I think it's safe to say that the fan boy in me will never die, not that I want it too, I love Final Fantasy. It has taken some knocks though, mainly in the form of the pathetic, waste of space game that was Final Fantasy XIII, whose only redeeming feature was it's graphics. Yeah the story was okay but that wasn't enough to deter from the auto-battle and straight line maps. To keep this short, FFXIII sucked big time.

Now, why did I buy XIII-2? Because i'm a fan boy. There is no possible reason really is there? So, what are my first impressions of the game? Very good in fact. Maps are big, there are NPC's and you have freedom. Auto-battle is still in it and that is a problem but it doesn't bother me as much (so far). And I think I'm really gunna love this monster training element. POKEMON.

Anyway, yeah, I like it so far.

I'd have to say the same things, but I still like FFXIII better so far. Probably because FFXIII made me feel a lot more, and FFXIII-2 just feels like a gameplay boost... which is good to say, since they really do improve on a lot of FFXIII's shortcomings, but... I also don't really like the monster system. Also, the graphics get laggy at times (which didnt seem to happen in FFXIII).

The game obviously has a lower budget than FF13, which is to be expected from a game which hasn't had the same development time and is in many respects an offshoot. It was never going to get the deluxe treatment that a full installment would have had. Even so, its a great game IMO, and I may actually prefer it to FF13 (though I like both). Not sure about the gameplay. Its as fun as always, but it seems a bit uneven this time. Most battles are much, much easier than in FF13, but some of the boss battles are beyond cruel. I just got *sensationally* owned by the slew of iron bosses at the end of the game. I crawled past 3 of them, but the final, final fight was too much. Back I go for some grinding...

But yeah, a very fun game that reminds of FF10-2 (which IMO, is no bad thing). But let's be honest, the game feels rushed and undercooked in places. I don't have a problem with repetition of levels in this case, because with time travel there is at least some reason you're visting the same places. There's also the fact that many of the repeated locations are optional, and the mandatory ones are redressed quite well.

However, that doesn't excuse the fact that some levels (Bresha Ruins is a good example) have at least 1 too many incarnations, in which not an awful lot actually happens, making them feel like filler. Side quests are all well and good, but when a timezone appears on the Historia Crux, you kind of expect it to be a big deal (and it usually is), but some of the zones are pretty empty. Serendipity is also a massive letdown, and is probably the most disappointing aspect of the game. It feels small, cheap and rushed - not helped by the fact that the meagre amount of games includes one that has to be unlocked with DLC! Its a poor substitute for the Gold Saucer, and isn't even as good as FF13's Nautilus City.

The thing is, these complaints seem entirely academic for the most part. Serendipity was the only time I actually felt disatisfied with the game - for the vast majority, I've really enjoyed playing this game. The fact that they are planning to release so much DLC is pretty annoying though. I still regard mostly all DLC as a rip-off. Its just stuff that should already be in the game, and if they needed more time to develop it, that still doesn't explain why we have to pay extra.

I hear the game is full of the same melodramatic, nonsensical dialogue/narration that was in previous game. Apparently this is now coupled with some poor ramblings about time travel, or something.

I'll rent it, but probably not any time soon. I was expecting something different from this game.

Is the game true free roam?

I wana get it, but not if it's like the last one.
Can you explore from the start? Is it like a normal FF game now??


It's 32 pounds at asda here, but maybe I should wait for price drop..

Surprisingly, the game is refreshingly fresh of the overly melodramatic trappings of the most hysterical examples of JRPGs. Its one of the most striking things actually, and is largely due to the influence of Noel. He is a very no nonsense, down to earth character, who handily steps in whenever you fear the game will get too emo. He's a marvellously handy character for this, as he constantly checks himself, Serah or whoever is about to launch into a big emo scene, with 'We can't just stand about, let's get moving and fix it' etc.

Its a JRPG so there are obviously some melodramatic moments, but seriously the tone is kept to a sane and managable level. There's no people leaping to the floor with their hands on their hearts swearing oaths etc, or tearful waling (there is one actually, but that one is entirely justified and lasts about 5 seconds before the scene sobers up again).

The one fly in the ointment on this issue is the bizarre opening with Lightning and the deathly slow intro in New Bodhum. The former sequence is full of wince inducing moments (like the combatants shouting bizarre battlecries like 'Hmmh, GODDESS OF LIGHT!' in an Advent Chidlren kind of way). The strange thing is that this only happens in the opening sequence and it never, ever happens again! It gives a false first impression that the game will be overly melodramatic, but it honestly isn't like that. Break through the pain barrier of the opening sequence (the first hour or so is the worst section of the game by a mile), and the game reveals itself to be much better written and much less hysterical than you'd expect.

As I say, I warn you now that the opening hour will test your patience big time. You'll fear the worst, you'll wince in agony, you'll throw your hands up in despair as you trudge about New Bodhum. Grit your teeth, play through the pain and great rewards shall ye have. Its not quite as bad an opening as Kingdom Hearts 2, but its not far off (and like I say, the most infuriating thing is that it completely misrepresents the tone and how enjoyable and good the rest of the game is).

Hey vrykolas,this may be strange,but i thought that from a gameplay point of view,it was better than the first FFXIII game.

1:You got actual levels,and i think that maybe you can actually choose a class.I-m not sure if the system is similar to choosing 1 class like in FF2 japanese,but it looked like that.
2:You can walk around and talk to people.I was quite happy about this as well,because a game doesn-t feel like a game if you cannot assess what everyone feels,and explore.
3:You can buy armor:This was one thing i-m happy they put back.
4:You can get gil from fights instead of getting rare items to sell.
5:Snow wasnt around at the beginning.It was nice to not have snow or hope around.

Thats not to call it perfect or anything,but it is a small improvement.

I didn't say that the gameplay itself was worse, just that the difficulty curve of the combat was a bit off (too easy in regular fights meaning no real need to change from 'Relentless Assault' and rather too hard in some of the boss fights without heavy grinding). I agree with most of your points, and yeah, how much of a relief is it to be able to get gil from fights again?! I like both Snow and Hope (and I really like them in this game, because I think all the old cast are used excellently), but I wasn't unhappy to have Noel and Serah as my characters at all. I thought they made a perfectly acceptable team, and I never had any issues with either of them. And like I said, I think Noel is a very useful party member in keeping the overall 'emo-ness' within tolerable parameters.

Basically, I'm not saying that this game is for everyone, that it will change your mind on JRPGs or FF13 or anything. All I'm saying is that I thought it was a really, really good game and the best that I could have hoped for in a sequel. I was a bit apprenhensive at the start about how credible the whole 'Hey let's put Time travel into the game when we never even mentioned anything like that in FF13, Lightning is suddenly gone and fighting at the end of time' etc etc. For the whole opening sections, I had doubts and worries swimming around my head, and the initial setup of it all was not very promising.

But from the moment Noel and Serah travel through the first time gate, it suddenly clicked into place and I thought 'Hey wait a second... I like the look of this, the feel of it too. Yeah, I'm really for up for this - let's do it!' And literally from then, I never looked back, because I was totally engaged. Because that's when the game stops messing about trying to justify its silly retconned setup and just starts running with it. Its when the game properly starts, as they embark on their grand time travelling adventure, and you think 'Who cares if it makes sense - I get to have adventures in time and space!'

Which isn't to say I don't rate the time travel aspect. Because regardless of the retcon way it is established, and how awkward that whole introduction is (precisely because the game cannot really start until all of that explanation is out of the way), I think the time travel aspect is extremely well done, letting us see how civilisation recovered after the end of FF13, seeing Mankind rediscover its pioneer spirit, and basically make the universe feel more concrete and fleshed out etc.

But to go back to how I felt about the game, its like the developers reached into my head, sorted through and found all the things I love the most, and then incorporated elements of them into this game. So for me, the game seems like a heavenly mix of Final Fantasy X-2, Quantum Leap, Star Ocean, Superman, Doctor Who, Soul Calibur, Star Trek and 2001: A Space Odyssesy. It might not be for everyone, but it feels like it was written especially for me. You don't often get that feeling when you feel that something has tapped directly into your wavelength, but this game does for me. I just wish they hadn't given into the modern trend of DLC. Square have been pretty good at not doing this in the past, but now it seems they're planning to go down Bethesda and Bioware's route of milking the fans, charging them for stuff that should already be in the game.

FFXIII was extremely melodramatic.

I only played part of the demo of FFXIII 2 though.
It seemed like they cut down on some cutscenes.

And vrykolas,i heard that the designers were aiming for how the time travel was used in chrono trigger,how much do you actually know about that?

I didn-t like the quicktime events,but at least the game was a bit harder.
It was a bit tougher to get 5 stars.

The melodrama is toned down - just don't take the intro as your example and you'll be fine! The game feels much more laid back for the most part, but dramatic enough to be thrilling when it is called for. Its a good mix of fun and dark.

Time travel is very hard to get right in a gameplay sense, in the way that Chrono Trigger and Majora's Mask do. Those are classics of game design that would be all but impossible to try and measure yourself against, even before you took the costs and development times required if you tried to do something like that in a modern game. Rather than have lots of little details that you can fiddle about with, FF13-2 works in pretty broad strokes. I.e you'll come a time period that utterly messed up and dangerous because of time paradoxes, you fix the problem and that unlocks the same place, same time, but without the paradox (and thus the place will be flourishing, rather than dying).

Its basically just Light World/Dark World type stuff when you boil it down. But discarded timelines (i.e ones that you later fix) do still continue to exist (one does not replace the other, they occupy different spaces on the Historia Crux). And there is a certain degree of complexity when you bring in the option to seal time periods and retry them, potentially altering the future. But that makes it sound more grand than it actually is. In reality, it just doesn't work in that kind of way -this game's time travel has nothing like the depth of a 'Majora's Mask' for example. That's not to say that there aren't some weighty concepts floating about, closed time loops, messages being sent through time to affect the immediate present and all that, but in gameplay terms the time travel is akin to the time travel in Doctor Who and Quantum Leap (i.e whilst there is time travel, its really only used as a means to get from location to location, narrative situation to narrative situation, rather than peforming all kinds of surgical changes to affect specific areas and puzzles etc).

There is a certain amount of complexity, but expecting the depth of Chrono Trigger or Majora's Mask's treatment of time travel would be a bit much to ask. I'm glad of that though, because the idea of the game forcing you to manipulate all kinds of time related puzzles that make you go back and forth trying to get them right, was not something I wanted anyway. Because I was not the greatest fan of Majora's Mask for that very reason, as I thought it was a bit gimmicky, got very old very quickly, and the constant back and forth with no real narrative progression was not to my taste. This game is telling a more focused story than Chrono Trigger, dealing in a specific time span of around 500 years, unravelling paradoxes to get to the 'real' timeline of those 500 years. The story of how the civilisation of the refugees from Cocoon comes along is integral, so there you can't back to the events of FF13 for example, nor can you go much further than the sort of 'Day of Judgement' style date.

The quick time events are again an element that is not present in much of the game (although the monster allies use some simple QTEs to do their special attacks, I suppose). Despite what the intro seems to suggest, QTEs are only really included in boss fights, and there aren't very many of those. I agree that they don't really add anything and I suspect Square won't bother including them in future FF games. A lot of the elements in this game feel like test cases, trying out different things so they can monitor what people make of them (the speech options are another example of something that is not terrible, but beither do they really add all that much, especially as they occur so infrequently - again despite the intro making it seem like there will be lots of them).

Dissecting the ins and outs of the game's features is a pretty futile prospect IMO. It just isn't the kind of game where that approach will get you very far. Its isn't any more scientific than 'You either get it or you don't'. Trying to get a hold of the whole narrative is pointless as many aspects are left (for now) out of your reach, as you don't have much info on what most of the other characters from FF13 are actually doing, but from what you do see of them, its plain that they have roles and there are elements of story that will be revealed later (either through DLC or a full sequel).

You only have full access to Serah, Noel and Hope's role in this story (which makes all the pictures of Lightning on the marketing seem like a massive con job!), but their story is entertaining and fun to experience. And at least for me, the info I learnt on what Sazh, Snow, Lightning and what was going on with Fang and Vanille left me wanting more, wanting to know more about what they were up to and would be doing after the (IMO great) ending. And I mean that in a good way, as in I'm really jazzed to see where they take it from here.

I liked majoras mask and chrono trigger.

I liked the idea of travelling back and forth and having different eras that have distinct things different,with many ways to beat the game.I thought that it was interesting for its time,but i-m not sure it would hold up today either.
the idea was done once,and you risk backlash if you don-t do it better.The time travel thing was more of a way to add gameplay in chrono trigger and ocarina of time.

I am also not one of the types right now who thinks all games coming out are bad,its just that we are in a very bad spot right now.Games like FFXIII got a lot of backlash,and some call it the worse game of all time.
This kind of thing must have been noted during the process of making FFXIII-2,because they changed features that were in the original game.I am also wondering what is going to happen with FFXIII versus,and what kind of game its going to be.

I might consider buying final fantasy again,if:

They make sure gameplay stays important in the franchise from now on
They try to make their games open world with stuff to do,while not sacrificing story
Try to minimalize whiny characters that are immature.I like mature content

I'm not sure the fans would thank them for prioritising gameplay and systems over story, Does anybody play JRPGs for the gameplay? I know I don't - as long as the gameplay is not intrusively bad, then I don't care. All I care about is the story and the experience - if the system happens to be good and fun to use (as I and many others consider FF13's to be), then that's a nice bonus, but no more than that. Gameplay will never be the main reason to play a JRPG. For that, you want something like Dark Souls, and that's pretty much all gameplay and no story, so its something entirely different (and very fresh, which explains why its going down so well - that and the fact that its great anyway).

Open world is also something you should be careful about wishing for. The more you open a world out and allow extensive exploration, the harder it is to keep a focused story. It was the chief complaint levelled against Final Fantasy 12. The changes made to FF13-2 did show that they are willing to listen to feedback, and that has to be a positive sign. But this whole 'Worst game ever' thing is ridiculous (and entirely a western reaction - the Japs loved FF13). I accept that many over here didn't like FF13 like I did, but to call it the worst game ever is a staggering over-reaction (and one that counts for nothing, as 13-2 has sold by the boatload still).

But still, your points are very fair, and I can't say I massively disagree with any of them. I also happen to think that gaming is pretty dire right now, and its not made any better by hysterics who claim things are better than ever. The hype that the press forced on us last year to believe it was 'The Best Year In Gaming Ever' was ludicrous and completely false. It was a year of wall to wall inferior sequels, nothing more.

I am not saying that only gameplay is important,but it is extremely important.
A game isn-t really a game without gameplay,because a game is more about gameplay,otherwise we just have a movie.I like good stories,and you can tell because i appreciate some of what is done by the designers who made final fantasy.
I am in between opinions right now,because i am worried that the americans are losing their grasp on what makes a fun game.i was able to play through fable 2 a few times,but other than that,it doesn-t have as much replay value as oblivion.
People hate oblivion,and bash it to death,but it has boatloads of quests to do.Not all the quests are as fun,but there are a lot of really fun quests,like:Who dunnit.That quest i listed,was the quest where you assasinate everyone without them seeing you.
I just love how they all start to panic after you kill their friends,and they start to look for someone to blame.I ended up framing a guy and convincing one guy to kill the other,then i killed the ex guard.

I think that also:Dlc can be fun,but i am worried that designers will abuse it more and more to get an extra buck out of us.We live in very dangerous times,where game designers know better how to exploit us,and get as much money out of us as possible.
Proof is in how square enix is milking ff7 to death.

Going back to american games,and what i think is wrong:I-m not all that big of a fan of mass effect,because the shooter genre does not appeal to me at all.I am more of a fan of actual rpg over fps.I have played some fps like games,but they have to be special.Fable was more of a zelda type adventure rpg game,but with more options towards good and evil.Mass effect played more like an fps overall,and implemented a level system that is only lightly based on rpg setting.I like dragon age origins,but i can only take so much of that game.I find it harder to tolerate a replay of dragon age origins,and i think it is because the path ends up the same more or less.

As for what i think is wrong with jrpgs:

Lets talk about FFXIII ok?

FFXIII:

1:The gameplay:The gameplay is held at a stand still,and doesn-t really ever evolve much at all.The open world was a small improvement over the closed world,with no shops,and a narrow path.The gameply was lacking for it to be considered a game.
2:The Story:The story is pretty much mostly running away most of the time,with scenes with small detail about the past of the characters in chunks.Most of the time,we see them standing around saying meaningless shit.
The story never really picks up,because there is really not much to it.
3:The characters:Most of the characters were extremely boring and or annoying to the point of the player wanting to strangle them to death,especially snow.

So in conclusion:The gameplay sucks,and the story and characters are uninteresting.The best combination for a game,is to attempt to balance out gameplay with story as much as possible.

Ps:I think that FFXIII is the worse modern jrpg i have played.We got technology to fit in lots of story,graphics and gameplay,but the programmers sacrifice too much in the name of cutscenes.
I am not going to compare it to old games,because games like ff6 ff7 ff8 and ff9,had more limited capacity.i did think ff9 did a better job at balancing out the gameplay and story than FFXIII,in fact:A whole lot better.

Thats not to say that the game from mistwalker:Lost legacy being flawless.I think it has a lot of flaws as well,one of them being the gameplay.
I also wish to add:I didn-t like the new tales game.I prefered tales of symphonia over tales of vesperia.

I would point out that the Fable series (which I like very much) is British, not American. We do make games over here, honest! And you don't have to tell me twice about Oblivion - I love that game, and I like it *way* more than Skyrim.

Good gameplay is never appreciated in JRPGs, because its something that fans of the genre play such little priority on. Like I say, as long as the system isn't actively bad, it will do for most JRPG fans. But if the system is actually good, that won't convince any non-JRPG fan to play the game, because poor gameplay was not the reason that they weren't playing JRPGs. There are plenty of JRPGs with decent battle systems (Star Ocean and the Tales games for example), but that isn't why people play them or don't play them. Plus nobody can ever reach consensus on what is and isn't a good system (some refuse to let go of random battles and cry all the time that they don't get included anymore, some love the real time combat of FF12 whereas others despise it as the most hateful thing ever etc etc).

About FF13:
1) I entirely agree about them ill-advisedly holding back the options for so long, but I think once those are unlocked, its the best JRPG system certainly of this gen. Would you really rather have the centuries old system of a Lost Odyssesy? That game's so old fashioned, it feels like it was made in 1750.

2) The story is decent enough for me, but I don't think its told all that well at times. The game takes far too long to introduce Fang, takes Snow out of action for hours on end, and is terrible at managing the time that the villains have on screen (its about Chapter 7 before they even start to show up, which is crazy).

3) I don't agree about the characters - I happen to think FF13 has an extremely good cast. One of the rare games where I liked all the characters (but that's just my opinion of course).

I'm happy for us to agree and disagree about the various aspects and whether we liked it or not. I'm perfectly fine with you considering it the worst JRPG of this gen etc. Its just that suggestion that its the worst game ever (which I don't think you were actually making yourself). That is where I draw the line, as its such an absurd statement. If people consider FF13 the worst game ever, then they haven't played very many games!

With regard to FF9, its like I always say - the first disc and bit are exceptional, but the rest sucks. Once you leave the Mist Continent, there are no good locations, characters come and go without leaving any impact (seriously, what does Amarant actually do?) and great characters like Steiner and Freya are just left to rot, getting nothing further to do.

I think labelling any JRPG as 'the best' or 'the worst' of this gen is pointless, as there have been so few of note. I really like Tales of Vesperia, but its just more of the same from the Tales team. Its not going to win new fans, nor turn off old ones, except perhaps that they might have wanted something fresh and abandon the series because they didn't get that. Lost Odysesy was too stuck in the past to be of any relevance with its random battles and archaic system.

Its a pretty grim time for RPGs right now, as the action genre is slowly but surely swallowing it up (Skyrim, Mass Effect 2 etc etc), whilst the sheer cost of making JRPGs is far too high considering the extremely diminished market for them (only Final Fantasy makes any kind of profit as far as JRPGs go). Sad times, but games like Fable and Dark Souls etc give me at least some hope. And of course FF13-2, because I really can't overstate just how much fun I've had with this game. The Paradox endings in particular are mind blowing.

Interesting points as always, Nos.

I disagree about gameplay not being appreciated in jrpgs always.There are plenty of games that appreciated gameplay,but the new ones are pushing it away to wedge as many cutscenes in as possible.
The problem is:I think that some games don-t put nearly enough effort into making a gameplay aspect interesting.

Lets take some of the modern problems in jrpgs,shall we? Lets start with lost oddysey:

Lost odyssey-s gameplay is much like legends of dragoon,except i think that legends of dragoons approach was more interesting,because you could unlock the abilities,and the dragons each one had made them special.
In lost odyssey,the actual characters Could all be clones who were masters of physical and magical attacks.There needs to be a boundaries.
The last tales game,had the same abilities as tales of symphonia,cept i think i actually liked the controls and characters better.

I played another game that i cannot remember now,but there was a bunch of monster things that had all special powers.I played a little and got bored,and felt massively disappointed.

Games in the past,like:FF tactics parasite eve,tales of symphonia breath of fire had great gameplay.
Kings field is probably one of my favorite jrpgs in the series.I like the first person aspect of the rpg.I like the second more than the first though.

As for centuries old systems:You are massively exaggerating there.

Rpgs maybe old,but console and pc rpgs are a mere 30 or 31 years old as far as i can tell.The first rpg i know about,was hydelide.Im not sure if hydelide is japanese now,but i think it came out before zelda.
Final fantasy 1 came out in 1987 ish,and the first dragon warrior came out somewhere around that time or later i think.

I will not include tabletop either,because tabletops play differently from console rpgs.For one:You need a partner to play,and you roll dice.It is true that many old school rpgs take the tabletop rules,like:Rolling dice for random stats,which can be very annoying.
Tabletops seem to be more about making your own story.Something i think that console rpgs cannot do,because it is hard to do something of that magnitude.To create your own story is literally impossible,even at our time now.The amount of sheer possibilities is staggering.There is literally no end to the amount of things that could or could not happen.Imagine if you had a choice playing zelda to not save zelda? or take the triforce for yourself and decide what to do? Would it come with cutscenes? because that would fill up those cds.

Games can have good gameplay without sacrificing too much story,and it is important to do so.Gameplay is very important,in fact:As important as having a very memorable story.The problem is:imagine if you had a game with great story,but the gameplay was so horrendous you couldn-t stand it.In those areas that were about gameplay,you would be bored to death.Gameplay should be one if not the major factor of a game,and story and characters should be second,and graphics should be dead last.

Lets talk about FFXIII:

Characters like hope and snow have been seen before.I saw in hope what i saw in other old jrpgs.Its been done to death,and over dramaticized.This is also one reason why i see raiden and hope to be very similar.Both have a bad tendency to be over melodramatic and whine.Whining doesnt make you care unless you first are able to make their story and character interesting,otherwise you just have a whiny annoying brat,and look how much people hate tidus.

I think that hope is more annoying than tidus though,and also far less interesting.Another problem is:There isn-t really anything other than whining to make him interesting,like:A very interesting engaging past.The more engaging the story of the character is,the better it is to immerse in the story and actually care about the character.

I think that the last game i really enjoyed from the jrpg series,was Suikoden 5 and dragon quest 8.

As for next gen and new gen thing:The reason i said that FFXIII was the worse new gen game i had played,was because new games have more powerful engines,and also would have more space for gameplay and also better quality sound.
I think some people hate on barthandalus theme too much,and maybe its because they died so much that they learned to hate it.personally:i thought barthandalus was easy as hell.

As for the music parts:Some of the stuff that is classical is good,but the techno themes arent to my liking.there are like 3 or 4 songs i liked,and the rest did nothing to me.One thing i am looking for,is a deeper story to connect to,with adult characters in interesting situations.

A lot of times,jrpgs deal with light teenage matters,so its like watching a teen flick that is more melodramatic.

I have heard some bad stuff about modern sand box games too:I hear that the americans are obsessed with sand box games and zombie games.
It would explain some games,like:Zombie apocalypse,and Dead island,and dead rising.I heard that they even included a zombie mode in a call of duty game.

I am worried that they will spam all these sandbox games,and we will soon have a bunch of under developed sand box games that arent all that interesting,or even engaging.
I am hoping this is not the case,because videogames are supposed to be fun,not a chore,like doing your homework or cleaning your room.

We'll have to agree to disagree on the gameplay. Star Ocean and Tales have great combat, but they do zero business in the west. They have good stories, characters and the gameplay is some of the best in any JRPGs, but they are still ultra-niche titles, regarded as being for JRPG fans and absolutely nobody else. Saying that there are too many cutscenes is to ignore that FF fans expect cutscenes, in the same way that Command and Conquer fans expect those cheesy FMV sequences etc. They need to be spaced out properly, and not continually disrupt the flow of the game (as I agree FF13 did), but cutscenes will always be important to JRPGs and the lack of them in WRPGs hurts those games IMO (because whilst they often have great characters, we never get to see them actually doing anything other than standing around talking to you).

And by centuries old, I'm obviously not talking actual centuries! You're taking what I say far too literally. I just meant that it was extremely dated.- I mean, if that game was any more old fashioned, I'd be checking outside the window to see if I'd actually gone back in time. The random battles, front and back rows for characters, rock paper scissors elements for attacks, I go then you go gameplay... it was painful.

You say gameplay is important but when has that ever been true in RPGs? The Elder Scrolls series is massively popular, yet is known by everyone who plays it to have some of the floatiest, least convincing melee combat ever. Final Fantasy (particularly FF7) took JRPGs overground to the mainstream, but the gameplay was always dodgy, with the random battles and artitrary way you could only use a couple of your characters etc. Even when you go back to something like FF6 which is celebrated by fans, its gameplay is highly dubious, with some characters like Sabin and Edgar having easy to perform and vastly overpowered moves that you just spam throughout the game. No need to learn new tactics, no need to even use later characters, just Drill, AutoCrossbow, Bum Rush etc etc your way to glory.

People like systems that are easy and uncomplicated to use. They like to get the hang of it, then rinse and repeat for hours and hours as they grind for items and exp etc, or just progress with minimum fuss through the main story (which they then complain was too short and easy, but that's modern gamers for you). If a game offers the slightest resistance, they hop on the internet to find some cheap way around it, or look at the guide they bought with the game. Games like Dark Souls are offering some respite from this modern curse, weeding out the casual gamers from the real gamers, but only by intensely focusing on gameplay to the exclusion of all else. No real story, no proper characters etc. Skyrim is similar, focusing on exploration etc whilst simplyfing everything else. Dark Souls just happens to specialise in gameplay, which is obviously an extremely rare thing to do these days.

People who play Atlus' games obviously don't play them for the gameplay. The dungeon crawling is utterly generic, the systems either pitifuly simple or wildly overcomplicated and the encounter rates are fatal in how quick they spawn. In a technical sense, their games are total car wrecks. And yet they are regarded as the best JRPGs around these days, because their atmosphere and stories are so unusual, being much darker and more relevant to the sense of doom hanging over modern society.

I continue to disagree with your reading of FF13's characters. Its too easy to label Hope as some whiny brat, when he never acts like that, except under the most understandable circumstances. After Chapter 3, he is determined to see through his mission. He keeps going after Lightning when she's told him to give it up because he's slowing her down, she is the one who makes him go to Parumpolum to see his father when he was set to put that aside and focus on the mission, she is the one who abandons their mission in parumpolum because of her doubts. None of this is Hope's fault, none of it shows him whining or doubting himself. He picks them up and gets them moving again after Fifth Ark and at the end of Oerba. Its completely out of order to say he just stands around whining.

And you have to be joking about Tidus. What is there to like about that shouting, crying fool? Hope would be better if he went about shouting and boasting at the top of his voice, would he? Ugh. FFX-2 convinced me that I didn't actually hate Spira or its people nearly as much as I thought I did - it really was just characters like Tidus, Jecht and Seymour, as well as the awful story of the original game. Tidus remains one of my all time most hated RPG characters. Only Yuri Hyuga from Shadow Hearts Covenant is worse.

Barthandles is easy if you've levelled up fully (as I did), but Cid is murder even if you are levelled. I didn't have a problem with it though, because the fight is really good. The complaints against Barthendelus are from the usual suspects who complain the game is just mashing X to win, then claim he is far too hard. If you bother to learn how to play the game properly, you can beat both Bart and Cid at reletively low levels (although Cid is much, much harder). Its their own fault for not learning how to play and expecting everything to just be given to them on a plate. Its the same mentality that drove Bethesda to make your actions have absolutely no consequences in SKyrim - because lazy gamers want to experience all the content and quests on the same playthrough and feel entitled to everything whenever they want it, without earning it. I have no time for such people - if you want something, then you should expect to have to put in some effort for it, otherwise of what value is it?

I'm not disagreeing with your right to consider FF13 the worst JRPG of this gen (I happen to think that The Last Remnant easily takes that 'prize' however). I was just saying that the idea of it being the worst game ever made was absurd, and only a knee jerk reaction could come to that conclusion. As much as anyone could ever hate FF13, gaming has vastly more infamous titles than FF13. But make the sign of the cross and back away, for those games must never be spoken of, Amen.

I tend to prefer ambient, futuristic music and celtic haunting strains etc. But I like to think that I'll enjoy anything just so long as its good.

Yes, there are far too many zombie games about. Dead Island isn't American though (its... Swedish or something, I think, can't remember). Anyway, its a lot less stereotypical than the easy B movie cash ins that many American games are churning out and putting in DLC. As for sand box, there are far, far too many of those, and they all get praised despite their often dubious quality (Borderlands being a prime offender - its a terrible game but it got rave reviews from the American press). I've heard that Bioware are thinking of making Dragon Age 3 into an open world game, and if that's so, then I'm done with them.

A game like Catherine seems to show that companies like Atlus are moving away from RPGs as a means to support themselves. They still do the same kinds of stories, and they still look like RPGs at a quick glance, but actually, they are using different cheaper to make genres or, because RPGs just cost too much to make for too little profit now (at least unless you jump on the open world bandwagon). Or they are doing what Grasshopper etc do, making unusual stories that you would expect to find in RPGs, but putting them in messily mishandled action games, because action games sell better than RPGs.

[QUOTE=Vrykolas;1914962]We'll have to agree to disagree on the gameplay. Star Ocean and Tales have great combat, but they do zero business in the west. They have good stories, characters and the gameplay is some of the best in any JRPGs, but they are still ultra-niche titles, regarded as being for JRPG fans and absolutely nobody else. Saying that there are too many cutscenes is to ignore that FF fans expect cutscenes, in the same way that Command and Conquer fans expect those cheesy FMV sequences etc. They need to be spaced out properly, and not continually disrupt the flow of the game (as I agree FF13 did), but cutscenes will always be important to JRPGs and the lack of them in WRPGs hurts those games IMO (because whilst they often have great characters, we never get to see them actually doing anything other than standing around talking to you).

You mention gameplay being unimportant,and yet:Games like kings field are all about gameplay.What about games like alundra? alundra has a cliche story,but it also has lot of gameplay aspects.
What about the gameplay aspects of games like:Grandia 3,and breath of fire? The truth is:jrpgs are moving away from gameplay,and want to be movies.Heck,even FFX put strong emphasis on gameplay.

And by centuries old, I'm obviously not talking actual centuries! You're taking what I say far too literally. I just meant that it was extremely dated.- I mean, if that game was any more old fashioned, I'd be checking outside the window to see if I'd actually gone back in time. The random battles, front and back rows for characters, rock paper scissors elements for attacks, I go then you go gameplay... it was painful.

Sort of like that whole thing of rolling for stats aye? Its so friggin annoying in old rpgs,when you have to roll for random stats,and get the shittiest possible stats and have to roll for what seems forever.

You say gameplay is important but when has that ever been true in RPGs? The Elder Scrolls series is massively popular, yet is known by everyone who plays it to have some of the floatiest, least convincing melee combat ever. Final Fantasy (particularly FF7) took JRPGs overground to the mainstream, but the gameplay was always dodgy, with the random battles and artitrary way you could only use a couple of your characters etc. Even when you go back to something like FF6 which is celebrated by fans, its gameplay is highly dubious, with some characters like Sabin and Edgar having easy to perform and vastly overpowered moves that you just spam throughout the game. No need to learn new tactics, no need to even use later characters, just Drill, AutoCrossbow, Bum Rush etc etc your way to glory.

Oblivion had a lot of bugs,and repetitive caves,but it did had good intentions.I am unsure at this moment about skyrim,so i wont comment.
Besides:No game is perfect.If you are comparing FFXIII to games like oblivion,which is an open sandbox game that allows you to virtually do anything you want,then you got to be fucking kidding me.Heck,even dragon age origins which puts more emphasis on story than oblivion has better gameplay than FFXIII,and its story is pretty good,if simple.If your idea of fun is watching 100 hours of cutscenes,and nothing but cutscenes,then be my guest,but don-t come crying to me when the gameplay aspect is lacking so much,that you get sick of it.You have the right ideas,but i think that you give too much credit to Final fantasy series,which i find stereotypes japanese games,and continues its tradition of predictable cliche scenes.I dont have having some cutscenes,but i do think that a game shouldn-t be primarily cutscenes,because then all we have is a fucking interactive movie with no gameplay.For that,i might as well watch a real director who is far less cliche.

People like systems that are easy and uncomplicated to use. They like to get the hang of it, then rinse and repeat for hours and hours as they grind for items and exp etc, or just progress with minimum fuss through the main story (which they then complain was too short and easy, but that's modern gamers for you). If a game offers the slightest resistance, they hop on the internet to find some cheap way around it, or look at the guide they bought with the game. Games like Dark Souls are offering some respite from this modern curse, weeding out the casual gamers from the real gamers, but only by intensely focusing on gameplay to the exclusion of all else. No real story, no proper characters etc. Skyrim is similar, focusing on exploration etc whilst simplyfing everything else. Dark Souls just happens to specialise in gameplay, which is obviously an extremely rare thing to do these days.

Easy is not necessarily good,and over complicated isn-t necessarily good either.One example of a game that is fucking hard,is ff tactics,and kings field 1 can be kinda difficult at times.
FF tactics is ridiculous a lot of times,but it does give good gameplay aspects,even ultima is difficult.I like it though because it provides a challenge that is relatively fun.Dragon quest 8 was an example of too easy.I don-t know if others found it too easy,but it was extremely ridiculous that i could kill the final boss so easily.I find that the best way to make a game,is to increase the difficulty curve slowly rather than all together.Some games curve in ridiculous ways,like:ff2 nes.FF2 nes is an example of going from too hard,to way too easy.The balance was totally broken,and there is no excuse for that level of broken difficulty curve.

People who play Atlus' games obviously don't play them for the gameplay. The dungeon crawling is utterly generic, the systems either pitifuly simple or wildly overcomplicated and the encounter rates are fatal in how quick they spawn. In a technical sense, their games are total car wrecks. And yet they are regarded as the best JRPGs around these days, because their atmosphere and stories are so unusual, being much darker and more relevant to the sense of doom hanging over modern society.

I continue to disagree with your reading of FF13's characters. Its too easy to label Hope as some whiny brat, when he never acts like that, except under the most understandable circumstances. After Chapter 3, he is determined to see through his mission. He keeps going after Lightning when she's told him to give it up because he's slowing her down, she is the one who makes him go to Parumpolum to see his father when he was set to put that aside and focus on the mission, she is the one who abandons their mission in parumpolum because of her doubts. None of this is Hope's fault, none of it shows him whining or doubting himself. He picks them up and gets them moving again after Fifth Ark and at the end of Oerba. Its completely out of order to say he just stands around whining.

He-s still a whining brat,and he cries at chapter 13 when he first gets to the open world,and puts himself in danger.Snow is an arrogant prick,and continues to be such later

And you have to be joking about Tidus. What is there to like about that shouting, crying fool? Hope would be better if he went about shouting and boasting at the top of his voice, would he? Ugh. FFX-2 convinced me that I didn't actually hate Spira or its people nearly as much as I thought I did - it really was just characters like Tidus, Jecht and Seymour, as well as the awful story of the original game. Tidus remains one of my all time most hated RPG characters. Only Yuri Hyuga from Shadow Hearts Covenant is worse.

Barthandles is easy if you've levelled up fully (as I did), but Cid is murder even if you are levelled. I didn't have a problem with it though, because the fight is really good. The complaints against Barthendelus are from the usual suspects who complain the game is just mashing X to win, then claim he is far too hard. If you bother to learn how to play the game properly, you can beat both Bart and Cid at reletively low levels (although Cid is much, much harder). Its their own fault for not learning how to play and expecting everything to just be given to them on a plate. Its the same mentality that drove Bethesda to make your actions have absolutely no consequences in SKyrim - because lazy gamers want to experience all the content and quests on the same playthrough and feel entitled to everything whenever they want it, without earning it. I have no time for such people - if you want something, then you should expect to have to put in some effort for it, otherwise of what value is it?

Barthandalus the first time was annoying,and the second time was the hardest for me.The last time,i pretty much expected what to do because i already saw him before,so i know what to expect.
The first cid raines was very difficult,but most fights were not,and some fights were done in such a way that were just plain cheap.

I'm not disagreeing with your right to consider FF13 the worst JRPG of this gen (I happen to think that The Last Remnant easily takes that 'prize' however). I was just saying that the idea of it being the worst game ever made was absurd, and only a knee jerk reaction could come to that conclusion. As much as anyone could ever hate FF13, gaming has vastly more infamous titles than FF13. But make the sign of the cross and back away, for those games must never be spoken of, Amen.

There is some truth in the hatred for FFXIII though.

Welcome wall o text, I shall avert my eyes from yar glory.

I am but a pirate. rrrahhr

Because there is a lot to say on the subject,and i cannot think of a way to express it in less lines.

To talk about something,i have to go into great detail.

I didn't say gameplay was unimportant - I said that JRPGs place little importance on it. There is a distinction, and that's my point. The RPGs which have traditionally done well have had a very hit and miss approach to gameplay. King's Field may be good, but most people in the west will never have heard of it (and those who have likely only know it is the precursor to Demon's Souls). Traditionally, gamers have not cared about good gameplay in RPGs, and those RPGs which happen to actually have good gameplay have not seen mass appeal for it. Similarly, games like Lost Odysessy, Skyrim etc are lauded whether by core fans or mainstream, despite having terrible gameplay.

Games like you mention (Grandia, Breath of Fire etc etc) are viewed with utter apathy by mainstream gamers, on the occasions that they even know anything about such games. It comes as a great surprise to them to learn that games like Dragon QUest are bigger than Final Fantasy in the east. They view such games as being dated and 'for crazy RPG nutjobs who like that sort of thing'. There is no commericial success to be had in producing such games these days, which is why nobody does (at least not over here).

How dare you remind me of rolling stats! I remember the agonising hours of trying to get a good party in games like Eye of the Beholder. Dark days...

I'm hardly in any danger of coming crying to you about lacking gameplay when I consider the gameplay in FF13 to be so strong, am I? And as I've said many times, I don't care about gameplay in RPGs, so long as it isn't awful (why on earth would I play games like Oblivion otherwise - to play that floaty combat? No chance!) The only game which has noticeably awkward gameplay in the FF series for me is FF8, but even that didn't stop me really loving that game. The rest I'm just fine with, and some (like FF12 and FF13) I think are very good indeed. Star Ocean too, while we're at it. I enjoy Final Fantasy and I do think its important because its basically the last chance saloon for JRPGs these days. If Final Fantasy stops selling, then that's it for JRPGs in the west - they'll stop bringing any over (they already have, really).

But that doesn't mean I give Final Fantasy a free pass. I'm paying my money for these games and I expect it to be worth it. It so happens that most of the recent ones I have enjoyed (FF10-2, FF12, FF13, FF13-2), but I was and continue to be very vocal about the ones I don't like (FF10 the most obvious, but I'm not much for FF9, FF6 or FF3 either).

I don't support games which are too easy or too hard (or at least those that are unfair as well as hard) - I'm just telling you what people like and what people shell big money for. Its the times we live in unfortunately, but the recent interest in Dark Souls was heartening. Gamers are starting to expect more from the gameplay in their RPGs then they ever did in the past. Which *would* be a good thing, if it meant more games like Dark Souls. Alas, it actually means that they want their games to be more like action games a la Mass Effect 2 etc.

Hope has every right to be scared at the thought of dying to an incurable disease. Go speak to cancer sufferers and ask them if they face absolutely every moment of every day with stoic bravery - they don't. People who know they are going to die are understandably overwhelmed by the injustice of it, knowing there is nothing they can do (and the characters aren't even going to just die, they are going to live on in absolute agony and suffering). There needed to be more displays of this, not less. Because as it is, it never feels like the characters have anything wrong with them (as apart from that one outburst from Hope, they never show any emotion over it and there is no physical signs of it beyond the brand.)

Barthandelous is easy the 3rd time, because he doesn't gain any extra attacks. He just has the same old Ultima, Thanatosian laughter etc. The game doesn't expect you to die to him, and he's much easier. (He's basically the dragon whih you used to have to fight before some of the final enemies in FF). He is eaiser with a slightly different set of paradigms to Orphan, but that's about it. It helps that his best attack (Thanatosian Laughter) cannot actually kill you.

I accept that there are good reasons for people to hate FF13, and I can understand it, even if I didn't personally hate it. But seriously, go play The Last Remnant (but not really), and tell me its not worse than FF13. That game is just appalling in every sense of the word. It has no redeeming features whatsoever, and is just offensively bad throughout. Most people like Sazh and admit the graphics are good in FF13 which is already more praise than you could ever give Last Remnant. Its a game that deserves to be shot into space, and have nuclear missiles fired at it.

Have you played Dark Souls by the way? If you liked King's Field, then you should really give it a go. Its mighty fine.

Because there is a lot to say on the subject,and i cannot think of a way to express it in less lines.

To talk about something,i have to go into great detail.

I heard somewhere that genius is being able to explain something complex, simply.

I heard somewhere that genius is being able to explain something complex, simply.

Its hard to put things into shortest possible sentence,and i had to go into great detail about what i was talking about,otherwise:I might as well not say anything if i don-t explain myself.
On the other hand:I don-t want to repeat myself

I think personally,that i am very good at getting into details about things.

I didn't say gameplay was unimportant - I said that JRPGs place little importance on it. There is a distinction, and that's my point. The RPGs which have traditionally done well have had a very hit and miss approach to gameplay. King's Field may be good, but most people in the west will never have heard of it (and those who have likely only know it is the precursor to Demon's Souls). Traditionally, gamers have not cared about good gameplay in RPGs, and those RPGs which happen to actually have good gameplay have not seen mass appeal for it. Similarly, games like Lost Odysessy, Skyrim etc are lauded whether by core fans or mainstream, despite having terrible gameplay.

Let me explain:If you take out the gameplay aspect of a game,you don-t have a game at all,you have one big long cutscene that never ends.Games of the past had to depend more on gameplay,because there was also less to add level of detail to story.
This is also one aspect in which games were officially better.The concentration on only cinematics and cgi,is one reason we end up with empty vast wastelands of cgi lands that nobody wants to explore.

Breath of fire is very popular,otherwise there would not be 4 or 5 games in total.
Also:Kings field has many many games,possibly even more than even the breath of fire series.Grandia i think,has 3 or 4 games.
Suikoden: over 5 games already,so some amount of popularity must be into the game.Suikoden is very story driven,but gameplay has always been extremely important.Just look at the changes from suikoden 4 in comparison to suikoden 5:
Boat and land combats,and a big castle,just like in suikoden 1 and 2.

And as for FFXIII:There is a reason why soe changed the gameplay to having gil and more open landscapes.The reason being:They sacrificed too much gameplay,and this is proof that the screwed up.

FF6 was a very good game for its time,but you can-t be too unfair.You may hate the gameplay aspect.ff7 used aspects from ff6,so you cannot fully discredit its gameplay aspects.

I haven-t played dark souls yet,but i-l look it up.

FF6 had merits for sure, but its gameplay doesn't work for me because the skills have no cost - you can just spam the best skills endlessly. Why do a regular attack, when you can do a Drill or an Autocrossbow etc? You just find the best skills (each character only having one makes it easy to make your choices) and spam away. Final Fantasy 7 had proper MP costs for the skills, and moved the more outrageous skills to Limit Breaks. Much more balanced IMO.

As for Final Fantasy 10, it was just rock, paper, scissors:
Flying enemy? Use Wakka.
Enemy has hard shell? Use Auron.
Enemy has high evasion? Use Tidus.
Enemy is resistant to physical? Use Lulu.
Enemy is mechanical? Use Rikku.
Enemy has enemy skill available? Use Kimarhi.
Need Healing? Use Yuna.

That got real old, real quick, and whilst you could reconfigure the characters, it took time and made no sense to do so when they were preconfigured to be good in those very specific roles. You didn't even have to make a choice on who to use, as each characters could come on, select 'Defend' once and get full Exp at the end of the battle. Very poor.

FF13's linear environments (during the first half of the game anyway) were an artistic decision made to fit the story. When it was appropriate for the world to be opened up, it did. The sequel is about having the ultimate freedom - to be able to travel in time and alter history. So it makes sense for the world to be open. The actual gameplay is exactly the same, with little improvements here and there such as the monster allies that prevent high level parties from just setting their paradigms to 3 Commandos, 3 Ravagers, 3 Sentinels, 3 Medics etc. Its a good monster system, not too simple and not too complicated.

Games like Suikoden etc were always niche products though - they never plugged into the mainstream like Final Fantasy was able to do with FF7 and FF10 etc. They come from a time when JRPGs were much cheaper to make (still expensive, but much easier to make a profit on them back then before graphics and voice acting and developing for current gen machines became so costly). Making those kinds of games on anything but portables these days is like throwing your money away, at least in the West. Its a sad thing, but there we are. Hardly any JRPGs get released on consoles over here now, because there is no market for them.

As for games not being games and not being worthwhile therefore if they are too much like movies etc, I don't think its as simple as you say. I'm a big horror fan for example, and where do I get the best horror these days? From games. Because games like Siren, Silent Hill, Fatal Frame etc deliver atmosphere and quality horror storylines that modern horror films just cannot match. The feeling of immersion alone is a strong factor, but the fact that the atmosphere and stories are also so much better mean that I'd take these games (which have pretty awful gameplay for the most part) over films anytime.

Movies are in an even worse state than games right now. Science Fiction movies have been awful for decades now and there have never been many good fantasy movies. With the constant sequels and trying to make films of games (never a good idea) movies are and have been for ages, in a desperate decline. So the experience you can get from a quality story and/or world, atmosphere etc in games is something that I cannot get simply from going to watch a movie.

I take your point about gameplay and I'm not saying that when I encounter good gameplay in an RPG I throw it aside - that would be foolish. I am of course delighted when a game series like Star Ocean etc comes along with genuinely absorbing combat. But I went into the game primarily looking for a good story and a world I could immerse myself in. Good systems definately help, but if it came down to a choice between a game with a story and characters I hated but with excellent gameplay, and a game with great story and atmosphere, but with average and repetitive gameplay, I'd go for the one with the story that interested me.

Good gameplay can be found in any number of different titles, but good stories and genuinely absorbing astmosphere and characters is far rarer, and I value them far more as a consequence. Its just a question of what you are looking for. If I was looking to play an action game, then obviously my priorities would be for deluxe gameplay and I wouldn't really care about story. But in RPGs 'The Story's the Thing' as the Bard once said.

I know I've only seen commercials, but it looks pretty fun to me. I can't say for sure though. But when I heard about monster training, that alone is getting me interested. ...Too bad I don't have the console it's on.

FF6 had merits for sure, but its gameplay doesn't work for me because the skills have no cost - you can just spam the best skills endlessly. Why do a regular attack, when you can do a Drill or an Autocrossbow etc? You just find the best skills (each character only having one makes it easy to make your choices) and spam away. Final Fantasy 7 had proper MP costs for the skills, and moved the more outrageous skills to Limit Breaks. Much more balanced IMO.

At least every ff6 character wasn't a clone of the other character.Sure it had seriously overpowered moves,but you didn't have to use them
FF7 used the same system,and the characters also were extremely powerful.I mean:If you spammed omnislash,you could wipe out any enemy in the game,with exception of the optional boss,as you would need a different strategy.Heck.Even then you could do a lot of damage.And lets not forget the abuseable knights of the round trick much? You talk about abuse? what about counter+knights of the round trick?

As for Final Fantasy 10, it was just rock, paper, scissors:
Flying enemy? Use Wakka.
Enemy has hard shell? Use Auron.
Enemy has high evasion? Use Tidus.
Enemy is resistant to physical? Use Lulu.
Enemy is mechanical? Use Rikku.
Enemy has enemy skill available? Use Kimarhi.
Need Healing? Use Yuna.

That got real old, real quick, and whilst you could reconfigure the characters, it took time and made no sense to do so when they were preconfigured to be good in those very specific roles. You didn't even have to make a choice on who to use, as each characters could come on, select 'Defend' once and get full Exp at the end of the battle. Very poor.

At least every character had special abilties.Sure you could eventually learn some,but they still remained very different,and even gave you a reason to use them.What about ff7? what is stopping the player from just choosing your favorite character and abandoning all others? in ff5 you have no choice,but in ff7,you could choose not to use yuffie for an example,or even cait sith.

FF13's linear environments (during the first half of the game anyway) were an artistic decision made to fit the story. When it was appropriate for the world to be opened up, it did. The sequel is about having the ultimate freedom - to be able to travel in time and alter history. So it makes sense for the world to be open. The actual gameplay is exactly the same, with little improvements here and there such as the monster allies that prevent high level parties from just setting their paradigms to 3 Commandos, 3 Ravagers, 3 Sentinels, 3 Medics etc. Its a good monster system, not too simple and not too complicated.

There you go again praising FFXIII.FFXIII had the worse combat system in all of final fantasy so far.ff8 is second worse,and FF2 nes is the third worse.
Its hilarious since the game is thought by many,including me:To have the most boring battle system in the final fantasy series.Effort is a nice thing you know.

Games like Suikoden etc were always niche products though - they never plugged into the mainstream like Final Fantasy was able to do with FF7 and FF10 etc. They come from a time when JRPGs were much cheaper to make (still expensive, but much easier to make a profit on them back then before graphics and voice acting and developing for current gen machines became so costly). Making those kinds of games on anything but portables these days is like throwing your money away, at least in the West. Its a sad thing, but there we are. Hardly any JRPGs get released on consoles over here now, because there is no market for them.

You know:Graphics aren't everything.I am sick of so much of graphics taking priority.I'm sick of FF taking credit for things that other games do just as well,or better sometimes.ff7 is massively overrated,and i don't even think its that good of a game.


As for games not being games and not being worthwhile therefore if they are too much like movies etc, I don't think its as simple as you say. I'm a big horror fan for example, and where do I get the best horror these days? From games. Because games like Siren, Silent Hill, Fatal Frame etc deliver atmosphere and quality horror storylines that modern horror films just cannot match. The feeling of immersion alone is a strong factor, but the fact that the atmosphere and stories are also so much better mean that I'd take these games (which have pretty awful gameplay for the most part) over films anytime.

Movies are in an even worse state than games right now. Science Fiction movies have been awful for decades now and there have never been many good fantasy movies. With the constant sequels and trying to make films of games (never a good idea) movies are and have been for ages, in a desperate decline. So the experience you can get from a quality story and/or world, atmosphere etc in games is something that I cannot get simply from going to watch a movie.

A movie is a movie,a game is a game.If you remove the gameplay from a game,you got an interactive movie.Its nice to have cutscenes,but they cannot replace the lack of gameplay.If you want to watch a movie,go watch a movie.Cutscenes are meant to make the game more scenic and perhaps enhance the experience,not take it over completely like it has.

I take your point about gameplay and I'm not saying that when I encounter good gameplay in an RPG I throw it aside - that would be foolish. I am of course delighted when a game series like Star Ocean etc comes along with genuinely absorbing combat. But I went into the game primarily looking for a good story and a world I could immerse myself in. Good systems definately help, but if it came down to a choice between a game with a story and characters I hated but with excellent gameplay, and a game with great story and atmosphere, but with average and repetitive gameplay, I'd go for the one with the story that interested me.

Good gameplay can be found in any number of different titles, but good stories and genuinely absorbing astmosphere and characters is far rarer, and I value them far more as a consequence. Its just a question of what you are looking for. If I was looking to play an action game, then obviously my priorities would be for deluxe gameplay and I wouldn't really care about story. But in RPGs 'The Story's the Thing' as the Bard once said.

Final fantasy used to have interesting stories,but they sacrificed them for clich� teen flick stories with your typical teen kid stories.I believe americans are doing slightly more mature stories than the japs in rpgs.
I didn't like tales of vesperia characters either.Look how many teen chars we have,i mean:Could we have at least someone in their 20s?

Oh yeah:The japanese sometimes make good stories,but sometimes over explain stuff and in the process,harm the character making it a stereotype of the typical japanese drama fashion seen with the subtlety of bad mexican soap opera.

And there are some really good movies,you just need to find them.

I'm just gonna say, as an OG fanboy since the original FF6 on SNES as FF3, after playing the XIII-2 demo, I've decided to boycot this game. I'm sorry, but I'm finding FF too boring. Too much melodramatic, emo, teen issues. I miss the band of 8, 9, 10, etc number of strangers from different kingdoms, towns, villages, etc getting together to save the world from some magical wizard or king. I want that deep, rich story like FF6, FF9 or FFT. Now, I still really love Lightning as a character, but I feel there's so much lost potential.

Lightning is not a bad character,in fact:I could understand her from a perspective:Imagine you are in the army and ordered to go in fast and hard.Chances are:There would be no time for crying,or even talking.
I felt like she wanted to get out as soon as possible,and some characters got in the way sometimes,primarily:Either hope,or snow.

Snow deserved to be punched in the face.Snow decided to stay and try to undig his girlfriend,in the process:Almost getting everyone caught.

FF8 on the other hand:I did enjoy it,but i still find that the story was very ridiculous.The love story was so over the top,that it was really hard to even take seriously,and it was unintentionally funny at times due to these corny love scenes.
You know what scene made me laugh? on ragnarok,when rinoa asks squall for a hug,and i-m thinking:YEAH RIGHT".Another thing that also made me laugh,was at the end when he smiled,and i was like:STOP SMILING". I was getting angry because the game was unintentionally making me laugh at the game,and i was trying hard to take it seriously but the designers even didn-t take their story seriously,cause that was plain ridiculous that hug scene.

FF9 was a good game,maybe some characters didn-t catch my attention as much,but i liked it.My favorite character isn-t amarant or zidane or even dagger,its steiner vivi blank cinna beatrix,and i thought that kuja was only slightly more interesting than zidane.I found zidane a bit childish,but i can understand it since its a kids game,and the designers kind of want to connect to teens,not someone in their 20s as strongly.
The music in parts was so good,and kuja was undeserving of having that boss theme,because he is nowhere near that bad ass.
FFX:I liked some of it,and didn-t even mind some characters.I-m not a rikku fan or a fan of kimahri,or even auron.I still think auron is a good character,but man does he get hype.
The most annoying aspect for me of FFX,was blitzball.I can-t seem to ever win that first match even with the special move and playing fair,i might have to cheat to win,which is insane for a game to get to that point.

How is it Snow's fault that they almost got caught? It didn't slow them down in any way, and if you love someone, isn't it understandable that you wouldn't want to leave them behind? The history of warfare is full of couples and families who died because they refused to be parted from their loved ones even when it was hopeless - husbands who wouldn't leave the bodies of their slain wives, mothers with their children etc etc. Its fairly obvious that Snow is something who thinks and acts from the heart, whereas Lightning is a much more practical (and fairly cold blooded) sort of person. As the cutscene on Pulse towards the end of the game shows, it is she who comes round to his way of thinking, not the other way round. Snow's reaction is very human.

Rinoa is childish, spoiled princess style character. She's fiery and spontaneous and knows practically nothing of real life. She scratches Irvine like a cat to get him to turn around back to the prison, sulks when Squall calls her on her ludicrous plan to kidnap the President etc. But it fits because Squall is oldest 17 year old in recorded history. He's like a grizzled 40 year old, emotionally deadned veteran in the body of a young man. That's why the game surrounds him with fiery, eccentric outlandish characters like Zell, Seifer, Selphie, Laguna, Rinoa etc to show how vibrant he abolsutely isn't. Because he's so impossibly stiff, Rinoa needed to be a character who was that much more alive, spunky and vibrant. FF8 is all about spectacle and doing things BIG. Big fights, big set pieces, big emotion. The whole game is OTT - why should the love story be any less?

I can't stand Zidane, but I've since grown to like him more (after playing FF10 and realising how much worse he could have been if he'd been like Tidus). Steiner and Vivi are by far the best party members. The rest are a bit of a non-event team. Freya and Amarant have promise, but they never really do anything (Amarant particularly).

I am actually a bit of a Blitzball fan. Its one of the only things I did actually like about FF10. My only complaint is that it takes far too long to play a single game (there shouldn't be a second half - you can get a good competitive game in one half, and the second just stretchs it out). Maybe if they saved the longer matches for the finals of tournaments etc it would have been better. But the game itself, I actually got into quite deep. I was *determined* to beat the Luca Goers, and I keep reloading it until I understood the rules well enough to force a win (the fact you don't even get a practice game is outrageous). And later on, I toiled away to win the league to get Wakka's best weapons and limit breaks. I became quite simply the baron of Blitzball.

As for the characters, I can't agree with you about Auron. He is the other thing I love about that game - my second favourite FF character ever (and pretty much the only character I liked in that whole game, seeing as how Yuna and Rikku don't get good until the sequel). I just can't get past the ridiculous story in FF10 - world terrorised by flying whale, beaten when everyone joins hands and sings hymns full of 'the power of love of friendship'... Words fail. Not to mention the continual idiocy of the people who don't cotton on that Sin would have a much harder time killing them all if they were inland - it at least wouldn't be able to smash them with tidal waves all the time! And... its a giant flying whale! I mean why is this even a discussion? Its such a stupid idea.

You didn't like the characters in Tales of Vesperia, but you did like the ones in Symphonia? Hmm, I felt completely the opposite actually. Many of them are very similar, but I think Vesperia does pretty much all of them better. I'd take Yuri Lowell over Lloyd anyday (I believe Yuri is the most popular member of the whole series, and I certainly consider him one of the best main characters in a JRPG), I'd have Estelle over Collette for sure, Rita Mordio is one of my favourite characters ever, but then I also like Raine. Raven's much better than Zelos IMO, I'd rather have Karol over Genis (another character who does absolutely nothing), which leaves Sheena as the only character I'd prefer over her Vesperia counterpart (Judith, who is easily the least used character in that game - she just doesn't get anythiug to say or do).

And as a movie nut, with a DVD collection so immense it might one day need a house of its own, I have to say this last decade has been the leanest I can remember for good new movies. The industry is in its death throes in my opinion - creativity is dead.

Final fantasy used to have interesting stories,but they sacrificed them for clich� teen flick stories with your typical teen kid stories.This is not true and as much as you'd like to say it, you're going to get refuted. You have never been right in this aspect of judging FF games.

You're basically judging based on FFXIII, and while there was melodrama you can't really accuse people of being whiny when they're literally being hunted down by the military of their planet and they're still trying to figure shit out. A guy lost his fiancee at the same time someone lost her sister, some kid lost his mother, and some dude lost his son. Then we have Vanille and Fang; Vanille being extremely depressed because of a War she was involved in. This is not "cliche teen flick stories" in the slightest.

Now, we have FFXII. To call that cliche teen flick stories is quite frankly stupid, considering everything that goes on is nothing to do with cliche teen flicks and it's almost entirely told/done through politics.



Also, their main reason for living near the sea is... water. Easy access to water. It becomes a chore to get water after a while, and honestly having it convenient for everyone is better than nothing. I don't think everyone was being retarded for that, because most if not all human civilization is concentrated near the sea (or another body of water) for that very reason. Agreed on Auron being one of the more interesting characters in FF; I never actually viewed him as a super badass or anything, but I really thought he was a good character.

Answer to both mercenary raven and vrykolas:

It is snow-s fault he got caught,because he is stupid.He got because he was trying to undo the crystalization process,and in turn get caught.He should had run away.

Story wise:FFXIII has been seen before,its more of the same.The characters are not deep and not interesting in my opinion,and i will say opinion since obviously:I will get trolled for citing it as fact.

I find the characters to be 2 dimensional,when their story is pretty straight forward and with very little detail other than a stand still,and that is what it felt like for me.Its like i was talking about the weather for 5 hours with total strangers,and getting bored of it.It didn-t feel stellar as much as other games in the series,and i can say that as a fact because i played most final fantasies.I found all characters to be pretty 2 dimensional and boring most of the time.Hope was boring because he whined a lot but not once did he have a deep personality.It was mostly:�Insert baby cry here) Maybe something different from a reaction,like:He could do something about it? Isn-t that how we learn from our mistakes? Why does it have to take him half the game or more to try and get over his whining emo personality?

Yuri is a clone of amarant,except more like sephiroth with long black hari and a bit of your japanese fighter stereotype.I played the demo and thought that karol and yuri were the 2 most boring characters in the game.
As for My thoughts on FFX:i thought that despite you hating tidus,he had the strongest backstory in the game.Sure he acts like a kid,but that is the way he was created,by sin.I don-t know for what reason he was created that way.

Merc:
But the people of FF10 know that the main threat to civilisiation is an aquatic creature. You'd think they'd build some storm walls or something! But they just go right ahead living life like normal, and complain why their communtiies get routinely wiped out. Yes, it'd be a chore to constantly have to ferry supplues inland, but that's better than losing whole townships of people at a single stroke, surely? Its just the lack of prepardeness that bugs me - the populace seem not to be interested in the threat posed by Sin, and just swan about in their colourful shorts like every day is a holiday etc... And Auron rocks - he does.

Nos:
You're ascribing practical solutions to something that nobody would know how they would react until actually faced with it. When you love somebody, you don't want to let them go, simple as that, hopeless or not. Serah is Snow's entire reason for fighting, its what drives him on. He couldn't abandon her there, and it would have been the most reality breaking thing his character could have done. Your solutions are highly unrealistic - Lightning is a damaged and very unlikable character at the start of that game. Her conduct is anything but heroic and the game doesn't try to pretend otherwise. If she had her way early on, Sazh would have died in the Hanging Edge, along with all the citizens on the train (as its NORA who defend them, not Lightning), and without Sazh, Hope and Vanille would have died when Lightning abandoned them in the Vile Peaks (something Snow hadn't thought she would do, and an infamous act that Lightning feels bad about later).

Heroes don't just abandon people in need - especially children who are only involved in this mess because of your actions! Lightning caused this by attacking Anima, even when Hope warned her not to. So for her to just walk off and leave them to die is not her finest hour at all. Fortunately, this was all just a lapse on her part due to stress and trauma at losing her sister and her whole life as she knew it. Serah, Snow etc know this isn't really what she's like and eventually she finds her way back to her humanity and actually starts behaving like a hero. Fang has to go through the same thing later.

Not that I think Tidus has that interesting a story, but any character that irritating would have to have the greatest story ever for me to able to put up with him.

And you play the whole game of Tales of Vesperia, if you haven't already. Yuri Lowell is an excellent character. He's usually very laid back and a nice guy, but he's very much an anti-hero underneath it all. He has no problem with murdering evil people in cold blood, and it makes for some extremely powerful scenes. He hates to see evildoers get away with their crimes, so when the law won't punish them. He knows most of the party won't accept this and keeps it from them. The character work is truly excellent in that game (but the main story's not a patch on Symphonia's, mind you).

Everyone bow down before the Bliztball baron...

I didn't like Tales of Vesperia at all but I'm not a fan of Tales plots outside of Legendia. Tales' writing doesn't jive with me too much- they really lack subtlety and I don't think they feel real sometimes. The storytelling just doesn't get to me, and it gets far too preachy and syntax-y which gets way in the way of enjoying the plot for me. Tales games in general feel like this to me.


But the people of FF10 know that the main threat to civilisiation is an aquatic creature. You'd think they'd build some storm walls or something! But they just go right ahead living life like normal, and complain why their communtiies get routinely wiped out. Yes, it'd be a chore to constantly have to ferry supplues inland, but that's better than losing whole townships of people at a single stroke, surely? Its just the lack of prepardeness that bugs me - the populace seem not to be interested in the threat posed by Sin, and just swan about in their colourful shorts like every day is a holiday etc..What are they going to do when Sin arrives huh? They're pretty much doomed overall, in their minds, and they are lead to believe Sin only attacks when machina is being made or something to the extent of a massive amount of Sin or whatnot. They don't expect it simply because they're trying to get through their lives and whatnot, as I tend to view it; as a result, they really have no idea what they're doing wrong.

Also, I'm not sure if I'm remembering wrong, but Spira is pretty small and most of the center actually really really sucks to live on, water aside. They also _really_ have no easy access to water, and also remember that Sin can fly if people move far away from water. I'm sure in 1000 years someone came up with it, and it fell flat simply because it's not a good idea to have people so far away from water- especially since they're more or less eternally stuck in a primitive age where they have no easy way to get to water in any sort of timely manner (not like the Al Bhed, who by contrast live in a desert).


:FFXIII has been seen before,its more of the same.The characters are not deep and not interesting in my opinion,and i will say opinion since obviously:I will get trolled for citing it as fact.No, you will get "trolled" (lately it's been synonymous for refuted for some reason) for calling it a teen flick.

Funny since you are trolling me for stating my opinion on a game Some people dislike,including the gameplay.

Don-t you see something wrong with this picture? I-m not the only person to think it is the worse jrpg yet from the ps3 era.

The people know that Sin is out there - when you get attacked on the ship from Besaid, people are alarmed of course, but not 'What the hell is that thing?' surprised. They know what's going on. Also, its pointless to bring the size of the world map into this this, because it doesn't (at I hope it doesn't) reflect the entire world - unless its a very, very small planet. If you live near a volcano and it erupts, frying you in the process, you can understand why people might question your choice of home. Live on a fault line and get crushed in an earthquake ditto. Live near the sea when an aquatic monster is terrorising you... see the pattern?

I made the point earlier that it wouldn't save them to move inland, but it help them to not just die instantly when Sin shows up. Kilika Island, Zanarkand, Operation Mi'hen etc see great swathes of people wiped out in no time at all, because it allows the monster to utilise devastating natural attacks. When Sin is eventually defeated, it is when they take water out of the equation and fight it in the skies. Now the people have access to that sort of tech, but the principle of denying the beast a ready source of destruction potential from the water is the same.

People may not like having to change their lifestyles, and they may not like the hardship that comes with ferrying supplies inland etc, but that's just tough isn't it? Its a case of survival and living next to the ocean when a monster that can cause Tsunamis is roaming about looking for trouble, is utter suicide. At the very least, they should build storm walls, and keep patrols of boats on constant watch. Instead, the populace is completely unprepared and show no common sense at all, spending all their time playing Blitzball and fishing. So many times during that game, I found myself muttering 'Could these guys be any more laid back considering what's going on in the world?!'

As for the Tales games... for me, the best thing about them is the skits system. The writing of these (and for the characters in general) is first rate in these games. It really helps to bond the team together and make your time spent with them into a fun experience. The games do have their darker moments and these are usually done very well, but overall the enduring image I have of the Tales games is one of warm, pleasingly enjoyable adventuring with an amusing band of misfits. The one thing I can always say after playing a Tales game is 'I had a really good time'. That's not really the same thing as 'Wow, that was the greatest thing ever' but it fulfills one of the needs I have from RPGs.

The people know that Sin is out there - when you get attacked on the ship from Besaid, people are alarmed of course, but not 'What the hell is that thing?' surprised. They know what's going on. Also, its pointless to bring the size of the world map into this this, because it doesn't (at I hope it doesn't) reflect the entire world - unless its a very, very small planet. If you live near a volcano and it erupts, frying you in the process, you can understand why people might question your choice of home. Live on a fault line and get crushed in an earthquake ditto. Live near the sea when an aquatic monster is terrorising you... see the pattern?I think somewhere it was stated that the world is pretty much just the continent- after you venture off Spira for a little bit you're "reset" back because the *actual* dream zanarkand is out there... so Spira is more or less the only place that exists. But I wasn't even bringing the size of the world into this- I was bringing in the fact that the center of Spira, if I'm thinking straight, sucks to live in.

It looks like this too: . There's not much in the way to live when you get off shore.


As for the Tales games... for me, the best thing about them is the skits system. The writing of these (and for the characters in general) is first rate in these games. It really helps to bond the team together and make your time spent with them into a fun experience. The games do have their darker moments and these are usually done very well, but overall the enduring image I have of the Tales games is one of warm, pleasingly enjoyable adventuring with an amusing band of misfits. The one thing I can always say after playing a Tales game is 'I had a really good time'. That's not really the same thing as 'Wow, that was the greatest thing ever' but it fulfills one of the needs I have from RPGs.I disagree but let's not get into that. The entire game irks me because it felt incomplete both in gameplay (I think it's because I'm used to two frontliners with a straightforward fighting style, so Yuri being the only major frontliner with a straightforward fighting style was what got me) and the plot got too syntax-y.. and I didn't feel enough warmth in it. Maybe it's because my mindset resonates more with games like Final Fantasy, Shadow Hearts, Fire Emblem etc which are darker and quite a bit more serious in tone overall (and SH's humor is for the most part either really dry or hilariously dark), but Tales never does it for me.


Funny since you are trolling me for stating my opinion on a game Some people dislike,including the gameplay.

Don-t you see something wrong with this picture? I-m not the only person to think it is the worse jrpg yet from the ps3 era.
I'm not trolling you, I'm saying that you can hate a game as much as you'd like but everything you point out is factually incorrect. ie, hope is extremely whiny and the game is a teen flick.

Really? then what about all crying and melodrama?

Hope cries a lot,even in chapter 13 he begins to whine.Lightning becomes infected by hopes hopeless whining and becomes a drama queen too.
Snow is just stupid,not melodramatic.

If you cannot see this,then you are the only one responsible.I-m not saying that it isn-t possible for modern jrpgs to be good,but FFXIII could have put more effort in the characters,and worry less about the graphics.

As for the vrykolas comment:I-m not sure what would happen if everybody lived farther from the coast in FFX.
Possibly,that sin couldn-t get to them.It also breeds monsters too.Remember some of the big bosses? THe one near what temple was it? the second temple you go through.On the steps,there is a big monster that is literally a piece of sinh.

The question is:Could sin fly over land? and how far it can fly? Seems mostly like a water creature.

I could never get into Shadow Hearts (mostly because I really, really hate Yuri Hyuga - he is my all time most hated main character in an RPG). But I just couldn't take the story seriously. The 'saucy' humour, the fact that whilst a brutal war is going on, your guys are rolling about the globe getting up to camp capers etc. That series just doesn't work for me on any level (and I take exception to it being called a serious game, as its far too camp and hysterical for that).

I must say I'm very surprised to hear you think Vesperia lacks warmth. I'd have said that's the one thing it has totally sewn up! From those guards that follow you about shouting 'I say!' all the time, to the wonderful post battle banter and hilarious skits, it was wall to wall joy for me. But hey, different strokes and all that.


About Sin:
Look, again I'm not saying that it would save you. Presumably Sin would find some way to get them, but at least they'd have a fighting chance of some people surviving. Whenever people try to tackle that thing near water, they always get supremely owned because it has such devastating water based attacks. One tsunami and bob's your uncle - city/town/settlement gone utterly. When you tackle Sin away from the water at the end of the game, it has no real defenses worth speaking about. Remember that despite the video game nature of this, the story is telling you that a party of 6 or so people can engage this thing in combat on and around it, without getting utterly killed.

Which suggests that it really is leaning heavily on the water to do its show stopping damage. Now, if it attacked a settlement inland, then you'd still be in grave danger (as it would eventually use that Giga Graviton thing from its mouth). But without any water about for it to easily smash all your forces, you'd have a chance of doing some damage and maybe driving it off. It might be a vain hope, but just sitting back at the water's edge and waiting for it to pulverise you with waves that you can't possibly defend against is no answer, is it? Neither is going about your lives and hoping it doesn't come back this time. You'd do what it takes to survive - or you'd die.

If I heard an invading was on its way to my home town, burning and pillaging etc, I'd cobble together any knives, axes etc I could carry and head off to the hills. I'm no survivalist, and there's a good chance they'd find me anyway. And what good would a couple of knives wielded by a untrained civilian be against professional soldiers etc? It would be a hopeless situation, but I'd at least try it, because just sitting around in my house waiting for them to come and kill me would be utterly foolish and suicidal.

If the people of Spira aren't even going to try and defend themselves, then what do they think is going to happen? You might not have a great chance of surviving inland, but you have *no* chance of surviving by the sea!


By the way, I should have made this clear before but this is in large part just me 'getting on FF10's case'. I didn't care for the game very much at all, and whilst I do think my reasoning is sound on this, I do get what the game was trying to say. The people of Spira don't act because they believe the Church of Yevon will save them, that a Summoner will sacrifice themself as they always have in the past and things will be right as rain again. The people's indolence and credulous natures in believing Yevon's lies and going along with the Summoner's sacrifice if it means they get to live etc is severe self delusion that the party is eventually broken of by Auron during rhe Yunalesca encounter. That eventually man is going to have to learn to stop relying on deceptive Gods and take charge of his own destiny etc.

I get all this, and I admit that I find it pretty cool. Its just that to get to that point, I have to wade through 40 or so hours of unusually cheery and tiresomely indolent people lazing about, and it just made me contemptuous of that whole society (particularly when I learned that the Summoners actually have to die to defeat Sin). It just cemented my disgust with these poeple and made me think 'Why am I even helping these people? Have they no minds of their own, no backbone to call their own?'

So along with all the many, many other things I hate about FF10, it leaves me a little too ready to think ill of pretty much everyone in that game (although I continue to despise Tidus - I legitmately cannot see why anyone would like that brat). Its just hard to play a game when you can't empathise with anyone's actions or views. Except Auron of course, but he keeps his cards very close to his chest on what he believes until the aforementioned Yunalesca scene.

Anyway, thought I better fess up to that.

Really? then what about all crying and melodrama?

Hope cries a lot,even in chapter 13 he begins to whine.Lightning becomes infected by hopes hopeless whining and becomes a drama queen too.
Snow is just stupid,not melodramatic. Because the crying and melodrama is over serious/grave/basically life threatening at the very least shit. They're cursed. It's either they die, turn into a crystal, or become worse than a zombie. And if they want to live, they must be crystallized, de-crystallized, and re-crystallized and complete a task some other guy wants them to. The rest of their lives, as far as they know, is completely fucking ruined and any sense of reputation they once had is completely gone. The world hates them and is completely out to get them- literally- and you pretty much dismiss this all as "whining"? If this were a real life situation, then how would you react?


The question is:Could sin fly over land? and how far it can fly? Seems mostly like a water creature.It can fly over land.


I could never get into Shadow Hearts (mostly because I really, really hate Yuri Hyuga - he is my all time most hated main character in an RPG). But I just couldn't take the story seriously. The 'saucy' humour, the fact that whilst a brutal war is going on, your guys are rolling about the globe getting up to camp capers etc. That series just doesn't work for me on any level (and I take exception to it being called a serious game, as its far too camp and hysterical for that). It has some camp and hysterical scenes, but it also has scenes like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdlh4k2rMs4) which... are truly extremely sad and its OST has music like this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZv88h5WtUk) which show it. And the ending to the game (the good ending) and some of the build-up to it really made me feel the plot. Different tastes and all, but you can't not call it a serious game; it has both extremes.

I must say I'm very surprised to hear you think Vesperia lacks warmth. I'd have said that's the one thing it has totally sewn up! From those guards that follow you about shouting 'I say!' all the time, to the wonderful post battle banter and hilarious skits, it was wall to wall joy for me. But hey, different strokes and all that.[/quote]I think it lacks warmth because the entire style didn't click with me. Maybe it's because my interest is in darker and more dry humor/gaming... I can't think of a feel-good game I've played at all, to be honest (well, reading some support convos in Fire Emblem are great).

About Sin:

Look, again I'm not saying that it would save you. Presumably Sin would find some way to get them, but at least they'd have a fighting chance of some people surviving. Whenever people try to tackle that thing near water, they always get supremely owned because it has such devastating water based attacks. One tsunami and bob's your uncle - city/town/settlement gone utterly. When you tackle Sin away from the water at the end of the game, it has no real defenses worth speaking about. Remember that despite the video game nature of this, the story is telling you that a party of 6 or so people can engage this thing in combat on and around it, without getting utterly killed.Who's to say Sin won't own whoever's going to go out to get them water? There's seriously not many if at all places people can live or settle down that isn't near water anyway. I doubt Yevon would be stupid enough to go "hey Sin's weakness is getting out of water" and not fuck up the continent with it.


Which suggests that it really is leaning heavily on the water to do its show stopping damage. Now, if it attacked a settlement inland, then you'd still be in grave danger (as it would eventually use that Giga Graviton thing from its mouth). But without any water about for it to easily smash all your forces, you'd have a chance of doing some damage and maybe driving it off. It might be a vain hope, but just sitting back at the water's edge and waiting for it to pulverise you with waves that you can't possibly defend against is no answer, is it? Neither is going about your lives and hoping it doesn't come back this time. You'd do what it takes to survive - or you'd die.Clearly people have survived this thing over 1000 years.


If the people of Spira aren't even going to try and defend themselves, then what do they think is going to happen? You might not have a great chance of surviving inland, but you have *no* chance of surviving by the sea!The people of Spira are idiots. They have no way to not be idiots. The people who decided to fight against Sin got fucked, generally. It took Tidus to come from another world for people to show that they're all idiots. I don't think there's much of a way around them being morons, but they've been alive for 1000 years while most of their settlements are fairly close to the water anyway. The places they *can* settle are near the sea, and the places that it would be completely dangerous to settle (read: fiends) are not near the sea. Yevon's pretty much fucked the people of Spira up lol

Mercenary raven and vrykolas,lets try not to go at each others throats,shall we? Good.

Last topic we had closed because things got a little too heated.

I still don-t like hope.I made up my mind so there is nothing you can do as of now.I find his act to be over dramatic and is detrimental.I sure hope he is far more mature in FFXIII-2,because that would be a lot better.I also hope for the story to be more interesting.

To tell you the truth:I only have a vague idea of what the story will be in full.I would have to read it online to get a full detail of the story.

and I don't intend to buy it as it , as of now, has a "bad ending".
You can watch the ending on youtube if you like or read spoilers on other forums.

That's not what I want from a final fantasy game.

There's a lot of speculation about a FFXIII-3.I think one is necessary as I don't feel they can correct the ending with dlc alone.
I might be wrong though.They have to do something to provide a "good ending" for me to purchase the game.If they don't then I won't be getting it.

That's a very strange attitude to take, seeing as the story is clearly set to continue (the words To Be Continued' being something of a giveaway). Such an ending does not need 'correcting' - Empire Strikes Back had such an ending, and that is one of the best movies of all time. Too many games nowadays end with suppoesdly happy endings, only to say 'But after that, it got worse than ever' in the next sequel. And yes, FF13-2 does this itself, but because the series was not oriignally planned to have a sequel, but the demand was there.

But games like Gears of War, Reistance, Mass Effect etc all end their games on positive 'We won the day' notes, only to then have everything go to hell right at the start of the next one. Now that Square have settled on FF13 having an ongoing story, they have prepared the way appripriately. I just can't understand the logic of not wanting to start a story, because you've spoiled yourself about the ending, and won't settle for anything less than a completely happy ending, even though the story is set to continue!

And if you actually do play it, you'll see that its much more complicated than just being a bad ending. The good guys do prevail in many important ways, and the fragments include several messages from the future encouraging the characters to keep faith, because even though dark times are ahead, they have a plan on how to fix it. As for the 'secret ending', I think its fairly obvious what is actually happening in that ending, and it isn't what people are assuming it is. I can't spoil it here, but I suggest you take that ending with a generous helping of salt. It isn't what it seems and you can quote me on that.

As for Merc Raven 'going for my throat'... Well, unless I read his post wrong, I didn't see any particular attacks or him 'going for my throat' as you put it Nos. We disagree on certain matters, but I don't think he did it in an insulting or vicious way.

That's a very strange attitude to take, seeing as the story is clearly set to continue (the words To Be Continued' being something of a giveaway). Such an ending does not need 'correcting' - Empire Strikes Back had such an ending, and that is one of the best movies of all time. Too many games nowadays end with suppoesdly happy endings, only to say 'But after that, it got worse than ever' in the next sequel. And yes, FF13-2 does this itself, but because the series was not oriignally planned to have a sequel, but the demand was there.

But games like Gears of War, Reistance, Mass Effect etc all end their games on positive 'We won the day' notes, only to then have everything go to hell right at the start of the next one. Now that Square have settled on FF13 having an ongoing story, they have prepared the way appripriately. I just can't understand the logic of not wanting to start a story, because you've spoiled yourself about the ending, and won't settle for anything less than a completely happy ending, even though the story is set to continue!

And if you actually do play it, you'll see that its much more complicated than just being a bad ending. The good guys do prevail in many important ways, and the fragments include several messages from the future encouraging the characters to keep faith, because even though dark times are ahead, they have a plan on how to fix it. As for the 'secret ending', I think its fairly obvious what is actually happening in that ending, and it isn't what people are assuming it is. I can't spoil it here, but I suggest you take that ending with a generous helping of salt. It isn't what it seems and you can quote me on that.

As for Merc Raven 'going for my throat'... Well, unless I read his post wrong, I didn't see any particular attacks or him 'going for my throat' as you put it Nos. We disagree on certain matters, but I don't think he did it in an insulting or vicious way.

There's a question as to whether it actually continues per se, as in FFXIII-3 or just as dlc providing paradoxes.

You're certainly entitled to like and enjoy the game as is , the direction FFXIII-2 took and whatever else you like about it.Those of us who disliked FFXIII and dislike the way that FFXIII-2 heads and finishes have a right to feel the way we do as well.

It's a matter of opinion and what your preference is.

I prefer my FF games end differently and unless there's some change in a FFXIII-3 or in a dlc I won't be buying this game.

spoiler warning:

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/121/1218042p1.html

just for your information.

Mercenary raven and vrykolas,lets try not to go at each others throats,shall we? Good.

Last topic we had closed because things got a little too heated.I'm not going at his throat. I'm not flinging insults or anything. It makes sense that you'd think this way, considering that you said that I was trolling you for disagreeing and you say "its my opinion" when you're proven wrong.


I still don-t like hope.I made up my mind so there is nothing you can do as of now.I find his act to be over dramatic and is detrimental.I sure hope he is far more mature in FFXIII-2,because that would be a lot better.I also hope for the story to be more interesting.No, you said that he's emo and whines too much (paraphrased). There's no degree of "overdramatic" that Hope could even be without being completely unrealistic.

Yes, I've seen that interview and its as vague and non-specific (not to mention inept) as I would expect. The problem with game developers is that they always manage to put their foot in it and say the absolute worst things possible. Peter Molyneux of the Fable series could tell a story or two about that. He is trying to be evasive on the whole issue of a sequel, because they never like to jinx these things before they've seen the sales etc. He neither confirms nor denies it, saying only that it doesn't necessarily mean FF13-3 will happen, even though I'd say its a nailed on certainty, given that ending.

For one thing, if they did intend to continue the story through DLC alone, there would be absolute uproar. You can't release a game so dependant on story, that only exists because the fans wanted to know if Lightning etc would be happy, then only allow them to see the conclusion of that story if they shelled out for a couple of DLC packs. It'd be a scandal! Now, DLC that fills in some of the blanks on what the other characters have been doing and preparing the way for FF13-3 is a different matter - that I would have absolutel no problem with.

I have no problem with you disliking the game - but to say these things without having even played it, is a very strange attitude to take. You are looking at the ending completely out of context - if you played the game, you would see that the party achieves many victories at the end. They have basically solved half the puzzle, but the other half remains unsolved. They were stuck in a Catch 22 position, and to break that cycle, a bad ending of some kind had to happen (the big bad has 2 ways to achieve his goal, one much worse for the world than the other). The party manage to secure the lesser of these 2 evils - with the ending they get, there is at least a chance of fixing it to get a truly happy ending. If they had failed and the bad guy's preferred option had happened, everything would be totally and irrevocably screwed.

You don't just stop watching Star Wars at Empire Strikes Back and say 'Man, the rebels lost, Han Solo's as good as dead and Darth Vadar beat Luke - why even bother watching the next film because they can't possibly win after that!' The same applies here - the good guys will turn things around, because its what the good guys do.

I appreciate you may have been burned by FF13, but this really is a much more enjoyable experience. Its your decision on whether to play it or not, but I can only say that I think its a really good game that deserves to be given a chance, if only on rental. If you don't want to, then you don't want to.

I said that hope overreacted towards snow,when snow wasn-t fully responsible for his mothers death.It also took him forever to take responsibility and actually stand up.So much so that it got boring very fast.

I don-t like him,i havent and there is nothing you can do to convince me otherwise,because i have already made up my mind.I played the game and i did not like those characters,i found them to be weak and overall:Just annoying.

Fair enough but it seems strange to say that it 'takes forever' for Hope to stand up for himself etc, because he makes that decision in Chapter 3, running himself into the ground trying to keep up with Lightning when Sazh and Vanille collapse with exhaustion and frustration at Lightning's attitude. From the time when they leave Snow with Serah's crystalised body, Hope makes up his mind that he will devote his remaining time to getting strong enough to fight Snow and helping Lightning with her mission. And this is what... 3 houts in, if that?

I get that you don't like Hope - its just that your reading of his character is so different to mine that its hard not to at least comment on that. But like I said, you're still free at the end of the day to dislike him. I mean, people could show me documented proof that Tidus gives all his Blitzball winnings to Save the Children and personally founds a fund to help War Orphans etc etc - I'm still going to hate the guy's guts! :D

(Not that I let that stop me from picking him as my star striker in Blitzball...)

I said that hope overreacted towards snow,when snow wasn-t fully responsible for his mothers death.It also took him forever to take responsibility and actually stand up.So much so that it got boring very fast.I don't think you did a great job reading one of the threads you linked, where someone said something along the lines of why Hope is the way he is. He did not "overreact," because he's 14 and it's expected for him to react this way. But on top of that, while he did see Snow not able to save his mother (not directly his fault), Snow was *extremely* reckless with the way he handled himself and got many people killed. Then came back parading his "i'm a hero" shtick... and that did nothing but irritate Hope, seeing as he was someone who lost his mother to Snow being reckless.

It was a combination of grief for his mother and Snow's generally irritating and carefree nature that got to Hope; it didn't have as much to do with blaming Snow for his mother's death as you think. One would think their relationship would turn out differently if Snow came back with more grief and a shattered ego like others would do instead of his usual carefree "I have to hide my sorrow" demeanor.

That is because snow is an arrogant prick.Look at what he did when sarah became crystalized.He started digging and lightning punched him for making a stupid decision and he decided to stay anyways and got caught.When he talks,he is always so self assured of himself.

And:The other members were able to keep more of a calm collective when they became le cie.Sure there were problems,but they faced them.

I noticed more differences in the other characters:

Lightning went from being a cold hearted bitch at the beginning,to treating the members of her team like an actual team.Example:In the junk yard,her attitude is much more different than the later ones.
Vanille:Vanille actually pretty much the same smile,but i think she probably gets a load off her mind when she finally confesses to knowing about what happened to the village she came from.
Fang:Both she and vanille have major secrets together,and experiences together.I feel like the relation between fang and vanille is ever a bit stronger than the rest.
Sazh:I think he complains less and becomes a little less worried
Hope:Its true that he eventually leads,but even then:We got the scene with just him and snow,and he tries to kill snow while snow feels guilty about it and says:Go ahead do it if you want.So i think that even though he might have been rash,He wasnn-t fully responsible,and therefor:Doesn-t deserve 100 percent hatred from hope.

Cid raines went from being slightly interesting:Stuck in a situation where he tries to kill you to stop barthandalus,to wilfully becoming barthandalus pawn.When we were on pulse,why didn-t he just run away?

Vrykolas:

show me documented proof that Tidus gives all his Blitzball winnings to Save the Children and personally founds a fund to help War Orphans etc etc - I'm still going to hate the guy's guts! I haven-t truly liked a final fantasy character since FF9,and that is really sad.

I think one of the most boring characters for me in FFX,is the ronso character.I don-t even like his abilities.At least every other character is useful in combat.
Auron is good vs thick shelled enemies,and has techniques that are much like steiners.
Lulu has magic that probably gets really strong later on
Wakka:Despite you hating wakka,possibly because he says yah a lot,i find the situation more interesting than anything.A lot has to do with the religious belief systems in FFX which they refuse to let go.Their beliefs are so firm that they blind themselves,and let prejudice take over.His dislike and distrust of rikku makes for more interesting moment,because we see the truth revealed that he believes that religious nonsense of maquina being responsible for the destruction.
Tidus:I can understand tidus up to a certain point,that being that i can understand being uneasy about being stuck in a place you aren-t from and being alienated.I can also understand hating your father,because mine gave me a lot of crap,so i kind of understand it.On the other hand:Despite him complaining,he also is cheerful a lot of times.
Yuna:I don-t feel strong about yuna to tell you the truth.Sure,she is responsible,and takes her duties very seriously,but i never really clicked to it.The main reason:I-m a male and i-m not religious.

Maybe my personality is the reason i get along characters like zack and tidus better.But then:How come i don-t like zelos wilder from tales of symphonia and zidane,but i actually prefer ramza over them?

And:The other members were able to keep more of a calm collective when they became le cie.Sure there were problems,but they faced them.I'll respond to the rest later, but this is the reason why:

BECAUSE THEYRE FUCKING ADULTS WHEN THEY BECAME L'CIE

Get it?

I'll respond to the rest later, but this is the reason why:

BECAUSE THEYRE FUCKING ADULTS WHEN THEY BECAME L'CIE

Get it?

Hope wasn-t older,he was the same age.In FFXII-2 he was older.
Snow was already an adult.I think that snow must have been 18 or older,because his attitude showed he had somewhat different attitude.
Lightning Fang and vanille were probably the ones who were most calmest and collective.

Lightning because she has war experience,and knows how to deal with a battle ground.
Vanille and fang have a different kind of experience.Both vanille and fang would technically be way more experienced as a le cie than everyone else.

I saw a picture of what hope looked like,and hope looked to be 18-20 in FFXIII-2.And snow as well.

Also:Calm the fuck down raven.
This is supposed to be a calm friendly discussion,and you are getting angry over petty things.If you start a fight,this thread will be closed like the last one,so can-t we just speak to each other in a calm fashion?

Snow's and NORA's actions save the citizens of the purge train. Okay so he doesn't save everyone, but if not for him and his guys, everyone would have been killed as a result of Lightning's actions. For which she takes absolutely no responsibility, and ignores them as they are being massacred by PSICOM. So before you go around calling Snow every name under the sun, let's just remember that he saves an awful lot of lives in the Hanging Edge. And again, his decision to stay with Serah was something that anyone who has been in love can understand. He believes he is meant to save her and will save her. And destiny or whatever you want to call it, rewards him for this belief by having this action lead to meeting Fang and Cid. Otherwise, they would have had no way to get to the Palamecia later on etc.

As for his general behaviour, Snow is operating on the belief that leaders and heroes need to be seen to be in control and on top of things by the people. Nothing scares people more than thinking that nobody has any idea what to do, that their protectors are worried and don't think they will survive etc. Snow puts a brave face on things to give other people hope, and adopts a positive attitude because worrying and fretting about stuff doesn't solve anything. Just keep trying and if things go bad, try even harder. But the game never makes any bones about the fact that he is not the kind of leadership material that Lightning for example is. She can inspire others to action and to follow her and depend on her without really trying (or even wanting to at the start). The game is candid that Snow's overly optimistic bravado and odd leaps of logic make him seem like a show-off and a guy who doesn't have a clue. When he tries to rally the citizens of the Purge train to fight, he falls flat and it takes Labreau to step in and get things moving. Vanille, Lightning, Fang etc all consider him to be a lot of talk, and someone with no real grasp on the situation. But the key thing is that logical or not, his approach gives him hope and strength to carry on.

The rest of the team meanwhile all give up under the weight of what happens to them - Lightning embarks on a suicide run, Sazh gets Vanille to safety then plans to give himself up to see his son one last time, Vanille was running back to Pulse to wait to be turned into a Cieth rather than fulfill her focus, Hope is living just for revenge on Snow, Fang has decided to kill all of Cocoon to save Vanille etc. They gave up, but Snow never does. And as the game progresses, they all slowly come round to the fact that somehow for all his lack of credibility, Snow actually did have the right idea. As Sazh says on the Palamecia 'Got to keep a positive attitude, right?' And Lightning's words to Fang when the latter is cursing their constant bad luck, show her change of heart - that every obstacle that is thrown against them and they overcome, brings them one step closer to victory. They all admit to Snow on Pulse that they wouldn't be there and still alive, if not for the strength of his belief, his ironclad resolve that they will beat this.

Lightning abandons Serah because she has given up all hope after what has happened - she is full of grief and anger and is on a self destructive Kamikaze run - or do you think her crazy plan to walk into Edenhall on her own and take on all the Fal'Cie and PSICOM by herself was a smart plan? Compared to how stupid that plan is, Snow looks like an absolute genius! It was a grief reaction, and when Lightning has time to calm down and find herself again (partly reawakened through her protective feelings towards Hope, reminding her of when she would take care of Serah), she finally realises this.

Sazh also has good reason to complain - Lightning's actions are both completely unacceptable (letting everyone in the Hanging Edge fend for themselves and abandoning them in the Vile Peaks etc), and he's sick with worry over his son. But he is a good man with a forgiving heart, so he's able to get past it and give Vanille and Lightning his help, because he knows instinctively that they are both people worthy of his trust.

Hope is taking the lead as early on as Chapter 5, in the Whitewood. Again, he is not thinking clearly because of all the stress and grief, but has enough presence of mind to listen when Snow tells him the truth. He shows himself to be someone who will make the right call when he has all the facts - something that continues in FF13-2.

Cid has always been a pawn, and every time he has tried to rebel, he has eventually found out he was actually aiding Barthandelous and doing what the Fal'Cie wanted. He finally thought he had asserted his free will when he attacked Lightning and co, and found peace when he turned to crystal, feeling for the first time that his actions were his own and that he had been rewarded for this by the universe, fate, whatever, in the same way that Serah had when she denied her focus and turned to crystal. But then he awoke and found that yet again, it was just part of Barthandelous' plan.

He's tired and can't go on anymore, as Sazh is when they get to Nautilus. If you keep running and find you are getting nowhere, eventually you stop running because there is just no point. He has run his course by the time Rygdea and his men catch up to him, and he's glad to finally have it over. But even despite this, Rygdea still had respect for the man that Cid tried to be throughout his life (Rygdea survived the assault on Edenhall, and went on to be a prominent member of the new government working for the people, instead of against them. When asked about Cid, he maintains that his old friend would be exactly the kind of man they need in the modern times, because he was a good man who tried his best.)

Also:Calm the fuck down raven.
This is supposed to be a calm friendly discussion,and you are getting angry over petty things.If you start a fight,this thread will be closed like the last one,so can-t we just speak to each other in a calm fashion? How can I calm down when you're missing the most basic point? Snow is in his 20s, Lightning too, Sazh is in his 40s, Fang/Vanille are already l'Cie and from Pulse, leaving Hope to be the one who's 14 years old and can't take everything as well as the others.

How can I calm down when you're missing the most basic point? Snow is in his 20s, Lightning too, Sazh is in his 40s, Fang/Vanille are already l'Cie and from Pulse, leaving Hope to be the one who's 14 years old and can't take everything as well as the others.

The point is:i don-t find any of the characters interesting,and worse of all:Some of them really annoy me.Both combinations are toxic,and you keep making up excuses to continue to argue with me.
I didn-t like the rest of the characters either.What was happening the whole time was not particularly interesting to me,because i didn-t care about them.They have to first make me care.To me:FFXIII was a disappointment,and always will be.FFXIII for me is the worse final fantasy.Not only because i don-t care about the characters,but also because of the lack of gameplay aspect.The game had potential,but instead we were given a bunch of linear missions to follow.I had more hope for the open world of grand pulse,because there actually were quite a few places to go to,and the main grand pulse map is rather large too.

Also:Snow also gets into trouble also for being rather arrogant.His Cavalier attitude gets him in trouble a few times.He later needs his self assertion to be able to accomplish his mission and survive as well.

Lightning was a bitch early on and was angry at sarah,but she kind of got over it later
Sazh was a coward.During the time where he is with vanille,he is too cowardly to kill her and too cowardly to kill himself.

The point is:i don-t find any of the characters interesting,and worse of all:Some of them really annoy me.Both combinations are toxic,and you keep making up excuses to continue to argue with me.No, I'm not. You consistently are wrong/misguided about why people are the way they are and I am correcting you. I do not care what you think of the characters one bit; notice how I don't care that you hate everything about this game. I am saying you are wrong, and you insist on being wrong and not listening. I don't care that you hate Hope, I care that you're not being fair in terms of judging characters.

You consider it cowardice on Sazh's part to not shoot an unarmed young girl who is offering no resistance?! What part of such a despicable act would be in any way brave? And it is not cowardice to reject suicide - indeed, suicide is dubbed 'the coward's way out'. It would be easy to pull that trigger and end his suffering - as far as he knows, his son is lost to him and he's doomed to die. But as he says to Vanille, they don't just get to take that easy way out. They have to do like everyone else does and keep moving on.

That's plenty brave from where I'm standing.

But it's a JRPG, nothing is realistic or moral! Right?

But it's a JRPG, nothing is realistic or moral! Right?

As i said:My biggest problem is with:Hope Snow and vanille.

Vanille is more refreshing after having to deal with hope-s whining a lot.
I don-t hate everything,i just have a strong dislike for 3 of the main characters,and the gameplay.Ok most of the game.

Lets think of it this way:Sazh blames vanille,right?

When he confronts vanille after he finds out she was responsible for dajh becoming a le cie,he was furious.Perhaps he figured it was pointless to kill her,because he wouldn-t get his son back.
On the other hand:Killing yourself wouldn-t be logical either,so he obviously was overwelmed by emotion for a second.

Either way:I felt nothing good for snow or hope.I could have done without them.
The other characters:I don-t mind so much.And i-ve seen the kind of personalities in this game that i have seen consistantly in others:
FF8 Selphie>>>>>>>Vanille
Hope:He complains a lot and is very much a drama queen,like raiden from mgs2.Even his haircut is similar.
Cloud>>>>>>>>>Lightning.Except that lightning is more of a bitch,in:She is pretty cold early on.
See? We have seen these types of arch type personalities.

So:What the hell do you want? You want me to cave in and worship FFXIII because you can-t stand anyone who disagrees with you? Well,i-m not doing it.

Everything ends up fine happy ever after.It just seems cheap and unrealistic.I then think:What about the personal problems each character still technically has? they vanish out of thin air?
Hope seems pretty damm happy to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgjtMRx9cwU

I didn-t like the ending.

Its a fair point about the ending being a bit too happy considering the circumstances (for some of the characters anyway, but it was very open ended for characters like Lightning and Hope, which felt like it was left hanging without resolution), but remember that ANGRYWOLF for example, posted comments just the other day saying he wouldn't even play FF13-2 because it didn't have a happy ending. So its not an easy decision for Square on what to do in this case - please one person and piss off another.

Its a fair point about the ending being a bit too happy considering the circumstances (for some of the characters anyway, but it was very open ended for characters like Lightning and Hope, which felt like it was left hanging without resolution), but remember that ANGRYWOLF for example, posted comments just the other day saying he wouldn't even play FF13-2 because it didn't have a happy ending. So its not an easy decision for Square on what to do in this case - please one person and piss off another.

The problem is:I feel that the ending felt like a let down.I felt like there could have been more.Its not that i don-t like happy endings,but i felt that it all felt too much like a steven spielberg ish type ending,as in forced.Everything ends happily and is hunky dory,and everybody lives happily ever after.Chrono trigger had a happy ending,but it was great.When that music played,it was so bitter sweet that it left an impression.

Well, I personally thought it was really sad how Fang and Vanille were in that tower for eternity more or less (well FFXIII-2 aside). It's one of those games that are sad when you ponder on them, and sorta make sense considering a bunch of the Analects say things to the extent of Etro feeling pity for l'Cie (which explains the Eidolons, as well as some of the crap that happened towards the end of the game) which made the happy ending make sense. I find that FF in general requires a bit of reading between the lines in a bunch of places so things make sense.

I liked FFXIII's ending, but it didn't seem to be all that happy. It still seemed bittersweet, but they were caught up in the moment; Serah and Dajh were de-crystallized and they are no longer slaves of the fal'Cie. There hasn't been an FF since FF4 that has given an epilogue as to what characters were doing after all of that ended, so I'm not sure what you were expecting.

Well, I personally thought it was really sad how Fang and Vanille were in that tower for eternity more or less (well FFXIII-2 aside). It's one of those games that are sad when you ponder on them, and sorta make sense considering a bunch of the Analects say things to the extent of Etro feeling pity for l'Cie (which explains the Eidolons, as well as some of the crap that happened towards the end of the game) which made the happy ending make sense. I find that FF in general requires a bit of reading between the lines in a bunch of places so things make sense.

I liked FFXIII's ending, but it didn't seem to be all that happy. It still seemed bittersweet, but they were caught up in the moment; Serah and Dajh were de-crystallized and they are no longer slaves of the fal'Cie. There hasn't been an FF since FF4 that has given an epilogue as to what characters were doing after all of that ended, so I'm not sure what you were expecting.

Now i-m not really sure.I mean:I-m not sure what i would have done,because i-m not a professional.

I like sad endings,but i also like bittersweet endings.Maybe i was unhappy because of the characters themselves meant nothing,so the ending itself meant nothing.The villain itself felt like it was there for the sake of having a villain,and that isn-t exactly a good thing.Thats not to say that it would be any better with no villain at all,because then you would have no reason to have these problems in the first place,unless it is designed in a certain way to have no villain since the beginning.

I think that it was ultima 5 was it? Had no actual villain supposedly,and it worked because it was about becoming a paragon of virtues.
In the next game,you had the corruption of the virtues,so once again you had a villain.

I have never played a final fantasy game that didn't have a villain in it.Sometimes the game did have misplaced villains.

One example comes to mind,is FF7.Sephiroth felt a bit misplaced,because the spotlight was constantly being taken by hojo and shinra,and this devalued his importance as the main villain.Also:Even jenova got more screen time.
Another example:Some people were not happy that kuja wasn't the final boss.Considering what happened during the game,you wanted him to be the main villain,instead you get a villain pulled out of their ass with no back story as well written as kuja.It was like FF4 all over again.

The same cannot be really said as much about FFX,because you know that you will probably eventually need to fight sin.What you don't know,is that he isn't the real final boss,yu yevon is.Considering what happened during the game,you didn't hate sin necessarily,because it felt more like a mindless killing machine than a thinking creature.I could be wrong,but i don't remember much planning from sin's side,i just remember it acting out of instinct.

In overall:Perhaps i did have high hopes because of the epic boss music.I was less hyped about the actual storyline,and more about the music and the fight with him because it was like:Oh cool he has a cool music and decent design.Sure i have no reason to hate him,except for maybe that he is a cheap bastard who keeps spamming his thanatos laughter.So in overall:I got more enjoyment out of the actual fight than the cutscenes,because the cutscenes meant nothing to me.They would have meant more if the character had given me a reaction,but it didn't.

I can't really say the same about FFXIII-2,because i only played a small portion of the game.Sure,i know how the gameplay plays out,and some parts about the beginning,but how can you determine the entire story if you haven't played it from start to finish? This was one reason i argued with darth revan that he would need to finish it to really see if the gameplay and story changed at all,and if it didn't,you never play it again.Maybe if you liked it a little,you play it once or twice.

For me,a game that i like a little may reserve 2 or 3 plays,and if i like it a lot,possibly 5-10 play throughs.

Personally, I consider Barthandelous to be a very strong villain. You seem him enough times to know what he's about, and he's extremely villainous in the closing fight sequences. By comparison, I felt absolutely nothing for FF10's 'Villains' if you can even call them that. Seymour was just awful, with his Walt Disney 'I plan to marry the princess' storyline, and complete lack of threat (1 chop from Auron and he died - 1 chop...) Sin is a giant whale, which is just ridiculous as I've said many times, and Yu Yevon is a cutscene boss who only gets mentioned right near the end, and who you can't actually die to.

And I don't know how you can bring up FF9 as an example of a game with a well written and developed villain, when it has Necron as the final boss. *Never* mentioned in the game, not even once! And I don't agree that Kuja has an interesting story either - he barely has a backstory at all, let alone a good one. He's just another 'My father didn't love me enough, I don't get the respect and power I deserve' posturing goth. His destrcution of Terra is like the ultimate tantrum, and he just lacks any kind of credibility to me. He seems like such a spoiled brat that I snorted in disgust whenever he appeared (fits well though, I suppose seeing as how I thought the same abotu Zidane).

Lots of people have abusive and neglectful parents/guardians etc - but they don't all become mass murderers because of it. He's a pathetic person, and I find it highly insulting to his victims that we are asked to waste any sympathy on him at all. Garland at least had a legitimate reason for what he was doing (its still a monstrous crime to promote death on that scale, but he was doing it to save the people of Terra, and took no pleasure in doing it, putting himself at arm's length from the actual killing). Which is a cold thing to do, but at least you can see a greater good that he was trying to serve - Kuja doesn't a damn about the people of Terra. Far from being troubled over his orders to foment chaos and destruction, he takes great delight in seeing people suffer, and he only cares about himself, even sacrificing his own servants. But as my mates put it when they played FF9 for the first time 'This guy's like a budget version of Sephiroth - same kind of story, but this guy sucks'.

I also can't understand your attitude towards Sephiroth. The scene where he murders Aeris, and the fact he murders Cloud's whole hometown make him the perfect villain. Cloud has the most intimate connection it is possible to have with him really, even beside these deeds he commits to Cloud's loved ones. Because even on the genetic level, they share JENOVA's genes, and the fact that Cloud was intended to be a clone of Sephiroth through Hojo's research. And you see him *loads* of times over the course of that game, and even when he's not physically present he is mentioned all the time. He is quite simply the best ultilised, most omnipresent villain in the series. I will agree that Shinra are better, but they are the best villains in the whole series and to me its simply a case of FF7 having 2-3 great sets of villains, where 1 of them is 'even more great' than the others.

Anyway, to return to the endings, I think the ending of FF13 is bittersweet as Merc says, but you did kind of feel like it was a bit of a strange place to leave it. As Nos says, the fact that Dajh and Serah just pop up for a quick 'We're alive!' drive by, followed by a completely open ending, was a bit of a scarce return for all your efforts. Final Fantasy games often have truncated or unsatisfying endings (FF7 being a prime example), but some at least feel like they've given all the information you really wanted/needed to know (FF8, FF9 show that the good guys survive, the hero and heroine are together and all's generally speaking well).

But with FF13, you feel like Lightning is kind of left out of proceedings, even though she's the main character (and even if you don't subscribe to her or anyone being the main character, she is still an important character). Snow's whole story has revolved around seeing Serah again, so he gets the main reaction for seeing Serah (and indeed the close focus on Serah and Lightning's relationship in 13-2 may have been to make up for how little of this there is in FF13).

So I don't think its a huge surprise then that FF13-2 deals with what happens next for Lightning and Hope specifically, seeing as how they were given pretty short shrift in the FF13 ending. It was just so open and unexplained about where each of their characters would go from there, but the sequel has answered those questions now.

Seymour was just awful, with his Walt Disney 'I plan to marry the princess' storyline, and complete lack of threat (1 chop from Auron and he died - 1 chop...)I... think that was the point. After you killed him, he did a couple things that were pretty screwed up (killing Kinoc for example), but once you hit Seymour Flux fights- you can tell he's a joke (even if Flux was tough as hell) in terms of the plot. He's more or less supposed to be a villain that seems villainess at first, but then dies down quick and hard because he's just that much of a joke.


Sin is a giant whale, which is just ridiculous as I've said many timesI think it works because Spira (and Zanarkand) are based entirely around the water. -_-


and Yu Yevon is a cutscene boss who only gets mentioned right near the end, and who you can't actually die to. Yu Yevon's a fairly... tragic character/villain/etc. They just don't expound on him or his intentions in-game.

[QUOTE=Vrykolas;1921417]Personally, I consider Barthandelous to be a very strong villain. You seem him enough times to know what he's about, and he's extremely villainous in the closing fight sequences. By comparison, I felt absolutely nothing for FF10's 'Villains' if you can even call them that. Seymour was just awful, with his Walt Disney 'I plan to marry the princess' storyline, and complete lack of threat (1 chop from Auron and he died - 1 chop...) Sin is a giant whale, which is just ridiculous as I've said many times, and Yu Yevon is a cutscene boss who only gets mentioned right near the end, and who you can't actually die to.

And I don't know how you can bring up FF9 as an example of a game with a well written and developed villain, when it has Necron as the final boss. *Never* mentioned in the game, not even once! And I don't agree that Kuja has an interesting story either - he barely has a backstory at all, let alone a good one. He's just another 'My father didn't love me enough, I don't get the respect and power I deserve' posturing goth. His destrcution of Terra is like the ultimate tantrum, and he just lacks any kind of credibility to me. He seems like such a spoiled brat that I snorted in disgust whenever he appeared (fits well though, I suppose seeing as how I thought the same abotu Zidane).

That is why i said:Oh no,not the ff4 thing again.When i say:Oh no not the ff4 thing,it is because zeromus is pulled out of nowhere with zero development as a villain.He has cool music,but all you find out is late in the game,and you know that he was sealed up because he was supposedly dangerous.

Lots of people have abusive and neglectful parents/guardians etc - but they don't all become mass murderers because of it. He's a pathetic person, and I find it highly insulting to his victims that we are asked to waste any sympathy on him at all. Garland at least had a legitimate reason for what he was doing (its still a monstrous crime to promote death on that scale, but he was doing it to save the people of Terra, and took no pleasure in doing it, putting himself at arm's length from the actual killing). Which is a cold thing to do, but at least you can see a greater good that he was trying to serve - Kuja doesn't a damn about the people of Terra. Far from being troubled over his orders to foment chaos and destruction, he takes great delight in seeing people suffer, and he only cares about himself, even sacrificing his own servants. But as my mates put it when they played FF9 for the first time 'This guy's like a budget version of Sephiroth - same kind of story, but this guy sucks'.

But ff9 wouldn-t have any villain to carry it,unless you count queen brahne as the villain.She certainly is easy to hate,because she died because of being a greedy selfish bitch.

I also can't understand your attitude towards Sephiroth. The scene where he murders Aeris, and the fact he murders Cloud's whole hometown make him the perfect villain. Cloud has the most intimate connection it is possible to have with him really, even beside these deeds he commits to Cloud's loved ones. Because even on the genetic level, they share JENOVA's genes, and the fact that Cloud was intended to be a clone of Sephiroth through Hojo's research. And you see him *loads* of times over the course of that game, and even when he's not physically present he is mentioned all the time. He is quite simply the best ultilised, most omnipresent villain in the series. I will agree that Shinra are better, but they are the best villains in the whole series and to me its simply a case of FF7 having 2-3 great sets of villains, where 1 of them is 'even more great' than the others.

It was nothing in comparison to the mass destruction in FF9 FF6 and certainly FFX.You may say he killed a lot,but not in my book.How many people died in ff6? How many died in ff9? How many died in spira at the hands of sin?
The thing that really irks me,is that its so over exposed,that i am sick of seeing cloud and sephiroth for the rest of my life.I would not mind as much if people gave it a rest.On the other hand:I never liked sephiroth as a villain.Sure he killed people,but there are ways around that to make it tragic too.To me,sephiroth felt forced as a villain,and many that came after also felt kind of forced.Hojo was a great villain,because he had the sort of real ego that one has when they think they have the right to play god.
To me,hojo was like one of those nazi doctors who is obviously sick,because they think nothing of causing pain to others so they can get what they want.He must have been crazy before injecting those cells,because he did some pretty sick shit to sephiroth.Also:What about crisis core? He is giggling like he is saying:No really" go in and get yourself killed.It was just plain creepy.

Shinra was more of your typical politician at work,like bush or dick cheney at work.The kind of guy you hate because he is all talk but very little action,and what action he does is to benefit himself or industries that pay him off.Rufus was especially like this.
I remember the dialogue from i think cloud:Boy you sure love to talk,you are just like your old man.

On to sephiroth:One thing i heard,is that if sephiroth wasn-t in the game,there would be no final boss antagonist to tie the game to.I guess this would be true since jenova is basically a dead alien creature.(It is dead right?)

But with FF13, you feel like Lightning is kind of left out of proceedings, even though she's the main character (and even if you don't subscribe to her or anyone being the main character, she is still an important character). Snow's whole story has revolved around seeing Serah again, so he gets the main reaction for seeing Serah (and indeed the close focus on Serah and Lightning's relationship in 13-2 may have been to make up for how little of this there is in FF13).

Yeah he does to see Serah,so lightning was hugging and talking and all laughing with joy.Sazh was happy when he heard and saw dajh,and everyone was pretty happy in the end.
I don-t think it would make sense for hope to complain about his mom at the end,so i guess it makes sense for him to be happy at the end,because he supposedly slightly forgave snow.
And lightnings story revolved around escaping i think from pulse after find out that her sister serah was a le cie.I remember a scene of sort where lightning finds out and we see some events unfold,then we see lightning get on a train.

So I don't think its a huge surprise then that FF13-2 deals with what happens next for Lightning and Hope specifically, seeing as how they were given pretty short shrift in the FF13 ending. It was just so open and unexplained about where each of their characters would go from there, but the sequel has answered those questions now.

To me,FFXIII felt like it was more about fang vanille and snow.

Vanilles story gets told slowly,and goes faster in grand pulse.
Snow has that whole story involving hope-s mom,who he felt guilty about,and sera who is lightning-s sister.She blames snow for what happened.
Fang is involved with vanille.And vanille is involved with the main story,because it tries to tie in with what the whole endgame plot area is about.And in truth:Much of the plot is also tied with vanille anyways.

It was nothing in comparison to the mass destruction in FF9 FF6 and certainly FFX.You may say he killed a lot,but not in my book.How many people died in ff6? How many died in ff9? How many died in spira at the hands of sin?

Completely Missing the Point... But COMPLETELY.




Anyway, Keep on the Debate! Keep it Up! It's Fun!

http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxjlw4AnIX1rn1xxfo1_250.gif

[QUOTE=topopoz;1921973]Completely Missing the Point... But COMPLETELY.


I am debating that he is putting values on lives, and that is not always 100 percent accurate.

Diane Downs - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Downs)

Are you going to say she is less evil than hitler because she killed less?

Are you going to say that sephiroth for an example is worse than hojo? Sure he killed more people,but look at what hojo did too.What about yu yevon? Sin was supposedly a sort of creature of yu yevon design.
Ok this is a little off topic now,so forgive me about this part.

What i meant to say:I want to define clear motives that are evil.The death of many is terrible,but the reasons also define the character too.

Barthandalus would be considered bad,because he wanted to wipe out humanity in order to bring back god.
The idea of wiping out all of the world is a terrible idea.

He was a villain,but his character just not very interesting.It is nice though that you no longer have the excuse of being crazy.FF7 and ff6 used that trump card.

Still, Missing the Point.

I was just adding that it is less about lives lost,and more about the personality.The context may have been wrong because he was talking about how it affects cloud when his village is burned.What annoys me, is that some people use this as an excuse for him to be really evil, and make it out to be about numbers rather than deeds.

I haven't played FF4, so I'm assuming that Zeromus is villain who is never mentioned in the game, yes? If its such an infamous example, then why did Sakaguchi think it was a good tbing to do it again in FF9? Brahne was by all accounts a good and kind woman before Kuja arrived on the scene with his Eidolons and such. I'm not excusing what she did (I felt just as irriatated when it tried to make me feel sorry for her on the beacj).

What has the amount of people killed got to do with being an interesting villain and a good character (which I notice you have since said, so we're in agreement). Going by that criteria, Ultimecia is the most villainous, because she plans to reduce all time and space to a single point where only she can exist and will ever exist. It doesn't make her an interesting character though. Sephiroth is an interesting character, quite apart from all the villainous things he does (of which the murder of Aeris is one of the most evil in the whole series). War is always monstrous, but the cold blooded execution of a complete innocent, done with absolutely no remorse is a chilling thing to see.

Just because someone has a tragic life, in no way justifies the atrocities they later commit. You can appreciate the tragedy, feel some sympathy for that aspect of their lives, but that's very different from condoning what they do. Seeing how and why they became what they did is part of a good character. Sephiroth discovers he is a thing, a creature born in a lab and that his accomplishments were made possible only by the hand of Hojo - a man he despises, who he now learns is in many senses, his father. He learns of the (apparent) abuses that Mankind has done to 'his' race (as he then believes), and is disgusted. And through the actions of Shinra and Avalanche (who are terrorists, remember who have killed innocents themeelves), Mankind does not do a good job of protraying itself in a good light in that game.

So you can see how he comes round to his murderous thoughts. He always considered himself special, but used it to help people. Now he learns he is different, but in a way that is degrading and humiliating. And that the race he was descended from (as he then believes) was exterminated by these same people who he has been helping. None of it justifies what he does, and in the end he is shown no mercy by Cloud, which is exactly right. It doesn't matter how hard your life was - the slaying of innocents is monstrous, whatever your justification. Cloud doesn't waste his sympathy on Sephiroth and neither do I. BUt that doesn't mean I don't consider him an interesting and tragic character.

Hojo is an evil man to be sure. His eventual transformation into a deformed experimental creature mirrors the monstrosity inside his heart. But he is black and white - he's just an evil man with ambition. It doesn't have the nuance that we see with a character like Sephiroth or Cloud who have genuinely suffered. Its the same reason I don't understand the love for Kefka. He's just crazy and power mad, and that's it. You can only really view him through the prism of his huge bodycount and feel loathing towards him for that. But when push comes to shove, his character is still extremely silly and very underdeveloped.

JENOVA is something that I'm not sure you can really kill. Its body may be dead, but the cells and its genes live on in Sephiroth, Cloud etc. Its like an evil force of nature, that spreads continually through people. Like a warning that there is evil in us all, its evil DNA has spread far and wide. Sephiroth is just the newest and perhaps ultimate incarnation of this evil.

Hope isn't exactly happy at the end of FF13. He and Lightning lament that Fang and Vanille won't be coming back, because they meant a great deal to both of them. And in the sequel, Hope is working tirelessly to free them from the pillar, and make it so the pillar won't be needed anymore. Lightning is also intensely worried about them, and diverts Snow from his original mission to find her, to go and protect the pillar until Hope can find a way to save them (which he does).

Lightning's story is about finding herself, more than anything. She loses sight of who she is after Serah is taken (and she was never that much of a people person before that). But the need to rely on the others, followed the genuine desire to see them safe eventually, makes her into a better person. She's relieved that Serah is alright, but she's not happy that it took Fang and Vanille's sacrifice to do it. She is surprised and pleased to discover however that they did in fact manage to survive and beat the curse. So it wasn't a journey for nothing by any means. As the sequel makes plain though, she won't be truly happy until they *all* come out of it in one piece.

Vanille is the cause of all the story, so obviously she's a major player. She just has to learn that refusing to do the Fal'Cie's bidding doesn't mean she has to run away. She can and eventually does stand up to them, when the team revert from being Cieth, showing that definance is possible etc.

My response:

About hojo:What makes hojo interesting,is that he is in a way sick.He was probably crazy from the start.Or at the very least:Extremely driven to the point where they put their own interests above other peoples lives.
I can see in hojo the type of thing i see in people who are psychopaths.They will do horrible things to people they are married to or related to for their own benefits,and think nothing of hurting others.In this time,it might just be very well because he puts his job as a scientist above his personal life,and in a way is just not a good parent as he is too self involved, and with a bloated ego. If you found a cell that you thought might be dangerous, would you really inject it into yourself? think clearly about this.

I don-t feel sorry for queen brahne.Queen brahne had no innocence at all.I can say without a doubt that it was her fault that she died.She allowed herself to be manipulated, and her greed got her killed.She wanted more power because she was obviously hungry for more conquest, like a spoiled little princess.

Sephiroth on the other hand:He wasn-t evil at first,and that is where the tragedy happens.If he had never been experimented on, and his dad actually took time to be a good father, would he be a normal child?

As for kekfa:The thing that fascinates me about kefkas personality,is that he seems like he is truly a mixture of crazy with psychopathy,with no regard for human life at all. He is an impatient egomaniac.
He loves senseless destruction,and shows no remorse. The fact that he goes out of his way to do harm is something that interests me,because i see him that he is truly evil from start. The thing about sephiroth:There might be room for redemption for him, but for people like kefka and queen brahne, you know that it is not so. There is no excuses for what they did. Worse yet:They show little remorse anyways. I mean: Sure queen brahne found out she was used and was played, but she had it coming.

I believe that some villains that are irredeemable are interesting. Maybe its just that i don-t understand how someone could be so cold and remorseless.

I'm not saying that Hojo is a poor character - far from it. I too am fascinated with just how evil he actually is. He always came across the most truly dangerous of the Shinra, and they were fools for relying on someone like him. But Hojo has a proper story, and you get to see him in flashbacks and videos and see how his mania has developed, and how he went from cold hearted and ruthless to flat out, stark staring crazy at the end.

But Kefka... he's just a fool. His dialogue is ridiculous 'What's that, bub?' and he's forever jumping around etc. You look at him and think 'Where on earth did they dig you up from?' as he looks and acts so bizarre. I just couldn't take him seriously at all. I'm not denying he commits evil acts, but my essential contempt for how stupid and silly his whole character was, overrode any feelings of true hate for him. He prevented me from engaging in the story, because I was alwasys looking at him and thinking 'This character is really, really daft'. He just wasn't believable to me, in a story where most characters had a pretty decent story - he has none to speak of. He's just this crazy clown guy.

Oh yeah, and about Merc's comment on Sin:
Look, when it was actually *in* the water and you couldn't see all of it, then yeah, I was fine with that. That massive fin erupted out the of the water on the way to Besaid, and I was like 'Woaaah - thar she blows!' and I was having a great time. But when I actually saw the thing later, and got used to the idea that it was a flying whale and not even a very threatening looking one at that, I just stopped and throught 'Actually, this is really, really dumb'.

I'd already completely fallen out of love with the game by that point. The irritating characters (Tidus especially, but the sight of Lulu with that stupid doll and Wakka acting like he's going to take his job seriously and then attacking people with a fricking beachball!) had gotten too much. Along with the annoyingly passive citizens who didn't seem capable of rousing themselves to care about the end of the world, the deathly slow pace, and the fact that the only character I did like (Auron) isn't even in the first third of the game after the intro... And then Seymour showed up, and I looked back fondly at the days when the game was just bad, and not truly devastatingly appalling.

Because if they want him to be a joke villain then fine. But why have him come back like 4 times in that case?! He was so pathetic and you just groaned with incredulity as he showed up each time, convinced somehow that he was going to whoop you, despite the titantic beatings you've given him again and again. That final battle against him is just the final straw. Auron with his Celestial weapon (on 1HP from Demi of course), gave him such a seeing to that I just couldn't believe I was still playing that game. Not even the basic enemies in Sin go down that quickly!

I haven't played FF4, so I'm assuming that Zeromus is villain who is never mentioned in the game, yes? If its such an infamous example, then why did Sakaguchi think it was a good tbing to do it again in FF9?


I want to make something clear here. Unlike Necron, Zeromus is kinda like an evolution or a transformation of the traces what was left of Zemus after he was defeated. They're the same entity.

Necron and Kuja are totally different stuff.

The similarity is found because Necron appears out of nowhere and is not related to anything at all. Where as Zeromus materializes from the Remains of Zemus.

FFIX is a mess.

FF4 is Virtually the best of the Classic FF games IMO. Because it plays with all of it's elements well and does not forces you to suspend your disbelief or forces you to shut your brain mainly because it doesn't contradict it's premise or the game itself. I Highly reccomend you to play IV.

The Story is not Complicated or Convoluted when you compare it to the later games. It's fairly Simple and the Characters make up for the ride. And it has is share of suprises and many Emotional Moments. For it's time it's amazing.


But Kefka... he's just a fool. His dialogue is ridiculous 'What's that, bub?' and he's forever jumping around etc. You look at him and think 'Where on earth did they dig you up from?' as he looks and acts so bizarre. I just couldn't take him seriously at all. I'm not denying he commits evil acts, but my essential contempt for how stupid and silly his whole character was, overrode any feelings of true hate for him. He prevented me from engaging in the story, because I was alwasys looking at him and thinking 'This character is really, really daft'. He just wasn't believable to me, in a story where most characters had a pretty decent story - he has none to speak of. He's just this crazy clown guy.

My thoughts Exactly. And the Inefficient, down right non-action from the Main Party to kill this guy. A Villain that Exposed himself a 100 times before he got powerful made me hate most of the Main Cast too. Most Overrated FF Villain Ever.

[QUOTE=topopoz;1922559]I want to make something clear here. Unlike Necron, Zeromus is kinda like an evolution or a transformation of the traces what was left of Zemus after he was defeated. They're the same entity.

Necron and Kuja are totally different stuff.

Zeromus appeared very late in the game.During most of the game, who was the antagonist? Golbez.The strongest connection to an antagonist to cecil is golbez, and he even gets to tellah yang and edward and even many kings.

The similarity is found because Necron appears out of nowhere and is not related to anything at all. Where as Zeromus materializes from the Remains of Zemus.
That too was not good design.That is why i think that kuja should have instead been the final boss.

FFIX is a mess.

FF4 is Virtually the best of the Classic FF games IMO. Because it plays with all of it's elements well and does not forces you to suspend your disbelief or forces you to shut your brain mainly because it doesn't contradict it's premise or the game itself. I Highly reccomend you to play IV.

There is the story of cecil, and his guilt of what he did. I suppose the idea sort of falls within the star wars area: Golbez is sorta like darth vader. I always liked ff4 a lot.For me, it is hard for me to decide between ff4, and ff tactics.FF tactics. I like cecil, but i also like ramza as a character. Algus is easy to hate because he is such an elitist prick.You also have wiegraf who is a tool, and allows himself to be used so he can gain a little power so he can cause senseless destruction.I find delita to be kinda sad too.What happened to his sister was really awful.

My thoughts Exactly. And the Inefficient, down right non-action from the Main Party to kill this guy. A Villain that Exposed himself a 100 times before he got powerful made me hate most of the Main Cast too. Most Overrated FF Villain Ever.

I disagree:Sephiroth is the most overrated villain of all time,and cloud is the most overrated would be hero of all time.Kefka has a bit too much attention,but he is also a really good villain.

SNES Final Fantasy VI (III US) Gameplay - Part 009 - Sabin's Scenario, Kefka Poisons Doma - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84hFitTXfjs) What kind of sick demented person takes delight in causing mass fear and death? The poisoning of doma? I am talking about his actions, not the amount of deaths caused.
And look also how he completely disrespects general leo and even gestahl.
SNES Final Fantasy VI (III US) Gameplay - Part 003 - Kefka at Figaro Castle - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTZdXaLVw7w) Complete disrespect for anyone.He believes himself to be superior to others,sort of like algus believes that non noble people are beneath him.Kefka treats the soldiers under his command like shit.
Also:Look how he said:I hope nothing bad happens to figaro,but in a threatening tone.Wouldn-t you be afraid if someone said that to you?
Final Fantasy 6 - Destruction of Thamasa - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dARIVFKCd20) He tricked the espers to coming out so he could destroy them and the town completely.I think this is pretty damm evil and clever at the same time.
He easily dispatched leo as if it was nothing,so you can imagine how powerful his magic must have been.

I always used to think that kefka-s outfit looked more like a noble from the 1800-s or late 1700-s.The kind of guys who put lead powder on their face and dress in those colorful outfits with a cloak.It would seem like peasants dress a lot different and far less elegant.

I think what makes the laughter great,is that it shows a complete lack of empathy and respect,or even madness.This is why he was such a great villain, he made you hate his guts.

Final Fantasy VI Playthrough (5) The Slave Crown - YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSrZGHtwNjU) skip to the slave crown part.He tells terra to kill his own men.What the hell?

Also:What is wrong with a bit of comedy? I also always felt that his attitude was also a bit different.

quote vrykolas quote:Because if they want him to be a joke villain then fine. But why have him come back like 4 times in that case?

What about sephiroth? How many times was he killed? once in human form by cloud,then repeatedly killed by the team.He keeps coming back like the way ganon.

But you don't actually fight Sephiroth until the end - the versions you fight early on are JENOVA clones. The real Sepiroth is in the Northen Crater, and you only fight him once (2 battles, but still one extended fight). Cloud kills Sephiroth in Nibelheim because Sephiroth is completely out of his mind at this point and doesn't consider Cloud a threat at all. Cloud basically blindsides him, but still gets mortally wounded (its heavily implied that he would have died without Hojo's experiments). He uses the last of his passionate rage over what happened to his hometown to throw the already weakened Sephiroth over the edge, but even then, Sephiroth doesn't die. Cloud did at least try to kill him, and doesn't hesitate when he finally gets his chance at the end.

In FF10 meanwhile, you actually fight Seymour himself about 4 times. He's utterly pitiful each time, and your party keep letting him go, which chimes with what Top said about Kefka - i.e that your party are a bunch of morons for continually letting these prats off the hook, when they have proved that they'll just come back again, after killing a whole bunch more innocent people.

I didn't hate Kefka - I just thought he looked ridiculous, and acted like a complete prat. He was embarassing, not sinister. If the party had actually had some backbone and had the will to actually give him what he deserved, he'd have died early on. He's miserably weak, and you can thrash him with just Sabin on his own. Its highly likely that you won't have a full party to face him in Narshe, because of the mini-game where you have to split up and intercept those soldiers. But even then, he's an absolute pushover. 2-3 Blitzes from Sabin and he's out cold.

And as for him disrespecting others, it just makes him look like a punk. Seriously, I thought he was just pathetic.

As for FF9, I consider Garland to be a much better villain than Sephiroth. He has a proper agenda and reason for why he's doing all this, instead of Kuja's adolescent tantrums. He's criminally wasted and the collapse of that section of the plot is a major factor in why I don't regard FF9 with the same love that most do. A potentially interesting story, and a proper villain at last, all undone in a couple of hours, just so we can have the Sephiroth wannabe back to continue his angsty power trip. I'd have preferred it if you beat Kuja in Terra, and then only have him show to replace Garland at the end. So the final boss encounter would be Garland, then Kuja, and none of this Necron nonsense.

On a side note, you've intrigued me about FF4, Top. What systems is it available for? I have a PS3, PSP, 360, DS. Can you get it for any of them?

[QUOTE=Vrykolas;1923223]But you don't actually fight Sephiroth until the end - the versions you fight early on are JENOVA clones. The real Sepiroth is in the Northen Crater, and you only fight him once (2 battles, but still one extended fight). Cloud kills Sephiroth in Nibelheim because Sephiroth is completely out of his mind at this point and doesn't consider Cloud a threat at all. Cloud basically blindsides him, but still gets mortally wounded (its heavily implied that he would have died without Hojo's experiments). He uses the last of his passionate rage over what happened to his hometown to throw the already weakened Sephiroth over the edge, but even then, Sephiroth doesn't die. Cloud did at least try to kill him, and doesn't hesitate when he finally gets his chance at the end.

Doesn-t sephiroth die in advent children and the other movie too? plus you fight him also in both kingdom hearts,and probably kh 3 too.I-m not sure if he appears in dirge of cerberus,but i know he is in crisis core.

In FF10 meanwhile, you actually fight Seymour himself about 4 times. He's utterly pitiful each time, and your party keep letting him go, which chimes with what Top said about Kefka - i.e that your party are a bunch of morons for continually letting these prats off the hook, when they have proved that they'll just come back again, after killing a whole bunch more innocent people.

I didn't hate Kefka - I just thought he looked ridiculous, and acted like a complete prat. He was embarassing, not sinister. If the party had actually had some backbone and had the will to actually give him what he deserved, he'd have died early on. He's miserably weak, and you can thrash him with just Sabin on his own. Its highly likely that you won't have a full party to face him in Narshe, because of the mini-game where you have to split up and intercept those soldiers. But even then, he's an absolute pushover. 2-3 Blitzes from Sabin and he's out cold.

You never actually kill kefka,and he is clever because he escapes.He wasn-t a god yet,and when he became a god,he became a threat.He cleverly tricked and killed both general leo and gestahl.Also:For his case,it made sense to beat him.He was meant to be shown as a weakling who desired power.He wouldn-t need the power as bad if he wasn-t weak.He desires power to make himself feel superior to others,like the kind of way that rapists desire to feel power over women by degrading them and hurting them.


And as for him disrespecting others, it just makes him look like a punk. Seriously, I thought he was just pathetic.

Thats your opinion and nothing more.I personally thought that it made him despicable.He obviously didn-t respect even someone like gestahl.Someone who was above him in authority.I have little doubt that gestahl knew this,and was attempting to buide his time to get power enough to get rid of a pest like kefka.Kefka on the other hand:Somehow found out about the statues nullifying magic, so he used that to block gestahls magical spells.

As for FF9, I consider Garland to be a much better villain than Sephiroth. He has a proper agenda and reason for why he's doing all this, instead of Kuja's adolescent tantrums. He's criminally wasted and the collapse of that section of the plot is a major factor in why I don't regard FF9 with the same love that most do. A potentially interesting story, and a proper villain at last, all undone in a couple of hours, just so we can have the Sephiroth wannabe back to continue his angsty power trip. I'd have preferred it if you beat Kuja in Terra, and then only have him show to replace Garland at the end. So the final boss encounter would be Garland, then Kuja, and none of this Necron nonsense.

I always did say that it seemed like the dark millenium seemed a bit too good for kuja.Thats not to say he wasn-t an interesting villain, just that him not being the final boss wasn-t a good thing for the game.


On a side note, you've intrigued me about FF4, Top. What systems is it available for? I have a PS3, PSP, 360, DS. Can you get it for any of them?

snes gba ds i think it was and i think there is also a psx port and also i think a psp port too.

As with a great many FF7 fans, I don't consider Advent Children to be canon. Its written and directed by different people from FF7(it has some of the same people, but many of the key personnel are missing), and well regardless of who worked on it... it just sucks. I don't pay attention to things like Advent Children and Dirge of Cerberus etc, because they have no relevance to the story of FF7. I don't consider any of them canon, because they were by people who had no involvement with the original material, and were just making a few extra bucks off of FF7's popularity. The disparity in quality between FF7 and it various offshoots is huge, basically. And Kingdom Hearts is something totally different. I mean, people who watch Aladdin don't try to work out where the events of KH1 fit in, do they?

And Kefka 'cleverly escapes'? His escapes are extremely cheesy, like the recurring villains in cartoons, where the heroes could finish them off, but don't because... they just don't. He's a feeble fighter, and if he has enough power to make spectacular getaways (because he walked to Narshe, so what the hell did he do - stash a bicycle in the bushes or something?) then he shouild have been able to cream the party. But he can't, because he's a miserable fighter, and would have died if they so chose. If he was so clever, then he wouldn't keep attacking the whole party, would he? He continually underestimates the party's strength and that is the sort of mistake that a villain *should* pay for. But the game keeps letting him get away, because the party can't be bothered going after him.

His plans are the worst kind of cartoon nonsense relying on Mcguffins and Deus Ex Machina (everyone is Doma instantly collapses from the poisoned water, despite the fact that to poison that much water, you'd have to be pumping industrial amounts of it in constantly, not just tipping a vial with a skull and crossbones or something etc). And if the poison was that effective, why doesn't he use it all the time? A quote from an article I read entitled 'Water Terrorism' states 'However, some in the water industry say intentionally wreaking havoc with the country's water supply is far easier said than done. Poisoning a reservoir poses immense logistical problems - immense amounts of poison or bacteria would have to be dropped into a water basin to counteract the effects of delusion.' It was from an article that was musing over the feasibility of Al Queda managing to poison American water supplies etc. The point being that to actually do something like this, you'd need a lot of poison, so unless that's one hell of a big jar Kefka was carrying...

Every time people come after him, he pulls out his latest Mcguffin, in true Dr Claw fashion (from Inspector Gadget). Its just silly, and has no credibility whatsoever. He feels like a cartoon villain - daft plans and no actual story. Its insulting that he's considered such a legendary character, when he has no story - at all!

Cheers for the heads up on FF4. I'll look into it, but its proximity to FF3 in the series gives me pause. If it really is better, then no problem. But FF3 did leave one hell of a big scar on me...

A lot of people love ff6 and kefka as a villain.

Also:You take realism too much, its a fantasy game. Sure some people complain about cloud-s huge sword,but its not really relevant or important.
As for kefka:He teleported out during the narshe attack.He ran away and went behind a guard.Reason for doing:Sabim is a trained fighter,and shadow is a trained assasin. Just how well do you think you would do against a professional martial artist, and a professional assasin? He also gets stronger and stronger throughout the game too.I have a theory that it has to do with the magics he gets,and just training as well.Some final fantasy villains can be cartoony.Kefka felt less so in the original game.It felt like he looked more like a clown in dissidia than in the original.He was attacking for the espers,but you can-t expect the villains to always win.Would you have been happier if kefka or sephiroth always won? Besides:He did kill general leo and trick gestahl.
He did trick espers into making a peace treaty,and then capture and or kill them

Cheers for the heads up on FF4. I'll look into it, but its proximity to FF3 in the series gives me pause. If it really is better, then no problem. But FF3 did leave one hell of a big scar on me...
FF4 is harder on ds than the original.I believe that the original snes version is the easy mode type,while the ds is the more difficult japanese type.
I heard theories about why this was done,something to do with japanese not thinking that the americans or the rest of the world could handle the hard mode.Also:Here are some differences i noticed:

The DS version uses 3D poligons for the team,and voice acting as well.You have added feature of getting a reward for completely exploring a cave or a dungeon.
In my opinion,it seems like a good console port,so i recommend it.

Psx version:First one to have hard mode i heard.I hear bad things about the loading times,and the music supposedly doesn-t sound as good.For now,stay away from this one till you find out more info.

GBA:I played this one completely,and it was pretty good.It didn-t seem that hard and it included the use of all characters you recruit during the game,except for tellah because he dies,and golbez and fusoya.You got added dungeons with loot,and some very enjoyable experience there.

PSP:Graphically it looks great.And the music seems to be really good as well.I am not sure about it completely.Go play it and try it for yourself.

The thing with FFVI, is that it establishes to be a Realistic World right from the Start. And Kefka Contradicts it's very premise, that's why he feels so out of place. Hence the reason of why it's annoying.

Vry. On the matter of FFIV. I've only played it SNES, PSX and GBA. GBA has poor sound, so you'll not enjoy the music.

PSX has the issue of the load times, but it's okay for me.

SNES is the best out of those.

NDS was remade on the Fashion of FFIII. I saw it, it has Voice Acting included. But I can't really tell you if it's good.

They made a Compilation for the PSP. It has updated 2D Graphics. It does not rely on 3D Renders like NDS. And it seems to be the pretty nice. It's like a Remastered version.

[QUOTE=topopoz;1923813]The thing with FFVI, is that it establishes to be a Realistic World right from the Start. And Kefka Contradicts it's very premise, that's why he feels so out of place. Hence the reason of why it's annoying.

It still has many fantasy stuff in it too.

It has chocobos and a talking yeti.Talking yetis aren-t exactly realistic is it?
Ultima 7 has a talking mouse named sherri.That isn-t realistic.

As Top says, the game is established to be a more or less realistic one. I get that its going to have fantasy elements of course, but the game is usually a sober and realistic one, only breaking out the more wacky elements for comic relief in between all the war and death (Ultros' recurring appearances etc). Kefka breaks the tone and feel of the main story in distractingly silly 'cartoon bad guy' ways,. As to his abilities, if he could just teleport away in Narshe, then why not teleport straight to the Esper? Why bother fighting the party at all? Why doesn't he teleport all the time, and why doesn't he ever do it any other times? Why not teleport away at the end when he's down to his last HP? Its a Mcguffin in the worst sense (i.e a superpower or ability that is used to get out an impossible situation, then not brought up ever again, because its inconvienient for them to have such a powerful ability).

And the fact that 'Many people like FF6 and Kefka' is of no matter to how I feel about it. If they aren't bothered with a game that lets you use your best abilities for free in every combat round, and consider a villain who has absolutely no story whatsoever, to be one of the best characters in the series, then that's their deal. I can't see the appeal myself, because that just seems totally broken (for the combat) and lame (for Kefka).

And again, how smart can this guy possibly be? The fact is, he keeps picking fights with the party, which is not a clever thing to do seeing as they completely outclass him. Does Hojo go around challenging Cloud, Barret et al to fights? Of course not, because he knows he'd get completely flattened. He only fights at the end, when he's dosed up with JENOVA genes, and gone completely insane.

If I do get Final Fantasy 4, I'll probably try and get it on one of my portables. Either the DS or the PSP. Cheers to the both of you for the summaries of the different versions. Got a couple of other games to finish up, but I'm probably going to give it a go now.

[QUOTE=Vrykolas;1924292]As Top says, the game is established to be a more or less realistic one. I get that its going to have fantasy elements of course, but the game is usually a sober and realistic one, only breaking out the more wacky elements for comic relief in between all the war and death (Ultros' recurring appearances etc). Kefka breaks the tone and feel of the main story in distractingly silly 'cartoon bad guy' ways,. As to his abilities, if he could just teleport away in Narshe, then why not teleport straight to the Esper? Why bother fighting the party at all? Why doesn't he teleport all the time, and why doesn't he ever do it any other times? Why not teleport away at the end when he's down to his last HP? Its a Mcguffin in the worst sense (i.e a superpower or ability that is used to get out an impossible situation, then not brought up ever again, because its inconvienient for them to have such a powerful ability).

And the fact that 'Many people like FF6 and Kefka' is of no matter to how I feel about it. If they aren't bothered with a game that lets you use your best abilities for free in every combat round, and consider a villain who has absolutely no story whatsoever, to be one of the best characters in the series, then that's their deal. I can't see the appeal myself, because that just seems totally broken (for the combat) and lame (for Kefka).

And again, how smart can this guy possibly be? The fact is, he keeps picking fights with the party, which is not a clever thing to do seeing as they completely outclass him. Does Hojo go around challenging Cloud, Barret et al to fights? Of course not, because he knows he'd get completely flattened. He only fights at the end, when he's dosed up with JENOVA genes, and gone completely insane.

If I do get Final Fantasy 4, I'll probably try and get it on one of my portables. Either the DS or the PSP. Cheers to the both of you for the summaries of the different versions. Got a couple of other games to finish up, but I'm probably going to give it a go now.[/QUOTE

Keep in mind that kefka is crazy.He is bound to do something that is irrational,and this is one reason he is viewed as a highly irrational.
As for teleport:He probably didn-t always have that teleport.I imagine that he gets stronger with us,and by the time he was in the village of mages,he was really strong.
He was always one step ahead of us in magic.On the other hand:I bet there are limitations to the teleport spell,like not being able to teleport right into a cave,or that strong magical barrier protects the espers.Keep in mind that we cannot teleport into the espers area either,nor on top of zozo tower.

Oh yeah:One of the great things that people neglect from ff6,is that there are a great many skills that are unique to every character,something less seen in ff7.You can pretty much make every character the same in ff7,and the system from ff7 designed to be very similar to ff6 style.espers get you magic and allow you to summon creatures,and materia allows you to summon stuff too,but different ones are needed.Even the story is similar.Both games have villains from start to finish who were evil.Both were experimented on and both became gods.Both of them have their flaws.a lot of people who were playing ff6 were kids,so now they are older.ff6 was a great game for its time,and in my eyes is still a classic.What i mean by that,is that people are often spoiled,and expect too much.If something was great for what it as back then,and is still fun to play,they treat it like it inferior to the game they started with,not keeping in mind the age.A lot of games were simplistic back then,and even the original ff7 has plot holes.

Its also very to criticize,when most kids now may not have even been born.A 18 year old would be born in 1994,and that would put him in line to start with ff7,or ff8.
Also your initial reaction to a game you did not play as a kid would make it less nostalgic for you.Some people are also jaded.Back in the 80s,you were lucky to find a more complex story than kill the bad guy save the princes and the kingdom.Perhaps ff6 is outdated in these times butt so is the original ff7.It also took many games movies and a book to make sense of the convoluted story in ff7,while ff6 story got through in one go.

Also your initial reaction to a game you did not play as a kid would make it less nostalgic for you.Some people are also jaded.Back in the 80s,you were lucky to find a more complex story than kill the bad guy save the princes and the kingdom.Perhaps ff6 is outdated in these times butt so is the original ff7.

Right in the 80's, Full Campaigns of Dungeons & Dragons were released as PC games with Books to provide the storylines. And they weren't the "Evil Wizard, Go Kill" Type of thing.

Let's do not forget the Shin Megami Tensei games, that their storyline as bizarre as it was. It was neat to come up with something like that. 2 years older than FFVI.

Fucking Chrono Trigger has a storyline very complicated, awesome gameplay and awesome characters, it was released a year later than FFVI. So the argument of "Cut me some slack it's old" is invalid.



It also took many games movies and a book to make sense of the convoluted story in ff7,while ff6 story got through in one go.

dafuq?

FFVII alone makes sense. It's actually the books, the movie and the rest of the stuff of the Compilation that doesn't make sense.

EDIT: So much for the original Line of thread. Right now it's just another stupid Argument of VI vs VII.

I find it hilarious since people compare secret of mana to ff6.Secret of mana story is awful.
People compare the graphics and story,when secret of mana is all about gameplay.

The story is almost non existant and it goes as simple as:Emperor is evil,go kill emperor.

And the graphics are anime style cartoon graphics,while you actually have a different style in ff6 that sets it away.

And a lot of 80s games came with books.I saw a spoony review of an 80s game that said in order to save space,there was a line that said refer to the guide page x for storyline.And it had something to do with floppy disk space.
Final fantasy 1-3 story and even dragon warrior 1 story are extremely simple stories.It was in ff4 and later that the stories became more and more complex,minus FF5 story which is as basic as ff1 story.
But also:That space was used for gameplay rather than story.

FF6 story was about a corrupt empire that only had self interests.The story was simple,but the characters interactions were what made it special.

And ff7 story was confusing at times,and some stuff was stupid.

Examples:Why didn't avalanche try to completely disable it without destruction? they caused untold death and destruction,and you are building a moat around it and defending it as if it was a religion.
I don't buy it.You seem extremely one sided biased towards ff7.It almost sounds as if you played ff7 first and decided to watch a few videos and decide what your opinion would be.
Thats not to call ff6 flawless,in fact::Its story is simplistic.There are later games which get new ways to flesh out characters.Also:There are some very good characters in ff6.I also believe that one reason why kefka was a way better villain,was because he actually got more screen time.Sephiroth was hardly on screen.That time could be used to make me hate him,instead of just be bored with him.

Don't even start with throwing accusations around about bias. I've stuck up for my views when I think they are right, and conceded points where I think you have it right. Are you surprised that people get annoyed with you when you constantly accuse them of bias? You make blanket statements that aren't true, then refuse to listen when people call you on it, just moving on to something else.

I already said that I thought the party characters in FF6 had some interesting stories - I in fact brought it up to highlight how out of place Kefka's complete lack of story was. So you can't use the game's age as an excuse for this, especially since other games at the time were doing substantially more with character as Top pointed out. And your statement that Kefka gets more screen time? Well, even if I accepted your bizarre argument that more screen time means you are a better villain, does he? Sephiroth also shows up dozens and dozens of times, and when he does, he gets far more story development than Kefka ever does (not difficult, considering Kefka gets none). Your statement of 'Sephiroth is hardly on screen' is completely untrue and you know it is. So why say it? Do we really need to go through the games and count every time each character appears and/or does something of significance?

You argue that Avalanche's plan makes no sense, because they didn't try to disable the reactor, yet have completely missed the point of the story (that Avalanche are a bunch of amateurs, going into a well defended facilities. They have to pay for the services of an experienced Mercenary (Cloud) because their team lacks experience. Are they really going to break in and then try to work out to disable an extremely complex piece of machinery that could just be re-activated if they don't sabotage it well enough? Of course not - much easier to blow it up, and it sends a visible message to the people and Shinra that they won't stand for Shinra's activites anymore.

But they kill innocent people to do it, and the game never shies away from the fact that this makes them terrorists. Their terrorist plans were and were always intended by the story, to be misguided). Barret comes to terms with that fact over the course of the game, realising how wrong he was, feeling unworthy to take care of Marlene because he's just a killer when it comes down to it. But he tried to do the right thing, and that counts for something, as Aeris' mother tells him and Dyne also, who just gave up on everything and everyone in life after what happened to him.

You can't just reduce all these story elements to 'They were morons for blowing people up'. Yes, they were, but that's the point! The whole game is tackling the issue of how wrong the nuclear response is (its another instance of the Japanese accusing the West of war crimes for using the hydrogen bomb against them). Avalanche blow up facilties and take innocent people with them, Sephiorth destroys all of Nibelheim to eradicate the Shinra experiments, the WEAPONS devastate the world in their efforts to get rid of the Mako reactors, Sephiroth plans to call Meteor to purge the world of humanity, labelling everyone guilty for the crimes of the past.

The Japanese feel that the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were uncalled for, a staggering overeaction to what was until then a test of strength and honour. Throughout all the FF games (FF6 included) they put in powers and magics etc that represent the nuclear bomb. Kefka devastates the world in FF6, Sephiroth calls Meteor to do the same in FF7, Ultimecia uses Time Compression, Kuja summons Memoria, FF10 has Sin routinely scouring the world, FF12 has the stones of power, FF13 has the planned destruction of Coccoon.

So don't accuse me of not understanding or appreciating these games. My problems with FF6 are related to its broken gameplay, and with Kefka because he has no personality and there is no excuse for that. I have no problem with the party characters or with the story. And yes, I consider FF7 to be the best FF, but everyone has a favourite - its only human nature to ponder which of a group of things you like, is the one you like the best.

As for Secret of Mana, it had an incredibly fun co-op mode, the story was solid (its basically the same as most other JRPGs, but the party characters have less personality, as the game is more action oriented. It shares many story similarities with FF6). It has an evil emperor, it has a court wizard/scientist that goes insane and betrays said emperor, that character then gains the ultimate power and sets about destroying the world. Its the same story! FF6 has better storytelling, no doubt about it, but Secret of Mana still does it well enough, whilst being more accessible to a wider audience. They are both good, but in slightly different ways.

And this whole thing of 'you can make the characters the same' in FF6. No you can't - Edgar is the only one with Tools, Setzer is the only one with Slots, Sabin is the only one with Blitzes etc. None of these abilties cost anything, and you can use them all the time - that is not balanced. Surely you can see that?


I think this thread has made it clear that I find many of your comments interesting. If you look, you'll see we agree on many things. But these off the cuff remarks that 'Vrykolas, you're biased to FF7, you're the kind of person who only likes FF dialogue, you're a MGS hater' are completely uncalled for. They aren't true, you provide no evidence for the claims, and show you have a complete lack of respect for the people you are debating with, to shrug off their views as simple bias.

Internet civility is alive and well it seems...

lets keep this to tells to not put aggravated tells that will get this topic closed for being off topic and aggressive?

You guys are the ones accusing kefka of having no reason,and yet after reading this and also having played ff6,he is a great villain.
I am also a golbez fan too.I don-t care about the emperor palomecia,because perhaps i played other games first and seen his arch type that comes later,but honestly:He is the first one to become a god in final fantasy.
He wanted to rule hell,and he did.Then you killed him.

I began to appreciate Kefka a lot after watching The Dark Knight- but that's just me. I'm sure he felt out of place, but I think I associated a much darker tone and sense of disturbance with Kefka's very existence, because that sort of mindset allowed me to take him extremely seriously. I honestly liked Kefka as a villain, and seeing him as a psychopathic nihilist whose very existence is more or less to see the world burn was... even if it was setup to be realistic, I can easily see it as the worst someone can do if they're given the opportunity to be given so much power, especially if their mind had been shattered through experimentation.


Let's also take what Vry said to heart before accusing him of flaming.

I began to appreciate Kefka a lot after watching The Dark Knight- but that's just me. I'm sure he felt out of place, but I think I associated a much darker tone and sense of disturbance with Kefka's very existence, because that sort of mindset allowed me to take him extremely seriously. I honestly liked Kefka as a villain, and seeing him as a psychopathic nihilist whose very existence is more or less to see the world burn was... even if it was setup to be realistic, I can easily see it as the worst someone can do if they're given the opportunity to be given so much power, especially if their mind had been shattered through experimentation.


I'll recomend you to read "The Killing Joke" a Batman Comic from the early 90's written by Alan Moore.

You've Just proven that as a villiain, he is THE Rip-Off.

On kefka I can only reduce it to this:

"I liked him better when his name was 'The Joker'."

Why does it matter if something is a rip-off? If I liked the implementation, then I like it; doesn't matter if it's a rip-off or not.

I accept that people often find such characters as Kefka and the Joker interesting, because they have that unknown factor about them, that you don't know why they are doing it, or just that exotic thing of wondering what they really think etc. Boba Fett would be a good example - most popular Star Wars character ever, but (at least in the movies), he has about 3 lines of dialogue and no story.

But for me, Kefka is still a character with no story and comic book plans and motivations (power, glory etc). He's barely a character at all, no more developed than Dr Claw from Inspector Gadget or Miles Mayhem from MASK etc. He's just a villain - he does bad things and you stop him. Which is fine, but its hardly the most interesting idea for a character.

Sephiroth meanwhile has a proper story, and he has an intimate connection to the main hero of the story. That always ups the ante, and makes it more personal, makes it matter more to stop him. As for your continued insistance that he hardly shows up, why don't you go and play FF7 again. His presence is always felt, he is being mentioned right at the start and it goes on from there. Every place you go to, people speak about him (he came out of the sea in Costa Del Sol, he talked to Dio in Gold Saucer, he slays President Shinra and leaves his blade in the corpse, kills the Midgar Zolom and hangs it from a tree as a warning, leaves a trail of failed clones in his wake, wailing chants for the Great Sephiroth and he speaks constantly to Cloud in his sleep telling him he is always with him...

He is always present, even when not actually on screen. But his actual apperances are even more significant, on the ship to Costa del Sol, where he slaughters the crew, in the flashbacks of Nibelheim, where he murders Aeris, his summoning of Meteor at the Temple of the Ancients, his deception at the unification etc etc. Even one of the secret optional characters has a story that is intmately tied to him.

I just don't see how Kefka, a character who is no more developed than Dr Claw, and who has no connection to any of the heroes from FF6, can be better than this. Your guys stop Kefka, but it could have been anyone, as none of them have a connection or rapport with him. He's a shallow character with the most basic of comic book motivations. There's no depth to him, nothing to get interested in. Whereas Sephiroth has story, has depth but also has the cosmetic trappings of an archvillain (which is all Kefka has), as he evokes an aura of majesty and supernatural omnipresence, being everywhere and able to summon power from everywhere, the earth and sky, in the reaches of space and deep within the planet, even inside Cloud's body and mind.

FF7 is just one of the Final Fantasy games that I like. I like 7, 8, 10-2, 12, 13 and 13-2 as well. And its not like I hate 6 and 9, I just don't care for them as much as many people on the internet do. 10 (and 3 I suppose, although I don't really count it to be honest), is the only one I genuinely don't like. My opinion on FF6 is much the same as Nostalgia's opinion of FF7 which he stated earlier. That I don't hate it and wouldn't have a problem with it, if people didn't rave about it all the time.

We are all biased to a certain degree, because you can't escape the fact that when you like something more than something else, you have a greater affinity for it. But that's different from letting it stop you from having any objectivity. I don't like FF10, but I don't go around saying there is nothing good at all about the game, because that's obviously not the case. Same with FF6. I freely admit that I like FF7 much more than FF6, as it ticks more of the specific boxes that are unique to me and my needs from a game, a story and an RPG. But objectively speaking as well, I also consider FF7 to be a much better game and experience all round. Story, characters, gameplay, world, system etc are all better in FF7, IMO. Which doesn't make FF6 a bad game, it just makes FF7 a really, really good one.

But take (for example) Killer7 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and I'll freely admit that whilst I don't care for it at all, Modern Warfare is the better game. I'd rather eat a bag full of rusted razor blades than play Modern Warfare again, but that's partly down to me just not liking modern shooters. I can still recognise that Modern Warfare is a very well made game - its just a very well made game that you couldn't pay me to play. Meanwhile, Killer7 has all kinds of problems (its hardly a game at all really), but I vastly, vastly prefer it to MW. To me in my own mind and my own needs for a game, Killer7 is better because in all the areas I care about, K7 is superiot, but objectively it obviously isn't a better game for a whole host of reasons.

I can seperate my subjective views from my objective views. It just so happens that in the case of FF7, both are in agreement - i.e that its better than FF6.

Why does it matter if something is a rip-off? If I liked the implementation, then I like it; doesn't matter if it's a rip-off or not.

Hold your arms partner. I wasn't pointing anything to you. I was just reccomending you something and saying that you're one of the many people provide more facts about what I think about Kefka as a villain. Wether you like it or not, it's your business.

Funny you say that because sephiroth rips off every other game before it.
Main character killed? ff5
Mind control? ff4 and ff6
Angel? ff6
Huge orchestra? ff6

story? ff6
Heck,even teh idea for a final attack is a rip off of kefka.

Plus:kefka also made a duplicate when he killed leo.If any character is a rip off,its sephiroth.
Third of all:Kefka was a great villain because you felt no compassion for him.He thought in a way that was truly sickening.There was too much tragedy behind sephiroth to make him a truly effective villain.You felt compassion for him because of his tragic past,while kefka was impossible.He felt no remorse whatsoever.

As i said before:Every game borrows something.I don-t think the original idea of kefka was to be a joker rip off,but i could be wrong.The insanity i think also is meant to detract sympathy.Imagine if i was laughing while stabbing your child,would you not feel insulted? What if i was stabbing aeris and at the same time laughing at it while insulting you? Would you not be infuriated?

Sephiroth is the silent emo villain wannabe who looks cool but thats about it.

Main character killed? ff5
Mind control? ff4 and ff6
Angel? ff6
Huge orchestra? ff6

story? ff6
Heck,even teh idea for a final attack is a rip off of kefka..

Again, Reducing it to that and it always will look stupid.

What's the problem with repeating some ideas of previous titles?. Besides, the things you mention are not the esscence or structure of the character. And, story, you're quite wrong about that.

I'll take the Angel form is from Kefka first, but it Sephiroth codified and made that trope work a lot better, considering the symbolism and religious paralels that his storyline has.



As i said before:Every game borrows something.I don-t think the original idea of kefka was to be a joker rip off,but i could be wrong.

Believe me, I tried really hard to believe that.

By the time you go to Vector and they tell you there that he goes crazy after the Over Exposure of Magitek stuff, I really lost it.

As I said, read "The Killing Joke" from 1988.

You can say that with Kefka, Square made a tribute to the Joker in the Final Fantasy Multiverse. But they've really missed it, IMO.

EDIT: People, I retire from this argument. We literally killed the original Thread Line.

I've also retired from the argument itself, but I don't think we are responsible for diverting the thread - the thread could only remain on topic if people had played at least some of FF13-2. If people haven't played it, then this thread was never going to remain on topic for very long, was it?

The problem i have toppoz,is people claiming that the idea of ff7 being totally original,when it borrows from other games previous.
There are people in other forums,and even here that will relentlessly trash ff6 and claim it to be unoriginal,then they will praise ff7 and build a moat around it.

These types of religious sects that suck square enix-s dick,are the most annoying people of all time.These are the most annoying people of all time,almost as annoying as the people who praise FFXIII,and choose to believe square enix to be infallible.
Thats not to say it didn-t have good ideas,but people who bow down at square enixs feet don-t feel like true fans,because when square enix makes a mistake,they will pretend it doesn-t exist and praise it.The opposite is also annoying.
I heard some good stuff about FFXII,and yet i have heard a lot of hate towards FFXII.