Counting down: Type-Zero days until this [Final Fantasy] thread is obsolete!

silence1186 · April 2016

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, but things are looking up. But before we get to that,

A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

MAIN SERIES

They've made FOURTEEN 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 the HD version is out.

I love Final Fantasy XI because it keeps 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 Heavensward!

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 I need to get practice for Type-0 in.

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 Keepers because it became a monster unto itself.

I love Final Fantasy Explorers because Monster Hunter is a good game, right?

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 is getting a localization... as an HD version for consoles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bedq4m8a_8U

Update: 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. Also, day 1 copies of the game come with a demo for...

FF 13 Versus: Wait, no, some things happened, and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3xKbPooKAo

It's now FF XV. It still doesn't exist, but we got a playble trailer, and by metrics it kicks ass. It's reinvigorated interest in this game, which is impressive since it was announced at the end of the Ps2 life cycle. So it MAY actually come out at this point. Look for more info at E3, hopefully.

Update: The FF XV demo was patched with additional content, so if you've played it, give it another go!

Update 2!: The FF XV Uncovered event happened, bringing with it a huge amount of new content, including two new trailers, Stand By Me covered by Florence + the Machine as the theme song, a gameplay trailer, an environment trailer, a tie-in anime (free online), a tie-in full length CGI movie, a tie-in mobile game, a new demo (free and available now), and the release date (9/30/2016). Definitely check it out, there's too many trailers to list them all here. I'll leave this though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2MnEGK44is

THE FUTURE

https://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 Snugglesworth

Confirmed
-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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_No3HEjvLrw

Final Fantasy in bite-sized form. What exactly this is remains unclear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK-3vmgXyok

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qUHccbHgqY

Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius is the next big Mobile game coming out by SE in the Final Fantasy franchise. Not sure if it will dominate the discussion like FFRK has, but news about it is welcome here, but the main discussion should be in the Mobile Final Fantasy thread.

Wait, what?

Final Fantasy Record Keeper/FFRK

Its popularity has grown so much that it's been dominating most discussion in the thread. As such it (and all mobile F2P Final Fantasy games) have been given their own thread here.

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

xenogears of bore wrote:

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.

silence1186 · April 2016

I will totally cop to being lazy with this OP; threads shouldn't hit 100 pages when I have work to do!

(I'll update it in a few hours when I have a few minutes).

Delphinidaes · April 2016

silence1186 wrote: »

I will totally cop to being lazy with this OP; threads shouldn't hit 100 pages when I have work to do!

(I'll update it in a few hours when I have a few minutes).

I wouldn't worry about it half the discussion these days isn't even about FF games in this thread

ArcTangent · April 2016

Final Fantasy VI had so many fantastic set pieces and sequences. The phantom train, fighting while diving down a waterfall, jumping into magitek armor and going nuts, underwater monster gauntlet... and that's all just in Sabin's little sidepart!

No doubt a huge part of why it's never going to get a similar kind of update treatment like FFIV got. Makes me sad. It's still my favorite FF. I'd be happy with even just genuine HD sprites in the original style ala the Disgaea HD upgrade and fixing all of the so many... many bugs.

Buttcleft · April 2016

ArcTangent wrote: »

Final Fantasy VI had so many fantastic set pieces and sequences. The phantom train, fighting while diving down a waterfall, jumping into magitek armor and going nuts, underwater monster gauntlet... and that's all just in Sabin's little sidepart!

No doubt a huge part of why it's never going to get a similar kind of update treatment like FFIV got. Makes me sad. It's still my favorite FF. I'd be happy with even just genuine HD sprites in the original style ala the Disgaea HD upgrade and fixing all of the so many... many bugs.

I love all the later final fantasies, but I think FF6 was the last truly great Final Fantasy.

I'd love them forever if they made FF16 a modern sprite game with nice clean, simple sprite based graphics ala 6.

Ianator · April 2016

I think the OP is missing a game.

I hate Final Fantasy Explorers because it isn't Monster Hunter.

Alternately,

I love Final Fantasy Explorers because I like to play dress-up.

Professor Snugglesworth · April 2016

Playing FFIX again makes me think a lot about FFXV, and how it's being treated as the big resurgence of Final Fantasy, including reports that the series' future will be determined by its reception.

I constantly wonder if the series is better off sticking to a more unified setting and gameplay style instead of constantly reinventing the wheel every game. I'm not saying every FF game has to be in the same world and aesthetics, but something along the lines of how Dragon Quest games carry several familiar aspects in both world design and gameplay might be a better option for them.

FFIX has talking hippopotamus people and the ATE system for additional dialog. I'm saddened that it's been the only game in the series to have that specific look and feel. I just wish there would be more shared concepts between titles like how they used to do in FFI-FFVI. Even VII through IX still felt like an evolution of those concepts rather than the drastic changes that came afterward.

FFX: More linear world, emphasis on narrative

FFXI: menu-based MMORPG

FFXII: Completely new aesthetics, faux real-time gameplay and AI manipulation

FFXIII: Hyper futuristic and super linear setting, active time menu, very little customization

FFXIV: WOW-style MMORPG

FFXV: (allegedly) huge open world, only one controllable party member, unknown customization options

Like, make up your mind already.

Delphinidaes · April 2016

Nah they should keep experimenting and trying out new stuff. There are enough stale franchises out there to pick from if that's your thing.

Professor Snugglesworth · April 2016

The Zelda series is probably the best example I can think of regarding a series that doesn't drastically change itself with every game, but changes just enough that each game feels both new and familiar. Even the upcoming Wii U game, which is said to be the most drastic change in the series yet, probably won't mess with the formula too much beyond giving you a bigger world with more freedom.

I'm not saying FF needs to be something formulaic and unchanging like Assassin's Creed, but I don't want it to follow the "I dunno, maybe if we added a werewolf or something, we don't know what fans want anymore" Sonic formula either.

ArcTangent · April 2016

Well, they kind of seem to have made up their mind, and it's that they really want the MMO aesthetic and to involve the player as little as possible so they can make it super flashy, at least superficially. I think there's still plenty of room to grow, experiment, or do different things with a more standard turn-based and job system (again, see Khemia, among an assload more niche RPGs), but open world is the big buzzword and gotta make shit as EPIC as possible, so bring on the one way paths and endless sprawling meadows. I'm looking at you too, recent Tales games.

jothki · April 2016

Buttcleft wrote: »

ArcTangent wrote: »

Final Fantasy VI had so many fantastic set pieces and sequences. The phantom train, fighting while diving down a waterfall, jumping into magitek armor and going nuts, underwater monster gauntlet... and that's all just in Sabin's little sidepart!

No doubt a huge part of why it's never going to get a similar kind of update treatment like FFIV got. Makes me sad. It's still my favorite FF. I'd be happy with even just genuine HD sprites in the original style ala the Disgaea HD upgrade and fixing all of the so many... many bugs.

I love all the later final fantasies, but I think FF6 was the last truly great Final Fantasy.

I'd love them forever if they made FF16 a modern sprite game with nice clean, simple sprite based graphics ala 6.

We're probably not going to get anything like that ever again, but things like Bravely Default are pretty close to the aesthetic.

Vincent Grayson · April 2016

Delphinidaes wrote: »

Nah they should keep experimenting and trying out new stuff. There are enough stale franchises out there to pick from if that's your thing.

Yeah. FF going less experimental with each title is not a thing I want to see.

DemonStacey · April 2016

ArcTangent wrote: »

Well, they kind of seem to have made up their mind, and it's that they really want the MMO aesthetic and to involve the player as little as possible so they can make it super flashy, at least superficially. I think there's still plenty of room to grow, experiment, or do different things with a more standard turn-based and job system (again, see Khemia, among an assload more niche RPGs), but open world is the big buzzword and gotta make shit as EPIC as possible, so bring on the one way paths and endless sprawling meadows. I'm looking at you too, recent Tales games.

This doesn't really make sense.

FF13 was not MMO-esque at all.
FF15 is not MMO-esque.

They are also very different from each other so the only thing they've "made up their mind" about based on avaialble evidence is that they are going to keep mixing up the formula.

Kai_San · April 2016

FF13 maybe not, but FF15 is.

The idea that wandering around open areas, with combat just kind of happening, and only controlling one character is MMOesque is what he is talking about.

I have fonder memories of the less innovative RPG styles when it comes to FF myself as well, but I have pretty much given into the idea that FF is the title they use for their mainline series which is always going to be the new innovative thing. Luckily (at least as of recently) they are branching out with other projects to appease the more old school loving crowd like myself, so I can't complain.

DemonStacey · April 2016

Kai_San wrote: »

FF13 maybe not, but FF15 is.

The idea that wandering around open areas, with combat just kind of happening, and only controlling one character is MMOesque is what he is talking about.

I have fonder memories of the less innovative RPG styles when it comes to FF myself as well, but I have pretty much given into the idea that FF is the title they use for their mainline series which is always going to be the new innovative thing. Luckily (at least as of recently) they are branching out with other projects to appease the more old school loving crowd like myself, so I can't complain.

That is an incredibly loose description of an MMO that encompasses a ridiculous amount of games..

That's just the description of open world games. Which is what it is. So..?

Kai_San · April 2016

I was definiing what he was talking about.

Clearly you both had different opinions on the subject, that did not need to be defined.

Also, that is the majority of what many look at as the difference between an MMO and a single player RPG. Of course there are other things, but outside of the fact MMO is a multiplayer game and a single player RPG is well, single player, those are some of the broadest differences you could state. The other MMO aspects vary too much from game to game.

DemonStacey · April 2016

Kai_San wrote: »

I was definiing what he was talking about.

Clearly you both had different opinions on the subject, that did not need to be defined.

Also, that is the majority of what many look at as the difference between an MMO and a single player RPG. Of course there are other things, but outside of the fact MMO is a multiplayer game and a single player RPG is well, single player, those are some of the broadest differences you could state. The other MMO aspects vary too much from game to game.

I'm just saying that doesn't make sense. We have plenty of open world games. This is just the logical evolution of world maps of the older games.

El Fantastico · April 2016

SquareEnix hasn't utilized their already existing franchises enough to appeal to fans who want the "classic" RPG formula and games they used to do. I'm talking about Dragon Quest. DQIX came out 6 years ago. DQX came out in 2012. SE was kind enough to re-release 4 through 6 as DS games and pretty much the entire series on mobile platforms, and we're only now getting DQVII in the west, with DQXI on the horizon.

I can't overemphasize enough how much these games make me happy. They may be formulaic to a fault, but the stories are charming at least, and I vastly prefer DQ's high fantasy style to FF's deeper dives into making their worlds more technological with every iteration.

I practically expect Final Fantasy 16 to be a fully-realized urban world. One day, a group of friends on a vacation in a tropical island find a large crystal, that speaks to them. Suddenly, magic is reborn into the world. Now it's up to the plucky group of youths to save the not-quite-Earth from mythical creatures while fighting in the streets of Neo-Tokyo, and Nu-York, trying not to cause damage to the environment and harming innocents like the B-plots of Man of Steel and Captain America: Civil War.

Fleur de Alys · April 2016

I don't think Final Fantasy should stick with any one thing. As much as I adore XIII's mechanics, we don't really need to see them in another title. That's because they already stretched those mechanics as far as they could. We've seen what it could do, we've mastered the system, and it's time for something different.

Up until FFX, Final Fantasy was stuck with a battle system it was afraid to innovate with. It would drastically change the character development mechanisms from game to game, but it refused to touch combat. This is mystifying because for the most part the combat wasn't all that great. It's something you accepted and went through the motions with in order to get the rewards to power up your characters and/or make it to the next story beat. You rarely fought for the fun of it. That's especially problematic given how much time you spend fighting things in a given FF title.

Consider how many times you've used the exact same strategies to defeat bosses in Final Fantasy titles. Consider how many times you've fought the exact same boss across different games, just with a different coat of paint. This somehow even persists across completely different battle systems (XIII's first boss is the ancient "don't attack during this phase and you win" boss we've fought since at least FF4; for all the game's mechanical accomplishments otherwise, the first 2 chapters are annoyingly familiar).

Back in the day we didn't really know any better, so we put up with it. Games have advanced since those days. They've gotten more fun to play, and not just because of novelty. There's comfort in the familiar, but there's also boredom. It's not possible to challenge long-term fans by giving them the same mechanics they've mastered twenty years ago, and it's not possible to entice new fans without giving them something exciting and novel.

This doesn't apply equally to all types of games of course. Shooters don't need to reinvent the wheel of what a shooting game is every title because they can add plenty of variety through level, monster, and weapon design (though the games that do find ways to innovate with that formula become legendary, such as Half-life). Final Fantasy has never been able to use level design to make the games more interesting (as a consequence of being random fights through similar dungeon mazes), and it went as far as it could with monster innovations long ago.

Dragon Quest is a special case. Its appeal is largely cultural and will remain limited outside of Japan where gamer motivations and wants are rather different, especially since its niche (grinding for accomplishment) has long been supplanted by the MMO.

Axen · April 2016

Classic style JRPGs are bubblegum for the brain to me. Silly story? Cliched characters? Predictable plot? I'm in.

As stupid as it sounds they're my favorite thing to play after a stressful day.

The Tales series is one of my favorites for that exact reason. I come home, play the game, and just relax.

I don't necessarily want SE to keep all their FF games the same, but I would fucking love to see SE "Blizzard" at least one of their FF games.

ToyD · April 2016

I liked the traditional battle systems where you could unlock the spell levels for your Mage and find summons for your summoner and find the final weapons for characters. I did not like the more recent rules based battle systems at all. They could go back to Last Remnant style battle systems and I'd be perfectly happy. In truth I wish they would experiment more with combining character actions instead of trying to make all characters all things when you need it. Plus I need the story to make sense. 13 just confused the poop out of me. I get a goal of breaks out of cocoon and then I never really understand wtf happens. I don't care for rare random drops in a single player game either a la 12. I'm a codger with FF games.

El Fantastico · April 2016

ToyD wrote: »

I liked the traditional battle systems where you could unlock the spell levels for your Mage and find summons for your summoner and find the final weapons for characters. I did not like the more recent rules based battle systems at all. They could go back to Last Remnant style battle systems and I'd be perfectly happy. In truth I wish they would experiment more with combining character actions instead of trying to make all characters all things when you need it. Plus I need the story to make sense. 13 just confused the poop out of me. I get a goal of breaks out of cocoon and then I never really understand wtf happens. I don't care for rare random drops in a single player game either a la 12. I'm a codger with FF games.

You should be super-excited for I Am Setsuna then when that releases this year. This is one of the titles I'm most looking forward to, both as a return to familiar fantasy settings, and because it sounds like Chrono Trigger gameplay mechanics on steroids.

Joshmvii · April 2016

As soon as you suggested a new cool JRPG was coming out I figured it was just 3ds game, because handhelds seem to be where 95% of jrpgs are sent now. Pleased to see that's a PS4 game.

ArcTangent · April 2016

El Fantastico wrote: »

ToyD wrote: »

I liked the traditional battle systems where you could unlock the spell levels for your Mage and find summons for your summoner and find the final weapons for characters. I did not like the more recent rules based battle systems at all. They could go back to Last Remnant style battle systems and I'd be perfectly happy. In truth I wish they would experiment more with combining character actions instead of trying to make all characters all things when you need it. Plus I need the story to make sense. 13 just confused the poop out of me. I get a goal of breaks out of cocoon and then I never really understand wtf happens. I don't care for rare random drops in a single player game either a la 12. I'm a codger with FF games.

You should be super-excited for I Am Setsuna then when that releases this year. This is one of the titles I'm most looking forward to, both as a return to familiar fantasy settings, and because it sounds like Chrono Trigger gameplay mechanics on steroids.

Setsuna's pretty mediocre from everything I've seen and heard. Big problems being that the character writing is a total disaster and that the battles are ridiculously easy. It's also not really Chrono Trigger on steroids so much as it's just Chrono Trigger with the little trigger/Setsuna gimmick and FF7's materia system tacked on.

El Fantastico · April 2016

Enh, I'll take anything "fresh" at this point. We're not in an RPG drought right now with Tales releasing last year, Bravely Second out now and a bunch of games on the way. I'm aware I Am Setsuna is produced by external staff from SquareEnix, and the reviews were generally 7.5/8, which doesn't make it an awful game. Not the 95% ratings games like Final Fantasy 3(6) and Chrono Trigger were receiving in their day, but still a solid score. Criticism on the game all sounds fair, and nothing I've heard has unsold me on it yet. A jRPG being "typical" is par for the course. I just want some dual/triple techs, dammit.

Kai_San · April 2016

The Sauce wrote: »

I don't think Final Fantasy should stick with any one thing. As much as I adore XIII's mechanics, we don't really need to see them in another title. That's because they already stretched those mechanics as far as they could. We've seen what it could do, we've mastered the system, and it's time for something different.

Up until FFX, Final Fantasy was stuck with a battle system it was afraid to innovate with. It would drastically change the character development mechanisms from game to game, but it refused to touch combat. This is mystifying because for the most part the combat wasn't all that great. It's something you accepted and went through the motions with in order to get the rewards to power up your characters and/or make it to the next story beat. You rarely fought for the fun of it. That's especially problematic given how much time you spend fighting things in a given FF title.

Consider how many times you've used the exact same strategies to defeat bosses in Final Fantasy titles. Consider how many times you've fought the exact same boss across different games, just with a different coat of paint. This somehow even persists across completely different battle systems (XIII's first boss is the ancient "don't attack during this phase and you win" boss we've fought since at least FF4; for all the game's mechanical accomplishments otherwise, the first 2 chapters are annoyingly familiar).

Back in the day we didn't really know any better, so we put up with it. Games have advanced since those days. They've gotten more fun to play, and not just because of novelty. There's comfort in the familiar, but there's also boredom. It's not possible to challenge long-term fans by giving them the same mechanics they've mastered twenty years ago, and it's not possible to entice new fans without giving them something exciting and novel.

This doesn't apply equally to all types of games of course. Shooters don't need to reinvent the wheel of what a shooting game is every title because they can add plenty of variety through level, monster, and weapon design (though the games that do find ways to innovate with that formula become legendary, such as Half-life). Final Fantasy has never been able to use level design to make the games more interesting (as a consequence of being random fights through similar dungeon mazes), and it went as far as it could with monster innovations long ago.

Dragon Quest is a special case. Its appeal is largely cultural and will remain limited outside of Japan where gamer motivations and wants are rather different, especially since its niche (grinding for accomplishment) has long been supplanted by the MMO.

This is one case where I disagree.

The SNES and PSX era FFgames combat engines were actually REALLY well done. What was wrong was that they took little advantage of those systems and either made the game way too easy, or just broken.

I think the very drastic changes to how characters stats functioned and were built were a sign there were different people handing that than the combat and they didn't communicate well. Because that is what would cause those well done ATB combats to seem so stale.

You could see hints of this if you purposely imposed restrictions on your party usually revolving around low levels. FF7 in particular can be a very challenging and interesting game to play if you do both low levels and assign your own specific roles to characters using materia (which becomes a little difficult when you are low leveling it, so you need to be a little creative). And we have seen what an outside group of people who know a lick about balancing can do with FF6.

Fleur de Alys · April 2016

Kai_San wrote: »

The Sauce wrote: »

I don't think Final Fantasy should stick with any one thing. As much as I adore XIII's mechanics, we don't really need to see them in another title. That's because they already stretched those mechanics as far as they could. We've seen what it could do, we've mastered the system, and it's time for something different.

Up until FFX, Final Fantasy was stuck with a battle system it was afraid to innovate with. It would drastically change the character development mechanisms from game to game, but it refused to touch combat. This is mystifying because for the most part the combat wasn't all that great. It's something you accepted and went through the motions with in order to get the rewards to power up your characters and/or make it to the next story beat. You rarely fought for the fun of it. That's especially problematic given how much time you spend fighting things in a given FF title.

Consider how many times you've used the exact same strategies to defeat bosses in Final Fantasy titles. Consider how many times you've fought the exact same boss across different games, just with a different coat of paint. This somehow even persists across completely different battle systems (XIII's first boss is the ancient "don't attack during this phase and you win" boss we've fought since at least FF4; for all the game's mechanical accomplishments otherwise, the first 2 chapters are annoyingly familiar).

Back in the day we didn't really know any better, so we put up with it. Games have advanced since those days. They've gotten more fun to play, and not just because of novelty. There's comfort in the familiar, but there's also boredom. It's not possible to challenge long-term fans by giving them the same mechanics they've mastered twenty years ago, and it's not possible to entice new fans without giving them something exciting and novel.

This doesn't apply equally to all types of games of course. Shooters don't need to reinvent the wheel of what a shooting game is every title because they can add plenty of variety through level, monster, and weapon design (though the games that do find ways to innovate with that formula become legendary, such as Half-life). Final Fantasy has never been able to use level design to make the games more interesting (as a consequence of being random fights through similar dungeon mazes), and it went as far as it could with monster innovations long ago.

Dragon Quest is a special case. Its appeal is largely cultural and will remain limited outside of Japan where gamer motivations and wants are rather different, especially since its niche (grinding for accomplishment) has long been supplanted by the MMO.

This is one case where I disagree.

The SNES and PSX era FFgames combat engines were actually REALLY well done. What was wrong was that they took little advantage of those systems and either made the game way too easy, or just broken.

I think the very drastic changes to how characters stats functioned and were built were a sign there were different people handing that than the combat and they didn't communicate well. Because that is what would cause those well done ATB combats to seem so stale.

You could see hints of this if you purposely imposed restrictions on your party usually revolving around low levels. FF7 in particular can be a very challenging and interesting game to play if you do both low levels and assign your own specific roles to characters using materia (which becomes a little difficult when you are low leveling it, so you need to be a little creative). And we have seen what an outside group of people who know a lick about balancing can do with FF6.

The thing is that battle system had already been taken to its limits with FF5. It's a very simple system with precious few levers to play with. There's turn charge, action charge, HP, MP, conditions, items, and row. Every option in the game -- every spell, every skill, every basic menu option, every monster ability -- is limited to those levers, plus a few modifiers to things like damage & hit formulas. FF5's wealth of skills and abilities pushed and prodded every lever at the game's disposal. It did so with a refined set of modifiers and a satisfying difficulty level.

Where could the series possibly go from there without fundamentally changing its core system or repeating itself? Nowhere, it seems, so we got "repeating itself" for four more titles. The differences between fighting battles in FF5 and fighting them in its four successors comes down to performing the same actions with a different coat of paint and generally less refinement to the balance and challenge. Almost every innovation from FF6 to FF9 was in storytelling, presentation, or character development mechanics. We got a few minor tweaks, like various forms of Limit Breaks, the gunblade trigger, and summon boosting / GF HP, but nothing that really changed how you fought battles. Each fight essentially boils down to a fairly simple optimization problem where you defeat the enemies using as few resources (items, HP, MP) as possible. Bosses were either more of the same or relied on a weird gimmick.

Compare this to innovation launched in other titles, like Grandia. Grandia's battle system added two new levers to mess with -- positioning and attack charge interruption with visual representation (the action bar). These levers instantly gave Grandia the supreme RPG battle system, a title it held probably until FFXIII. It made battles dynamic, adding new shifts to the optimization problem that made it both more complex and required you to make snap judgments, the added pressure of which made it more difficult (and satisfying) to master. It also made the battles themselves fun to fight, something that absolutely floored me the first time I played it. I had spent most of my jRPG career to that point running from half or so of the random battles out of boredom (which had the added benefit of making boss battles and shopping more interesting). When the most fun way to play a game is to actively avoid engaging its primary content as often as possible, something's gone wrong!

ToyD · April 2016

I'd never heard of grandia. I am intrigued. I had a really hard time with positioning in Ff 12 because of the camera and I'm not sure positioning had more than a minimum impact on the fight. Going to check this out further.

DemonStacey · April 2016

Sauce we may disagree about a bunch of stuff but we're on the same page wrt combat.

vamen · April 2016

ToyD wrote: »

I'd never heard of grandia. I am intrigued. I had a really hard time with positioning in Ff 12 because of the camera and I'm not sure positioning had more than a minimum impact on the fight. Going to check this out further.

I've never played it myself - though I own it now - but I've heard and seen so many people/posts/news article talk about how Grandia 2 is one of the most amazing RPGs ever made.
It's on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/330390/) and Vita if you use either.

ToyD · April 2016

Thanks for the steam link. I searched grandia earlier on steam and it didn't show this for some reason. I was all set to go to the original on PSN.

Blackjack · April 2016

I don't know if it's been patched or not, but I think the PC version has some pretty glaring bugs, just for the record.

El Fantastico · April 2016

Grandia's combat system is the one used in episode 3 and 4 of the Penny-Arcade OTRSPOD games, which Slash and RainbowDespair adapted for the game. It's a very nice combat system, indeed.

Speaking of Zeboyd Games, CSH releases in the summer of this year.

Kai_San · April 2016

The Sauce wrote: »

Kai_San wrote: »

The Sauce wrote: »

I don't think Final Fantasy should stick with any one thing. As much as I adore XIII's mechanics, we don't really need to see them in another title. That's because they already stretched those mechanics as far as they could. We've seen what it could do, we've mastered the system, and it's time for something different.

Up until FFX, Final Fantasy was stuck with a battle system it was afraid to innovate with. It would drastically change the character development mechanisms from game to game, but it refused to touch combat. This is mystifying because for the most part the combat wasn't all that great. It's something you accepted and went through the motions with in order to get the rewards to power up your characters and/or make it to the next story beat. You rarely fought for the fun of it. That's especially problematic given how much time you spend fighting things in a given FF title.

Consider how many times you've used the exact same strategies to defeat bosses in Final Fantasy titles. Consider how many times you've fought the exact same boss across different games, just with a different coat of paint. This somehow even persists across completely different battle systems (XIII's first boss is the ancient "don't attack during this phase and you win" boss we've fought since at least FF4; for all the game's mechanical accomplishments otherwise, the first 2 chapters are annoyingly familiar).

Back in the day we didn't really know any better, so we put up with it. Games have advanced since those days. They've gotten more fun to play, and not just because of novelty. There's comfort in the familiar, but there's also boredom. It's not possible to challenge long-term fans by giving them the same mechanics they've mastered twenty years ago, and it's not possible to entice new fans without giving them something exciting and novel.

This doesn't apply equally to all types of games of course. Shooters don't need to reinvent the wheel of what a shooting game is every title because they can add plenty of variety through level, monster, and weapon design (though the games that do find ways to innovate with that formula become legendary, such as Half-life). Final Fantasy has never been able to use level design to make the games more interesting (as a consequence of being random fights through similar dungeon mazes), and it went as far as it could with monster innovations long ago.

Dragon Quest is a special case. Its appeal is largely cultural and will remain limited outside of Japan where gamer motivations and wants are rather different, especially since its niche (grinding for accomplishment) has long been supplanted by the MMO.

This is one case where I disagree.

The SNES and PSX era FFgames combat engines were actually REALLY well done. What was wrong was that they took little advantage of those systems and either made the game way too easy, or just broken.

I think the very drastic changes to how characters stats functioned and were built were a sign there were different people handing that than the combat and they didn't communicate well. Because that is what would cause those well done ATB combats to seem so stale.

You could see hints of this if you purposely imposed restrictions on your party usually revolving around low levels. FF7 in particular can be a very challenging and interesting game to play if you do both low levels and assign your own specific roles to characters using materia (which becomes a little difficult when you are low leveling it, so you need to be a little creative). And we have seen what an outside group of people who know a lick about balancing can do with FF6.

The thing is that battle system had already been taken to its limits with FF5. It's a very simple system with precious few levers to play with. There's turn charge, action charge, HP, MP, conditions, items, and row. Every option in the game -- every spell, every skill, every basic menu option, every monster ability -- is limited to those levers, plus a few modifiers to things like damage & hit formulas. FF5's wealth of skills and abilities pushed and prodded every lever at the game's disposal. It did so with a refined set of modifiers and a satisfying difficulty level.

Where could the series possibly go from there without fundamentally changing its core system or repeating itself? Nowhere, it seems, so we got "repeating itself" for four more titles. The differences between fighting battles in FF5 and fighting them in its four successors comes down to performing the same actions with a different coat of paint and generally less refinement to the balance and challenge. Almost every innovation from FF6 to FF9 was in storytelling, presentation, or character development mechanics. We got a few minor tweaks, like various forms of Limit Breaks, the gunblade trigger, and summon boosting / GF HP, but nothing that really changed how you fought battles. Each fight essentially boils down to a fairly simple optimization problem where you defeat the enemies using as few resources (items, HP, MP) as possible. Bosses were either more of the same or relied on a weird gimmick.

Compare this to innovation launched in other titles, like Grandia. Grandia's battle system added two new levers to mess with -- positioning and attack charge interruption with visual representation (the action bar). These levers instantly gave Grandia the supreme RPG battle system, a title it held probably until FFXIII. It made battles dynamic, adding new shifts to the optimization problem that made it both more complex and required you to make snap judgments, the added pressure of which made it more difficult (and satisfying) to master. It also made the battles themselves fun to fight, something that absolutely floored me the first time I played it. I had spent most of my jRPG career to that point running from half or so of the random battles out of boredom (which had the added benefit of making boss battles and shopping more interesting). When the most fun way to play a game is to actively avoid engaging its primary content as often as possible, something's gone wrong!

I stated what went wrong, they balanced poorly

While I was a huge fan of Grandia, and even Tales which honestly took combat in a direction I liked more, I think that there is no difference between innovating via positioning and interruption and stuff like limit breaks and such. Turn based and semi turn based combat engines come down to decision making. The more and different decision making options you come up with, the more unique it becomes. Maybe you found those other innovations more interesting, but they were not better. Just different ways of going about it.

I also count out of combat stuff as part of the combat as well. Innovating with different ways to change how you play in combat is just as relevant. Since its all about decision making, those decisions not only matter but change what options you get in combat as well.

Finally innovation can come from how complicated you make the combat scripts. Something they never really got as into as possible either. FF was much better at it than most but still a lot of fights were awful straightforward and repetitive. There was no reason it had to be that way.

Buttcleft · April 2016

vamen wrote: »

ToyD wrote: »

I'd never heard of grandia. I am intrigued. I had a really hard time with positioning in Ff 12 because of the camera and I'm not sure positioning had more than a minimum impact on the fight. Going to check this out further.

I've never played it myself - though I own it now - but I've heard and seen so many people/posts/news article talk about how Grandia 2 is one of the most amazing RPGs ever made.
It's on Steam (http://store.steampowered.com/app/330390/) and Vita if you use either.

The absolute worst thing about FFXII is opening the wrong chest in like the first 5 minutes of the game keeps you from getting the best weapon in the game.

Fleur de Alys · April 2016

Kai_San wrote: »

The Sauce wrote: »

Kai_San wrote: »

The Sauce wrote: »

I don't think Final Fantasy should stick with any one thing. As much as I adore XIII's mechanics, we don't really need to see them in another title. That's because they already stretched those mechanics as far as they could. We've seen what it could do, we've mastered the system, and it's time for something different.

Up until FFX, Final Fantasy was stuck with a battle system it was afraid to innovate with. It would drastically change the character development mechanisms from game to game, but it refused to touch combat. This is mystifying because for the most part the combat wasn't all that great. It's something you accepted and went through the motions with in order to get the rewards to power up your characters and/or make it to the next story beat. You rarely fought for the fun of it. That's especially problematic given how much time you spend fighting things in a given FF title.

Consider how many times you've used the exact same strategies to defeat bosses in Final Fantasy titles. Consider how many times you've fought the exact same boss across different games, just with a different coat of paint. This somehow even persists across completely different battle systems (XIII's first boss is the ancient "don't attack during this phase and you win" boss we've fought since at least FF4; for all the game's mechanical accomplishments otherwise, the first 2 chapters are annoyingly familiar).

Back in the day we didn't really know any better, so we put up with it. Games have advanced since those days. They've gotten more fun to play, and not just because of novelty. There's comfort in the familiar, but there's also boredom. It's not possible to challenge long-term fans by giving them the same mechanics they've mastered twenty years ago, and it's not possible to entice new fans without giving them something exciting and novel.

This doesn't apply equally to all types of games of course. Shooters don't need to reinvent the wheel of what a shooting game is every title because they can add plenty of variety through level, monster, and weapon design (though the games that do find ways to innovate with that formula become legendary, such as Half-life). Final Fantasy has never been able to use level design to make the games more interesting (as a consequence of being random fights through similar dungeon mazes), and it went as far as it could with monster innovations long ago.

Dragon Quest is a special case. Its appeal is largely cultural and will remain limited outside of Japan where gamer motivations and wants are rather different, especially since its niche (grinding for accomplishment) has long been supplanted by the MMO.

This is one case where I disagree.

The SNES and PSX era FFgames combat engines were actually REALLY well done. What was wrong was that they took little advantage of those systems and either made the game way too easy, or just broken.

I think the very drastic changes to how characters stats functioned and were built were a sign there were different people handing that than the combat and they didn't communicate well. Because that is what would cause those well done ATB combats to seem so stale.

You could see hints of this if you purposely imposed restrictions on your party usually revolving around low levels. FF7 in particular can be a very challenging and interesting game to play if you do both low levels and assign your own specific roles to characters using materia (which becomes a little difficult when you are low leveling it, so you need to be a little creative). And we have seen what an outside group of people who know a lick about balancing can do with FF6.

The thing is that battle system had already been taken to its limits with FF5. It's a very simple system with precious few levers to play with. There's turn charge, action charge, HP, MP, conditions, items, and row. Every option in the game -- every spell, every skill, every basic menu option, every monster ability -- is limited to those levers, plus a few modifiers to things like damage & hit formulas. FF5's wealth of skills and abilities pushed and prodded every lever at the game's disposal. It did so with a refined set of modifiers and a satisfying difficulty level.

Where could the series possibly go from there without fundamentally changing its core system or repeating itself? Nowhere, it seems, so we got "repeating itself" for four more titles. The differences between fighting battles in FF5 and fighting them in its four successors comes down to performing the same actions with a different coat of paint and generally less refinement to the balance and challenge. Almost every innovation from FF6 to FF9 was in storytelling, presentation, or character development mechanics. We got a few minor tweaks, like various forms of Limit Breaks, the gunblade trigger, and summon boosting / GF HP, but nothing that really changed how you fought battles. Each fight essentially boils down to a fairly simple optimization problem where you defeat the enemies using as few resources (items, HP, MP) as possible. Bosses were either more of the same or relied on a weird gimmick.

Compare this to innovation launched in other titles, like Grandia. Grandia's battle system added two new levers to mess with -- positioning and attack charge interruption with visual representation (the action bar). These levers instantly gave Grandia the supreme RPG battle system, a title it held probably until FFXIII. It made battles dynamic, adding new shifts to the optimization problem that made it both more complex and required you to make snap judgments, the added pressure of which made it more difficult (and satisfying) to master. It also made the battles themselves fun to fight, something that absolutely floored me the first time I played it. I had spent most of my jRPG career to that point running from half or so of the random battles out of boredom (which had the added benefit of making boss battles and shopping more interesting). When the most fun way to play a game is to actively avoid engaging its primary content as often as possible, something's gone wrong!

I stated what went wrong, they balanced poorly

While I was a huge fan of Grandia, and even Tales which honestly took combat in a direction I liked more, I think that there is no difference between innovating via positioning and interruption and stuff like limit breaks and such. Turn based and semi turn based combat engines come down to decision making. The more and different decision making options you come up with, the more unique it becomes. Maybe you found those other innovations more interesting, but they were not better. Just different ways of going about it.

I also count out of combat stuff as part of the combat as well. Innovating with different ways to change how you play in combat is just as relevant. Since its all about decision making, those decisions not only matter but change what options you get in combat as well.

Finally innovation can come from how complicated you make the combat scripts. Something they never really got as into as possible either. FF was much better at it than most but still a lot of fights were awful straightforward and repetitive. There was no reason it had to be that way.

I don't disagree with you here. I just wanted to see more changes to the underlying combat itself, which didn't happen until FFX. FFX was kind of neat in its approach of making battles a little more puzzle-y, but then it basically just gave you all the answers to the puzzles for most of the game, which was unfortunate.

What's remarkable about XIII is that it went back to the old-school ATB formula, but added two major new wrinkles -- chain gauge and paradigms (the latter of which is really just an evolution from X-2's job change). It's incredible what adding those two things did to ATB. I wish it hadn't taken that long to see innovations like that; VII would have been absolutely incredible with a chain gauge system as it really fits the overall style of that game. I want to see more fresh ideas like these in future FF titles (still hoping XV's action focus is an anomaly due to its Versus pedigree).

Joshmvii · April 2016

I had no problem with FF12's treatment of the zodiac spear. In that version of the game, it's the best weapon in the game, and they decided to make it a secret easter egg type thing. It's not like you can't beat the game without it. And also, it's not even the only way to get it in that game, you can get it with a very low chance out of another chest later in the game.

They did away with that way of acquiring the zodiac spear in the IZJS version of the game we're all waiting for the HD remaster of anyway. From what I understand, in that version there's a RNG and a non-RNG way of acquiring the spear, but it's not even the best weapon in the game any more and can only be used by one of the jobs anyway.

Duffel · April 2016

The FF series has usually been kind of stuck in between a rock and a hard place in terms of its battle system and presentation in general.

On the one hand each release, especially since FF7, but really even before that, has tried to be an innovator in the field - a field that is sadly a lot less crowded than it used to be. In retrospect, a lot of those innovations can be fairly labelled as failed experiments. I'm thinking of FF8 in particular here, and I was honestly never really a fan of FF7's materia system at the time, either; it made all the characters essentially undifferentiated blank slates except for minor statistical variations. But just as they've tried (and definitely succeeded) at moving video games in general and JRPGs in particular into a more cinematic style of presentation, they've tried to tweak the traditional RPG battle system in a variety of ways, with mixed results.

On the other hand, no small amount of their fans play FF games because they want to be reminded of earlier FF games. It's potentially the most unabashedly self-referential series on earth; how many times, by this point, have we got to see what the Behemoth looks like this go-round? So there is the expectation that they not deviate too much from pre-established formulae and game systems and - as Sauce pointed out - those systems are extremely archaic at this point. I still haven't gotten around to 13, but in 12, for all the clamor about the game "playing itself" and what have you, the actual system in place was not terribly different than what came out in FF1 back in the late 80s. Positioning was mostly a moot point except for running away from a few big, highly-telegraphed attacks, and I personally didn't see a whole lot of differents between setting up a junction that said "autofight when I get in range of an enemy" and endlessly pressing the confirm button during random battles (sometime, try to think about how many times you've mindlessly pressed that button to attack in the FF series...).

This has been compounded in later years given that the budgets for recent games are so vast that failure is literally not an option. They had every incentive to play it safe. Really, it's probably a surprise that they innovated as much as they have, given the pressures that they're under.

And, it must be said, it seems as though Japanese audiences respond pretty well to games that fit into well-established categories, and the Japanese market is and will always be SE's primary target demographic. The Dragon Quest series basically prints money, and if I'm not mistaken it's basically running off a variation of the systems they had in place back in DQ1 on the NES.

I'm really glad that it seems like FF15 (and even what I've seen of FF7R) is moving toward a more action-oriented gameplay style. Spending a decade in development and the GDP of a developing country would feel like a waste if what we got was essentially another scripted movie where our main form of interaction with the world is to do those same battle commands over and over again. FF has never really had other ways of interacting with the world, even in limited ways like BoFs Township systems. Battle is basically it. If I never have to "press X to issue the attack command" again in a main-line FF title I won't feel like I've missed out on much.

That's not to say there's no place for the classic systems anymore, though. If I had some sort of genie-granted wish, I'd like to see SE move toward the development and release of lots of smaller titles in both abandoned (Mana, SaGa, Bushido Blade) and new IP's. There's got to be plenty of in-house talent to make that kind of thing work, and they could make SNES/PS1/2 quality titles for digital distribution for peanuts in today's market. Use that kind of thing as a test lab and see what works and what doesn't without gambling your mainline can't-fail title on something untested.

And, to be fair, they are doing that stuff a little bit... I just never get to see it because it's invariably released exclusively on handhelds. Put that stuff on a console download, dammit. I want to give you people my money.

Joshmvii · April 2016

Materia is the tits. I don't care that X character is not a white mage until I make them one. I care that I could, without prompting from the game, come up with combos as simple as deathblow->added cut to allow me to get rid of the risk of using deathblow(missing), hades on a weapon linked to added effect to put all the statuses on enemies, all the way to the broken stuff like counter->mime to mimic your own omnislash when you get attacked.

I don't want it in every game, and I want them to do something new and interesting for FF7R too, but I love the original system too.

vagrant_winds · April 2016

Joshmvii wrote: »

Materia is the tits. I don't care that X character is not a white mage until I make them one. I care that I could, without prompting from the game, come up with combos as simple as deathblow->added cut to allow me to get rid of the risk of using deathblow(missing), hades on a weapon linked to added effect to put all the statuses on enemies, all the way to the broken stuff like counter->mime to mimic your own omnislash when you get attacked.

I don't want it in every game, and I want them to do something new and interesting for FF7R too, but I love the original system too.

I also loved that it actually rewarded you for having multiple copies of a single materia equipped on a character because of the crazy dual-support materia combos you could do.

Tofystedeth · April 2016

I will be a dissenting opinion and say that I didn't really care for FFXIII's combat system. It was good enough that I could play the game to completion but I never found it very compelling.

X was the pinnacle of FF combat in my opinion. Turn based, but with little to no waiting.

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