I tried SaGa and designs are shit, story is meh, combat is....eeeh...you are supposed to avoid fights? Then what is the point if the story is shit and lazy?
I refuse to believe SaGagays are not contrarians trolling, I have never seen them ever talking about a favorite character or, as much as they praise SaGa gameplay, ever talking about builds, bosses, advices, etc. Nothing. Nada.
>you are supposed to avoid fights?
there isn't a single game in the series where you have to avoid fights. every game requires you to level up your stats to beat the game. even in romancing 1, where fighting monsters can make quests expire, fighting is necessary part of the game. the whole system exists to give player complete freedom over the adventure. if you dont wanna do quests you can quite literally just do 200 random battles and then fight the final boss.
no but the original release is pretty bad due to the inventory and key items
there's almost no similarity between ff2 and saga >the stat progression though
then every jrpg that isn't saga are similar to each other? no, the progression system is barely even similar because even the first saga game has multiple extremely different types of progression systems
Not really no, if you just play it normally, aka, not grinding you will do fine.
After replaying 1-6 on the pixel remasters though, I gotta say that I disliked 3 and 6 the most
It was the first Final Fantasy to actually have a plot that matters versus I and III just sort of having things happen to excuse dungeon crawls, and it created a lot of standards in the franchise like Chocobos, the first Cid, a proper MP system, and the then-somewhat-standard character death at its most extreme. It's also a game that experimented with the idea that every individual stat, weapon type, and spell can be grinded out with the concept that "sword user that takes lots of hits becomes tanking murderer" and "spellcaster that uses a lot of Fire and Cure becomes proficient in that stuff with good MP". Create your own classes by grinding the party how you want them to be.
In practice, the grind was vague as certain attributes raise in very weird circumstances, it was turbo grindy back in the original Famicom release (later releases at least toned this down), there were all sorts of obnoxious hidden mechanics at play the game never bothers hinting at, and you either were horribly underpowered because the theoretical difficulty soars through the roof, or you grinded so much that your party became unstoppable demigods short of certain status effects. And this was on top of some of the worst dungeon design in the series filled with floors upon floors of indistinct areas and a constant guess-who of 4 doors side-by-side: one door was progress, the other three put you to the middle of a room with ludicrous encounter rates to make it a chore to get back out of the room.
It's not bad. But it's far, far, FAR from recommended by most unless you're ready to embrace it for its ambitious faults.
>And this was on top of some of the worst dungeon design in the series filled with floors upon floors of indistinct areas and a constant guess-who of 4 doors side-by-side: one door was progress, the other three put you to the middle of a room with ludicrous encounter rates to make it a chore to get back out of the room.
going over the famicom game maps, jesus christ they also put a lot of these trick troll doors just lying around in dungeons to de-incentivize ever entering rooms blindly without a guide. there's multiple cases where there's just a trick door in a one-way path to frick with you, or an entire floor with doors spread across it and nearly all of them are tricks. people meme on the "several side-by-side" but that's when the game is being blatant about fricking with you, most of the time you don't get the courtesy
In a way, yes. The structure and dungeon design is absolutely atrocious. The combat is broken by the leveling mechanic, which you'll inevitably abuse when the game starts rolling out Hill Gigas that one shot your characters, and after cheesing the system nothing will be able to hit you. So in terms of gameplay, it's a horrible mess that, at best, is mildly annoying to play and maddening at worst.
The story is, however, really solid and carries the game.
The game sucks, but when I beat it I wasn't mad at it for some reason. I should hate it, but I don't --unlike FF3 which I do.
>--unlike FF3 which I do.
if someone hates FF3, I will always recommend them the PR version if they ever bother with it again, honestly. the rebalances + quick/autosaves make the game more tolerable, ESPECIALLY the crystal tower. but then some people simply don't gel with the puzzle box solution for jobs, and I don't gel with it either, so eh.
The hate is overblown. Its pretty straight forward, people need to remember that the difference between Lv 5 and Lv6 is noticeable so unless you are skipping fights and speedrunning, you should not be having problems. If you are low on HP, heal, if you have a offensive mage, cast. You will get stronger. I played the PSP version.
honestly i'm sure there's some wiki shit or documentation on it but it really undersells how much the PS1 version cleaned up, how radically the GBA version rebalanced the game, and how much the PSP version piled on from there. PR being a weird hybrid ass amalgamation of PS1 and GBA/PSP makes it hard to even attempt to make sense of because of how fricky the whole thing is. like equipment penalties that were reinstated.
The updated versions of the game aren't as bad, but the original NES ver is IMO the worst mainline FF game. Genuinely had more fun with trashy games like 13 & 15 than 2.
Yes. PR has a lot of things that make it better, like highlighting phrases and reducing encounter rates in trap rooms, but the original was abysmal to play.
Just play with 4x xp and gold and go through it if you are a completionist.
only the nes version is bad due to being very buggd and half of the stats dont do anything. first final fantasy is the same, the nes version is unplayable. all other versions of FF2 are good. the leveling system works as intended on those re-releases and criticisms are wildly overblown. if you play the game normally the game is balanced. like i've seen videos of people trashing FF2 and their argument is that "you have to grind HP by hitting your own guys" and then later in the video "the game is just too easy". like what did these people expect if they grind 2k health pools in the starting area?
I disagree, but mostly because each game was pretty different from each other despite the core stuff being shared. I don't recommend 2 or 3 to anyone that isn't looking into either nostalgia or origins of the series, but I can recommend 1 because it's a straightforward D&D adventure with no strings attached. I can recommend 4 and 6 because they do tell fun stories, 6 especially, but I don't really recommend them for gameplay first; that's 5's entire shtick and if you aren't an RPG aficionado that loves that shit, 5 probably won't mix with you.
7 is the one that made the series mainstream, but despite growing up with it, I genuinely think it's weaker mechanically than some of its predecessors. Too many 6-isms of "use items to freeform your party until nothing is a challenge anymore, and beyond limit breaks the characters become borderline blank slates because of it".
I'm going through all of them right now, I finished 1 and 2 and I'm now at the part in 3 where Desch jumped into the furnace. What is wrong with 3? I have no idea where the frick to go most of the time but so far I'm enjoying it a lot more than 2.
Mostly relying heavily on "use the right job for a dungeon/boss or die" instead of having much elbow room for it. But the final dungeon is so horrifically bad that the devs apologized for it, and it's pretty much 90% of people's hatred for the game that isn't the job sickness shit in the 3D version.
I hope you have save states or are playing Pixel Remaster, then. Enjoy as you will, but if you're playing an older version raw, you better be really good at these games for endgame if you don't just grossly overlevel because of this advice.
1 week ago
Anonymous
I am playing the pixel remaster. I don't think I would have finished 2 without the exp buff because the emperor wrecked my shit and I had to train up my evade and buff spells to stand a chance because he was hitting and healing for 1200 per turn while I damage him for like 400.
>1: the four elements are going nuts because of 4 fiends corrupting the world, the warriors of light holding 4 crystals of the elements defeat Garland to rescue a princess and then go fight the fiends, only to find out at the very end that Garland had some stable time loop shit where he got rescued by the fiends to the past, he becomes Chaos, and then sends the fiends to the future; you kill him, break the loop and save the world and him >2: the emperor made a deal with hell itself to rule the world, he fricks up the world, the resistance and 3 orphans work tooth and nail to stop the emperor, one other orphan was brainwashed to fighting for the emperor but is recovered to their side instead, heroes kill emperor, emperor literally takes over hell itself (and heaven in extra story content from later stuff), so the heroes march into the afterlife to kill him for good and save the world
2 kinda has events and characters and shit, but they're very threadbare and straightforward, jumping from 0 to 100 at random. You're there to see early ideas of Squaresoft's writing before any refinements rather than the actual plot.
It's the worst game in the franchise, I'm surprise it didn't nearly bankrupt Square again after FF1 saved them. It's part of the unholy trinity of objectively bad FF games, 2, 8, 15.
Try again I was alive when FF1 released and it was my first. The only bad games are the ones listed here. Maybe when you grow some hair on your chest you'll understand silly zoom zoom.
It's the worst game in the franchise, I'm surprise it didn't nearly bankrupt Square again after FF1 saved them. It's part of the unholy trinity of objectively bad FF games, 2, 8, 15.
8 and 15 have some great design elements that make them worthwhile, the gameplay is just seriously flawed. 8 on particular has a very unique aesthetic charm. It's blend of fantasy and sci-fi might be the best in the series.
I personally don't like the sci-fi or the modernity in newer FF games. I know mechanics have been a thing since the beginning, but I would hardly call 7 or 8 fantasy. I wish we went back to just sword and board shit.
It's the entire game, the enemy rooms in dungeons, the "LVing" system, the fact your bare fists become the most OP thing in the game eclipsing even magic is ridiculous, bad enemy variety you'll see bosses recycled as normal mobs later and if they're encountered you can't run from them. Everything about this game is pure cancer it's garbage and all the hate is actually justified. Only special snowflakes try to dismiss it and champion it to get attention.
Aren't you still fricked against the emperor barehanded? It's been years since I last played it but I remember having to give Firion the endgame swords and grinding his sword level up to stand a chance against his healing bullshit.
Can't speak for the rest, but the NES version is. I wager it can be fun if you already know the game inside out but for a blind playthrough it might very well be the most miserable experience I've had playing through a game.
Kinda, especially considering SaGa did everything this game tried to do but, like, a hundred times better
god, you sagagays are genuinely the worst. no one likes your shitty series.
I tried SaGa and designs are shit, story is meh, combat is....eeeh...you are supposed to avoid fights? Then what is the point if the story is shit and lazy?
I refuse to believe SaGagays are not contrarians trolling, I have never seen them ever talking about a favorite character or, as much as they praise SaGa gameplay, ever talking about builds, bosses, advices, etc. Nothing. Nada.
>you are supposed to avoid fights?
there isn't a single game in the series where you have to avoid fights. every game requires you to level up your stats to beat the game. even in romancing 1, where fighting monsters can make quests expire, fighting is necessary part of the game. the whole system exists to give player complete freedom over the adventure. if you dont wanna do quests you can quite literally just do 200 random battles and then fight the final boss.
FF2 is the first SaGa game moron
no but the original release is pretty bad due to the inventory and key items
there's almost no similarity between ff2 and saga
>the stat progression though
then every jrpg that isn't saga are similar to each other? no, the progression system is barely even similar because even the first saga game has multiple extremely different types of progression systems
It's very tedious. It had some neat ideas and moments but it's not very fun for most of it. There's a reason they went back to jobs for 3
its worse. everyone memes about the leveling but the dungeon design is awful too and the keyword system sucks ass
If you hate grinding yes. If you love grinding you can be overleveled before meeting the first boss.
hmm i wouldnt mind getting overleveled at the beginning, maybe i'll give it a try some day
Not really no, if you just play it normally, aka, not grinding you will do fine.
After replaying 1-6 on the pixel remasters though, I gotta say that I disliked 3 and 6 the most
It was the first Final Fantasy to actually have a plot that matters versus I and III just sort of having things happen to excuse dungeon crawls, and it created a lot of standards in the franchise like Chocobos, the first Cid, a proper MP system, and the then-somewhat-standard character death at its most extreme. It's also a game that experimented with the idea that every individual stat, weapon type, and spell can be grinded out with the concept that "sword user that takes lots of hits becomes tanking murderer" and "spellcaster that uses a lot of Fire and Cure becomes proficient in that stuff with good MP". Create your own classes by grinding the party how you want them to be.
In practice, the grind was vague as certain attributes raise in very weird circumstances, it was turbo grindy back in the original Famicom release (later releases at least toned this down), there were all sorts of obnoxious hidden mechanics at play the game never bothers hinting at, and you either were horribly underpowered because the theoretical difficulty soars through the roof, or you grinded so much that your party became unstoppable demigods short of certain status effects. And this was on top of some of the worst dungeon design in the series filled with floors upon floors of indistinct areas and a constant guess-who of 4 doors side-by-side: one door was progress, the other three put you to the middle of a room with ludicrous encounter rates to make it a chore to get back out of the room.
It's not bad. But it's far, far, FAR from recommended by most unless you're ready to embrace it for its ambitious faults.
Actual real quality post, OP. Please read this if you want a genuine answer.
Best part of the game are those pixel tights and that single-cup bra
>And this was on top of some of the worst dungeon design in the series filled with floors upon floors of indistinct areas and a constant guess-who of 4 doors side-by-side: one door was progress, the other three put you to the middle of a room with ludicrous encounter rates to make it a chore to get back out of the room.
going over the famicom game maps, jesus christ they also put a lot of these trick troll doors just lying around in dungeons to de-incentivize ever entering rooms blindly without a guide. there's multiple cases where there's just a trick door in a one-way path to frick with you, or an entire floor with doors spread across it and nearly all of them are tricks. people meme on the "several side-by-side" but that's when the game is being blatant about fricking with you, most of the time you don't get the courtesy
In a way, yes. The structure and dungeon design is absolutely atrocious. The combat is broken by the leveling mechanic, which you'll inevitably abuse when the game starts rolling out Hill Gigas that one shot your characters, and after cheesing the system nothing will be able to hit you. So in terms of gameplay, it's a horrible mess that, at best, is mildly annoying to play and maddening at worst.
The story is, however, really solid and carries the game.
The game sucks, but when I beat it I wasn't mad at it for some reason. I should hate it, but I don't --unlike FF3 which I do.
>--unlike FF3 which I do.
if someone hates FF3, I will always recommend them the PR version if they ever bother with it again, honestly. the rebalances + quick/autosaves make the game more tolerable, ESPECIALLY the crystal tower. but then some people simply don't gel with the puzzle box solution for jobs, and I don't gel with it either, so eh.
would
leila>maria
The hate is overblown. Its pretty straight forward, people need to remember that the difference between Lv 5 and Lv6 is noticeable so unless you are skipping fights and speedrunning, you should not be having problems. If you are low on HP, heal, if you have a offensive mage, cast. You will get stronger. I played the PSP version.
I did too and I liked it a lot but it's significantly easier and a much different experience on PSP.
honestly i'm sure there's some wiki shit or documentation on it but it really undersells how much the PS1 version cleaned up, how radically the GBA version rebalanced the game, and how much the PSP version piled on from there. PR being a weird hybrid ass amalgamation of PS1 and GBA/PSP makes it hard to even attempt to make sense of because of how fricky the whole thing is. like equipment penalties that were reinstated.
>The hate is overblown.
No if anything there isn't enough hate for it.
The updated versions of the game aren't as bad, but the original NES ver is IMO the worst mainline FF game. Genuinely had more fun with trashy games like 13 & 15 than 2.
Yes. PR has a lot of things that make it better, like highlighting phrases and reducing encounter rates in trap rooms, but the original was abysmal to play.
Just play with 4x xp and gold and go through it if you are a completionist.
only the nes version is bad due to being very buggd and half of the stats dont do anything. first final fantasy is the same, the nes version is unplayable. all other versions of FF2 are good. the leveling system works as intended on those re-releases and criticisms are wildly overblown. if you play the game normally the game is balanced. like i've seen videos of people trashing FF2 and their argument is that "you have to grind HP by hitting your own guys" and then later in the video "the game is just too easy". like what did these people expect if they grind 2k health pools in the starting area?
It's not just bugs, newer versions also have a bunch of balancing changes.
Final Fantasy as a whole wasn't good until around 7 or 8
I disagree, but mostly because each game was pretty different from each other despite the core stuff being shared. I don't recommend 2 or 3 to anyone that isn't looking into either nostalgia or origins of the series, but I can recommend 1 because it's a straightforward D&D adventure with no strings attached. I can recommend 4 and 6 because they do tell fun stories, 6 especially, but I don't really recommend them for gameplay first; that's 5's entire shtick and if you aren't an RPG aficionado that loves that shit, 5 probably won't mix with you.
7 is the one that made the series mainstream, but despite growing up with it, I genuinely think it's weaker mechanically than some of its predecessors. Too many 6-isms of "use items to freeform your party until nothing is a challenge anymore, and beyond limit breaks the characters become borderline blank slates because of it".
I'm going through all of them right now, I finished 1 and 2 and I'm now at the part in 3 where Desch jumped into the furnace. What is wrong with 3? I have no idea where the frick to go most of the time but so far I'm enjoying it a lot more than 2.
Mostly relying heavily on "use the right job for a dungeon/boss or die" instead of having much elbow room for it. But the final dungeon is so horrifically bad that the devs apologized for it, and it's pretty much 90% of people's hatred for the game that isn't the job sickness shit in the 3D version.
I thought it was kind of bullshit that I had to fight the rat in mini and my physical guys were useless, but other than that I'm enjoying it so far.
I hope you have save states or are playing Pixel Remaster, then. Enjoy as you will, but if you're playing an older version raw, you better be really good at these games for endgame if you don't just grossly overlevel because of this advice.
I am playing the pixel remaster. I don't think I would have finished 2 without the exp buff because the emperor wrecked my shit and I had to train up my evade and buff spells to stand a chance because he was hitting and healing for 1200 per turn while I damage him for like 400.
>What is wrong with 3?
There are a few things but it's still better than the ones before and the one after it.
This is completely false because FF peaked with V and the PS1 era just made the series popular while still managing to keep the bar high.
I have played all of the classic FF games and I honestly don't even remember what the story was in 1 and 2.
>1: the four elements are going nuts because of 4 fiends corrupting the world, the warriors of light holding 4 crystals of the elements defeat Garland to rescue a princess and then go fight the fiends, only to find out at the very end that Garland had some stable time loop shit where he got rescued by the fiends to the past, he becomes Chaos, and then sends the fiends to the future; you kill him, break the loop and save the world and him
>2: the emperor made a deal with hell itself to rule the world, he fricks up the world, the resistance and 3 orphans work tooth and nail to stop the emperor, one other orphan was brainwashed to fighting for the emperor but is recovered to their side instead, heroes kill emperor, emperor literally takes over hell itself (and heaven in extra story content from later stuff), so the heroes march into the afterlife to kill him for good and save the world
2 kinda has events and characters and shit, but they're very threadbare and straightforward, jumping from 0 to 100 at random. You're there to see early ideas of Squaresoft's writing before any refinements rather than the actual plot.
I played it on gba back in the day and had fun with it.
It's the worst game in the franchise, I'm surprise it didn't nearly bankrupt Square again after FF1 saved them. It's part of the unholy trinity of objectively bad FF games, 2, 8, 15.
>not xiii
disregarded
ff13 hate is a forced reddit meme you drooling npc, go back.
>ff13 hate is a forced reddit meme
and ff2 hate isnt?
Correct, glad you understand.
Lol absolutely not, frick off secondary.
you first summertroony
>the hate is wrong because it is the game I grew up with
Try again I was alive when FF1 released and it was my first. The only bad games are the ones listed here. Maybe when you grow some hair on your chest you'll understand silly zoom zoom.
>Try again I was alive when FF1 released
In your grandfathers nutsack.
I'm in my 40s, stay afraid of empty backrooms.
All that experience and you only have shit taste not worth listening to.
zoom zoom
Kind of yes. There's one exception though and it's using the Blood Sword to kill the final boss easily but otherwise fists are best.
Hit plebbit, how many boots have you licked today?
dude everyone hates 13 except for a handful of autistic japs, frick off
its even more unpopular than 9 and all the nuFF games
FF13 is amazing compared to the shit that comes out today
8 and 15 have some great design elements that make them worthwhile, the gameplay is just seriously flawed. 8 on particular has a very unique aesthetic charm. It's blend of fantasy and sci-fi might be the best in the series.
I personally don't like the sci-fi or the modernity in newer FF games. I know mechanics have been a thing since the beginning, but I would hardly call 7 or 8 fantasy. I wish we went back to just sword and board shit.
The remaster is at least playable
Is it really just the level up system that makes people hate it? I thought it was fun to hit your own party for levelling
Any roleplaying game system that revolves around "learning by doing" is shit
Ah I see, that's the problem. I love that shit in all games, from Morrowind to Kingdom Coom
It's the entire game, the enemy rooms in dungeons, the "LVing" system, the fact your bare fists become the most OP thing in the game eclipsing even magic is ridiculous, bad enemy variety you'll see bosses recycled as normal mobs later and if they're encountered you can't run from them. Everything about this game is pure cancer it's garbage and all the hate is actually justified. Only special snowflakes try to dismiss it and champion it to get attention.
>the fact your bare fists become the most OP thing in the game eclipsing even magic is ridiculous
So same way monk was the most OP class in 1?
Aren't you still fricked against the emperor barehanded? It's been years since I last played it but I remember having to give Firion the endgame swords and grinding his sword level up to stand a chance against his healing bullshit.
It's why you use the bloodsword. That's the only reason to use a sword.
I didn't have that because its easy to miss without a guide. I had the two you get from hell and that's it.
Can't speak for the rest, but the NES version is. I wager it can be fun if you already know the game inside out but for a blind playthrough it might very well be the most miserable experience I've had playing through a game.
the NES version specifically yes.
Should I teach everyone magic or have a dedicated magic user?
Seems like the mp pool is pretty small and this game specifically gives you the ability to teach everyone magic so I guess I'll take advantage of it.