Thoughts of FFXII?

>I'm shit at RPG's and need my hand held throughout
go play pokemon Black person

cope

Not defending FF12's implementation of missable content, but the design choice itself is perfectly valid and engaging if the developer is competent knows what they're doing (ie. not Square).

This isn't even rumor generating content. The Zodiac Spear locked behind the four chests is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to get without a guide. Not hard, not difficult, not rare. Impossible. No human could ever find it, not ever, the lifespan of the universe would not be enough to find it. Only reading the guide works.

You did no such thing. You probably found the second spear from a chest that spawns randomly (and has a 0.001 chance to drop it). We're talking about the first one, from the necropolis. You don't get that one "by mistake". You only get it by reading the official guide and following it step by step.

You probably found it in that other chest that has like a 1/500 chance of having a Zodiac Spear inside. I guess for a game that was only supposed to play like an MMO in theory they sure didn’t shy away from MMO-tier drop rates (or MMO-tier lack of respect for human concepts of real time) on a lot of things.

Obtaining pic related was one of the worst grinds of my life.

And if true, you didn't know how.

>Missable content is a hallmark of actual RPGs, rather than simplistic grinding games

Not the kind of shit they did in FF12 and if you're defending it I'm assuming you don't know what the player needs to do to get the Zodiac Spear. I'll tell you.

The player needs to avoid opening four specific treasure chests. They are in plain sight and not marked in any way, they're just default treasure boxes. There is no indication at all or or any kind of logic which four have to remain shut. The game does not give ANY hints to this whatsoever. You could play a trillion times trillion years and never figure this out because there is no indication that these chests are connected to the spear. Oh, and you can't close the chests after opening them. You literally just randomly have to refuse to pick up unmarked non-special treasure to get the best weapon in the game.

This is not good game design.

This isn't even rumor generating content. The Zodiac Spear locked behind the four chests is LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE to get without a guide. Not hard, not difficult, not rare. Impossible. No human could ever find it, not ever, the lifespan of the universe would not be enough to find it. Only reading the guide works.

How about you go frick yourself with your shit opinion? In a huge game like FF locking the best shit behind arbitrary missable nonsense is gay. If it was instead the third best spear, no one would be as salty.

Also dumbass acting like non autists play this game

It's extra shit you don't need

But you don't need the Zodiac Spear. It isn't even the best weapon outside of shear brute force. It doesn't have combo potential like katanas or greatswords, or any sort of elemental bonus.

It's not bad game design

explain how it's bad

Why is that bad? Why do you need to collect everything on your first playthrough?

Yes, you pathetic zoomer homosexual.

Requiring a guide to play a game is bad game design. It means your game in of itself is not sufficient.

I thought it was already apparent what I meant. Whatever you put in the guide could easily be translated into clues in the game or locked behind a puzzle. The game in itself should not require knowledge outside of the game that the game itself does not provide, otherwise the game design by definition is insufficient.

You have this excuse for NES, and maybe SNES at best. Name a single PSX or later game that didn't have tons of tutorials.

This is a bot.

>Boomers will tell you that finding something that didn't make sense or didn't have an answer, then crawling through the early days of the internet to find a community to find and share answers was great
You clearly don't agree.

It's a pitiable thing. I encourage you all to play games and try things without ~~*preconceived notions*~~.

You're either playing dumb or are exceptionally moronic. Either way, this "discussion" is over.

Would you consider the Chaos badges the same as the Zodiac sphere?

>big number spear with zero strategic use is missable content
You are a moron.

What is your problem outside of this specific spear?

No, you don't understand. Under no circumstances do you need the Zodiac Spear. Beat the penultimate boss? Best DPS is Excalibur, a greatswrod. Beat the ultimate boss? Yagyu Darkblade, a ninja sword. Everything inbetween? Katana with Genji equipment. There are literally zero meaningful battles where Zodiac Spear is optimal.

i feel like its less of an egregious sin because its not that complicatred, its not specific intervals, the first fight its everytime he pulls out a sword and in the 2nd its the same except just twice, once before and after cutscenes

you can also straight up buy it in Zodiac version. for 12 years these people have clung onto a single weapon in the game as evidence the game is bad as if Ultimate weapons in all FFs have been explicitly detailed in game.

and its not even the best weapon. youd get further just stealing Genji Gloves and Muramasa from Gilgamesh. Zodiac Spear is not the make or break for helping you beat Hell Wyrm or Yiazmat

nah it wasnt, even if youre a pleb. raw damage is for plebs.

Holy Lance with and White Mask with a gambit to attack yourself when low and various other shenanigans are better setups than just "strongest weapon".

like i said, people are clinging to it HARD as if it does so much damage everything else is invalidated but it doesnt, even in the original. having a black mage caste Scathe or Ardor on a reflected party with your White Mage having an Opal Ring to stop reflected spells being bounced is infinitely more useful than one pleb on your party with a strong weapon.

its shit design but the Zodiac Spear being obtuse is not a negative against a game in a genre with frequently batshit ultimate weapon steps. saying it is, is practically bandwagoning, like saying Emerald Weapon in FFVII makes it the best JRPG ever made because its harder than Sephiroth and is secret

>needed
it isn't

>Missable content is a hallmark of actual RPGs, rather than simplistic grinding games

Not the kind of shit they did in FF12 and if you're defending it I'm assuming you don't know what the player needs to do to get the Zodiac Spear. I'll tell you.

The player needs to avoid opening four specific treasure chests. They are in plain sight and not marked in any way, they're just default treasure boxes. There is no indication at all or or any kind of logic which four have to remain shut. The game does not give ANY hints to this whatsoever. You could play a trillion times trillion years and never figure this out because there is no indication that these chests are connected to the spear. Oh, and you can't close the chests after opening them. You literally just randomly have to refuse to pick up unmarked non-special treasure to get the best weapon in the game.

This is not good game design.

Missable content is a hallmark of actual RPGs, rather than simplistic grinding games which is what you seem to be looking for.

The zodiac spear isn't even that bad. A player could eventually deduce that certain chests vanish when you open the one in the necrohol.
The invisible airship chest with the invisible bow is way worse.

its lost on them. even in Zodiac the chest requirement was scrapped and the "clue" is the items in 12 chests on Phon Coast being labeled suspiciously in japanese- lost entirely in the english translation. now the argument is actually "but Great Trango, The Grandia III and the Silmarillion have 1% drop rates, defend that", when they actually are fully cheat weapons and only supposed to be found by autists in the first place, silimarly to those "FFXI Player beats secret boss playing for 6 days!"

genuinely concerned how a secret weapon caused this much seethe

>"it plays itself, its fricking boring"
yeah okay now try letting it play itself during any boss battle without being overleveled and watch Fran get Disabled and Reversed and killed immediately because Ashe cast Curaja automatically and party wiped. unless you WANT to click attack 40,000 times i dont get how setting up your actions to work cleanly is a bad mechanic

Quick
Post your favorite side areas in FF games

pic related. fed this fat b***h way too many Fuma Shurikens

sure, i just dont know why you would, i love the system- im just getting memories of Golmore Jungle's boss and the Necrohol where you get 900 status effects every 3 seconds and it sounds like ass to individually cure everyone and then rebuff

>unless you WANT to click attack 40,000 times
I do this lol. I usually use around 3-5 gambits. Sometimes less.
It's not because I hate gambits. I just like it that way

https://www.pixiv.net/en/artworks/111230602

exodiashe the forbidden one aside
what the FRICK are those gambits
it's like the list of neurons that connect to make a person dump gas on their heads and set themselves on fire.

its a list of gambits to make someone dump something alright

https://files.catbox.moe/cf12w4.jpg

never say we mistreat our customers

>walking through empty ship
>walking through empty tower

It's the same thing. If you somehow think the Zertinan caverns are empty then so are the Deep Sea Research Center and Fork Tower

if youve never played XIV and youre saying XII is an MMO then youre talking shit and your opinion is worthless as like i said you can REALLY tell where they just scraped XII- and i dont mean in an esoteric way, there are character models and plot point lifted directly from the PS2 game

Why do you play video games?

That's an interesting opinion

...there are multiple dots on the lisence board to generate MP based on doing and taking damage, the only point in the game MP is a problem is maybe at the start.

yeah nah yeah, that makes sense cos Tomb of Raithwall is the "first" real dungeon and the only spell you have is probably cure and 100MP

>a homeless girl affording this shit
lol. lmao, even.

You mean knockoffs?

>grind money
son, i really genuinely dont want to just call you a moron but the loot in the game youve been picking up has no other use than to be sold so you can buy healing items and motes.

the loop of hunts being to defeat a difficult enemy that you leveled up on the way to, selling loot from the enemies on the way to it, and then going on to the next hunt shouldve been more than enough to have you not say the "combat sucks"

i got filtered at the first Ghost casting Doom, but i went back and finished it later then continued with the rest of hunts- i feel like youre conflating "the combat sucks" with "i genuinely dont know whats going on and i dont want to try"

see the difference is i didnt lambast the entire game having shit combat just because i couldnt heal doom and got slapped to shit at level 10.

its an old game, but still not as bad as FFIV where you should feel the need to sweat bullets wondering if you need to grind more- all youre doing is convincing me and painting a picture of the kinds of people who dont like FFXII- which is a generalisation and a dumb thing to do but the only way you could possibly be having a problem is if youre not playing the game even semi-correctly.

because if you were, the real point you wouldve dropped the game playing like this is White Chocobo putting up anti-physical and anti-magic barriers for 2 minutes straight and screaming autistically while running up and down Paramina. do you play RPGs often because i absolutely would just fricking hate FFXII if i didnt for the same reason people like Ross on AccursedFarms doesnt like WOW. its just 4 homies in a row hitting stuff but thats not ALL the genre is

but XII has a significantly higher number of combat interactions than any other FF. its my favourite below CC. it actually has systems and buffs above "take less magic damage" or "take less physical damage". i havnt had more "fun" in a FF than casting Berserk, Haste, Bravery, Reflect, Reverse, Bubble and Decoy on a single party member and then letting high level spells bounce off their butthole into a Boss im underleveled for and saying "lol rip" in 3 seconds

im not so neurotic im going to try and convince you youre 100% dumbdumb for not liking it. it just sounds from description of what youve been doing that something went horribly wrong

>30 hours in
How the frick are you 30 hours in, still at the Sochen Cave Palace, and underleveled to boot? I managed to beat the game for the first time in far less time than that, without grinding and without being underleveled. What the frick have you been doing all this time?

yeah but heres the thing, i reckon once the Black Chocobos in Ozmone started taking significant chunks out of Ashe's panties you wouldve realised you probably shouldve leveled a little bit, and doubly so once you turned around and saw the Dullahands beating the shit out of Basch.

having 3 bench characters underleveled is a more common occurence than having your entire party struggle against a ghost 30 hours in

>I managed to beat the game for the first time in far less time than that

Bullshit. I'm over 40 hours in and only just got to Bahamut with the party barely level 50, and I've been abusing turbo and guides half the time