But that's an entirely different issue with XV. Many of the best upgrades happen so late into the game that they're nearly worthless. Like the super bright headlights for the car that makes it pretty safe to drive at night. By the time you get those you aren't doing a lot of night driving anyway because you are on the path to beating the game at that point.
I see this complaint a lot in many games, and I don’t generally think it’s valid: upgrades that let you bypass encounters you’ve outgrown are simply convenience item saving the player time spent on what would be trivial or tedious gameplay. If you got them while those encounters were still a factor then the item puts an end to that threat. I mean, it’s useful and more impactful that way but just a design decision like any other: “do we want night encounters to be scary until the player outlevels them or not?”
Kh3 is proof they can do very good action combat, and they’re both on the same engine.
When I think of FF combat I'm expecting a party of characters working together, each character fulfilling a traditional role or two (dps, heal, buffing, tanking, etc).
Action combat as I've always seen it does two things I don't want in FF:
1) The player controlled character is always doing all the work.
2) The player controlled character is usually doing all the damage. You can't be the tank, or healer, or anything else.
I didn't play KH3, maybe it was better in that regard? Are Donald and Goofy important to fights or is it just the Sora show?
In other words, I'd like to see an action combat system that allows the player character to be a healer, tank, or even ranged dps, and having the AI characters actually do the other jobs competently.
It was worse in FFXIII. The Player-Controlled character needed to be tank-ish, or at least not particularly squishy, because if that one character died it was "gg"
Worst design decision in the game
I'm running into that with Persona 5 at the moment and I hate it. Especially when there's a non-zero chance that I'll run into some random encounter than one-shots me and causes me to lose 45-90 minutes of progress just because in-dungeon save rooms are few and far between.
I decided to give Persona 5 a spin recently and I'm absolutely flummoxed as to how it has been reviewed so well. The characters are incredibly trite, it's harder to get a more no-stakes level of conflict than "fucking around with highschool drama", the level design is twenty years out of date, and the gameplay is basically a straight rip-off of Pokemon (which I do not at all consider a good thing, because the Pokemon combat system is way too bland to be entertaining). About the only thing I can give an actual thumbs-up to is the upbeat music and some of the more dynamic visual design. And apparently the NG+ is a draw for the game and I'm just like... fucking why?
I like FF8 and will readily acknowledge it's skill/combat system is probably the worst of the series, but at least I can skip 99% of the tedious gameplay instead of the game reveling in the grind as some kind of insane feature. That alone would make me want to play the game a hundred times more than Persona 5.
Okay, I need to comment about this because you are just stating wrong things about Persona 5 in order to explain your dislike of the game. Mind you, if you do not like it, for whatever reason, that's okay. But you are incorrectly portraying several aspects of Persona 5 that I feel should be addressed. (I also apologise that this is going off topic, I will leave it be here.)
No-stakes high school drama: I am not sure how you came to this conclusion. Several of the story arcs (spoilered in case anyone comes here not expecting them)
The first act is about a high school sports coach who sexually abuses his female players. There are no vagaries here: a girl commits suicide after being raped by him. A later act is about a drug dealer who blackmails students after tricking them into acting as drug mules. A later character arc involves a girl who is grappling with depression so deep after seeing her mother die in front of her that she has become a shut-in.
The point is that none of these stories say "no-stakes high school drama" to me with the exception that they happen to high school students. Sure, there are some stupid tropey events that happen in the downtime between main plots, but they are not the focus.
The combat is basically Pokemon: The only way I can see this comparison being remotely fair is that the combat is turn based and the main character can switch Personas. But... turn-based combat is just a facet of most JRPGs. The rest of the party is also locked to their Persona meaning you need to plan your roster to fill weaknesses as the game goes on. You fight with up to 4 characters as the game goes on and there is the whole weakness exploitation for extra turn mechanic to the combat.
Do you mean that it's like Pokemon because you can convince enemy Personas to join you? This has been a mechanic of several Shin Megami Tensei games and offshoots for longer than Pokemon has existed as a franchise.
Characters being trite: This is a matter of opinion. I liked the cast of Persona 5, but I can understand why others don't.
All things considered, the XV plat was very easy. It didn't really require going that far out of your way to do it. You have to beat the Adamantoise, which is the worst fight I had the displeasure of participating in in that game. It really highlights how bad and finicky the targeting, warp strike, companion AI and all the other combat issues are. The game just can't handle combat at that grand of scale. But that's getting off topic. On the topic of the plat, I never felt like it was a huge burden to pickup the trophies as I was just playing the game.
One of the trophies is to collect all the upgrades for the car, which is something I wanted to do anyway. I wanted a fully tricked out car. In hindsight, having a fully tricked out car is pretty useless, but I didn't know that as I was doing it.
But that's an entirely different issue with XV. Many of the best upgrades happen so late into the game that they're nearly worthless. Like the super bright headlights for the car that makes it pretty safe to drive at night. By the time you get those you aren't doing a lot of night driving anyway because you are on the path to beating the game at that point.
The Adamantoise fight is a great advertisement for returning to ATB combat. The layer of abstraction you get from ATB lets the combat operate at scale without breaking.
For example, compare Adamantoise to the weapon fights in FF7. You can understand what's going in those battles because it can use the exact same positioning and camera every other fight does.
Now imagine the weapon fights using action combat....they are suddenly going to have a lot of the same issues as Adamantoise.
All things considered, the XV plat was very easy. It didn't really require going that far out of your way to do it. You have to beat the Adamantoise, which is the worst fight I had the displeasure of participating in in that game. It really highlights how bad and finicky the targeting, warp strike, companion AI and all the other combat issues are. The game just can't handle combat at that grand of scale. But that's getting off topic. On the topic of the plat, I never felt like it was a huge burden to pickup the trophies as I was just playing the game.
One of the trophies is to collect all the upgrades for the car, which is something I wanted to do anyway. I wanted a fully tricked out car. In hindsight, having a fully tricked out car is pretty useless, but I didn't know that as I was doing it.
But that's an entirely different issue with XV. Many of the best upgrades happen so late into the game that they're nearly worthless. Like the super bright headlights for the car that makes it pretty safe to drive at night. By the time you get those you aren't doing a lot of night driving anyway because you are on the path to beating the game at that point.
The Adamantoise fight is a great advertisement for returning to ATB combat. The layer of abstraction you get from ATB lets the combat operate at scale without breaking.
For example, compare Adamantoise to the weapon fights in FF7. You can understand what's going in those battles because it can use the exact same positioning and camera every other fight does.
Now imagine the weapon fights using action combat....they are suddenly going to have a lot of the same issues as Adamantoise.
I sure to look forward to attacking LARGE GREEN WALL for an hour straight. Up next, LARGE RED WALL.
+1
Sirialisof the Halite Throne.Registered Userregular
edited February 2019
There is already the Omega Weapon from the Royal Pack if you want something a little more similar to FFVII’s Weapons than the Adamantoise
It was pretty tedious really, basically it has 3 different oneshot attacks (one can hit the entire team) its hitbox is really inconsistent to hit, only those lifedrain swords seem to do any damage to it, it can go immune to all damage for a while and it literally takes up to an hour and a half to kill at level 101.
The reward for killing it seemed to only be an item called “Omega Badge” that cant be used for anything except its a proof that you killed it, at least I dont remember getting anything else.
I love how Sephiroth destroyed the solar system like 3 times during our final fight to hit me for like 4000 damage.
Xenosaga 2 had a great moment in it where the enemy mech uses a super move that features an animation blowing a hole in the environment/ship you are currently on. When you leave combat, there is now a gaping hole through the ship where the move was used. It was a nice touch.
Edit: With regards to the earlier comment on the FFXIV lorebooks, about 95% of the content contained in those is communicated in-game in some fashion or another. They are more organized compilations than background material the player never experiences. Sometimes they give previews of information that gets revealed in game after the book comes up, but it is pretty rare that major plot relevant things are only communicated in the lorebooks. This isn't World of Warcraft.
There is already the Omega Weapon from the Royal Pack if you want something a little more similar to FFVII’s Weapons than the Adamantoise
It was pretty tedious really, basically it has 3 different oneshot attacks (one can hit the entire team) its hitbox is really inconsistent to hit, only those lifedrain swords seem to do any damage to it, it can go immune to all damage for a while and it literally takes up to an hour and a half to kill at level 101.
The reward for killing it seemed to only be an item called “Omega Badge” that cant be used for anything except its a proof that you killed it, at least I dont remember getting anything else.
That sounds horrific, and not like the weapon fights at all even just considering time and rewards.
I did a quick YouTube search for"ff7 weapon battles" and the first page is filled with videos of weapon fights that are < 20 minutes.
And when you do kill the weapons they give you great rewards and not just a "I killed it" badge.
There is already the Omega Weapon from the Royal Pack if you want something a little more similar to FFVII’s Weapons than the Adamantoise
It was pretty tedious really, basically it has 3 different oneshot attacks (one can hit the entire team) its hitbox is really inconsistent to hit, only those lifedrain swords seem to do any damage to it, it can go immune to all damage for a while and it literally takes up to an hour and a half to kill at level 101.
The reward for killing it seemed to only be an item called “Omega Badge” that cant be used for anything except its a proof that you killed it, at least I dont remember getting anything else.
That sounds horrific, and not like the weapon fights at all even just considering time and rewards.
I did a quick YouTube search for"ff7 weapon battles" and the first page is filled with videos of weapon fights that are < 20 minutes.
And when you do kill the weapons they give you great rewards and not just a "I killed it" badge.
by the time you've killed any weapon in FF7 the rewards are meaningless.
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
There is already the Omega Weapon from the Royal Pack if you want something a little more similar to FFVII’s Weapons than the Adamantoise
It was pretty tedious really, basically it has 3 different oneshot attacks (one can hit the entire team) its hitbox is really inconsistent to hit, only those lifedrain swords seem to do any damage to it, it can go immune to all damage for a while and it literally takes up to an hour and a half to kill at level 101.
The reward for killing it seemed to only be an item called “Omega Badge” that cant be used for anything except its a proof that you killed it, at least I dont remember getting anything else.
That sounds horrific, and not like the weapon fights at all even just considering time and rewards.
I did a quick YouTube search for"ff7 weapon battles" and the first page is filled with videos of weapon fights that are < 20 minutes.
And when you do kill the weapons they give you great rewards and not just a "I killed it" badge.
by the time you've killed any weapon in FF7 the rewards are meaningless.
I think some of the Star Ocean games have a good feature where if you do certain side content it unlocks a much harder version of the final boss(es). That could be a fun compromise. I think a few of the Tales games do something similar.
I mean, FF5's Omega just gives you a badge. I mean, I think it's better than getting the super kick ass Master Sword and no place to use it. I loved using my Lionheart/Ultima Weapons/Caladbolgs against super bosses.
Shinryu’s reward (the Ragnarok Sword) is a better reward in the later versions of FFV, where you still have the postgame bonus dungeon to contend with.
Or you could cheese Shinryu at lower levels with Berserk and Guard+Cover, so as to have the sword at a point where it’s actually useful for the final boss.
Then again, with Chemist and Bard, “low level” is a pretty fluid term in FFV.
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
edited February 2019
Ideally for me the super bosses are all giving some kind of gear/reward but the biggest baddest super boss is something you can fight after you get the best weapons. That way you have the biggest boss to use them against (that maybe gives some super dumb accessory) and then you can also use them for the final dungeon along with your broken ass accessory if you please.
This is also why I don't mind them being tied to mini-game style challenges or arena style challenges. That way you can acquire them from some skill related thing without having them be from the hardest fight in the game. You have to put them behind some challenge so if it's not the hardest fight it might as well be some other challenge.
And never ever ever ever lock any content behind beating the end boss. I've said it a million times but lordy is that some silly ass shit right there that serves no actual purpose.
You know I've never done the new FF5 dungeon. How is it? Thinking about the extra dungeons they've added over the years I'd rank them:
FF6 - Dragon's Den
FF1 - Soul of Chaos
FF2 - Soul of Rebirth
FF4 - Lunar Ruins
I've yet to try FF5 now that I think about it.
It’s a mixed bag. I enjoy a bonus dungeon that offers a challenge (the combat kind of assumes you know your stuff with regard to strong job combos), but the design of the dungeon itself can be questionable at times. More than once, an NPC will task you with going to a remote part of the dungeon to accomplish a task before returning to him (once under a time limit). The most egregious example being the bit where you finally reach the bottom floor of the dungeon, only for the NPC there to open a cage back all the way back at the top floor, and task you with killing the boss he just released before he’ll open the chambers containing the final 3 bonus bosses. Meaning you need to climb the dungeon and descend it again to get where you’re going (thank god for the Oracle’s ability to reduce encounter rate)
I still had a good time; the fights are neat, and you do get a proper (if obsolete) reward for clearing it out, but there are some fairly bad design choices at points. All in all, I prefer the Dragon’s Den to the Sealed Temple. Not enough to say that I hate the Temple, but I’d be remiss to not mention those NPC quests.
There is really no solution to the superboss loot paradox.
-Give no reward because it's very likely the last thing a player will do: "I beat the hardest boss in the game and didn't get shit, screw you"
-Give any reward: "What the hell am I going to use this on, I just did everything in the game, screw you".
I take it back a bit. About the only "solution" is if the game has a NG+ feature that lets you take said reward and have fun with the entire game.
Otherwise... you kinda just have to pick your poison here.
I mean curb stomping the final dungeon and final boss with broken characters is a place to use that stuff.
And there are plenty of folks who actively enjoy that tradition.
Yet another reason why not locking that stuff behind beating the game is important! There is a group of people for which this is not a paradox and there is a perfectly good answer. If for the other folks it's always a paradox then why not just go with the method that actually makes a group of people happy?
The extra dungeons (such as they were) for Chrono Trigger for the better-than-end-game gear was easy, and fun to get and go back and trounce Lavos with. It had the benefit of being a game that was given bonus content some 15 years after the original game came out, so most people who have already played Chrono Trigger were probably happy to get some new stuff.
I don't mind bonus content being unlocked after you beat the game. Dragon Quests have a knack for doing this. What was the best gear at "the end" is now easily replaced or gets an upgrade if it was a story-mandatory end game weapon, for example. That usually meant that there was a super-boss at the end of the secret dungeon, but rarely were they ever too challenging.
What doesn't make much sense to me is when a game wants you to beat the super boss multiple times, with better times, or you need to hit milestone kill numbers to get a new piece of a macguffin.
There is really no solution to the superboss loot paradox.
-Give no reward because it's very likely the last thing a player will do: "I beat the hardest boss in the game and didn't get shit, screw you"
-Give any reward: "What the hell am I going to use this on, I just did everything in the game, screw you".
I take it back a bit. About the only "solution" is if the game has a NG+ feature that lets you take said reward and have fun with the entire game.
Otherwise... you kinda just have to pick your poison here.
I mean curb stomping the final dungeon and final boss with broken characters is a place to use that stuff.
And there are plenty of folks who actively enjoy that tradition.
Yet another reason why not locking that stuff behind beating the game is important! There is a group of people for which this is not a paradox and there is a perfectly good answer. If for the other folks it's always a paradox then why not just go with the method that actually makes a group of people happy?
I actually did all the crazy skill point exploit/endgame weapon minigame/etc stuff in FFX, it was pretty fun one turning the final boss.
0
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
There is really no solution to the superboss loot paradox.
-Give no reward because it's very likely the last thing a player will do: "I beat the hardest boss in the game and didn't get shit, screw you"
-Give any reward: "What the hell am I going to use this on, I just did everything in the game, screw you".
I take it back a bit. About the only "solution" is if the game has a NG+ feature that lets you take said reward and have fun with the entire game.
Otherwise... you kinda just have to pick your poison here.
I mean curb stomping the final dungeon and final boss with broken characters is a place to use that stuff.
And there are plenty of folks who actively enjoy that tradition.
Yet another reason why not locking that stuff behind beating the game is important! There is a group of people for which this is not a paradox and there is a perfectly good answer. If for the other folks it's always a paradox then why not just go with the method that actually makes a group of people happy?
I actually did all the crazy skill point exploit/endgame weapon minigame/etc stuff in FFX, it was pretty fun one turning the final boss.
Yea I LOVED doing all the side stuff in FFX. Getting the special summons, all the super weapons for my characters and stuff.
There is really no solution to the superboss loot paradox.
-Give no reward because it's very likely the last thing a player will do: "I beat the hardest boss in the game and didn't get shit, screw you"
-Give any reward: "What the hell am I going to use this on, I just did everything in the game, screw you".
I take it back a bit. About the only "solution" is if the game has a NG+ feature that lets you take said reward and have fun with the entire game.
Otherwise... you kinda just have to pick your poison here.
I mean curb stomping the final dungeon and final boss with broken characters is a place to use that stuff.
And there are plenty of folks who actively enjoy that tradition.
Yet another reason why not locking that stuff behind beating the game is important! There is a group of people for which this is not a paradox and there is a perfectly good answer. If for the other folks it's always a paradox then why not just go with the method that actually makes a group of people happy?
I actually did all the crazy skill point exploit/endgame weapon minigame/etc stuff in FFX, it was pretty fun one turning the final boss.
Yea I LOVED doing all the side stuff in FFX. Getting the special summons, all the super weapons for my characters and stuff.
And then just destroying the final encounter.
That's honestly what I want from an FF game.
See I hate that because I want the final boss to be a challenge, and if I can sorta wander off and do all the super stuff beforehand, I'll show up to him with god weapons and squash him and that's boring as fuck. If the game has 0 challenge, then I'm way less likely to play it.
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
I'm a big fan of cosmetic rewards for super bosses. Like, sure, give me a cool looking sword but also maybe a fun new costume for my characters. Add new visual effects to a spell. Give me unlockable variant animations for attacks. Unlock a new flashier version of limit bursts.
The Tales series has always been pretty good about giving nice cosmetic rewards for long side-quests and such, would be really nice to see that in FF outside of FFXIV
0
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
There is really no solution to the superboss loot paradox.
-Give no reward because it's very likely the last thing a player will do: "I beat the hardest boss in the game and didn't get shit, screw you"
-Give any reward: "What the hell am I going to use this on, I just did everything in the game, screw you".
I take it back a bit. About the only "solution" is if the game has a NG+ feature that lets you take said reward and have fun with the entire game.
Otherwise... you kinda just have to pick your poison here.
I mean curb stomping the final dungeon and final boss with broken characters is a place to use that stuff.
And there are plenty of folks who actively enjoy that tradition.
Yet another reason why not locking that stuff behind beating the game is important! There is a group of people for which this is not a paradox and there is a perfectly good answer. If for the other folks it's always a paradox then why not just go with the method that actually makes a group of people happy?
I actually did all the crazy skill point exploit/endgame weapon minigame/etc stuff in FFX, it was pretty fun one turning the final boss.
Yea I LOVED doing all the side stuff in FFX. Getting the special summons, all the super weapons for my characters and stuff.
And then just destroying the final encounter.
That's honestly what I want from an FF game.
See I hate that because I want the final boss to be a challenge, and if I can sorta wander off and do all the super stuff beforehand, I'll show up to him with god weapons and squash him and that's boring as fuck. If the game has 0 challenge, then I'm way less likely to play it.
Yea that's totally understandable. But that's why all that stuff is optional. And you can do it whenever you want. If you don't want to be broken before the end boss you don't have to be. If you just want to get to do that content but also want to experience the end content without it you can do that very thing without issue.
And you can't really design a last boss around getting optional stuff because than that stuff is no longer optional.
Especially when getting some of that optional stuff is frustrating and infuriating in a way that the end game boss couldn't hope to be.
Sorry, I know I keep bringing up the "less than zero" shitty Chocobo race. It's just I really liked Chocobo racing in VII before X. Many of the other ultimate weapons are no where near as frustrating.
Especially when getting some of that optional stuff is frustrating and infuriating in a way that the end game boss couldn't hope to be.
Sorry, I know I keep bringing up the "less than zero" shitty Chocobo race. It's just I really liked Chocobo racing in VII before X. Many of the other ultimate weapons are no where near as frustrating.
Oh, it's an awful minigame. The butterflies in the forest are just as bad, I think. Also the lightning strikes. ...I think that's about it for "this is so utterly stupid" though. Blitzball is merely time consuming.
XIV's chocobo racing is better than VII's though (the rewards aren't as good as getting that gold chocobo to grab KotR though).
Bliztball is just awkward, complex, and kind of tedious. At least it's a game.
X's excuse for Chocobo Racing is like Flappy Bird from hell.
I enjoy the little bit of Chocobo Racing I've done in XV, which is more elaborate than in VII, but I never tried it in XIV (what I've seen of the game didn't include that).
I never understood why people hated the chocobo racing in X. I got less than 0 on my first try. It can't be that hard.
Cue some years later: I tried to redo it on another play through and almost broke a controller in half. Weirdly I found the butterflies much easier that time.
Bliztball is just awkward, complex, and kind of tedious. At least it's a game.
X's excuse for Chocobo Racing is like Flappy Bird from hell.
I enjoy the little bit of Chocobo Racing I've done in XV, which is more elaborate than in VII, but I never tried it in XIV (what I've seen of the game didn't include that).
Not sure offhand when you played, it's available reasonably early but you have to know where it is (more specifically, how to unlock the gold saucer). Not actually sure how many people do much with it since it's not been touched in ages.
Bliztball is just awkward, complex, and kind of tedious. At least it's a game.
X's excuse for Chocobo Racing is like Flappy Bird from hell.
I enjoy the little bit of Chocobo Racing I've done in XV, which is more elaborate than in VII, but I never tried it in XIV (what I've seen of the game didn't include that).
Not sure offhand when you played, it's available reasonably early but you have to know where it is (more specifically, how to unlock the gold saucer). Not actually sure how many people do much with it since it's not been touched in ages.
It was a case of watching other people play the game on multiple occasions (if the intent of showing me the story beats). I'm not a subscriber myself.
Bliztball is just awkward, complex, and kind of tedious. At least it's a game.
X's excuse for Chocobo Racing is like Flappy Bird from hell.
I enjoy the little bit of Chocobo Racing I've done in XV, which is more elaborate than in VII, but I never tried it in XIV (what I've seen of the game didn't include that).
Not sure offhand when you played, it's available reasonably early but you have to know where it is (more specifically, how to unlock the gold saucer). Not actually sure how many people do much with it since it's not been touched in ages.
It was a case of watching other people play the game on multiple occasions (if the intent of showing me the story beats). I'm not a subscriber myself.
Ah, yeah, there's no story or anything with it, and it doesn't contribute to progression in any way.
The main difference is that you have active control over the chocobo during the race instead of just watching it, and can breed/teach active or passive skills for races.
Bliztball is just awkward, complex, and kind of tedious. At least it's a game.
X's excuse for Chocobo Racing is like Flappy Bird from hell.
I enjoy the little bit of Chocobo Racing I've done in XV, which is more elaborate than in VII, but I never tried it in XIV (what I've seen of the game didn't include that).
Not sure offhand when you played, it's available reasonably early but you have to know where it is (more specifically, how to unlock the gold saucer). Not actually sure how many people do much with it since it's not been touched in ages.
It was a case of watching other people play the game on multiple occasions (if the intent of showing me the story beats). I'm not a subscriber myself.
Ah, yeah, there's no story or anything with it, and it doesn't contribute to progression in any way.
The main difference is that you have active control over the chocobo during the race instead of just watching it, and can breed/teach active or passive skills for races.
I got that impression of that from what I've heard--in XV and VII, after all, you are the rider and not some unseen manager type (though I have not gotten to the Chocobo breeding system in XV).
In VII, the stats were pretty simplistic--just speed and stamina, as far as I remember, on top of the color.
Especially when getting some of that optional stuff is frustrating and infuriating in a way that the end game boss couldn't hope to be.
Sorry, I know I keep bringing up the "less than zero" shitty Chocobo race. It's just I really liked Chocobo racing in VII before X. Many of the other ultimate weapons are no where near as frustrating.
Oh, it's an awful minigame. The butterflies in the forest are just as bad, I think. Also the lightning strikes. ...I think that's about it for "this is so utterly stupid" though. Blitzball is merely time consuming.
XIV's chocobo racing is better than VII's though (the rewards aren't as good as getting that gold chocobo to grab KotR though).
I think I got lightning strikes on the second or third try. The hard part is entering a zenlike state where you aren’t counting or thinking about how many are left. I think I had more patience for that kind of thing back then.
I frequently listen to different FF playlists at work. The Decisive Battle just came on and now I have an overwhelming desire to play through VI again. Then the Besaid theme came on and now I really want to play X again. Except I'm already halfway through a playthrough of XII Zodiac Age.
I guess my point is that time is indeed the enemy.
Posts
I see this complaint a lot in many games, and I don’t generally think it’s valid: upgrades that let you bypass encounters you’ve outgrown are simply convenience item saving the player time spent on what would be trivial or tedious gameplay. If you got them while those encounters were still a factor then the item puts an end to that threat. I mean, it’s useful and more impactful that way but just a design decision like any other: “do we want night encounters to be scary until the player outlevels them or not?”
Okay, I need to comment about this because you are just stating wrong things about Persona 5 in order to explain your dislike of the game. Mind you, if you do not like it, for whatever reason, that's okay. But you are incorrectly portraying several aspects of Persona 5 that I feel should be addressed. (I also apologise that this is going off topic, I will leave it be here.)
No-stakes high school drama: I am not sure how you came to this conclusion. Several of the story arcs (spoilered in case anyone comes here not expecting them)
The combat is basically Pokemon: The only way I can see this comparison being remotely fair is that the combat is turn based and the main character can switch Personas. But... turn-based combat is just a facet of most JRPGs. The rest of the party is also locked to their Persona meaning you need to plan your roster to fill weaknesses as the game goes on. You fight with up to 4 characters as the game goes on and there is the whole weakness exploitation for extra turn mechanic to the combat.
Do you mean that it's like Pokemon because you can convince enemy Personas to join you? This has been a mechanic of several Shin Megami Tensei games and offshoots for longer than Pokemon has existed as a franchise.
Characters being trite: This is a matter of opinion. I liked the cast of Persona 5, but I can understand why others don't.
3DS FC: 2234-7230-2712
Battle.net: Kriese#1709
The Adamantoise fight is a great advertisement for returning to ATB combat. The layer of abstraction you get from ATB lets the combat operate at scale without breaking.
For example, compare Adamantoise to the weapon fights in FF7. You can understand what's going in those battles because it can use the exact same positioning and camera every other fight does.
Now imagine the weapon fights using action combat....they are suddenly going to have a lot of the same issues as Adamantoise.
I sure to look forward to attacking LARGE GREEN WALL for an hour straight. Up next, LARGE RED WALL.
It was pretty tedious really, basically it has 3 different oneshot attacks (one can hit the entire team) its hitbox is really inconsistent to hit, only those lifedrain swords seem to do any damage to it, it can go immune to all damage for a while and it literally takes up to an hour and a half to kill at level 101.
The reward for killing it seemed to only be an item called “Omega Badge” that cant be used for anything except its a proof that you killed it, at least I dont remember getting anything else.
Ladd, Lavian, and Alicia get to become gods of might, magic, or a complete Null whole destroys magic users.
Boko gets to support them in a very tasty way. (Yes I'm the person that breeds monsters and then poaches them for the loot).
Xenosaga 2 had a great moment in it where the enemy mech uses a super move that features an animation blowing a hole in the environment/ship you are currently on. When you leave combat, there is now a gaping hole through the ship where the move was used. It was a nice touch.
Edit: With regards to the earlier comment on the FFXIV lorebooks, about 95% of the content contained in those is communicated in-game in some fashion or another. They are more organized compilations than background material the player never experiences. Sometimes they give previews of information that gets revealed in game after the book comes up, but it is pretty rare that major plot relevant things are only communicated in the lorebooks. This isn't World of Warcraft.
That sounds horrific, and not like the weapon fights at all even just considering time and rewards.
I did a quick YouTube search for"ff7 weapon battles" and the first page is filled with videos of weapon fights that are < 20 minutes.
And when you do kill the weapons they give you great rewards and not just a "I killed it" badge.
by the time you've killed any weapon in FF7 the rewards are meaningless.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
I think some of the Star Ocean games have a good feature where if you do certain side content it unlocks a much harder version of the final boss(es). That could be a fun compromise. I think a few of the Tales games do something similar.
Or you could cheese Shinryu at lower levels with Berserk and Guard+Cover, so as to have the sword at a point where it’s actually useful for the final boss.
Then again, with Chemist and Bard, “low level” is a pretty fluid term in FFV.
FF6 - Dragon's Den
FF1 - Soul of Chaos
FF2 - Soul of Rebirth
FF4 - Lunar Ruins
I've yet to try FF5 now that I think about it.
This is also why I don't mind them being tied to mini-game style challenges or arena style challenges. That way you can acquire them from some skill related thing without having them be from the hardest fight in the game. You have to put them behind some challenge so if it's not the hardest fight it might as well be some other challenge.
And never ever ever ever lock any content behind beating the end boss. I've said it a million times but lordy is that some silly ass shit right there that serves no actual purpose.
-Give no reward because it's very likely the last thing a player will do: "I beat the hardest boss in the game and didn't get shit, screw you"
-Give any reward: "What the hell am I going to use this on, I just did everything in the game, screw you".
I take it back a bit. About the only "solution" is if the game has a NG+ feature that lets you take said reward and have fun with the entire game.
Otherwise... you kinda just have to pick your poison here.
It’s a mixed bag. I enjoy a bonus dungeon that offers a challenge (the combat kind of assumes you know your stuff with regard to strong job combos), but the design of the dungeon itself can be questionable at times. More than once, an NPC will task you with going to a remote part of the dungeon to accomplish a task before returning to him (once under a time limit). The most egregious example being the bit where you finally reach the bottom floor of the dungeon, only for the NPC there to open a cage back all the way back at the top floor, and task you with killing the boss he just released before he’ll open the chambers containing the final 3 bonus bosses. Meaning you need to climb the dungeon and descend it again to get where you’re going (thank god for the Oracle’s ability to reduce encounter rate)
I still had a good time; the fights are neat, and you do get a proper (if obsolete) reward for clearing it out, but there are some fairly bad design choices at points. All in all, I prefer the Dragon’s Den to the Sealed Temple. Not enough to say that I hate the Temple, but I’d be remiss to not mention those NPC quests.
I mean curb stomping the final dungeon and final boss with broken characters is a place to use that stuff.
And there are plenty of folks who actively enjoy that tradition.
Yet another reason why not locking that stuff behind beating the game is important! There is a group of people for which this is not a paradox and there is a perfectly good answer. If for the other folks it's always a paradox then why not just go with the method that actually makes a group of people happy?
I don't mind bonus content being unlocked after you beat the game. Dragon Quests have a knack for doing this. What was the best gear at "the end" is now easily replaced or gets an upgrade if it was a story-mandatory end game weapon, for example. That usually meant that there was a super-boss at the end of the secret dungeon, but rarely were they ever too challenging.
What doesn't make much sense to me is when a game wants you to beat the super boss multiple times, with better times, or you need to hit milestone kill numbers to get a new piece of a macguffin.
Stupid Dragon Quest 8.
Steam: TheArcadeBear
Steam: TheArcadeBear
FFV really probably had my favorite system, I do like having some customization options even if it makes the characters a bit more samey.
I actually did all the crazy skill point exploit/endgame weapon minigame/etc stuff in FFX, it was pretty fun one turning the final boss.
Yea I LOVED doing all the side stuff in FFX. Getting the special summons, all the super weapons for my characters and stuff.
And then just destroying the final encounter.
That's honestly what I want from an FF game.
See I hate that because I want the final boss to be a challenge, and if I can sorta wander off and do all the super stuff beforehand, I'll show up to him with god weapons and squash him and that's boring as fuck. If the game has 0 challenge, then I'm way less likely to play it.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
The Tales series has always been pretty good about giving nice cosmetic rewards for long side-quests and such, would be really nice to see that in FF outside of FFXIV
Yea that's totally understandable. But that's why all that stuff is optional. And you can do it whenever you want. If you don't want to be broken before the end boss you don't have to be. If you just want to get to do that content but also want to experience the end content without it you can do that very thing without issue.
And you can't really design a last boss around getting optional stuff because than that stuff is no longer optional.
Sorry, I know I keep bringing up the "less than zero" shitty Chocobo race. It's just I really liked Chocobo racing in VII before X. Many of the other ultimate weapons are no where near as frustrating.
Oh, it's an awful minigame. The butterflies in the forest are just as bad, I think. Also the lightning strikes. ...I think that's about it for "this is so utterly stupid" though. Blitzball is merely time consuming.
XIV's chocobo racing is better than VII's though (the rewards aren't as good as getting that gold chocobo to grab KotR though).
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
X's excuse for Chocobo Racing is like Flappy Bird from hell.
I enjoy the little bit of Chocobo Racing I've done in XV, which is more elaborate than in VII, but I never tried it in XIV (what I've seen of the game didn't include that).
Cue some years later: I tried to redo it on another play through and almost broke a controller in half. Weirdly I found the butterflies much easier that time.
Not sure offhand when you played, it's available reasonably early but you have to know where it is (more specifically, how to unlock the gold saucer). Not actually sure how many people do much with it since it's not been touched in ages.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
It was a case of watching other people play the game on multiple occasions (if the intent of showing me the story beats). I'm not a subscriber myself.
Ah, yeah, there's no story or anything with it, and it doesn't contribute to progression in any way.
The main difference is that you have active control over the chocobo during the race instead of just watching it, and can breed/teach active or passive skills for races.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
I got that impression of that from what I've heard--in XV and VII, after all, you are the rider and not some unseen manager type (though I have not gotten to the Chocobo breeding system in XV).
In VII, the stats were pretty simplistic--just speed and stamina, as far as I remember, on top of the color.
I think I got lightning strikes on the second or third try. The hard part is entering a zenlike state where you aren’t counting or thinking about how many are left. I think I had more patience for that kind of thing back then.
I guess my point is that time is indeed the enemy.