Final Fantasy

[Benji]

Just saw someone call Amaranth/Salamander "Sideshow Bob" and now I will never be able to unsee it.

[Ruki]

Such a cool character design. It's a shame he didn't get a personality to go with it. Maybe they fix that in the remake.

[Benji]

I definitely would love to see him and Quina get more expansion in the remake. I feel like if any FF9 character maybe needs a DLC expansion it's Amarant. Give me some of his story during his travels with Lani and tell me some of his history in flashbacks or something. Heck, throw me a DLC of a bunch of side characters with it - Beatrix, Blank, Cinnamon, Baku, Fratley, just a whole smorgasbord of extra untold Canterbury Tales.

[Ruki]

More Freya too. Love me my rat-dragoon lady!

[stokeriño]

In 2007 I bought Final Fantasy XII for the PS2. Riding high from my adoration of FFX, I expected great things. What I actually got from the game was a combat system that I just HATED and an abundance of what I will call "Star Wars prequel vibes" from the story/setting that failed to hook me. So I never got especially far into it, and the game was set aside in favour of... well, at a guess, it might have been Disgaea 2.

Now, 17 years later, I have returned to try again. With my PS4 'The Zodiac Age' edition, decades of added experience, and a much-enhanced willingness to do tedious things for the sense of trophy completion, will I be able to push through and finally at least finish this FF game that seems to be fairly well liked by a large number of people?

...It's not going well.

The gambit system is a straight choice between onerous micromanagement and ineffectual failure (at least when Unicorn Overlord used something similar, it was for optional refinement and not a fundamental "if you don't dedicate yourself to coding dozens of IF statements you will die very quickly" necessity). It's very difficult to maintain any idea of how battles are going ("oh, Fran's suddenly almost dead because three more skeleton guys just turned up off-camera with no way of me knowing before seeing her HP numbers plummet"). The license system seems to exist solely to taunt you with equipment you can't buy yet. 

I'm still very early on (Lv 14) so have no new insights to the plot, but Balthier is still fantastic and Vaan is still an unlikable little shit. 

If I could perhaps over-level myself a bit and thereby bypass the worst sufferings of the gambit system, maybe that would help me progress. But at the moment I just feel kind of annoyed and need to regroup. Again.

[Krabby]

1 hour ago, stokeriño said:

In 2007 I bought Final Fantasy XII for the PS2. Riding high from my adoration of FFX, I expected great things. What I actually got from the game was a combat system that I just HATED and an abundance of what I will call "Star Wars prequel vibes" from the story/setting that failed to hook me. So I never got especially far into it, and the game was set aside in favour of... well, at a guess, it might have been Disgaea 2.

Now, 17 years later, I have returned to try again. With my PS4 'The Zodiac Age' edition, decades of added experience, and a much-enhanced willingness to do tedious things for the sense of trophy completion, will I be able to push through and finally at least finish this FF game that seems to be fairly well liked by a large number of people?

...It's not going well.

The gambit system is a straight choice between onerous micromanagement and ineffectual failure (at least when Unicorn Overlord used something similar, it was for optional refinement and not a fundamental "if you don't dedicate yourself to coding dozens of IF statements you will die very quickly" necessity). It's very difficult to maintain any idea of how battles are going ("oh, Fran's suddenly almost dead because three more skeleton guys just turned up off-camera with no way of me knowing before seeing her HP numbers plummet"). The license system seems to exist solely to taunt you with equipment you can't buy yet. 

I'm still very early on (Lv 14) so have no new insights to the plot, but Balthier is still fantastic and Vaan is still an unlikable little shit. 

If I could perhaps over-level myself a bit and thereby bypass the worst sufferings of the gambit system, maybe that would help me progress. But at the moment I just feel kind of annoyed and need to regroup. Again.

I loved the combat system myself but I definitely get the thing about the if then system, I tried to utilize it as little as possible while still trying to be effective. Who is all in your party at the moment? 

I loved the setting also but the story definitely did not hit me very well, it just didn't ever come together the way that I wanted. But there are so many cool places to go and I loved that part about it.

[stokeriño]

1 hour ago, Krabby said:

I loved the combat system myself but I definitely get the thing about the if then system, I tried to utilize it as little as possible while still trying to be effective. Who is all in your party at the moment? 

I loved the setting also but the story definitely did not hit me very well, it just didn't ever come together the way that I wanted. But there are so many cool places to go and I loved that part about it.

I'm ridiculously early on still, so I've barely any choice. Right now I only have Vaan, Balthier, Fran and Basch - and just trying to rotate one out to level evenly.

[Benji]

It honestly baffles me that of all the things they changed about the game, gambits being given more automation wasn't one of them.

[Bobfoc]

Final Fantasy XVI will come to PC on 17th September. The demo is available now on Steam and Epic.

[stokeriño]

And it's magnificent. I love FF16. In the event that anyone hasn't played it, I dare you to play the demo to its end and not immediately buy the full game.

Getting on a little better with FF12 now too. About 18 hours in, Level 25, approaching Mt. Bur-Omisace. I *think* this is further than I got back on the PS2 (the last part I definitely remembered was the destruction of the Leviathan, but I'll have to see if anything else jogs my memory) - lord knows that the Fast-Forward feature makes the typical gameplay a lot more bearable.

[Krabby]

1 hour ago, stokeriño said:

And it's magnificent. I love FF16. In the event that anyone hasn't played it, I dare you to play the demo to its end and not immediately buy the full game.

Getting on a little better with FF12 now too. About 18 hours in, Level 25, approaching Mt. Bur-Omisace. I *think* this is further than I got back on the PS2 (the last part I definitely remembered was the destruction of the Leviathan, but I'll have to see if anything else jogs my memory) - lord knows that the Fast-Forward feature makes the typical gameplay a lot more bearable.

Who is all in your party now? I don't want to spoil anything lol

[stokeriño]

2 minutes ago, Krabby said:

Who is all in your party now? I don't want to spoil anything lol

I'm just rotating them to keep the levels up. I try to keep at least one person with Cure magic in the party at all times (i.e. Penelo, Ashe or Fran) and I prefer to lead with either Vaan or Balthier, but am otherwise not thinking about it too hard.

It's only when I really *need* Black Magic occasionally that I'm like "oh fuck", because that's almost only Ashe and can therefore get a bit iffy in a tight spot. 

[Krabby]

8 minutes ago, stokeriño said:

I'm just rotating them to keep the levels up. I try to keep at least one person with Cure magic in the party at all times (i.e. Penelo, Ashe or Fran) and I prefer to lead with either Vaan or Balthier, but am otherwise not thinking about it too hard.

It's only when I really *need* Black Magic occasionally that I'm like "oh fuck", because that's almost only Ashe and can therefore get a bit iffy in a tight spot. 

Ok nice, you got Penelo! She honestly was my best tank in the entire game. You can get her dodging and blocking up to a ridiculous high amount if I recall. I had her geared so she could just sit in front of whatever and dodge every single hit (for the most part) then I could have the others sit back and heal/do damage from afar.

[stokeriño]

FF12 update...

I've just reached Giruvegan, Lv 50-51, and have the distinct impression that I'm approaching the part of the game which will mostly be 30-odd boss battles back to back (perhaps separated by some puzzle mazes and/or unnecessarily spooky areas - looking at you, Feywood).

At this point I've come to accept that the story is just never going to kick off. Honestly, the most interesting bits have been the side scenes at the Imperial capital (political intrigue between the Judges and such). Meanwhile, the main party have got barely anything between them and seem to mostly be carrying on through inertia. To summarise the entirety of their individual plot arcs thus far:

(Not sure my glib summaries would seriously be considered spoilers, but just to be sure...)

Spoiler

Vaan: I was angry about my brother once, but I quickly got over it and now I'm just here to be quiet whenever the grown-ups talk.

Penelo: I have no story arc. I am here so that Vaan doesn't get lonely at the kid's table.

Fran: I left the wood and can't go back (except I did go back, but everyone was passive-aggressive about it).

Balthier: *strolls into a field, 30 hours in* "I have a past, you know." *carries on strolling*

Basch: I have a confrontation with my twin coming, but until then I'm here to be the Main Grown-up whenever we have to talk to other people.

and best of all...

Ashe: I am a princess, and therefore de facto Leader of the Resistence, despite not actually showing leadership at any point (not least because I spend all my time wandering around fields while Ondore is apparently off managing an actual rebel army). I seem to have stumbled halfheartedly into a moral quandary of "do I want to use nuclear weapons nethicite?", but at no point has my supposed temptation been convincing. Also, I see my dead husband a lot, for some reason. 

Obviously I will push on through just to tag the game as *finished*, and I'm sure there are some good fireworks to come, but yeah. Meh.

[Benji]

For me, I always seem to stop being able to bother around the time Reddas arrives in the story. I don't know why, but I've got to that point three separate times and couldn't push past it.

[Bobfoc]

Final Fantasy XVI was reportedly available on Playstation Plus for a brief time before being taken down. It could be an official addition to the service soon, you'd think.

[Krabby]

Yeah you aren't super far off in your summaries @stokeriño   - the setting is super cool to me, I loved it, but the story just sort of sputters along. It could have been so much cooler given the visuals and the gameplay. 

[Ruki]

The Judges were cooler in Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced.

[Benji]

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_1W5afJ4qt/?igsh=cjkwMjhndm92Zjlr

 

[Schlitzbrille]

6 hours ago, Benji said:

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C_1W5afJ4qt/?igsh=cjkwMjhndm92Zjlr

 

I'm sure some Al Bhed are good people, great tremendous people even