Fabulous Final Fantasy Franchise Discussion Catch-all

Dakuna wrote:

Is this where I come to talk about FFVII remake release dates that we don't have yet??

Sure, come scream into the void with us.

I hope we see something at this year's E3, but i dunno.

Honestly, if it's 2019 for Part 1 I'll be shocked. 2020 seems more likely.

This year and next will all be about (more) FFXV and KH3.

I'm betting on it becoming a PS5 title at this point

PS7 at the rate it took XV to come out.

The edict from SE to everyone is to not mention they ever said anything and hope we all forget.

10 years from now, the FF7 remake jokes will have replaced the Half Life 3 jokes and Star Citizen snark.

FFXV Windows edition is $33.50 on steam right now.

ChipRMonk wrote:

10 years from now, the FF7 remake jokes will have replaced the Half Life 3 jokes and Star Citizen snark. ;-)

They already have, in some circles.

So I got a new phone, and tried installing FF:BE and it let me in without requiring access to my fb friends list, so I'm back on my bullsh*t. I can't believe they had another FFX summon wave and didn't include Auron, but did include Seymour. Wtf. They're holding out on us for next year I guess? (Current summon event includes Yuna and Lulu).

P.S. There was also a three part international women's day special banner (hate using that jargon but it fits), that I thought was nice.

Three months since the last post? Say it isn't so...

I've been playing Final Fantasy XIII the last week, and it sure is a hell of a thing.

First off, on PC, it is so pretty. For a four year old port of an eight year old game, it holds up beautifully, especially in motion. Being able to finally play an HD Final Fantasy is a real visual treat.

And the cast is great. The visual fidelity, combined with the animation and strong voice acting and writing, has made them one of my favorite cast of characters from this series. They're tropey, but feel fleshed out, and their actions and motivations make sense as the story goes along. Slowly revealing the thirteen days leading up to the Purge has me hooked - I'm ready for more revelations and explanations.

If they had to make the game so relentlessly linear, I'm glad the plot supports it. Still, I'm at the start of chapter nine and am feeling a little exhausted. There's barely a break in the action, and everything feels pretty hopeless in the larger scheme of things. That's the point, of course, but I'm ready to find out how the situation these characters find themselves in can be resolved.

The battle system is... fine. I've never been a fan of ATB and when I realized they took away the ability to wait while you're in menus, I was actually almost angry. But, auto-battle works well 95% of the time, and the AI partners pretty much always do what you would want at any give time. That aspect is impressive. Still, grinding enemy health bars down without the ability to pause and evaluate things is a bummer. I would otherwise enjoy the puzzle-like nature of the encounters if it weren't for that.

I gather I still have a few hours until making it to Gran Pulse, but I'm looking forward to the change of pace.

XIII is very pretty, but the battle system isn't my favorite either. XII is still my favorite of their battle systems. Being able to directly build the decision trees for your entire team was one of the coolest things I've seen.

I started playing FF XIII earlier this year, and decided I needed to take a pause right around where beanman101283 is right now -- I actually stopped after I made it to Gran Pulse. There's a lot of individual aspects of the game that I like, but any time I would play for more than 30 minutes, I would always feel a little exhausted and wonder if I am having fun. I would love to play in and explore this world more if choice were more meaningful. I'm not necessarily talking about narrative choice, but there is so little opportunity for exploration and social interaction. Even the paradigm growth paths are relatively linear (up until around chapter 9 or 10) and many combats can just be won with simple paradigm setups. And, even the resource-management of earlier games is gone, given that MP no longer exists, and therefore doesn't need to be preserved.

Played the very beginning of Gran Pulse yesterday during a bout of insomnia, and I wonder if I will like that more. I probably won't return to it until after finishing some other games first.

I did take a break for a couple days since the pace of the plot, as well as the overly long chapter 7, was a bit exhausting. I feel refreshed coming back, and played part of chapter 9 last night. The characters are acting in their own interests now, rather than just reacting, which is nice. That sense of purpose, combined with the change of scenery to a giant airship, makes everything feel a little fresh again.

beanman101283 wrote:

Three months since the last post? Say it isn't so...

I've been playing Final Fantasy XIII the last week, and it sure is a hell of a thing.

First off, on PC, it is so pretty. For a four year old port of an eight year old game, it holds up beautifully, especially in motion. Being able to finally play an HD Final Fantasy is a real visual treat.

momgamer wrote:

XII is still my favorite of their battle systems. Being able to directly build the decision trees for your entire team was one of the coolest things I've seen.

Can anyone comment on whether the Steam version of XII is worth a damn? It's been a while since I final fantasied, and I missed XII first time around. Tossing up between XII and XV.

I played the steam version of FFXII: Zodiac Age. I really enjoyed it having never played much of XII when it originally launched. I also enjoyed the little I’ve played of XV as well. XII is definitely an older style game and I really enjoyed the speed boosts that you could use.

I’d suggest just grab whatever is on sale I know XV was $25 during the summer sale. I don’t know what XII was at that time.

No comment on the steam version, but I played both XII on PS3 and XII-Zodiac Age on PS4.. love both immensely. I imagine from what Chimalli says above that the Steam version will be virtually identical to the PS4 version.

With ultra wide monitor support!

I caved during the summer sale and got the PC version of XV. The control system on the keyboard is different, but it was workable.

I also picked up a Steam Link because they were so inexpensive, and I want to try that out with a controller and see how it goes.

Any controller will work, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Switch Pro, Steam controller, 8bitdo

Last night I played FF13 via the Steam Link, with a wired 360 controller, and it worked flawlessly. Really happy with that summer sale purchase.

Made it to Gran Pulse, and have been running around doing the mark missions.

The change of scenery is nice, but the "openness" I had always heard about is disappointing. You're still just doing nothing but killing monsters, and the fact there are no people around is bizarre. I suspect there are Plot Reasons for this, but man.

Still enjoying the characters a lot.

Finally finished FF13, and it has comfortably nestled itself at the bottom of my Final Fantasy ranking. Are there any interviews or books that go into the development of this game in detail? This game is a fascinating failure in my opinion, and I'd love to know more about the circumstances surrounding its development.

I don't hate it or anything, but it's obvious to me that they didn't have time to include anything extra in the game, leading to the overly linear nature and lack of content beyond the main characters and locales. Everything that DID make the cut is polished to a glimmering sheen only possible from a giant developer like Square Enix. This is probably just me projecting, but I can't help but wonder if the plot is a reflection of the development process itself. Come hell or high water, there WILL be a new Final Fantasy, but everyone involved in its making are struggling to find their place and purpose within that fate.

I decided to jump right into FF 13-2. The first hour sees you taking on side quests and riding a chocobo, which is a pretty strong statement of intent. It's.. pretty goofy so far. But I'm looking forward to seeing where the crazy goes.

Game Developer magazine had a nice post mortem back in 2010 (link to PDF).

As far as deep insight into what happened, well, I don't believe there's been anything overly substantial. That's typical for Japan companies, I'm sure.

garion333 wrote:

Game Developer magazine had a nice post mortem back in 2010 (link to PDF).

As far as deep insight into what happened, well, I don't believe there's been anything overly substantial. That's typical for Japan companies, I'm sure.

Thanks for that. Not too detailed, but still interesting to read.

Six hours in to FF 13-2 and I'm feeling cautiously positive about it. It's still early days in the story, but it still feels fairly goofy. However, the moment-to-moment experience of playing feels pretty good. They revamped the camera/movement controls from FF13 so it feels a lot better running around. They seems to have fixed some of the issues I had with the Paradigm system as well, letting you tweak character actions more, and letting you save/load paradigms rather than making you have to recreate them every time you switch your party around. The star rating on battles actually has an impact now. The monster catching is, unsurprisingly, kind of addicting. There are simple side quests, you get chocobos practically right away, and I actually had a choice of where to go after completing the second area.

Everything might fall apart later, but for now I'm enjoying it.

I will get back to FFXIII-2 some day. I switched hard drives, and while I have the save right here, Steam refuses to recognize it anymore, so would need to restart; couldn't use cloud saves because it caused the game to constantly crash (the PC port is... wanting).

What I did play of it was great fun, though! It's Pokemon meets Chrono Trigger, which just worked for me (despite looking at it initially as if that would be a horrible thing).

Yes, I had to disable Steam cloud as well due to crashing. I also got a crash when taking a screenshot with Steam, which bums me out. I've gotten into the habit of saving frequently. At least the game allows this, as opposed to limiting you to only saving at specific locations.

The first Ultimania book covering I-VI came yesterday. I’ve only looked at it briefly but I’m pretty happy with it so far.

So, I was genuinely surprised that FF XIII-2 ends with

Spoiler:

the death of Serah and a massive cliffhanger showing the world about to end. Our heroes can't catch a break, it seems.

Despite how bonkers the story gets, it remained enjoyable to play throughout. The final sequence of boss fights were fairly straightforward and enjoyably flashy.

Did anyone play the DLC episodes focused on Lightning, Sazh, and Snow? Are they worth checking out?