[Lorric]

Can't wait



(And VIII is on my wishlist, waiting for a really good sale.)

What is that picture from please? (not FFXXVII, the whole thing.)

[butter_pat_head]

I remember beating VIII before VII.  I got to the point where my Squall's ATB gauge would fill in under half a second, some funky combination of auto-haste coupled with a full tank of Haste junctioned to speed.  Add a full tank of Ultima to strength plus the Lionheart along with crit health and/or aura and the 9999s just won't stop.

Also Booya-Heel Drop-Booya-Heel Drop-Booya-Heel Drop-Booya-Heel Drop...

[Lorric]

I remember beating VIII before VII.  I got to the point where my Squall's ATB gauge would fill in under half a second, some funky combination of auto-haste coupled with a full tank of Haste junctioned to speed.  Add a full tank of Ultima to strength plus the Lionheart along with crit health and/or aura and the 9999s just won't stop.

Also Booya-Heel Drop-Booya-Heel Drop-Booya-Heel Drop-Booya-Heel Drop...

Ha ha ha. Never tried that! (The Haste thing.)

And yes, Zell. I would pause the game after each move to take in the button combinations, so he performed enormous combos.

[Scourge of Ages]

What is that picture from please? (not FFXXVII, the whole thing.)

That is from Deus Ex: Human Revolution, by Square Enix. It's a random poster you can find in a few places, this was a bunk in some barracks somewhere.

[Lorric]

What is that picture from please? (not FFXXVII, the whole thing.)

That is from Deus Ex: Human Revolution, by Square Enix. It's a random poster you can find in a few places, this was a bunk in some barracks somewhere.

Heh. Thanks. Well, they're not going to make it to Final Fantasy XXVII if they don't sort themselves out.

[NGTM-1R]

Why? I really enjoyed X.

Tidus tends to get to people, if not on the personal level that he's dumb and self-centered and really just kind of annoying to listen to, then on the meta level that he's presented as the game's main character.

"Listen to my story."

But it's not his story. It's Yuna's story. It was always the story of Yuna's quest to defeat Sin. For all that they try to push Tidus as the main character, the only reason he's even involved in this plot is Yuna drafted him. (And Yuna's not the sharpest knife in the drawer either with her big plan to Send Antlerhair and her getting kidnapped about a half-dozen times in the game. The Al-Bhed's big plan to viciously attack you and kill people to prevent killing people is also the product of a diseased mind.)

X-2 is honestly a better game in a lot of ways, except for the way it opens.

[The E]

Why? I really enjoyed X. VII, VIII and IX, loved them all. X-2 was decent, for a half price game, no more. Had a few good moments, and had some utterly cringeworthy moments. The wheels came off for me at XII. Square-Enix is a joke today. I'm just wondering what could make you ditch it in an hour. XII lasted at least 8 hours with me I'd say before I dumped it.

I put about 200 hours into FFX. It is many things, a good game it is not (and the reason why I put so many hours into it has more to do with a friendly rivalry a mate and I had going at the time, and my desire to beat the black Eidolons).

It's a game that is hampered by an unlikable main character who spends a lot of time in the early game being completely and utterly stupid, whose insistence that "this is my story" gets all the more irritating the more you realize that he's pretty much just a bloody plot device! You have a story that has various characters picking up idiot balls left and right, you have minigames that run the gamut from utterly disappointing (Blitzball is so ****ing cool in the intro! I can't wait to play it! Only when you do get to play it, it's utterly simplistic and easily broken) to way too ****ing random (Remember Chocobo riding?), and all of these have to be played to have a shot at the best weapons in the game.

FFX, while not the worst in the series (THAT honor is reserved for the endless tunnel of doom called FF13), is still pretty dire. It had the potential to be really really good (And I will say that at least on a technical level, it is a remarkable achievement), but it ultimately disappointed.

X-2, while also not exactly good, at least had the decency to not take itself seriously, and it had the balls to include a couple rather *****in' Jpop tracks. Again, it could have been much better on a writing level, and it could have found a better narrative structure, but at least Yuna and her crew are more fun to be around than the idiot you had to guide around in X.

FF12, on the other hand, I found magnificent. It had a consistency of style and tone that its immediate predecessors lacked, and while Vaan was a bad choice for protagonist (Basch was a much better choice, honestly), it had a cool combat system that encouraged tinkering, and it avoided at least some of the grindiness of FFX. It also had a reasonably open world to play with, lots of room for exploration and sidequests. It also had a villain who actually had a reasonable reason to act the way he did, and it managed to make it somewhat ambiguous as to who the actual villains of the piece are.

Also, it is possibly the prettiest game on the PS2.

[Ghostavo]

I miss the old art/game style from FF 1-6.

FF6 in particular was a masterpiece.

[Lorric]

Why? I really enjoyed X. VII, VIII and IX, loved them all. X-2 was decent, for a half price game, no more. Had a few good moments, and had some utterly cringeworthy moments. The wheels came off for me at XII. Square-Enix is a joke today. I'm just wondering what could make you ditch it in an hour. XII lasted at least 8 hours with me I'd say before I dumped it.

I put about 200 hours into FFX. It is many things, a good game it is not (and the reason why I put so many hours into it has more to do with a friendly rivalry a mate and I had going at the time, and my desire to beat the black Eidolons).

It's a game that is hampered by an unlikable main character who spends a lot of time in the early game being completely and utterly stupid, whose insistence that "this is my story" gets all the more irritating the more you realize that he's pretty much just a bloody plot device! You have a story that has various characters picking up idiot balls left and right, you have minigames that run the gamut from utterly disappointing (Blitzball is so ****ing cool in the intro! I can't wait to play it! Only when you do get to play it, it's utterly simplistic and easily broken) to way too ****ing random (Remember Chocobo riding?), and all of these have to be played to have a shot at the best weapons in the game.

FFX, while not the worst in the series (THAT honor is reserved for the endless tunnel of doom called FF13), is still pretty dire. It had the potential to be really really good (And I will say that at least on a technical level, it is a remarkable achievement), but it ultimately disappointed.

X-2, while also not exactly good, at least had the decency to not take itself seriously, and it had the balls to include a couple rather *****in' Jpop tracks. Again, it could have been much better on a writing level, and it could have found a better narrative structure, but at least Yuna and her crew are more fun to be around than the idiot you had to guide around in X.

FF12, on the other hand, I found magnificent. It had a consistency of style and tone that its immediate predecessors lacked, and while Vaan was a bad choice for protagonist (Basch was a much better choice, honestly), it had a cool combat system that encouraged tinkering, and it avoided at least some of the grindiness of FFX. It also had a reasonably open world to play with, lots of room for exploration and sidequests. It also had a villain who actually had a reasonable reason to act the way he did, and it managed to make it somewhat ambiguous as to who the actual villains of the piece are.

Also, it is possibly the prettiest game on the PS2.

Tidus is easily the most common criticism I see levelled at FFX. I'm lucky in not only can I tolerate him, I actually like him.

I decided it wasn't worth the grinding to defeat the black eidolons. I took down Valefor, and that was enough for me. I did everything else besides them.

I kind of enjoyed Blitzball. Getting a good team together and going from a mid-table team to a juggernaut. Tidus' "This is my story" I always took as him saying something akin to "this is my life". As in life-story. Not that everyone else are just extras in his story or anything. Anyway, blame Auron for that, he set Tidus off with that!

What's an idiot ball?

I hated what they did to Rikku, who was my favourite character in X. X-2 Yuna got damaged as well, though this was tolerable, but they took the 15yr old Rikku from X, who had the brains and maturity of someone significantly older, and made X-2's 17yr old Rikku into someone who had the brains and maturity of a 10yr old. I certainly had more fun with Tidus than Yuna and Rikku. But of course, everyone seems to hate Tidus...

EDIT: I got turned off big time by XII's combat. And the World and characters just didn't grab me at all.

[The E]

I kind of enjoyed Blitzball. Getting a good team together and going from a mid-table team to a juggernaut. Tidus' "This is my story" I always took as him saying something akin to "this is my life". As in life-story. Not that everyone else are just extras in his story or anything. Anyway, blame Auron for that, he set Tidus off with that!

Blitzball is so easily exploitable with even a minimal eye for its mechanics, it's not funny. The AI is literally too predictable to prevent you from doing easy wins, and has a couple of really irritating blind spots. And all that after the intro to the game set it up as this really awesome action-filled sport. Just a waste.

What's an idiot ball?

Per TVTropes, when a character suddenly starts acting completely stupid for no adequately explained reason, he or she is said to have picked up the idiot ball.

EDIT: I got turned off big time by XII's combat. And the World and characters just didn't grab me at all.

I looooooved the combat, because figuring out all the various systems and how they interacted tickled my programmer brain. It was also pretty cool to be able to leave the boring repetitive crap to the AI and move more to an oversight role, managing the combat like an RTS rather than direct intervention.

Ivalice, as a world, was one of the few FF worlds that managed to look like it worked as a world, that had a sense of history and scale that other FFs lacked. The characters within it all acted in reasonable ways, all had their own motivations and goals, and managed to be more than the cardboard cutouts that previous games gave us. A lot of this has to do with Ivalice not being an original world (it's the setting for the FF Tactics series).

[Lorric]

I kind of enjoyed Blitzball. Getting a good team together and going from a mid-table team to a juggernaut. Tidus' "This is my story" I always took as him saying something akin to "this is my life". As in life-story. Not that everyone else are just extras in his story or anything. Anyway, blame Auron for that, he set Tidus off with that!

Blitzball is so easily exploitable with even a minimal eye for its mechanics, it's not funny. The AI is literally too predictable to prevent you from doing easy wins, and has a couple of really irritating blind spots. And all that after the intro to the game set it up as this really awesome action-filled sport. Just a waste.

What's an idiot ball?

Per TVTropes, when a character suddenly starts acting completely stupid for no adequately explained reason, he or she is said to have picked up the idiot ball.

EDIT: I got turned off big time by XII's combat. And the World and characters just didn't grab me at all.

I looooooved the combat, because figuring out all the various systems and how they interacted tickled my programmer brain. It was also pretty cool to be able to leave the boring repetitive crap to the AI and move more to an oversight role, managing the combat like an RTS rather than direct intervention.

Ivalice, as a world, was one of the few FF worlds that managed to look like it worked as a world, that had a sense of history and scale that other FFs lacked. The characters within it all acted in reasonable ways, all had their own motivations and goals, and managed to be more than the cardboard cutouts that previous games gave us. A lot of this has to do with Ivalice not being an original world (it's the setting for the FF Tactics series).

I never ended up exploiting the AI, but I never needed to. I've seen videos on Youtube though of people making the puppet that is the Blitzball AI dance. Final Fantasy minigames have never been anything special though.

Idiot ball, Rikku must have gathered them all up somewhere between FFX and FFX-2...

On FFXII, I didn't like the enemies wandering around on the map, getting in the way of my exploring, or even worse, powerful enemies crushing my party while I'm trying to explore. It also took longer to kill the normal enemies, and I actually prefer micromanaging my party as opposed to just sitting and watching.

Of course, I can't comment on the World as I didn't get that far in. I did find it uninspiring. I must say though, for a PS2 game, the graphics are indeed astonishing.

[Mongoose]

VI is honestly the only FF title I've spent any time at all with, and I still haven't finished that completely, mainly because random encounters still make my brain twitch something fierce.  I do enjoy most of the characters and the general story (plus Kefka is awesome, and Ultros is hilarious), but the Esper system means that you can just about have every character Do All The Things, which kind of takes away from their uniqueness.  I think my problem is really that I played Chrono Trigger before VI, and the former is just so much more streamlined and polished that it was hard going backwards to the latter.  XII is about the only other title I have some interest in, because of the more hands-off battle system and the general world environment.  It's nice to see more high fantasy instead of "lol Nomura pseudo-neon-cyberpunk thing."