13 and 12 are both way worse than 8. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like 8 and thinks the fanbase for it is far more obnoxious than any other game in the series including 6gays.
I was able to play through the first three FF's when I was playing through the series a while back. This game was a slog to get even haflways through, put it on hold, and I hesitate to even go back (altho the Pixel Remasters existing makes it more palatable to revisit). I know this is copypasta bait, and anon is a gay, but I guess I do somewhat agree. thought I'd post an opinion tangentially related to OP from someone who actually has played a video game before tho. there's your (You) OP
depends on what you interpret when you see the word "compelling." i don't mean it's soulful, inventive, character-driven drama...i just mean "good enough that you want to see what happens on the next page." i think final fantasy is capable of achieving that, and in fact it might be the only thing several final fantasy games achieve.
plus the final fantasy worlds can often have settings that are compelling in their own right i.e., make one want to play through the game to explore and learn more about the setting. i don't think it serves anyone to be glib
I don't know, even if some have a vaguely interesting premise FF games always have terribly boring if not outright bad execution, more often than not the casts are handled in an equally terrible way outside of a couple of rare examples (Josef, Gordon or Cyan) that do not really redeem the franchise as a whole. >plus the final fantasy worlds can often have settings that are compelling in their own right
In theory, yes.
In practice, hell no, FF don't even have actual fricking settings for the most part, they have setpieces but no real effort in making the worldbuilding feel cohesive, despite all the time they waste on tedious, empty exposition.
Take FF8, the world is an empty, nonsensical wasteland, why the frick is there even a Garden in Trabia when the entire continent has no civilization?
Dollet stops existing after the SeeD mission in the prologue, you go back there and there's nothing, Wynhill only exists to contextualize Laguna's flashbacks, then there's the massive asspull with Esthar in the last third of the game.
And the average FF isn't any different, take FFVI and you'll see the same issues with how 90% of the world is just setpiece for the plot and doesn't actually exist as a cohesive setting.
Even FFVII can be rightfully pointed out as an example of said issue, especially with the jarring change of tone from Midgar to Kalm, the fact that multiple places in the world are just there as checkpoints, Costa Del Sol could be erased from the game and nothing would change, Mideel purely exists as a place for Cloud to stay in his wheelchair etc.
If you're a little kid or a casual you're surely amazed by the visuals, but none of the writing in FF makes much sense, especially when it comes to the setting, with the exception of the MMOs and XII I guess.
I certainly agree. I'm certainly not here to write FF apologia. I personally have been filtered / bored by almost every FF game I've played other than tactics (PSX).
Thank you for the post anon, I appreciate the details and specific input from someone who clearly actually attempted to play through the games.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I guess my tone gave the wrong impression, I wasn't attacking you or anything, and honestly I somewhat agree with your point too, only because most people don't really care about anything but surface level impressions, which FF is really good at.
It's just one of many franchises that fall down really hard the moment you begin to analyze what's shown on the screen, which is a shame since you can glimpse some good ideas for interesting narrative here and there, as much as I dislike it even FFVII had some really interesting stuff in it, in theory at least.
FFXII was the only non MMO where they actually tried, mostly because of Matsuno, and it did end up being actually nice in terms of setting, it wasn't just a collection of setpieces like the other games, definitely not something as embarassingly bad as FFIV or V.
Its why I'm actually glad they got rid of the overworld in Final Fantasy and am always confused when people say its a negative of modern Final Fantasy games. The overworld was always just a big empty mass of nothing that was just there to pad content by making the journey to the next place longer and filling it full of random battles. Also in the context of FF7 and FF8 it makes very little sense for the world to be so barren and just full of towns that are on opposite ends of continents with no roads or means to get there. With the technology that these worlds have, they'd have figured out some monorail or highway system surely. Especially because the routes there are full of monsters and sometimes you have to pass through mountains. Do people just casually walk from town to town or do they just not visit other towns?
2 years ago
Anonymous
>The overworld was always just a big empty mass of nothing that was just there to pad content by making the journey to the next place longer and filling it full of random battles.
The Overworld is an abstract representation of game's world in general, and thus is intended to give it a sense of scale. It makes the world feel larger than it would be had you just been ferrying place to place.
FF3, 5, 6 and debatably 2 and 4 also use the overworld to produce an effect: FF2 has a majority of the towns get destroyed in the endgame, 3 has the revelation that the first half of the game took place on a continent and you end up on the surface world, 4 has three different worlds that you travel between, 5's 2/3rd takes place on another world and the last third takes place after both worlds merge and 6's world gets fricked up halfway through the game, so it helps to show just how heavily it has changed.
One could also argue that it adds a sense of exploration, doubly so after one gets a new vehicle that allows them to go new places (FF2 being the outlier in that you can go almost anywhere on-foot and practically anywhere after you get the boat).
And, of course, much like dungeons, it's meant to strain your resources, although most games give you tents and the like so it's also more forgiving.
That said, I've barely played VII and have not played VIII or X, so I dunno how they handle their overworlds (or lack thereof). For the former two, one could assume it's just Square approaching it the same way that they did the prior games and not really needing to think about explaining those details; abstraction of detail and whatnot.
2 years ago
Anonymous
That guy is functionally moronic I think.
2 years ago
Anonymous
FF and other early RPGs were always about worldbuilding -- building a complete world. An overworld helps to show a complete world where every part of the map has something.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>It makes the world feel larger than it would be had you just been ferrying place to place.
In theory, in practice that's arguable since there's nothing in the overworld outside of empty space and some icons to enter a location, if anything it works against it by highlighting how poorly made those worlds are.
Again, why does a place like Kalm exist right beside Midgar?
There's literally nothing in Kalm, it's seven houses at best and one reactor, the only other human settlement in that part of the continent is the Chocobo Stable to the south, which is unexplicably the only chocobo stable on the entire planet for some reason, then there's Junon and Fort Condor, five human settlements in a whole continent.
There's TWO ports in the entire world, Junon and Costa Del Sol, how do people even get to Mideel when it's in the middle of nowhere? What's in Mideel anyway? Why is it a favela looking shithole? Who knows.
This is the usual FF worldbuilding, even the first two FF did a better job at explaining why the places you go to exist, mostly because they didn't exist purely as setpieces or checkpoints in a linear progression, partly because the people who worked on those had some standards, which is why they left after those games I guess.
You know it's very dire when FF2 does a better job at building its very own empty world than the SNES or PS1 games, the world's still really empty but at least in there 90% of the towns exist for something other than being just a checkpoint with 10 minutes of cutscenes, Altair is where the resistance hides, Poft is Cid's hometown and base of operations for his business, Salamand is a mythril mining town that was conquered by the empire for that reason etc., nearly every single place has an actual story behind it unlike FF7 where there's four towns at best that feel like believable places.
FFX with its map menu completely avoids this issue because there is no empty overworld to create that narrative dissonance in the first place.
2 years ago
Anonymous
How do you know those are the only places that exist in the game world? Maybe they're just the ones relevant to the story and so that's why they appear as icons on the overworld.
I used to puzzle this out as a kid and teenager in the 90s.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Maybe they're just the ones relevant to the story
The Chocobo Stable is completely irrelevant to the story, fully optional too and only exists to justify a minigame.
Wutai is also completely optional, which is a good thing because you hear so much about the war between Shinra and Wutai and when you finally get there it's a fricking miniscule town with absolute nothing outside of an optional dungeon, and a really puzzling optional quest starring Don Corneo and the Turks.
Gongaga's another fully optional location which for some reason more relevant to the overall story than places like Kalm, the Gold Saucer or Costa Del Sol because at least it ties a bit into Zack's story.
So why did they take their time to add a couple of locations such as these but did not take the time to do something as simple as, say, adding a couple of ports here and there, something even the very first game on the NES did? That sure would have helped a lot in making the overworld feeling more believable and coherent at least.
You talk about leaving space to imagination but those overworlds keep being absurdly inconsistent, one thing is leaving some space to the players' imagination, another thing is just not caring at all and trying to justify lazy writing and game design by leaving it to the players' imagination to fill all that empty, dead space that serves no functional purpose, if not actually hurt the game's narrative.
2 years ago
Anonymous
The whole genre is descended from Tolkien's LOTR. Tolkien's worlds were very sparsely populated with long distances and huge travel times between towns.
2 years ago
Anonymous
What kind of of brainlet cop out is this?
There's plenty of games with more believable and coherently laid out worlds than FF games, there's no huge travel time inbetween locations in FF overworlds either, it takes more time to navigate a dungeon than the overworld.
People also took inspiration from a lot more shit than Tolkien, from things like Conan to Jack Vance or Moorwiener's books, what an incredibly stupid statement to make.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>in practice that's arguable since there's nothing in the overworld outside of empty space and some icons to enter a location,
Yes, because it's an abstraction. The purpose is to actually make you feel like you're traveling the world, on an adventure. Plus, not all world maps are empty; The world maps have stuff like forests and mountains which tie into the getting new tools aspect (Forests can't be landed in while using airships in most games, Mountains can block progress in addition to being unable to be flown over in III).
And again, scale is a factor: Even when abstracted, the world is big. >Again, why does a place like Kalm exist right beside Midgar?
See, I can't answer that, because I have not played FFVII, and the only answer I can realistically give is the meta-reason, which you would probably not be thrilled with (reading the synopsis, maybe Shinra just wanted the Mine workers to be close without actually being within Midgar?). The Chocobo stable, just looking at the map, I can bullshit and say that the continent Midgar is on has enough space tht people would more likely need a Chocobo to move from, say, Junon to Kalm more easily compared to the other places, but that's just me. > the world's still really empty but at least in there 90% of the towns exist for something other than being just a checkpoint with 10 minutes of cutscenes
I apologize if I'm misunderstanding, but by your logic, wouldn't it be less believable? Having an explicit reason to visit almost every town in the world vs some towns that you pass by but don't necessarily have business in?
>Maybe they're just the ones relevant to the story
The Chocobo Stable is completely irrelevant to the story, fully optional too and only exists to justify a minigame.
Wutai is also completely optional, which is a good thing because you hear so much about the war between Shinra and Wutai and when you finally get there it's a fricking miniscule town with absolute nothing outside of an optional dungeon, and a really puzzling optional quest starring Don Corneo and the Turks.
Gongaga's another fully optional location which for some reason more relevant to the overall story than places like Kalm, the Gold Saucer or Costa Del Sol because at least it ties a bit into Zack's story.
So why did they take their time to add a couple of locations such as these but did not take the time to do something as simple as, say, adding a couple of ports here and there, something even the very first game on the NES did? That sure would have helped a lot in making the overworld feeling more believable and coherent at least.
You talk about leaving space to imagination but those overworlds keep being absurdly inconsistent, one thing is leaving some space to the players' imagination, another thing is just not caring at all and trying to justify lazy writing and game design by leaving it to the players' imagination to fill all that empty, dead space that serves no functional purpose, if not actually hurt the game's narrative.
>but did not take the time to do something as simple as, say, adding a couple of ports here and there, something even the very first game on the NES did?
The original NES did that because you could only dock your ship at those ports. They served a gameplay function.
II only has two ports if I remember correctly and that's because you rent the ship up until Leila joins
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Yes, because it's an abstraction.
Abstraction is worthless when it's half assed and inconsistent.
You know what else is an abstration AND works much better? World maps, in fact they're also inherently more abstracted than an overworld, which by your own admission serves more of a simulation purpose than a world map given how they let you move a character icon inside it and want to give a bigger, more tangible sense of scale, which has little to do with abstraction.
For the records, SMTI/II also had their own overworld, which were also a lot more abstracted than FF worlds maps, more tastefully done too, in fact in those games you never have to worry about all the awful empty space of FF games since the overworld is a true visual abstraction of the setting and not some weird middle of the road, in those games you see things like destroyed buildings or other enviromental clues that FF simply do not have. >but by your logic, wouldn't it be less believable?
It is, but I cannot expect a 1988 game to be that elaborated, I'm merely pointing out that such an old game did what newer games were supposed to do a lot better, and as I said, FF2 is also still guilty of having a massively empty and dead world.
[...]
"Relevant to the story" is absolutely correct and has always been correct(ish). Actual correct is "relevant to the game" which nullifies your stupid objection to the chocobo stables. Also you're wrong about Kalm, Gold Saurcer, and Costa Del Sol but getting into this is clearly not worth it given your apparent mental capacity.
>Old Final Fantasy games don't have extremely autistic world building
Holy shit, you noticed? Wow I'm so impressed. That's why they are better games.
>You talk about leaving space to imagination but those overworlds keep being absurdly inconsistent
Meanwhile your examples are laughably autistic, and heavily focused on Final Fantasy VII which is the transition from the old-style 2D "leave it to the imagination" design and the more modern, aesthetics-and-story-oriented design. Final Fantasy VII is a game designed heavily on the original 2D-era formula, but also included lots of cinematic cutscenes, exquisitely detailed environments, a far more elaborate and detailed story than anything that had come before. This triggers autists you to lose their shit over inconsistencies which you then extend to all the 2D games because you're more interested in trying to impress random anons by being nitpicking critic than understanding anything relevant.
>Actual correct is "relevant to the game"
Most of the content in FFVII is filler that is irrelevant to anything. >That's why they are better games.
Not really, they're the same thing as every other FF game, no FF has extremely autistic world building either.
Besides I can also point out similar issues in other entries, I was just talking about FF7 because the conversation was about that, see things like Troia, Regole, Maranda etc. >a far more elaborate and detailed story than anything that had come before
Not really, no, but it's quite clear you're just a butthurt fanboy with nonexistent standards who doesn't know any better given how you throw words like autistic as if they were insults in this fricking place.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>You know what else is an abstration AND works much better? World maps,
No, not really. You lose the travel aspect with just clicking a location.
If you desperately want an alternative then you can try Romancing SaGa, which is interesting, but kinda requires you to figure out what ship goes where (I think the other games streamline it, but you get the point). Either that or do the FFT thing where you get into random encounters. >SMTI/II also had their own overworld, which were also a lot more abstracted than FF worlds maps, more tastefully done too, in fact in those games you never have to worry about all the awful empty space of FF games since the overworld is a true visual abstraction of the setting and not some weird middle of the road, in those games you see things like destroyed buildings or other enviromental clues that FF simply do not have.
The SMT games have a smaller scale in terms of setting, usually taking place in strictly in Tokyo or a similar city. It lacks empty space by virtue of being based on a city rather than on the entire world, because the world, surprise, is fricking big.
Similarly, by virtue of being based on the entire world, usually if there is something significant about the environment, it'll have an icon and its own map for you to inspect it more closely (like the meteorites in FFV). >I'm merely pointing out that such an old game did what newer games were supposed to do a lot better,
But again, what makes 2 do it better? Your complaints are that FF's worldbuilding is awful, yet optional towns, which arguably count as world-building, are also bad?
2 years ago
Anonymous
>You lose the travel aspect with just clicking a location.
More like you save time wasted by walking through dead, empty dioramas with nothing in them.
There's nothing to figure out in SaGa games either, the games do tell you where a ship goes, as much as they do not tell you what might happen when you go somewhere, which is also more significant travel than moving around your character in dead overworlds with nothing but unavoidable random encounters.
If I wanted a competently made overworld I'd play something like the Metal Max games since there's actually plenty of stuff to do in their overworlds, from Wanted hunts to treasure hunting that leads to all sorts of stuff, but those games actually did put some effort into their overworlds.
SaGa Scarlet Grace also has a very well done overworld, but that's a game that only has an overworld in the first place and uses it to its absolute fullest, it's an outlier and not something one can use as an example, and it also has a lot of other issues too as a result anyways, even if the worldbuilding is rock solid. >It lacks empty space by virtue of being based on a city rather than on the entire world
Yeah, because they didn't want to bite more than they could chew, and it was a smart decision.
Again, look at something like Metal Max Returns, which has a world map as big as FF games on the console, yet it is much richer and much more detailed in terms of content and mechanics, let alone actual exploration. >But again, what makes 2 do it better?
Context, it's that simple.
I could care less about optional shit when the main content is all over the place and makes for 90% of the content anyway, at that point I'd rather prefer a game with no optional content at all but a more tight context, which is what FF2 does, as flawed and ripe with many other mistakes as it still is.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>There's nothing to figure out in SaGa games either, the games do tell you where a ship goes
Yes, but getting from point A to point B may require connecting through a bunch of places, which also costs money. >Yeah, because they didn't want to bite more than they could chew, and it was a smart decision.
SMT's stories are pretty strictly centered in Japan, even in cases where the rest of the world gets fricked.
FF games are almost always globe-trotting, so it's represented by a world map. Some degree of realism is used in creating the continents of said map. It's been that way since the first game, so unless they set every other game in a specific town, that probably wasn't happening. >The Metal Max games since there's actually plenty of stuff to do in their overworlds, from Wanted hunts to treasure hunting that leads to all sorts of stuff I don't have a frame of reference for Metal Max, and the only explanation I can use would a lame "The Metal Max game you mentioned came out after FFVI/MM2 came out after FFV and by FFVII, Square was all in on 3D/CGI which took dev time", so, I'll just make a note to play Metal Max.
The closest I can argue in that case is that sidequests exist in games post II (III having the summons, for example) some of which are teased early on via seeing them on the world map, encouraging you to return once you get a means of reaching them. >I could care less about optional shit when the main content is all over the place and makes for 90% of the content anyway, at that point I'd rather prefer a game with no optional content at all but a more tight context,
The thing about FF2 is the reason it has that context is because it's an outlier: You actually have a base and the structure of the plot means that you go to specific places.
Most FF games are more adventure type stories. Thus, most of the game is spent wandering from place to place, on some quest.
2 years ago
Anonymous
The World Map isn't as explorable as in, say, Metal Max, but it's meant to be immersive in a way that a simple menu wouldn't, especially in games like I or III. It's meant to give you a scale of the world as you travel from town to town or dungeon to dungeon. It's meant to strain resources, but not in as harsh a fashion as a traditional dungeon. It works to railroad the player through more natural roadblocks until they get an airship, which lets them go anywhere.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>but getting from point A to point B may require connecting through a bunch of places, which also costs money.
I'm not sure I get your point here, cost money in game terms?
There's only two games in the series where you have to pay money to use ships, and the only one where that is actually important is Romancing SaGa 3, and only in the very early game.
I don't think you mean cost money as in terms of development since SaGa games are notoriously low budget despite their actual production values. >Some degree of realism is used in creating the continents of said map
Realism can be conveyed in many ways though, FF only stuck to world maps because the first two games were copying Dragon Quest, which in turn was copying Ultima, a game that quickly abandoned overworld as soon as the team could afford something better.
You mentioned SaGa, those games handled world exploration by connecting multiple places together in different ways, RS2 is especially good on that since you can explore vast sections of the world (relative to that time) that are almost fully interconnected with each other, so you don't really have to rely on the world map a lot, it ends up being more of a fast travel sort of commodity in fact, in something like SaGa Frontier you 90% move around through world screens with a couple of exceptions like Shrike which have an "overworld" screen, unless you're Blue which can fast travel with the region map, and SaGa Frontier has a massive game world with a lot of care put in the overall narrative too.
But again, I'm not fundamentally against overworlds, because I've seen games that made good use of that, I'm just saying that Final Fantasy, like many other series (see Tales of for another example of terrible overworlds) didn't really make good use of that.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>>>
If you play Metal Max, Returns especially or the DS games, you'll see how much care they put in their overworlds, not only they're visually rich, mechanics wise they're also rich, they feel a true part of the world and not just something that exists to convey a sense of scale in visuals only, those overworlds convey a true sense of scale because there's a lot of stuff to do in them other than moving from point A to B like in FF.
There's also another crucial aspect of the overworld that FF misses, that is the exploration aspect, FF being an overly linear series in terms of progression completely kills the potential any overworld has, which is again, where games like Metal Max shine, because progression is almost entirely open ended there's a completely different player approach to the overworld.
FF overworlds are massive, but at the same time feel cramped because the games never allow you to progress at your own pace, even something like FF5, with three different overworlds AND an underwater layer feels cramped most of the time because you simply can't fully explore it, you have to wait near the very end of the game to do so, when there's very little to see.
Games like Metal Max however do not have this issue, the world is your oyster so to speak, where you end up is fully up to you, and since there's several overworld mechanics like again, Wanted hunts, looking for treasures with your metal detector or finding out secret locations, the overworlds actually do convey a true sense of scale in game terms, because there's a lot of stuff to do and a true sense of exploration, which is almost entirely absent in FF games, outside of some low value efforts in some of the later games with overworlds like FF7 or 9, but meeting yuffie in forest areas or minigames like chocobo treasure hunting are barely even meeting the minimum quota compared to those games.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Not really, no
Yes, really, yes. >you throw words like autistic as if they were insults in this fricking place
It's only an insult when it causes massive comprehension failure such as yours.
I love autistic world-building, but not every game needs to have it, and for those that don't you need to evaluate on a different standard. >nonexistent standards
I have plenty of standards. I try to apply suitable standards for the game in question based on what it's trying to accomplish and how well it does along those lines. You have one very half-assed (autistic) standard that you apply to everything and throw around words like "casual" and "fanboy" to deflect from the fact that you really don't have a clue what you're talking about.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Yes, really, yes.
Is that why the game is chock full of massive plotholes and inconsistencies, like Vincent's entire character, or why the game worlds is nonsensical and with tons of throwaway locations like the ancient forest? >I love autistic world-building
And yet you just said older FF were better because they didn't have it, because...they apparently don't need it, actually they need no worldbuilding at all according to you because who cares about that when it's FF? A game series which notoriously has nothing to offer outside of graphics and stories, the latter being just as half assed as their gameplay. >I have plenty of standards
Which is why you pretend FF is more than it actually is I guess, it's fine when FF is intentionally shallow...because it just is.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Is that why the game is chock full of massive plotholes and inconsistencies
Jesus christ you are stupid if you think pointing out (actually, making a vague reference to) some plot holes and iconsistencies has anything remotely to do with what I said.
Compare FFVII to what came before. FFVII has a far more elaborate and detailed story. There are many more scenes and scenes are full of far more dialog, acting subtlety, and visual storytelling. Compare scenes with The Turks to scenes with Ultros from FFVI. There's no comparison at all. Vincent, hidden character with no important role in the main story at all, has more character development than all but a handful of supporting characters in IV-VI. The VII has something like 5 times the amount of text compared to VI. During the SNES era, games were limited in the amount of text they could include, there was only so much ROM available. Those limitations vanished on Playstation.
Locations themselves are obviously far more detailed, it's again not even close. In FFIV, the buildings all have identical architecture except for roof color (and every colored roof in the same town will have the same color). Even in FFVI, most towns are palette swaps of the same base tileset, with maybe some extra details like the steamworks in Narshe. This all reinforces the abstract nature of the game world. In FFVII every place is unique and highly detailed, which raises expectations on consistency and internal logic.
>>I love autistic world-building >And yet you just said older FF were better because they didn't have it,
Yeah I did, didn't I. See if you are smart enough to figure out why it's not a contradiction.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I don't know bro, you say compare FFVII to what came before but you're just sticking to other Final Fantasy games which is kinda pathetic since they're all mediocre to bad, and even there it's arguable, more text and cutscenes doesn't automatically mean better or deeper writing, especially not in FFVII's case.
Saying Vincent has more character development than most of the supporting cast of the SNES games is frankly comical too since he barely even plays a part in the game's story and is only ever acknowledged as a character in Hojo's bossfight when you go back to Midgar, but not by any of the other Turks or other Shinra characters. >Even in FFVI, most towns are palette swaps of the same base tileset
That's just because FF is a cheap and poorly made franchise, you don't see this issue in other games of the time, it really has nothing to do with abstraction, games with lower budget and smaller teams had more care put into things like this than FF, and FFVI didn't really go for abstraction in the first place, arguably it's the opposite since they preferred to spend time and money making unique weapon sprites rather than making the world feel believable.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>you don't see this issue in other games of the time
Other games of the era are usually worse. If they manage to do better along one dimension they've made obvious tradeoffs somewhere. Certainly, no console game comes remotely close to Final Fantasy VII. Even if a game has say, 4 town tilesets vs 2, that doesn't come remotely close to FFVII hand-crafting and 3D pre-rendering every single non-overworld location in the entire game. >it really has nothing to do with abstraction
It does, though. It's rare to find someone like you who is really too stupid to see it. It is extremely obvious.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Other games of the era are usually worse.
Anon, even Romancing SaGa 2, which was made one year earlier by a small team working on a shoestring budget has more coherent and diverse tilesets for towns than FFVI, let alone better everything else, there's SIX towns out of 11 in FFVI that use the same exact tileset even though they're in completely different continents.
BoF2 has more coherent and varied city tilesets than FF games, Metal Max Returns, a fricking Data East game made when the company was croaking has more well thought out tilesets AND overworlds than FFVI. >that doesn't come remotely close to FFVII hand-crafting and 3D pre-rendering every single non-overworld location in the entire game.
I'll take something like Arc the Lad 2, where every location is a 2D tileset with actual thought put into worldbuilding and consistency than FFVII's fancy prerendered background where there's no overall world coherency at all, I'd take BoF4 over FFVII.
You can try to cope all you want with muh abstraction but you're missing the mark here, FFVII was visually great for its time and has some banging music but that's just it, there's really no thought put into the rest of the game, either when it comes to the writing or the terrible gameplay.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>elementary math is beyond me
Anon, all you are doing is desperately trying change the topic into shitting on Final Fantasy because you think I care, while utterly missing the point. >I'll take something like Arc the Lad 2
No one gives a shit about your taste.
You still fail to understand abstraction. >You can try to cope all you want with muh abstraction
It's not cope, it's simply true and beyond your mental ability (surprisingly limited, even for /vrpg/) to recognize or comprehend.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>You still fail to understand abstraction.
There's nothing abstract about incompetent developers and poorly made games, FF is one of the least abstract franchises out there, FFVII especially is, if anything, something that steers clear away from actual abstraction for the simple reason that they blew literal millions in extremely detailed 3D renderings, which is as far away from abstraction as you can get.
Rogue or Nethack are examples of actual abstraction, FFVI being a cheaply made game isn't, same for FFVII.
All you can do is throw insults around like a tourettic child and stomp your feet while trying to pretend that lack of actual effort and care is actually intentional "abstraction", so again, what is supposedly "abstract" about overly reused tilesets in one of the best looking games on the system in 1994?
What is abstract about the jarring world of FFVII where most of the locations don't really mesh together in any sort of coherent way?
Where is the abstraction in FFVIII's equal lack of world coherency since 90% of locations have no context in the general "worldbuilding" if you can even call it that?
The very picture you posted is as far away from abstraction as possible when it comes to its time.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>FF is one of the least abstract franchises out there,
It's not, though. SNES-era Final Fantasy is absolutely, undeniably, without question, abstract. Just like most other 16-bit console RPGs. Some PC RPGs took a less abstract approach, but usually those would take a selective approach instead and implement only a portion of the setting in the game world (eg Eye of the Beholder is one dungeon). >FFVII especially is [not abstract]
That's my point. FFVII began adding realistic detail to an abstract formula. FFVII used the proven formula from the SNES games, but with substantially more detail. This leads to dissonance between the formula and the game details. So FFVII is in this weird space where sometimes it feels like the 16-bit games and sometimes it feels like something new and more realistic. So you're more likely to notice world-building inconsistency. And despite this, the game was a resounding success due to the gameplay and story.
>Rogue or Nethack are examples of actual abstraction
In other words, you are a binary-brain moron incapable of discussion. ALL RPGs are abstract to some degree. If you can't handle a sliding scale you cannot say anything meaningful. RPGs take a variety of approaches to cope with the complexity of depicting a realistic setting as a game world:
1. Abstraction: Elements of game world are symbolic of the setting world.
2. Selection: Game world depicts only a piece of the setting world (even a single dungeon, in some cases).
3. Theme Park: Derive the setting world from the game world (backwards).
Most RPGs use some mix of mostly 1 and 2, with 16-bit JRPGs leaning heavily on 1 and 90s WRPGs leaning more on 2. Rogue and Nethack go hard on all three.
>All you can do is throw insults
I throw insults when you make comments that are too vapid and provocative to take seriously. Stop being a moron and I won't point it out.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>It's abstraction when it suits my argument bro, don't question me
Being lazy with tilesets and writing has nothing to do with abstraction, and FF7 only sold because of the marketing and graphics, nobody gave a shit about the dumb story, or the awful gameplay which is why FF7R is a thing, not even Kitase himself thinks the gameplay was good.
2 years ago
Anonymous
moron
2 years ago
Anonymous
>It's abstraction when it suits my argument bro, don't question me
that's exactly what you're doing though. and then you got mad and decided to make more baseless assertions. that guy rekt you and you deserve to be called a moron
2 years ago
Anonymous
Nah, I'm not the one trying to justify laziness with abstraction, mindlessly reusing tilesets for most cities outside of a select couple isn't abstraction, not bothering with creating any sort of cohesive world in games that feature globetrotting in the first place isn't abstraction, it's just incompetence, especiallly when you waste time and money on making bigass empty overworld with nothing in them, overworlds you can't even freely run around in until after you're done with most of the game's content, which doubly defeats the entire point.
But actually nevermind what I just said, it's honestly laughable to even say FF has any real globetrotting when it's really all about a series of shallow, incoherent visual setpieces made to accomodate some equally shallow telenovela character drama, in which again, abstraction has no real place in the discourse, FF7 is probably the most glaring example of that.
2 years ago
Anonymous
you seem to know what it isn't but have yet to describe what you think it is. at least the other guy defined his terms
the shitposting will continue until you quit sucking dick like the miserable homosexual you are
2 years ago
Anonymous
What the frick are you even talking about?
The entire point is that you can't justify incoherent design by cherrypicking issues and pretending they're part of the necessary abstraction inherent to games when they clearly are not.
What does abstraction have to do with six different towns having all the same exact tiles regardless of their geographical position when there are three (four or five if you count places like castle doma/figaro and Narshe) different tilesets to begin with?
Even the SNES Dragon Quest games aren't this bad because at least those fully embrace the abstraction and stick to their generic town or dungeon tilesets all the way through, first person combat cameras and generous amounts of pallete swapped NPCs, sure sucks when you play something like DQV and see how Jami's sprite is just a pallete swap, but those games never put much focus on the presentation at all so there's really no big inconsistency.
When you play something like FFVI, which outside of being constantly fellated for nonexistent merits is a game where most of the budget went to the graphics, it's just bad, no fancy mode 7 or weapon sprites saves the poor visual consistency, or the poor writing and gameplay, you can't say "ah but the towns are just abstracted you see :)" when Vector has a fully unique tileset and there's plenty of unique screens for other locations too, the truth is they knew the game was all about setpieces so they just slapped some tilesets for cities other than Narshe and Vector, which are nothing but empty checkpoints, and called it a day.
The issue here isn't abstraction, it's the lack of coherence and the pretense that it was all actually careful design decision, nevermind the fact that this whole dumb discussion is just one homosexual constantly moving away from his original argument, which is that most games were the same (they weren't) so it was okay for FF6 to be low effort.
Same for the rest of the series really, it's just cope by and for midwits.
2 years ago
Anonymous
i'm not reading all that
2 years ago
Anonymous
Don't worry, even if you did read that you wouldn't be able to contribute anything of value anyway
2 years ago
Anonymous
you are definitely the authority on lacking value
2 years ago
Anonymous
Yeah, I've got a good eye for spotting worthless subhumans like you, I must admit.
Did you lose your twitter password or something? No need to be so angry, you can still create a new account and go look for attention there with the rest of your kind.
2 years ago
Anonymous
angry? i scroll through vrpg every couple hrs while at work and see if you're still here for me shit on and sure enough. you're still here.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Imagine wasting your time at "work" browsing this place instead of working, just to pick a fight with some stranger because you kept being BTFO by him, and then have the sheer arrogance to call him an authority on lacking value while admitting how you're a good for nothing who browses Ganker at work, because you're fricking obsessed with a bunch of letters on a screen.
Truly comedy gold.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>Maybe they're just the ones relevant to the story
The Chocobo Stable is completely irrelevant to the story, fully optional too and only exists to justify a minigame.
Wutai is also completely optional, which is a good thing because you hear so much about the war between Shinra and Wutai and when you finally get there it's a fricking miniscule town with absolute nothing outside of an optional dungeon, and a really puzzling optional quest starring Don Corneo and the Turks.
Gongaga's another fully optional location which for some reason more relevant to the overall story than places like Kalm, the Gold Saucer or Costa Del Sol because at least it ties a bit into Zack's story.
So why did they take their time to add a couple of locations such as these but did not take the time to do something as simple as, say, adding a couple of ports here and there, something even the very first game on the NES did? That sure would have helped a lot in making the overworld feeling more believable and coherent at least.
You talk about leaving space to imagination but those overworlds keep being absurdly inconsistent, one thing is leaving some space to the players' imagination, another thing is just not caring at all and trying to justify lazy writing and game design by leaving it to the players' imagination to fill all that empty, dead space that serves no functional purpose, if not actually hurt the game's narrative.
"Relevant to the story" is absolutely correct and has always been correct(ish). Actual correct is "relevant to the game" which nullifies your stupid objection to the chocobo stables. Also you're wrong about Kalm, Gold Saurcer, and Costa Del Sol but getting into this is clearly not worth it given your apparent mental capacity.
>Old Final Fantasy games don't have extremely autistic world building
Holy shit, you noticed? Wow I'm so impressed. That's why they are better games.
>You talk about leaving space to imagination but those overworlds keep being absurdly inconsistent
Meanwhile your examples are laughably autistic, and heavily focused on Final Fantasy VII which is the transition from the old-style 2D "leave it to the imagination" design and the more modern, aesthetics-and-story-oriented design. Final Fantasy VII is a game designed heavily on the original 2D-era formula, but also included lots of cinematic cutscenes, exquisitely detailed environments, a far more elaborate and detailed story than anything that had come before. This triggers autists you to lose their shit over inconsistencies which you then extend to all the 2D games because you're more interested in trying to impress random anons by being nitpicking critic than understanding anything relevant.
narrative and story are a bit sparse. more than anything else though, the combat simply wasn't compelling enough to sit through hours of; compounded by the fact that there isn't a single - Pixel Remaster excluded (haven't played it yet to determine) - competent version of the game as a piece of software. the 3D version would be the definitive version afaic, considering that it tries to flesh out the story, and it is slightly more challenging, but goddamn the incompetency of it as a piece of software. even the SNES/GBA versions have issues when it comes to battles running properly, but nothing as annoying as the 3D game. but even then, the 2D titles suffer from being dumbfrick easy. the biggest shame is, I was excited to play FFIV, as I remembered booting it up on an emulator when I was a kid, and being enthralled by the opening cinematic, but there is just too much in the way. take my opinion with a grain of salt tho, FFVIII is my favorite entry in the series, followed by FFXII and FFX-2
The SNES version should not have issues with battles running properly. There are a few minor things due to the age of the game, like the logic for determining whether a status attack lands or misses is whether the animation plays. This is awkward, and there are a few other UI elements that are mildly clunky, like having to switch to the status screen to see the stat bonuses from equipment. >the 2D titles suffer from being dumbfrick easy
That's every Final Fantasy though. FFIV is actually reasonably balanced such that it gets gradually harder as you progress, culminating in the most challenging fight of the game as the final boss, unlike most of the other games that start out easy and stay easy with maybe a couple of random unbalanced bosses in the middle somewhere with a gimmick that can give you trouble (mostly because you've been playing half-asleep).
Also FFIV you can finish in 20 hours easily on your first try without even pushing hard. Most subsequent games in the series take at least twice that long (but don't necessarily have twice as much combat depth).
Can't say for the other Versi n but I play it on the first PSP and it was really well suited for the console, music and graphic wise, for what I can tell the best port. I like the game, it lack on the story side, it is sparsed for moment you're right, the premise is fairly basic, but it has its final fantasy charm, the characters are cool too. I really enjoyed it and thought it would be more dull.
This is a pretty stupid (reductionist) comparison. The games are structured and paced very differently. You can probably 100% FF4 before you are even halfway through FF13.
This is a pretty stupid (reductionist) comparison. The games are structured and paced very differently. You can probably 100% FF4 before you are even halfway through FF13.
And at least FF4 has room to move. 13 is just a constant straight and narrow hall. FF4 is linear but at least has some diversions similar to FFX.
OP here since people are asking:
Currently in the moon, just before what I assume is the final dungeon.
The story and characters are boring as shit. I'm not interested enough in it to find out what happens next. Note that I'm not saying that the problem is that it's generic or something like that. You can have a story filled with the most generic shit but at least make it grab my attention, which is what this game fails at.
Most fights are just mashing the attack button since most enemies will only be taking like 10% of your hp and they die in one or two hits. The encounter rate is annoyingly high, not enough to make me stop playing but I still want to point that out. Also, there are certain enemies that do REALLY low damage but they act quick so you have to sit through them doing useless attacks over and over before you get a chance to do something. Pair that with the high encounter rate and it becomes a pain in the ass. Also, bosses are dissapointingly easy. I'm not saying I want bosses where I need to go out and grind beforehand, but I don't want bosses where the fight is just braindead spam attack and curaga until it dies either.
Dungeon design is boring and pretty much a straight line most of the time.
The inventory capacity limit is useless as a game mechanic that I suppose was put in there to give a certain taste of resource management to the game, but it really is just a pain in the ass that was lazily implemented. If it was made to make me unable to carry a shit ton of hi-potions then don't make me able to buy so many of them so easily. The amount of gold you get in the FFs I've played so far (IV and those before it) is pretty damn high and you end up hoarding it because there's nothing to spend it on. Improve your implementation of the gold earned and spent throughout the game instead of just putting a cap that makes me go out of my way to sell useless items for meager gold that I don't need.
sounds like your time would've been better spent playing the ds version, at least as far as the battles are concerned
who knows, its presentation might've made you like the plot and characters as well but that's debatable
I don't think a change in style would've made the story more bearable unless they expanded on it, but I would've gone with the ds version had I known that the battles were tweaked there.
Looking back, you could say this game feels very flat, even when put up with other FFs of the time. However, it was the first game that had the most recognizable elements of the franchise, and in a way almost every other FF game has stuff from it, be it in direct references or in feel. It's pretty much the most "Final Fantasy" game out there. I'd still reccomend it as the first FF for newcomers. It's not baby easy, but not overwhelmingly hardcore either. Perfectly manageable.
FFIV has the structure of a comic book issue/manga volume, probably more than any other FF game.
There's a lot of setpieces with beginning, middle and end, there's a lot of cliffhangers, in a way you could even call them "clickbaits".
It's not a story that makes a lot of sense when put together, but it's a story that makes me want to "turn the page", see what happens next.
In comparison with FFV, which has a way more addicting job system but the actual story is very subdued, it really feels more like a Dragon Quest-lite, the same "page turning" effect is not there, it doesn't feel as epic or desperate to catch your attention as FFIV, at least not from a story point of view, maybe from a game mechanics point of view.
I like most Final Fantasy games because of the fast pace, both in story and the general structure.
I don't personally care about world building in fantasy stories at all, so the way Final Fantasy just takes you from situation to situation is just what I want in a story based game. I also really like how weird and imaginative some of the games are. That's why I enjoy VIII, despite its huge pile of obvious problems
You're a zoomer with no patience and no taste, much like OP and almost every other homosexual in here.
FF I through X are all great (yes, VIII is great, go cry to mommy).
MMOshit and XII onwards is where the snoozefest unFF-like titles begin.
No, FF2 really fricking sucks. Shit progression, shit story, constant backtracking, moronic magic penalty system, useless keyword system that amounts to some chests before the final dungeon at best. 2 is the worst, the contrarian's choice.
Your opinion has been duly noted and discarded
Bottom 3
>FF2
>FF15
>FF8
No, it's 8, 15 and 13 in that order.
13 and 12 are both way worse than 8. I say this as someone who doesn't particularly like 8 and thinks the fanbase for it is far more obnoxious than any other game in the series including 6gays.
I was able to play through the first three FF's when I was playing through the series a while back. This game was a slog to get even haflways through, put it on hold, and I hesitate to even go back (altho the Pixel Remasters existing makes it more palatable to revisit). I know this is copypasta bait, and anon is a gay, but I guess I do somewhat agree. thought I'd post an opinion tangentially related to OP from someone who actually has played a video game before tho. there's your (You) OP
what's wrong with it specifically? when you slog, was it not narratively compelling or was there something else?
>Final Fantasy
>compelling narrative
lol
depends on what you interpret when you see the word "compelling." i don't mean it's soulful, inventive, character-driven drama...i just mean "good enough that you want to see what happens on the next page." i think final fantasy is capable of achieving that, and in fact it might be the only thing several final fantasy games achieve.
plus the final fantasy worlds can often have settings that are compelling in their own right i.e., make one want to play through the game to explore and learn more about the setting. i don't think it serves anyone to be glib
I don't know, even if some have a vaguely interesting premise FF games always have terribly boring if not outright bad execution, more often than not the casts are handled in an equally terrible way outside of a couple of rare examples (Josef, Gordon or Cyan) that do not really redeem the franchise as a whole.
>plus the final fantasy worlds can often have settings that are compelling in their own right
In theory, yes.
In practice, hell no, FF don't even have actual fricking settings for the most part, they have setpieces but no real effort in making the worldbuilding feel cohesive, despite all the time they waste on tedious, empty exposition.
Take FF8, the world is an empty, nonsensical wasteland, why the frick is there even a Garden in Trabia when the entire continent has no civilization?
Dollet stops existing after the SeeD mission in the prologue, you go back there and there's nothing, Wynhill only exists to contextualize Laguna's flashbacks, then there's the massive asspull with Esthar in the last third of the game.
And the average FF isn't any different, take FFVI and you'll see the same issues with how 90% of the world is just setpiece for the plot and doesn't actually exist as a cohesive setting.
Even FFVII can be rightfully pointed out as an example of said issue, especially with the jarring change of tone from Midgar to Kalm, the fact that multiple places in the world are just there as checkpoints, Costa Del Sol could be erased from the game and nothing would change, Mideel purely exists as a place for Cloud to stay in his wheelchair etc.
If you're a little kid or a casual you're surely amazed by the visuals, but none of the writing in FF makes much sense, especially when it comes to the setting, with the exception of the MMOs and XII I guess.
I certainly agree. I'm certainly not here to write FF apologia. I personally have been filtered / bored by almost every FF game I've played other than tactics (PSX).
Thank you for the post anon, I appreciate the details and specific input from someone who clearly actually attempted to play through the games.
I guess my tone gave the wrong impression, I wasn't attacking you or anything, and honestly I somewhat agree with your point too, only because most people don't really care about anything but surface level impressions, which FF is really good at.
It's just one of many franchises that fall down really hard the moment you begin to analyze what's shown on the screen, which is a shame since you can glimpse some good ideas for interesting narrative here and there, as much as I dislike it even FFVII had some really interesting stuff in it, in theory at least.
FFXII was the only non MMO where they actually tried, mostly because of Matsuno, and it did end up being actually nice in terms of setting, it wasn't just a collection of setpieces like the other games, definitely not something as embarassingly bad as FFIV or V.
Its why I'm actually glad they got rid of the overworld in Final Fantasy and am always confused when people say its a negative of modern Final Fantasy games. The overworld was always just a big empty mass of nothing that was just there to pad content by making the journey to the next place longer and filling it full of random battles. Also in the context of FF7 and FF8 it makes very little sense for the world to be so barren and just full of towns that are on opposite ends of continents with no roads or means to get there. With the technology that these worlds have, they'd have figured out some monorail or highway system surely. Especially because the routes there are full of monsters and sometimes you have to pass through mountains. Do people just casually walk from town to town or do they just not visit other towns?
>The overworld was always just a big empty mass of nothing that was just there to pad content by making the journey to the next place longer and filling it full of random battles.
The Overworld is an abstract representation of game's world in general, and thus is intended to give it a sense of scale. It makes the world feel larger than it would be had you just been ferrying place to place.
FF3, 5, 6 and debatably 2 and 4 also use the overworld to produce an effect: FF2 has a majority of the towns get destroyed in the endgame, 3 has the revelation that the first half of the game took place on a continent and you end up on the surface world, 4 has three different worlds that you travel between, 5's 2/3rd takes place on another world and the last third takes place after both worlds merge and 6's world gets fricked up halfway through the game, so it helps to show just how heavily it has changed.
One could also argue that it adds a sense of exploration, doubly so after one gets a new vehicle that allows them to go new places (FF2 being the outlier in that you can go almost anywhere on-foot and practically anywhere after you get the boat).
And, of course, much like dungeons, it's meant to strain your resources, although most games give you tents and the like so it's also more forgiving.
That said, I've barely played VII and have not played VIII or X, so I dunno how they handle their overworlds (or lack thereof). For the former two, one could assume it's just Square approaching it the same way that they did the prior games and not really needing to think about explaining those details; abstraction of detail and whatnot.
That guy is functionally moronic I think.
FF and other early RPGs were always about worldbuilding -- building a complete world. An overworld helps to show a complete world where every part of the map has something.
>It makes the world feel larger than it would be had you just been ferrying place to place.
In theory, in practice that's arguable since there's nothing in the overworld outside of empty space and some icons to enter a location, if anything it works against it by highlighting how poorly made those worlds are.
Again, why does a place like Kalm exist right beside Midgar?
There's literally nothing in Kalm, it's seven houses at best and one reactor, the only other human settlement in that part of the continent is the Chocobo Stable to the south, which is unexplicably the only chocobo stable on the entire planet for some reason, then there's Junon and Fort Condor, five human settlements in a whole continent.
There's TWO ports in the entire world, Junon and Costa Del Sol, how do people even get to Mideel when it's in the middle of nowhere? What's in Mideel anyway? Why is it a favela looking shithole? Who knows.
This is the usual FF worldbuilding, even the first two FF did a better job at explaining why the places you go to exist, mostly because they didn't exist purely as setpieces or checkpoints in a linear progression, partly because the people who worked on those had some standards, which is why they left after those games I guess.
You know it's very dire when FF2 does a better job at building its very own empty world than the SNES or PS1 games, the world's still really empty but at least in there 90% of the towns exist for something other than being just a checkpoint with 10 minutes of cutscenes, Altair is where the resistance hides, Poft is Cid's hometown and base of operations for his business, Salamand is a mythril mining town that was conquered by the empire for that reason etc., nearly every single place has an actual story behind it unlike FF7 where there's four towns at best that feel like believable places.
FFX with its map menu completely avoids this issue because there is no empty overworld to create that narrative dissonance in the first place.
How do you know those are the only places that exist in the game world? Maybe they're just the ones relevant to the story and so that's why they appear as icons on the overworld.
I used to puzzle this out as a kid and teenager in the 90s.
>Maybe they're just the ones relevant to the story
The Chocobo Stable is completely irrelevant to the story, fully optional too and only exists to justify a minigame.
Wutai is also completely optional, which is a good thing because you hear so much about the war between Shinra and Wutai and when you finally get there it's a fricking miniscule town with absolute nothing outside of an optional dungeon, and a really puzzling optional quest starring Don Corneo and the Turks.
Gongaga's another fully optional location which for some reason more relevant to the overall story than places like Kalm, the Gold Saucer or Costa Del Sol because at least it ties a bit into Zack's story.
So why did they take their time to add a couple of locations such as these but did not take the time to do something as simple as, say, adding a couple of ports here and there, something even the very first game on the NES did? That sure would have helped a lot in making the overworld feeling more believable and coherent at least.
You talk about leaving space to imagination but those overworlds keep being absurdly inconsistent, one thing is leaving some space to the players' imagination, another thing is just not caring at all and trying to justify lazy writing and game design by leaving it to the players' imagination to fill all that empty, dead space that serves no functional purpose, if not actually hurt the game's narrative.
The whole genre is descended from Tolkien's LOTR. Tolkien's worlds were very sparsely populated with long distances and huge travel times between towns.
What kind of of brainlet cop out is this?
There's plenty of games with more believable and coherently laid out worlds than FF games, there's no huge travel time inbetween locations in FF overworlds either, it takes more time to navigate a dungeon than the overworld.
People also took inspiration from a lot more shit than Tolkien, from things like Conan to Jack Vance or Moorwiener's books, what an incredibly stupid statement to make.
>in practice that's arguable since there's nothing in the overworld outside of empty space and some icons to enter a location,
Yes, because it's an abstraction. The purpose is to actually make you feel like you're traveling the world, on an adventure. Plus, not all world maps are empty; The world maps have stuff like forests and mountains which tie into the getting new tools aspect (Forests can't be landed in while using airships in most games, Mountains can block progress in addition to being unable to be flown over in III).
And again, scale is a factor: Even when abstracted, the world is big.
>Again, why does a place like Kalm exist right beside Midgar?
See, I can't answer that, because I have not played FFVII, and the only answer I can realistically give is the meta-reason, which you would probably not be thrilled with (reading the synopsis, maybe Shinra just wanted the Mine workers to be close without actually being within Midgar?). The Chocobo stable, just looking at the map, I can bullshit and say that the continent Midgar is on has enough space tht people would more likely need a Chocobo to move from, say, Junon to Kalm more easily compared to the other places, but that's just me.
> the world's still really empty but at least in there 90% of the towns exist for something other than being just a checkpoint with 10 minutes of cutscenes
I apologize if I'm misunderstanding, but by your logic, wouldn't it be less believable? Having an explicit reason to visit almost every town in the world vs some towns that you pass by but don't necessarily have business in?
>but did not take the time to do something as simple as, say, adding a couple of ports here and there, something even the very first game on the NES did?
The original NES did that because you could only dock your ship at those ports. They served a gameplay function.
II only has two ports if I remember correctly and that's because you rent the ship up until Leila joins
>Yes, because it's an abstraction.
Abstraction is worthless when it's half assed and inconsistent.
You know what else is an abstration AND works much better? World maps, in fact they're also inherently more abstracted than an overworld, which by your own admission serves more of a simulation purpose than a world map given how they let you move a character icon inside it and want to give a bigger, more tangible sense of scale, which has little to do with abstraction.
For the records, SMTI/II also had their own overworld, which were also a lot more abstracted than FF worlds maps, more tastefully done too, in fact in those games you never have to worry about all the awful empty space of FF games since the overworld is a true visual abstraction of the setting and not some weird middle of the road, in those games you see things like destroyed buildings or other enviromental clues that FF simply do not have.
>but by your logic, wouldn't it be less believable?
It is, but I cannot expect a 1988 game to be that elaborated, I'm merely pointing out that such an old game did what newer games were supposed to do a lot better, and as I said, FF2 is also still guilty of having a massively empty and dead world.
>Actual correct is "relevant to the game"
Most of the content in FFVII is filler that is irrelevant to anything.
>That's why they are better games.
Not really, they're the same thing as every other FF game, no FF has extremely autistic world building either.
Besides I can also point out similar issues in other entries, I was just talking about FF7 because the conversation was about that, see things like Troia, Regole, Maranda etc.
>a far more elaborate and detailed story than anything that had come before
Not really, no, but it's quite clear you're just a butthurt fanboy with nonexistent standards who doesn't know any better given how you throw words like autistic as if they were insults in this fricking place.
>You know what else is an abstration AND works much better? World maps,
No, not really. You lose the travel aspect with just clicking a location.
If you desperately want an alternative then you can try Romancing SaGa, which is interesting, but kinda requires you to figure out what ship goes where (I think the other games streamline it, but you get the point). Either that or do the FFT thing where you get into random encounters.
>SMTI/II also had their own overworld, which were also a lot more abstracted than FF worlds maps, more tastefully done too, in fact in those games you never have to worry about all the awful empty space of FF games since the overworld is a true visual abstraction of the setting and not some weird middle of the road, in those games you see things like destroyed buildings or other enviromental clues that FF simply do not have.
The SMT games have a smaller scale in terms of setting, usually taking place in strictly in Tokyo or a similar city. It lacks empty space by virtue of being based on a city rather than on the entire world, because the world, surprise, is fricking big.
Similarly, by virtue of being based on the entire world, usually if there is something significant about the environment, it'll have an icon and its own map for you to inspect it more closely (like the meteorites in FFV).
>I'm merely pointing out that such an old game did what newer games were supposed to do a lot better,
But again, what makes 2 do it better? Your complaints are that FF's worldbuilding is awful, yet optional towns, which arguably count as world-building, are also bad?
>You lose the travel aspect with just clicking a location.
More like you save time wasted by walking through dead, empty dioramas with nothing in them.
There's nothing to figure out in SaGa games either, the games do tell you where a ship goes, as much as they do not tell you what might happen when you go somewhere, which is also more significant travel than moving around your character in dead overworlds with nothing but unavoidable random encounters.
If I wanted a competently made overworld I'd play something like the Metal Max games since there's actually plenty of stuff to do in their overworlds, from Wanted hunts to treasure hunting that leads to all sorts of stuff, but those games actually did put some effort into their overworlds.
SaGa Scarlet Grace also has a very well done overworld, but that's a game that only has an overworld in the first place and uses it to its absolute fullest, it's an outlier and not something one can use as an example, and it also has a lot of other issues too as a result anyways, even if the worldbuilding is rock solid.
>It lacks empty space by virtue of being based on a city rather than on the entire world
Yeah, because they didn't want to bite more than they could chew, and it was a smart decision.
Again, look at something like Metal Max Returns, which has a world map as big as FF games on the console, yet it is much richer and much more detailed in terms of content and mechanics, let alone actual exploration.
>But again, what makes 2 do it better?
Context, it's that simple.
I could care less about optional shit when the main content is all over the place and makes for 90% of the content anyway, at that point I'd rather prefer a game with no optional content at all but a more tight context, which is what FF2 does, as flawed and ripe with many other mistakes as it still is.
>There's nothing to figure out in SaGa games either, the games do tell you where a ship goes
Yes, but getting from point A to point B may require connecting through a bunch of places, which also costs money.
>Yeah, because they didn't want to bite more than they could chew, and it was a smart decision.
SMT's stories are pretty strictly centered in Japan, even in cases where the rest of the world gets fricked.
FF games are almost always globe-trotting, so it's represented by a world map. Some degree of realism is used in creating the continents of said map. It's been that way since the first game, so unless they set every other game in a specific town, that probably wasn't happening.
>The Metal Max games since there's actually plenty of stuff to do in their overworlds, from Wanted hunts to treasure hunting that leads to all sorts of stuff
I don't have a frame of reference for Metal Max, and the only explanation I can use would a lame "The Metal Max game you mentioned came out after FFVI/MM2 came out after FFV and by FFVII, Square was all in on 3D/CGI which took dev time", so, I'll just make a note to play Metal Max.
The closest I can argue in that case is that sidequests exist in games post II (III having the summons, for example) some of which are teased early on via seeing them on the world map, encouraging you to return once you get a means of reaching them.
>I could care less about optional shit when the main content is all over the place and makes for 90% of the content anyway, at that point I'd rather prefer a game with no optional content at all but a more tight context,
The thing about FF2 is the reason it has that context is because it's an outlier: You actually have a base and the structure of the plot means that you go to specific places.
Most FF games are more adventure type stories. Thus, most of the game is spent wandering from place to place, on some quest.
The World Map isn't as explorable as in, say, Metal Max, but it's meant to be immersive in a way that a simple menu wouldn't, especially in games like I or III. It's meant to give you a scale of the world as you travel from town to town or dungeon to dungeon. It's meant to strain resources, but not in as harsh a fashion as a traditional dungeon. It works to railroad the player through more natural roadblocks until they get an airship, which lets them go anywhere.
>but getting from point A to point B may require connecting through a bunch of places, which also costs money.
I'm not sure I get your point here, cost money in game terms?
There's only two games in the series where you have to pay money to use ships, and the only one where that is actually important is Romancing SaGa 3, and only in the very early game.
I don't think you mean cost money as in terms of development since SaGa games are notoriously low budget despite their actual production values.
>Some degree of realism is used in creating the continents of said map
Realism can be conveyed in many ways though, FF only stuck to world maps because the first two games were copying Dragon Quest, which in turn was copying Ultima, a game that quickly abandoned overworld as soon as the team could afford something better.
You mentioned SaGa, those games handled world exploration by connecting multiple places together in different ways, RS2 is especially good on that since you can explore vast sections of the world (relative to that time) that are almost fully interconnected with each other, so you don't really have to rely on the world map a lot, it ends up being more of a fast travel sort of commodity in fact, in something like SaGa Frontier you 90% move around through world screens with a couple of exceptions like Shrike which have an "overworld" screen, unless you're Blue which can fast travel with the region map, and SaGa Frontier has a massive game world with a lot of care put in the overall narrative too.
But again, I'm not fundamentally against overworlds, because I've seen games that made good use of that, I'm just saying that Final Fantasy, like many other series (see Tales of for another example of terrible overworlds) didn't really make good use of that.
>>>
If you play Metal Max, Returns especially or the DS games, you'll see how much care they put in their overworlds, not only they're visually rich, mechanics wise they're also rich, they feel a true part of the world and not just something that exists to convey a sense of scale in visuals only, those overworlds convey a true sense of scale because there's a lot of stuff to do in them other than moving from point A to B like in FF.
There's also another crucial aspect of the overworld that FF misses, that is the exploration aspect, FF being an overly linear series in terms of progression completely kills the potential any overworld has, which is again, where games like Metal Max shine, because progression is almost entirely open ended there's a completely different player approach to the overworld.
FF overworlds are massive, but at the same time feel cramped because the games never allow you to progress at your own pace, even something like FF5, with three different overworlds AND an underwater layer feels cramped most of the time because you simply can't fully explore it, you have to wait near the very end of the game to do so, when there's very little to see.
Games like Metal Max however do not have this issue, the world is your oyster so to speak, where you end up is fully up to you, and since there's several overworld mechanics like again, Wanted hunts, looking for treasures with your metal detector or finding out secret locations, the overworlds actually do convey a true sense of scale in game terms, because there's a lot of stuff to do and a true sense of exploration, which is almost entirely absent in FF games, outside of some low value efforts in some of the later games with overworlds like FF7 or 9, but meeting yuffie in forest areas or minigames like chocobo treasure hunting are barely even meeting the minimum quota compared to those games.
>Not really, no
Yes, really, yes.
>you throw words like autistic as if they were insults in this fricking place
It's only an insult when it causes massive comprehension failure such as yours.
I love autistic world-building, but not every game needs to have it, and for those that don't you need to evaluate on a different standard.
>nonexistent standards
I have plenty of standards. I try to apply suitable standards for the game in question based on what it's trying to accomplish and how well it does along those lines. You have one very half-assed (autistic) standard that you apply to everything and throw around words like "casual" and "fanboy" to deflect from the fact that you really don't have a clue what you're talking about.
>Yes, really, yes.
Is that why the game is chock full of massive plotholes and inconsistencies, like Vincent's entire character, or why the game worlds is nonsensical and with tons of throwaway locations like the ancient forest?
>I love autistic world-building
And yet you just said older FF were better because they didn't have it, because...they apparently don't need it, actually they need no worldbuilding at all according to you because who cares about that when it's FF? A game series which notoriously has nothing to offer outside of graphics and stories, the latter being just as half assed as their gameplay.
>I have plenty of standards
Which is why you pretend FF is more than it actually is I guess, it's fine when FF is intentionally shallow...because it just is.
>Is that why the game is chock full of massive plotholes and inconsistencies
Jesus christ you are stupid if you think pointing out (actually, making a vague reference to) some plot holes and iconsistencies has anything remotely to do with what I said.
Compare FFVII to what came before. FFVII has a far more elaborate and detailed story. There are many more scenes and scenes are full of far more dialog, acting subtlety, and visual storytelling. Compare scenes with The Turks to scenes with Ultros from FFVI. There's no comparison at all. Vincent, hidden character with no important role in the main story at all, has more character development than all but a handful of supporting characters in IV-VI. The VII has something like 5 times the amount of text compared to VI. During the SNES era, games were limited in the amount of text they could include, there was only so much ROM available. Those limitations vanished on Playstation.
Locations themselves are obviously far more detailed, it's again not even close. In FFIV, the buildings all have identical architecture except for roof color (and every colored roof in the same town will have the same color). Even in FFVI, most towns are palette swaps of the same base tileset, with maybe some extra details like the steamworks in Narshe. This all reinforces the abstract nature of the game world. In FFVII every place is unique and highly detailed, which raises expectations on consistency and internal logic.
>>I love autistic world-building
>And yet you just said older FF were better because they didn't have it,
Yeah I did, didn't I. See if you are smart enough to figure out why it's not a contradiction.
I don't know bro, you say compare FFVII to what came before but you're just sticking to other Final Fantasy games which is kinda pathetic since they're all mediocre to bad, and even there it's arguable, more text and cutscenes doesn't automatically mean better or deeper writing, especially not in FFVII's case.
Saying Vincent has more character development than most of the supporting cast of the SNES games is frankly comical too since he barely even plays a part in the game's story and is only ever acknowledged as a character in Hojo's bossfight when you go back to Midgar, but not by any of the other Turks or other Shinra characters.
>Even in FFVI, most towns are palette swaps of the same base tileset
That's just because FF is a cheap and poorly made franchise, you don't see this issue in other games of the time, it really has nothing to do with abstraction, games with lower budget and smaller teams had more care put into things like this than FF, and FFVI didn't really go for abstraction in the first place, arguably it's the opposite since they preferred to spend time and money making unique weapon sprites rather than making the world feel believable.
>you don't see this issue in other games of the time
Other games of the era are usually worse. If they manage to do better along one dimension they've made obvious tradeoffs somewhere. Certainly, no console game comes remotely close to Final Fantasy VII. Even if a game has say, 4 town tilesets vs 2, that doesn't come remotely close to FFVII hand-crafting and 3D pre-rendering every single non-overworld location in the entire game.
>it really has nothing to do with abstraction
It does, though. It's rare to find someone like you who is really too stupid to see it. It is extremely obvious.
>Other games of the era are usually worse.
Anon, even Romancing SaGa 2, which was made one year earlier by a small team working on a shoestring budget has more coherent and diverse tilesets for towns than FFVI, let alone better everything else, there's SIX towns out of 11 in FFVI that use the same exact tileset even though they're in completely different continents.
BoF2 has more coherent and varied city tilesets than FF games, Metal Max Returns, a fricking Data East game made when the company was croaking has more well thought out tilesets AND overworlds than FFVI.
>that doesn't come remotely close to FFVII hand-crafting and 3D pre-rendering every single non-overworld location in the entire game.
I'll take something like Arc the Lad 2, where every location is a 2D tileset with actual thought put into worldbuilding and consistency than FFVII's fancy prerendered background where there's no overall world coherency at all, I'd take BoF4 over FFVII.
You can try to cope all you want with muh abstraction but you're missing the mark here, FFVII was visually great for its time and has some banging music but that's just it, there's really no thought put into the rest of the game, either when it comes to the writing or the terrible gameplay.
>elementary math is beyond me
Anon, all you are doing is desperately trying change the topic into shitting on Final Fantasy because you think I care, while utterly missing the point.
>I'll take something like Arc the Lad 2
No one gives a shit about your taste.
You still fail to understand abstraction.
>You can try to cope all you want with muh abstraction
It's not cope, it's simply true and beyond your mental ability (surprisingly limited, even for /vrpg/) to recognize or comprehend.
>You still fail to understand abstraction.
There's nothing abstract about incompetent developers and poorly made games, FF is one of the least abstract franchises out there, FFVII especially is, if anything, something that steers clear away from actual abstraction for the simple reason that they blew literal millions in extremely detailed 3D renderings, which is as far away from abstraction as you can get.
Rogue or Nethack are examples of actual abstraction, FFVI being a cheaply made game isn't, same for FFVII.
All you can do is throw insults around like a tourettic child and stomp your feet while trying to pretend that lack of actual effort and care is actually intentional "abstraction", so again, what is supposedly "abstract" about overly reused tilesets in one of the best looking games on the system in 1994?
What is abstract about the jarring world of FFVII where most of the locations don't really mesh together in any sort of coherent way?
Where is the abstraction in FFVIII's equal lack of world coherency since 90% of locations have no context in the general "worldbuilding" if you can even call it that?
The very picture you posted is as far away from abstraction as possible when it comes to its time.
>FF is one of the least abstract franchises out there,
It's not, though. SNES-era Final Fantasy is absolutely, undeniably, without question, abstract. Just like most other 16-bit console RPGs. Some PC RPGs took a less abstract approach, but usually those would take a selective approach instead and implement only a portion of the setting in the game world (eg Eye of the Beholder is one dungeon).
>FFVII especially is [not abstract]
That's my point. FFVII began adding realistic detail to an abstract formula. FFVII used the proven formula from the SNES games, but with substantially more detail. This leads to dissonance between the formula and the game details. So FFVII is in this weird space where sometimes it feels like the 16-bit games and sometimes it feels like something new and more realistic. So you're more likely to notice world-building inconsistency. And despite this, the game was a resounding success due to the gameplay and story.
>Rogue or Nethack are examples of actual abstraction
In other words, you are a binary-brain moron incapable of discussion. ALL RPGs are abstract to some degree. If you can't handle a sliding scale you cannot say anything meaningful. RPGs take a variety of approaches to cope with the complexity of depicting a realistic setting as a game world:
1. Abstraction: Elements of game world are symbolic of the setting world.
2. Selection: Game world depicts only a piece of the setting world (even a single dungeon, in some cases).
3. Theme Park: Derive the setting world from the game world (backwards).
Most RPGs use some mix of mostly 1 and 2, with 16-bit JRPGs leaning heavily on 1 and 90s WRPGs leaning more on 2. Rogue and Nethack go hard on all three.
>All you can do is throw insults
I throw insults when you make comments that are too vapid and provocative to take seriously. Stop being a moron and I won't point it out.
>It's abstraction when it suits my argument bro, don't question me
Being lazy with tilesets and writing has nothing to do with abstraction, and FF7 only sold because of the marketing and graphics, nobody gave a shit about the dumb story, or the awful gameplay which is why FF7R is a thing, not even Kitase himself thinks the gameplay was good.
moron
>It's abstraction when it suits my argument bro, don't question me
that's exactly what you're doing though. and then you got mad and decided to make more baseless assertions. that guy rekt you and you deserve to be called a moron
Nah, I'm not the one trying to justify laziness with abstraction, mindlessly reusing tilesets for most cities outside of a select couple isn't abstraction, not bothering with creating any sort of cohesive world in games that feature globetrotting in the first place isn't abstraction, it's just incompetence, especiallly when you waste time and money on making bigass empty overworld with nothing in them, overworlds you can't even freely run around in until after you're done with most of the game's content, which doubly defeats the entire point.
But actually nevermind what I just said, it's honestly laughable to even say FF has any real globetrotting when it's really all about a series of shallow, incoherent visual setpieces made to accomodate some equally shallow telenovela character drama, in which again, abstraction has no real place in the discourse, FF7 is probably the most glaring example of that.
you seem to know what it isn't but have yet to describe what you think it is. at least the other guy defined his terms
the shitposting will continue until you quit sucking dick like the miserable homosexual you are
What the frick are you even talking about?
The entire point is that you can't justify incoherent design by cherrypicking issues and pretending they're part of the necessary abstraction inherent to games when they clearly are not.
What does abstraction have to do with six different towns having all the same exact tiles regardless of their geographical position when there are three (four or five if you count places like castle doma/figaro and Narshe) different tilesets to begin with?
Even the SNES Dragon Quest games aren't this bad because at least those fully embrace the abstraction and stick to their generic town or dungeon tilesets all the way through, first person combat cameras and generous amounts of pallete swapped NPCs, sure sucks when you play something like DQV and see how Jami's sprite is just a pallete swap, but those games never put much focus on the presentation at all so there's really no big inconsistency.
When you play something like FFVI, which outside of being constantly fellated for nonexistent merits is a game where most of the budget went to the graphics, it's just bad, no fancy mode 7 or weapon sprites saves the poor visual consistency, or the poor writing and gameplay, you can't say "ah but the towns are just abstracted you see :)" when Vector has a fully unique tileset and there's plenty of unique screens for other locations too, the truth is they knew the game was all about setpieces so they just slapped some tilesets for cities other than Narshe and Vector, which are nothing but empty checkpoints, and called it a day.
The issue here isn't abstraction, it's the lack of coherence and the pretense that it was all actually careful design decision, nevermind the fact that this whole dumb discussion is just one homosexual constantly moving away from his original argument, which is that most games were the same (they weren't) so it was okay for FF6 to be low effort.
Same for the rest of the series really, it's just cope by and for midwits.
i'm not reading all that
Don't worry, even if you did read that you wouldn't be able to contribute anything of value anyway
you are definitely the authority on lacking value
Yeah, I've got a good eye for spotting worthless subhumans like you, I must admit.
Did you lose your twitter password or something? No need to be so angry, you can still create a new account and go look for attention there with the rest of your kind.
angry? i scroll through vrpg every couple hrs while at work and see if you're still here for me shit on and sure enough. you're still here.
Imagine wasting your time at "work" browsing this place instead of working, just to pick a fight with some stranger because you kept being BTFO by him, and then have the sheer arrogance to call him an authority on lacking value while admitting how you're a good for nothing who browses Ganker at work, because you're fricking obsessed with a bunch of letters on a screen.
Truly comedy gold.
"Relevant to the story" is absolutely correct and has always been correct(ish). Actual correct is "relevant to the game" which nullifies your stupid objection to the chocobo stables. Also you're wrong about Kalm, Gold Saurcer, and Costa Del Sol but getting into this is clearly not worth it given your apparent mental capacity.
>Old Final Fantasy games don't have extremely autistic world building
Holy shit, you noticed? Wow I'm so impressed. That's why they are better games.
>You talk about leaving space to imagination but those overworlds keep being absurdly inconsistent
Meanwhile your examples are laughably autistic, and heavily focused on Final Fantasy VII which is the transition from the old-style 2D "leave it to the imagination" design and the more modern, aesthetics-and-story-oriented design. Final Fantasy VII is a game designed heavily on the original 2D-era formula, but also included lots of cinematic cutscenes, exquisitely detailed environments, a far more elaborate and detailed story than anything that had come before. This triggers autists you to lose their shit over inconsistencies which you then extend to all the 2D games because you're more interested in trying to impress random anons by being nitpicking critic than understanding anything relevant.
If you think the world of FFVI, of all of them, isn't coherent, you literally did not play the game.
I think he made quite enough of an argument for you to just dismiss it as "he didn't play"
Not that anon but 95% of his post is just ranting about FF7 and 8.
why not answer the question instead of choking out nonsense like you have 10 dicks in your mouth?
narrative and story are a bit sparse. more than anything else though, the combat simply wasn't compelling enough to sit through hours of; compounded by the fact that there isn't a single - Pixel Remaster excluded (haven't played it yet to determine) - competent version of the game as a piece of software. the 3D version would be the definitive version afaic, considering that it tries to flesh out the story, and it is slightly more challenging, but goddamn the incompetency of it as a piece of software. even the SNES/GBA versions have issues when it comes to battles running properly, but nothing as annoying as the 3D game. but even then, the 2D titles suffer from being dumbfrick easy. the biggest shame is, I was excited to play FFIV, as I remembered booting it up on an emulator when I was a kid, and being enthralled by the opening cinematic, but there is just too much in the way. take my opinion with a grain of salt tho, FFVIII is my favorite entry in the series, followed by FFXII and FFX-2
The SNES version should not have issues with battles running properly. There are a few minor things due to the age of the game, like the logic for determining whether a status attack lands or misses is whether the animation plays. This is awkward, and there are a few other UI elements that are mildly clunky, like having to switch to the status screen to see the stat bonuses from equipment.
>the 2D titles suffer from being dumbfrick easy
That's every Final Fantasy though. FFIV is actually reasonably balanced such that it gets gradually harder as you progress, culminating in the most challenging fight of the game as the final boss, unlike most of the other games that start out easy and stay easy with maybe a couple of random unbalanced bosses in the middle somewhere with a gimmick that can give you trouble (mostly because you've been playing half-asleep).
Also FFIV you can finish in 20 hours easily on your first try without even pushing hard. Most subsequent games in the series take at least twice that long (but don't necessarily have twice as much combat depth).
Can't say for the other Versi n but I play it on the first PSP and it was really well suited for the console, music and graphic wise, for what I can tell the best port. I like the game, it lack on the story side, it is sparsed for moment you're right, the premise is fairly basic, but it has its final fantasy charm, the characters are cool too. I really enjoyed it and thought it would be more dull.
>as a piece of software
>even the SNES/GBA versions have issues when it comes to battles running properly
lolwut? Brain damage much?
>pixel remasters
I dislike it because it's completely on rails. Even 13 is better than the absolute borefest that is FF4.
This is a pretty stupid (reductionist) comparison. The games are structured and paced very differently. You can probably 100% FF4 before you are even halfway through FF13.
And at least FF4 has room to move. 13 is just a constant straight and narrow hall. FF4 is linear but at least has some diversions similar to FFX.
How does it feel to be so incredibly wrong
Is it already this time of the month?
School has been out for weeks.
I beat this game as a child around the time I learned how to read
What don't you like in it ?
the worst FFs are easily any game that came after X, X-2, XII, XIII, XV - take your pick
(MMOs aren't real FFs so who cares)
except X-2 was much better than X
FFIV is great.
FFVIII is the worst one.
OP here since people are asking:
Currently in the moon, just before what I assume is the final dungeon.
The story and characters are boring as shit. I'm not interested enough in it to find out what happens next. Note that I'm not saying that the problem is that it's generic or something like that. You can have a story filled with the most generic shit but at least make it grab my attention, which is what this game fails at.
Most fights are just mashing the attack button since most enemies will only be taking like 10% of your hp and they die in one or two hits. The encounter rate is annoyingly high, not enough to make me stop playing but I still want to point that out. Also, there are certain enemies that do REALLY low damage but they act quick so you have to sit through them doing useless attacks over and over before you get a chance to do something. Pair that with the high encounter rate and it becomes a pain in the ass. Also, bosses are dissapointingly easy. I'm not saying I want bosses where I need to go out and grind beforehand, but I don't want bosses where the fight is just braindead spam attack and curaga until it dies either.
Dungeon design is boring and pretty much a straight line most of the time.
The inventory capacity limit is useless as a game mechanic that I suppose was put in there to give a certain taste of resource management to the game, but it really is just a pain in the ass that was lazily implemented. If it was made to make me unable to carry a shit ton of hi-potions then don't make me able to buy so many of them so easily. The amount of gold you get in the FFs I've played so far (IV and those before it) is pretty damn high and you end up hoarding it because there's nothing to spend it on. Improve your implementation of the gold earned and spent throughout the game instead of just putting a cap that makes me go out of my way to sell useless items for meager gold that I don't need.
sounds like your time would've been better spent playing the ds version, at least as far as the battles are concerned
who knows, its presentation might've made you like the plot and characters as well but that's debatable
I don't think a change in style would've made the story more bearable unless they expanded on it, but I would've gone with the ds version had I known that the battles were tweaked there.
>they expanded on it
in parts they did, mostly to do with golbez' background
>The encounter rate is annoyingly high
Agreed. And the item drop rate of rare items is abysmal.
https://forums.ppsspp.org/showthread.php?tid=17369
_C0 No Encounters (Square=Off)
_L 0x200CF798 0x1000004C
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_L 0x200CF798 0x14C70053
Looking back, you could say this game feels very flat, even when put up with other FFs of the time. However, it was the first game that had the most recognizable elements of the franchise, and in a way almost every other FF game has stuff from it, be it in direct references or in feel. It's pretty much the most "Final Fantasy" game out there. I'd still reccomend it as the first FF for newcomers. It's not baby easy, but not overwhelmingly hardcore either. Perfectly manageable.
Kind of a based opinion; what makes you say that, OP?
FFIV has the structure of a comic book issue/manga volume, probably more than any other FF game.
There's a lot of setpieces with beginning, middle and end, there's a lot of cliffhangers, in a way you could even call them "clickbaits".
It's not a story that makes a lot of sense when put together, but it's a story that makes me want to "turn the page", see what happens next.
In comparison with FFV, which has a way more addicting job system but the actual story is very subdued, it really feels more like a Dragon Quest-lite, the same "page turning" effect is not there, it doesn't feel as epic or desperate to catch your attention as FFIV, at least not from a story point of view, maybe from a game mechanics point of view.
I like most Final Fantasy games because of the fast pace, both in story and the general structure.
I don't personally care about world building in fantasy stories at all, so the way Final Fantasy just takes you from situation to situation is just what I want in a story based game. I also really like how weird and imaginative some of the games are. That's why I enjoy VIII, despite its huge pile of obvious problems
iv has lewd green haired slot.
based anon who logs in, checks catalog, then replies every thread with a single phrase
All RPGs with heavy story focus are shit.
Doesn't get worse than FF2. Anyone who says otherwise hasn't played it.
You're a zoomer with no patience and no taste, much like OP and almost every other homosexual in here.
FF I through X are all great (yes, VIII is great, go cry to mommy).
MMOshit and XII onwards is where the snoozefest unFF-like titles begin.
No, FF2 really fricking sucks. Shit progression, shit story, constant backtracking, moronic magic penalty system, useless keyword system that amounts to some chests before the final dungeon at best. 2 is the worst, the contrarian's choice.
>Easily the worst FF.
so you skipped II? please skip to VIII, XII, XIII and XV next
2 is the worst but 4 is damn close
Not even close, it's the second best FF and only beaten out by V. The enemy AI alone was such a huge leap over anything that came before it.
I like how such a simple post leads to so much discussion
Best in the series. Everything about it is just right.