Yeah, I had heard it tons of times long before I ever saw the movie.
I'm really not liking Vaan and we just landed at Bhujerba. I wonder if I would have enjoyed him more if I played this when it first came out and I was still big into anime.
He was clearly shoehorned into the main plot, what little character development he does get is boring and cliche, he usually doesn't do anything important, even in cutscenes, to significantly impact the course of events in any kind of meaningful way. When he actually does do something it's usually a lame attempt at comic relief. You could very easily take him out of the story and nobody would really notice.
FF12 is probably not as bad a game as many people (including myself, at times) have made it out to be, but one thing I think definitely rings true is that it's probably the most forgettable main-title FF game ever released. That's pretty incredible when you consider the unprecedented amount of time, money, and work that obviously went into it, but there's just really not much about it that stands out in your mind if you haven't played it for a while.
1 (on NES, and after the battery had died too so I had to leave my system on)
4 (on DS)
6 (SNES and GBA)
and 7 (with Gamesharking a few things. After a year, I just said "fuck it, I'm finishing this.")
but I've also played 8 (got to the second disc) and
10 (Seymore's second form? The one where he casts zombie on you then life during the same turn. It was a battle on top of a mountain.)
But yeah, I'm seeing that Vaan really doesn't belong in the game. Like, he's there to move the plot forward but he's not the main character, just the one you primarily control.
Oh god I'm not the only one who did this
The Pipe Vault|Twitter|Steam|Backloggery|3DS:1332-7703-1083
To be fair, I finished it during the summer of 1999 on my original NES that I got back on 84/85. And I think I got the game in.... damn, 90? Maybe earlier...
Besides, I remember hearing that those cart batteries only lasted ~5 years. Took me 2 restarts to figure out what happened.
No, I got that far. That's about where I threw the bullshit flag and turned off the playstation.
Very very true. I love to see them making a conscious effort to try something new and not try the same thing twice. The Junction system had the potential to be a really great, fairly strategic way to customize your characters, if they actually balanced the game properly around it; the problem is that they didn't. Oh well, live and learn.
This is also why XIII doesn't bother me that much. They gave us a battle system which some people love and some people hate, but which nonetheless is different from every previous FF game (I happen to think it's pretty cool, once you get the hang of it). They gave us better voice-acting and better-written characters than we've had. And they gave us a world that's rendered in more detail than we've ever seen before -- it's really stunning the way that XIII makes even XII look lo-fi, after XII did the same for X, and X did the same to IX. So they took away our freedom to wander to give us a more tightly-integrated story and a more high-definition world. Does the linearity suck? Yeah. Is XIII the worst FF game ever? No, just not the best. Is S-E going out of business? Nope! And presumably they learned something from XIII, so I fully expect FFXV to come out and combine some of the best stuff from X through XIII with some of the best stuff from I through IX, along with some new shit, and I fully expect it to be, at the very worst, a pretty good game that shows off its many-million-dollar budget.
Yeah, stop trying to like Vaan. It's okay, he's not important. He's just there.
As for X... okay, I agree, Seymour Flux is one of the hardest battles ever the first time it comes at you, but it's totally beatable, and you'll feel like you accomplished something when you did. Not to mention, when you come down the other side of that mountain you're treated to one of the beautiful FMVs that FFX is so good at.
And then you're only a stone's throw (well, a stone's throw and another hard boss battle involving Zombie status) away from getting the airship and spending more time on optional sidequests than you could ever possibly spend on the mandatory part of the game... if you're into that kind of thing. Some of the better sidequests even reveal fairly juicy bits of story (which, on the one hand is a little bit cruel that they're withholding the full story from the casual player, but on the other hand it's nice that the sidequests earn you something besides a bigger sword and the thanks of a digital person.)
I've always felt like FFX did so many things right...and then they went and tied in-game rewards to all those terrible minigames.
The story I have oft heard repeated in this thread is that Basch was the hero until they got to focus testing in Japan and the focus groups (especially women) wigged out over not having a more standard bishie hero. And so Vaan got shoehorned into the game to appease the Japanese I suppose.
Which is an interesting story if true, but that still doesn't explain why the fuck Penelo exists, as she is even more useless than Vaan.
LoL: failboattootoot
"...only mights and maybes."
JAPAAAANNNNNNN!!!
*angry fist shaking*
LoL: failboattootoot
But why didn't they use all that experience and brought out a master peice yet? I mean, DQ9 used the acumlaited experience of previous games; people were bothered by the alchemy taking to long? lets make it instant!
Why can't FF see good choices that they've done before and do them again?
Also, Basch was originally supposed to be Manly McBeardo in near full armor like a FFT character before they shaved him, gave him a perm and gave him that silly red vest with the pot-holder on it.
Unfortunately Japan is all "Lol dude that's so gay" at the thought of men looking like men for some reason.
"...only mights and maybes."
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
"...only mights and maybes."
As does Seifer.
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
I stopped playing there as well I think.
On the snowy mountain right? With all the platforming jumps and shit?
Stopped right there.
I did pick it up about a week later again and played through, but it's weird that I stopped at the same part.
I really wish they would do a rugged, old warrior as a main character. There is so much untapped potential there for the right writer.
Auron was really a step in the right direction. He was my favorite 10 character. I'm probably not the only one.
he was capable, comedic, and had almost no emotional baggage until a brief and sort of crappy scene near the end
he was a pretty good protagonist
golf clap
I also thought it was kinda weird that all the Dalmascans we see (or at least the ones that are members of our party) are all pale and blonde, considering that it's a desert country.
I've heard that originally the characters in FF12 were going to have more depth (Vaan was originally going to be Ashe's cousin or something like that, so they actually had a relationship and a reason for travelling together; Penelo had a brother in the resistance that she was fighting on behalf of; other stuff like that). I'm not sure why all that got cut out. I mean, there's always something going on in FF12, it's just that it's usually boring and not worth paying attention to. Why not fill all those cutscenes with something people might actually care about watching?
Also, Zidane wasn't really "manly", he was just kind of a rogueish womanizer.
Hey, it's my favourite scene to complain about!
This is what totally made me lose all respect for the game although I'm sure every FF game has a point like this.