Fabulous Final Fantasy Franchise Discussion Catch-all

Stele wrote:

I've always meant to go back and play Tactics but maybe not...

Tactics is amazing and worth a playthrough. Just keep a rolling save system of 5 slots.

It is a good game, but it can be frustrating. Like I said, love-hate relationship.

I get that JRPGs in general and Final Fantasies in particular often have super-obscure secrets, that's not the issue. I found the secret, I did the thing, and then at the very end it says, "j/k, nope! Because our UI is stupid you don't get the reward!" That's not garden-variety "oh this secret is so obscure that you'd never find it without a guide," it's just poor design.

Are you playing the original release? I do believe that issue was fixed or at least alleviated with more party slots in WotL.

Yes, I'm playing the original. I understand that the PSP version has a new translation and some quality of life improvements, but I don't have a PSP or Vita.

Summer 2023

That looks ridiculous. And I mean that in the best way possible.

I'm now excited for a mainline FF game for the first time in over a decade.

Kaiju battles in my Final Fantasy??

Definitely looks cool. I hope there's some sort of party-based combat at some point, since all that trailer showed was Clive on his own. The idea that special individuals turn into Eikons is neat and has me more interested than the standard evil empire plot that they appear to be going with.

I've seen some screenshots floating around that look very pretty. Looking forward to seeing more gameplay and exploration. I wonder if it'll be open world-ish at all, or more linear like FF7R.

Yoshida has done great things with XIV so I’m keeping my mind open, but I’m not really sure what to think after watching the trailer a couple times. If there’s really no party system that’s going to take some getting used to in my mind. One of the reasons I loved FF games was because of the different party members.

It kinda feels too much like 14 for me, as someone currently playing 14. I’ll play of course, but I worry. The hard focus on the eikons is a lot like the Realm Reborn story.

They gave Shiva clothes! Finally!

Still making my way through Final Fantasy Tactics. Feels like I'm getting close to the end? I dunno, I'm starting to lose the thread of the plot. I've been blaming it on the translation, but I'm starting to suspect that this story is just plain not well-told. It started out strongly enough-- snooty nobles need to be taken down a peg or two, but maybe the zeal of the commoners to overthrow a corrupt system could be exploited by darker powers?-- but now it's thrown so many twists and backstabs and functionally identical factions at me that I kind of don't care any more. I guess my sister got kidnapped or something, but every time I think they're going to resolve that plot thread, it turns out my princess is in another castle. When your big epic sprawling political saga boils down to the same basic story as SMB 1, that's not, like, great.

I'd never really messed with the unique characters before-- I'd always get Agrias and then say to myself, "yeah, but I've been building up these generics all game, I don't want to give one of them up." I've been using mostly uniques this playthrough, though, and some of them are awesome. It made me a little sad when I got Orlandu, though, because he's just Agrias But Better(tm), so I benched Agrias to make room for him. I guess it's a good problem to have when I've got so many cool toys to play with that it feels bad to only get to use five of them at a time, but still. The twin heaven / hell knights, the former-dragon girlfriend, "Agrias but worse," and frigging Cloud are all permabenched, which seems like a bit of a waste. Other Final Fantasy games with large casts make sure to occasionally throw in a multi-party dungeon so that you always have a reason to use more than the same three or four characters.

Or be like Disgaea and let you use 10 per map.

Disgaea's way too far in the deep end of the pool for me, ha ha. My favorite tactical RPG is still Vandal Hearts, which is kind of Baby's First TRPG. (-:

I hit a wall in a late chapter of Disgaea and haven't felt the urge to grind it out with so many other good games out there.

I may be the odd-person out here, but I actually prefer FFT's small battle parties. Having played a lot of other tactics games with larger rosters I find the battles can actually become very tedious as you move your 10+ units around. The Fire Emblems games were especially bad when later maps let you field 20+ units. Even playing through the recent Three Houses with a cap of 10 units, I felt the battles could still bog down. There might be a little wiggle room to upwards of like 7 characters, but I really enjoy that FFT maps could be done in ~10 minutes rather than ~30 for some of the other SRPGs out there.

I also had the same experience hbi2k when I first played FFT. I got these unique characters and was "but I've already leveled and boosted these generics, I don't want to swap." I think on my first play through I was already like level 50 or 60 by the time Agrias joined at level 20 as well. So my generics had like 10 classes mastered and she had to start at zero. The one character I made an exception for was TG Cid because he was just so strong in his base class.

Malkroth wrote:

I think on my first play through I was already like level 50 or 60 by the time Agrias joined at level 20 as well.

This explains why you want to optimize in FF6 you get her about a quarter into the game you can finish the game at around level 40

Malkroth wrote:

I may be the odd-person out here, but I actually prefer FFT's small battle parties. Having played a lot of other tactics games with larger rosters I find the battles can actually become very tedious as you move your 10+ units around.

That part of it I do like in FFT. It would just be nice if they could contrive some way to reward you for cycling units in and out of your active party so your roster isn't divided into "the chosen five," "some dudes 10-20 levels behind that got permabenched when someone with a name took their spot" and "level 1 dude I haven't touched since the first battle."

hbi2k wrote:
Malkroth wrote:

I may be the odd-person out here, but I actually prefer FFT's small battle parties. Having played a lot of other tactics games with larger rosters I find the battles can actually become very tedious as you move your 10+ units around.

That part of it I do like in FFT. It would just be nice if they could contrive some way to reward you for cycling units in and out of your active party so your roster isn't divided into "the chosen five," "some dudes 10-20 levels behind that got permabenched when someone with a name took their spot" and "level 1 dude I haven't touched since the first battle."

I completely agree with this. I really wish every game with these larger than a single party rosters would do things to make you mix up who you are using. Like FFT could have used some multi-pronged assault maps where you have to split your party into three groups of 5 to accomplish something, and you play each map one at a time.

Is there a separate thread for Stranger in Paradise? I want to complain about not being able to beat

Spoiler:

Tiamat.

No, only a few of us played and I think I’m one of the even fewer that finished it.

I’d recommend going as a mage and using Blizzard magic.

Yep. Sounds like a plan.

I finished Stranger in Paradise the other day. I found the boss fights to be a pain, and I eventually dropped the difficulty to Story mode for them.

By the end, I was more invested in the story than in the combat.

Apologies for the old quote, but I finally caught up on this thread and something caught my attention.

hbi2k wrote:

I've been playing Final Fantasy Tactics on my little Chinese emulation portable (thread). This is a game that really benefits from portability (as Tactics Advance players have known for years, I'm sure).

I'm sure I've said this before so apologies if I have, but my first SRPG was actually FFTA and I'm positive I never would have gotten into the genre (or maybe back into games in general) had it not been for the SP and that game. Since then I've played every SRPG I've ever finished on a handheld. It's such a perfect pairing, IMO.

I've been thinking of revisiting FFT on either my RG351P or RG351V, but I wasn't sure legible fonts were on those devices. Can you speak to that? What are you playing on?

DSGamer wrote:

I've been thinking of revisiting FFT on either my RG351P or RG351V, but I wasn't sure legible fonts were on those devices. Can you speak to that? What are you playing on?

I was playing on my 280V, so a smaller screen with lower resolution than either of your devices, and had no problems reading the text. Gotta love games that were designed for CRTs of wildly varying size and quality. (:

hbi2k wrote:
DSGamer wrote:

I've been thinking of revisiting FFT on either my RG351P or RG351V, but I wasn't sure legible fonts were on those devices. Can you speak to that? What are you playing on?

I was playing on my 280V, so a smaller screen with lower resolution than either of your devices, and had no problems reading the text. Gotta love games that were designed for CRTs of wildly varying size and quality. (:

Yeah. Funny thing is the first time I ever bought that game was on the PS One with one of those portable CRT attachments.

IMAGE(https://now.estarland.com/images/products/56/19156/PS-Sony-Psone-with-5in-LCD-Screen-large-image.jpg)

I never really ended up playing it that way and only saw the credits roll 5 years ago or so on my Vita.

At least I finally got to it.

Final Fantasy VII 25th Anniversary stream had good stuff.

Final Fantasy VII Remake is on Steam tomorrow, and SteamDeck compatible.

The mobile Ever Crisis remake of the whole saga goes into beta later this year.

They're remaking Crisis Core and calling it Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion. Available this winter.

And part two of the remake is called Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, which will be available next winter.

Finally, they confirmed that the Remake series will be a trilogy. They haven't revealed the name for that one yet.

Crisis Core says this winter and Remake pt 2 says next winter, so I took that to mean like 1.5 years from now?

It is confusing, and you may end up being right. However the Twitter statement they also put out says it will be released approximately 3 years after FF7 Remake released in 2020, which certainly seems like that should mean 2023 to me.

Edit: I just changed my post to say next winter. Whatever that ends up meaning.

Yeah it’s always confusing when they say “winter” because that could mean the beginning of the year or the end of the year.

steinkrug wrote:

Yeah it’s always confusing when they say “winter” because that could mean the beginning of the year or the end of the year.

Or middle of the year, depending on your climate. A year would have been nice.