This is the thread for talking about Square Enix's flagship series, Final Fantasy, originally released in 1987.
For a while they decided they didn't like releasing new games, and kept porting old games to new platforms, Something wonderful has happened, and Square Enix released a new mainline Final Fantasy.
Final Fantasy XV released on November 29th, 2016. The last time a Final Fantasy was released was three years ago, if you count the MMO reboot, six years ago, if you count the MMO's original release, or SEVEN years ago, if you don't count MMOs at all. There's been some sequels and side games released in the interim, but there has been a general dearth of Final Fantasy, and this major installment has been a long time coming for fans of the series.
The game that is Final Fantasy XV was originally conceived as Final Fantasy XIII-Versus. It was supposed to share a common mythos in the Fabula Nova Crystallis, which also contains Final Fantasy XIII and Final Fantasy Type-0 (originally Final Fantasy XIII-Agito).
The original game was conceived as a darker Kingdom Hearts style action-RPG, and was going to be headed by Tetsuya Nomura. It was announced at E3 2006.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6At_bb1PNU
Given that at the time the PS3 hadn't been released, and it is now 2016, the era of the PS4 Pro, it's fair to say that the game fell into development hell for a while.
What I will lovingly call "shenanigans" ensued, and because of the turmoil in the FF series over the past few years, the game that was FF13-Versus was scrapped, and it was rebuilt into Final Fantasy XV.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rbwm-mzm5QA
It got a new director, Hajime Tabata, and we started getting occasional drips of information about the game. As the years kept on, the drips of information turned into a stream, until they finally had a huge release date announcement event called Uncovered: Final Fantasy XV, where we got a flood of new information about the game, the universe, and all the tie in materials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0I7J17nkxM
They also announced the game's release date as September 30th, 2016.
"But wait," you say, "it's well past September 30th, 2016, and I know how dates and time works!"
Well unfortunately, the game needed a bit more polish and optimization, so the game was pushed back instead of releasing a version of the game that potentially would have disappointed fans after their long wait. That wait is now over, and the game is available for purchase.
The most recent trailers (beware spoilers):
A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE
MAIN SERIES
They've made
FIFTEEN (I am so happy to be able to write that) main series games and over fifty spin off titles. Here's what the fans says about them.
I love Final Fantasy because you have to start somewhere.
I love Final Fantasy II because I like hitting myself for stat ups.
I love Final Fantasy III because it allowed me to stop being a hippy and get a job for the first time.
I love Final Fantasy IV because I don't have enough versions of it yet.
I love Final Fantasy V because I can play it for charity.
I hate Final Fantasy VI because I'm a soulless monster without any redeeming qualities.
I love Final Fantasy VII because it's getting remade, naturally.
I love Final Fantasy VIII because I'm a Triple Triad cardshark. There was a fun minigame about saving the world included too.
I love Final Fantasy IX because "Steiner, please, look behind you!"
I love Final Fantasy X because blitzball is rad.
I love Final Fantasy XI because it kept Square Enix in business.
I love Final Fantasy XII because I'm Captain Basch fon Ronsenburg of Dalmascaa.
I love Final Fantasy XIII because I can't get enough Lightning.
I love Final Fantasy XIV because Stormblood is coming!
I love Final Fantasy XV because it exists, and that is no small feat.
SPIN OFFS
Every time profits are down SE makes some more FF games. There are a lot of them, too many to list them all so I'll just continue the theme with the more popular ones.
I love Final Fantasy Tactics because I love grid based movement.
I hate Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles because I have no friends.
I hate Final Fantasy Mystic Quest because it's too easy and I don't like having fun.
I love Final Fantasy X-2 because it really is the ultimate expression of both ATB and the Job system. Also I understand math so Sphere Breaker ain't shit.
I love Dissidia because it's included in its entirety in its sequel.
I love FF XIII-2 because monsters are great at parties.
I love Crisis Core because Zack is an unbeatable hero.
I love Theatrhythm because Square Enix has the best music.
I love Final Fantasy Tactics Advance because just one more turn.
I love Dissidia Duodecim 012 Final Fantasy because you can settle which Final Fantasy is best for all time with your fists.
I love Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2 because more of the same is exactly what you need when the same is fantastic.
I love Final Fantasy XIII Lightning Returns because it was either this or no new games at all.
I love Final Fantasy Dimensions because I love Final Fantasy V.
I hate Final Fantasy Record Keeper because it became a monster unto itself.
I love
Final Fantasy Explorers because Monster Hunter is a good game, right?
I love World of Final Fantasy because I can stack pocket sized Final Fantasy monsters on my head to do battle!
WHICH VERSION IS BEST?
There's a version of almost everything for almost everything these days. However, avoid the PSX version of FF5 unless it's your only option.
THE PRESENT
Square Enix has managed to get their shit together long enough that they've started releasing new content.
FF Type-0: Was Final Fantasy 13 Agito, changed to Final Fantasy Type-0, and came out on the PSP in Japan only. Fans clamored for this one for a long time, and finally the West got a localization... as an HD version for consoles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT-N_MHg6kEUpdate: They also fixed the nausea inducing camera blur, so if that was holding you back, give it another shot!
It came out, and it's pretty sweet. I highly recommend picking it up. It's an Action-RPG with a new and interesting story (and direction) for the Final Fantasy series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4Gz7BislTw
World of Final Fantasy. A new game that hits most of the standard jRPG notes, but with a most excellent presentation. You play as two protagonists who have to collect miniaturized versions of classic Final Fantasy monsters, stack them on your head so you can fight other classic Final Fantasy monsters, and all the while interact with miniaturized classic Final Fantasy heroes in a brand new world. This game is upbeat and lighthearted, but has plenty of content to enjoy.
THE FUTUREhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kznek1uNVsg
I've had a little time to process this, so no more yelling is required, but yes, the long awaited, long asked for remake of Final Fantasy VII has been confirmed. Of all the times Square Enix has asked us to be excited, now would be the opportune moment.
Update: Combat sneak peek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHDoYM3CVK4
Some FF7 remake (FF7r) rumors courtesy of
Professor SnugglesworthConfirmed
-Will not be a 1:1 remake, will have story deviations
-"New story scenario" written by Nojima
-Development started in 2012, in-game assets beyond CG trailer exist
-Will retain some of the classic "humorous" elements; Cloud's dress is in
-Battle system will not be the same
Rumored:
-Will run on Unreal Engine
-CyberConnect assisting with development
-Console exclusivity currently in talks, may never come out on XBox One
-Aiming for T rating
-Next major update this Winter
-Original game will get new translation
Also if you want a quick laugh search Youtube for "FF7 remake reactions." There are some choice ones out there
There is a new Dissidia coming out. It will be available in Japan in arcades for about a year, and then they're planning on porting it to console to tap other markets (such as the West). Expect it maybe in 2017.
(I know it's confusing after all those FF7 videos, but don't let the thumbnail fool you. This is a Dissidia video).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK-3vmgXyokUpdate: Dissidia Arcade is officially being ported to console as Dissidia NT. Expect it some time in 2018. Trailer up:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNbLoxhasRA
Square Enix has yet another mobile game in the pipes, DISSIDIA Final Fantasy Opera Omnia. This one appears to based on the Dissidia universe, and shares some similarities in gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5jA7ONvat0Final Fantasy's current MMO, Final Fantasy XIV
While it's totally kosher to talk about FF11 and FF14 here, keep in mind there is a dedicated
FF14 MMO-specific thread.
Final Fantasy Mobile offerings
Final Fantasy Record Keeper's popularity grew so much that it dominated most of the discussion in the thread. As such it (and all mobile F2P Final Fantasy games) have been given their own threads.
Final Fantasy Record Keeper.
Final Fantasy Brave Exvius.
Mobius Final Fantasy.
KINGDOM HEARTS
Is vaguely related to Final Fantasy, but has its own thread
here.
BRAVELY DEFAULT
Is everything you might want in a Final Fantasy, and you can talk about it
here.
FF5 FOUR JOB FIESTA
Do you have what it takes to play what is quite simply the most fun and addicting alternate game mode of any RPG ever? Do you want to help out sick children by raising money for the greatest charity in the world? Do you want to watch RK sleepily make his way through Neo-Exdeath with quite a sub standard party? If this sounds even remotely interesting well then, do I have a website for you.
The deal is you get four jobs from the normal set of 20+ and you can only use skills from those four. As you gain new job sets one job is randomly assigned to you and each assigned job must be equipped at all times on at least one party member. You get the wind job, you get four of those, you get the water job, your party must be made up at least one from your water job and one from your wind job and so on. There are variations
http://fourjobfiesta.com/
What do you need to start playing?
1. A copy of FF5. PSN version is cheapest and worst. SFC version is pretty cheap but in Japanese, GBA version is best but expensive, iOS version is a lot cheaper than that but has the issues standard with playing a game on iOS (easy screencaps though!)
2. A twitter account. Yeah I hate twitter too but I made some dummy accounts just for this.
3.Then all you do is sign up at the website (with any of the optional run ideas) and you can play from whenever RK beats the game until the end of August!
Where does the charity come in you say? Well, you can either pledge money to change whatever jobs RK is assigned for his inaugural run (1 dollar=1 extra vote for a job!) or you can pledge money for doing various deeds. If you can't donate money you'll notice that you can still earn money from other people's pledges by completing their goals (usually beating the game with a certain class, beating the two optional bosses,etc.) It's just like getting sponsors for a 10k back in school! You play, everyone wins.
Credit to
@xenogears of bore for cannibalizing most of his OPs.
Posts
E: Fun and exciting changes have come and been edited in.
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Hopefully the holiday speeds things up a tad, for those who celebrate.
Yassss
If you have Prime it should be 47.99 on both systems. I'm not console boosting, but I'd feel more comfortable getting that on PS4 than XB1.
Perfectly fine with most of this. But I an wondering about the assertion that Locke is a jerk, because I never really got that vibe myself. He's absolutely not a super great or flawless person by any means, of course; he's obsessed with what happened to Rachel to the point that it colors everything about what he does and how he sees himself. And his attempts to redeem himself through saving people who remind him of her is, while a good thing to do, still come from a rather unhealthy place. As such, the idea of him still having a relationship with Celes, after it's made clear that he never dropped the Rachel thing until he found the Phoenix, is something that is either a "no" or a "this will take some more time to properly establish".
But for his flaws, Locke never really struck me as a bad or malicious person, like Setzer. He's just a guy with a big piece of emotional baggage that he needs to sort out before anything else.
Couldn't agree more, the combat in Dark Souls is boring, not nearly flashy enough.
In fact, I think what it really needs is pizzazz.
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No no, I think it's lacking a wow factor, or a certain something something, perhaps a bit more oomph?
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Things plummeted downhill with the whole bit where Kefka inexplicably convinces Locke and the others that Celes was working for him the whole time.
Then ignoring the disturbing implications of what may have happened when Celes stayed behind so that they could escape, she gives Locke the cold shoulder (which is deserved), but when she decides to talk to him again he gives it back in return (absolutely not deserved).
This might be the fault of the game's narrative waning a bit in the second half, but the two never mend their relationship in a satisfying way after that. When they reunite again in the World of Ruin, he literally greets the group with one line while also inserting how he's found the magical thingy to bring his girlfriend back in the exact same text box. Even the end credits sequence, which would have been the penultimate moment to reconcile the relationship, is Locke berating Celes for going after the bandana she dropped while becoming utterly oblivious to its importance.
The whole dynamic started real strong, hit a low point and never recovered from there, and it ended up making both characters come out worse in the end (Locke being cold and indifferent, Celes being meek and dependent).
Celes and Terra's relationship, meanwhile, became a focal point in the second half and through the end, so yeah. I don't do fan ships much, but I'll endorse that one.
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Locke: Stone cold bitch.
Plus I hear he rips people's lungs out.
Ff6 is a really hard story to tear apart at because it barely fit the whole main plot on the cart. You could make arguments like that both ways easily because there is a lot of filling in the blanks with perceived opinion
Except Celes literally does nothing wrong in any of these scenes.
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Wait, can you qualify this? I can't think of an instance where FF has had flashy and over the top mechanics. I think there have been spell animations that are flashy and over-the-top, but I guess that's not a function of a real-time system that needs to keep flowing? I haven't seen or kept up with the Judgment Demo, but like... I dunno, I KH isn't a good comparison because it is also kind of not over-the-top and flashy.
As someone entering this conversation late, it seems like you're comparing two entirely different mechanical systems and comparing their outputs, which... isn't what you do?
From the platinum demo, I felt the combat was relatively clunky, but I didn't give it a chance to be fair. I could kill the boss at the end, but it wasn't something I felt I connected well with on a mechanic level. I'm hoping, from reports based on Judgment, that the combat is a lot more fluid and intuitive.
3DSFF: 5026-4429-6577
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCOLczG9VhQ
Elevator music for now. Please be patient, the destination is worth the wait.
There's one streamer on PS4 and they've got the expected massive amount of viewers. The outfits and detail on the weapons look insanely sick.
Because typically FF game combat is NOT flashy or over the top, it's extremely straightforward, with maybe an exception being made for FFXIII since it went more dynamic with it's turn based system.
I mean let's take a quick look at the combat in each FF numbered game shall we?
FF1-6: sprite turn based combat. Moves are barely animated, but spell effects are more extravagent
FF7: 3D! still tightly turn based, standard combat is simple attacks or magic spells, summons and rare spells are more extravagent. No team attacks
FF8: Same as FF7 but animation is better, and you have to press R2 when Squall attacks to get more damage.
FF9: Same as above pretty much
FF10: turn based combat is still pretty much the same, attacks are again, very straightforward, but there is a little more flavor now, you can throw blitzballs!
FF11: MMO turnbased combat. You can however use team like attacks with weapon skills!
FF12: Combat is now largely automated, attacks are still turn based, and still very straightforward, no combo attacks
FF13: Still turn based, but the actual combat sequences are much more dynamic and cinematic. Probably the flashiest combat so far, you work with your team to coordinate attacks, but you largely only control one character.
FF14: Combat is very explosive, even basic moves have magic effects associated with them, and you have to weave together combat rotations. Lots of team coordination here, since your party is other players.
FF15: Combat is no longer turn based, you have to actually maneuver in combat to avoid attacks, and to strike your opponent. You can now teleport around the field, and interact with the Z axis. They added in air combos, weapon switching, and team attacks, magic is explosive and interacts with the environment. You can swap your weapons around at will and each plays differently with different combo options. Summons are probably the most over the top they have EVER been.
So historically, main numbered FF games have never been 'flashy' or 'over the top' with their combat, with the exception of FFXIII, an outlier in the series.
And FFXV is far more dynamic and 'flashy' than any of the other ones with it's combat system, largely because this is the first time they've departed from a turn based system in a main numbered series, and allowed you to actually move around the battle in a meaningful way.
Now, if you want to talk cinematics, it's a whole nother ball game, in that regard FF is always flashy and over the top, but FFXV is no slouch there either from what we've seen so far, especially given the extra media we've had access to.
So making a statement of 'It's boring' or 'not flashy enough' is a completely nonsensical statement to make, especially when you are trying to use the history of the franchise to try and back that statement up.
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The combat kicks ass. It is very fluid, and is going to take I think people quite awhile to really feel like they've mastered it (I can't wait to see the combat combo videos, as well as the dumpster fire that will be the DarkSydePhil playthrough).
Most who have played the previous demos (I couldn't get past the toy-box bullshit and didn't play Duscae), most have said the Duscae demo has the most in common with what we have now.
The Final Fantasy brand is good again, right?
It's pretty much been hit after hit for a while now, hasn't it?
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"If nothing else, it's... flashy."
That depends largely on your opinions about FFXIII.
Personally? FFXIII was fine, I loved the characters and the setting, and the combat was fun to watch.
FFXIV however was the REAL game changer. We saw them really embrace the history of the franchise, and capture that nostalgia in a way that not only made it fresh again, but re-invigorated an entire demographic.
Jury is still out on FFXV of course, but initial impressions seem to be pretty positive. I've been in full blackout for quite some time, but played the two initial demos and was on board.
Then of course, they are making FF7:Remake. Which wins in my book just because it's happening, regardless of what it ends up being.
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But somewhere along the way they chickened out, even though it still expressively feels like a story of two estranged newlyweds trying to clear up their inner demons while their kid(s) are caught in the middle.
You need only look at the sequels to FFXIII and (ugh.............) FFX-2 as proof that somebody at Square doesn't believe in characters developing past marriage.
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That's JRPGs, and most Japanese pop stories to be honest. It's the same in Manga, Anime, etc. Love interests very rarely actually get to marriage. It does happen, and there are some cool stories about it, but it is not the norm.
If anything it's just Square conforming to the standard on this stuff. I'd really love for more matured relationships to exist in these games though. Sadly I think the reason has largely to do with self insertion of the player into the story.
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Stuff like that makes me wonder what a full remake with a full script rewrite and expansion would be like.
Anyway, yeah, I'd be all for a relationship development between Celes and Terra. You could even have it naturally flow from Celes and Locke realizing that what they had was coming from some ultimately unhealthy places (obsession with Rachel's shadow and the hope Locke's survival represented, respectively) and looking to other places.
Hell, the story ends up being about love in all its forms, so it would be super on-message as well.
There are similarities between the way Locke and Celes' relationship and Cloud and Tifa's relationship develop over the course of their respective games (both experience a separation due to betrayal, both literally and metaphorically, and both try to awkwardly patch things up afterwards), except the former was lacking that extra "talking under the airship" moment to help give a better sense of closure.
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I'm still salty over the strategy guides that lied about the "super rare sixth dream" you could have with Shadow.
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Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
Did it say how to save general Leo too?
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And then Chrono Trigger DS
https://youtube.com/watch?v=1ytCEuuW2_A
Man, AC was cool. Especially Complete.
Two undevisive, numbered entries in a row. Which depending on how you believe an MMO fits within that paradigm means either XV or XVI is when you could say it's 'good' again.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OLcAGbXhWIVcl5IziVpG0eKFJS3xi_Sac9kYMkRFvD8/edit?usp=sharing
One thing that Dark Souls combat had in spades was weight. I didn't really get a sense of weight from any of the gameplay videos I saw so far. I love weight in action games because it keeps the veil down between me and the dice rolling system behind the curtain. My suspicion is that XV will have long, RPG-style fights with 0 weight in the actions which makes me feel like I'm playing a menu-driven RPG with the world's worst interface.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1OLcAGbXhWIVcl5IziVpG0eKFJS3xi_Sac9kYMkRFvD8/edit?usp=sharing
I would assume it's still the PC port? Don't know about mods though.