Final Fantasy

[Chindie]

Stranger of Paradise is destined to be one of those games that like, 4 people really, really like, and everyone else shrugs and files it in 'play in game drought when it's a tenner'.

It's so, so bizarre a thing. Prequel to FF1 but done in the FF7 remake style but as made by Team Ninja where they spent the entire time making a massively customisable combat system and the entire visuals department took the week off.

[Daweii]

The game is essentially Nioh with a Final Fantasy skin. Stranger of Paradise has all the depth of Nioh 1 & 2 in a package that is trying to be as absurd as possible. Almost every review talks about how the main characters, the story and the visuals are average/terrible, while praising how good the gameplay is. Part of me thinks Team Ninja would have been better off making Nioh 3 instead. 

[Daweii]

Started playing Stranger of Paradise today. 

My first impressions are as follows;

• The gameplay is good, albeit massively dumbed down compared to Team Ninja's more recent output in Nioh.
• The game throws a lot of loot at you and most of it is pointless. The only thing the game seems to care about is equipment level. The sheer depth of Nioh's loot is completely missing from this game so far.
• The voice acting is atrocious.
• The cutscenes have been awkward with wooden movements and basic lip syncing.
• The visuals are PS3 quality which would be fine except I have had occasional frame drops running these PS3 visuals on a PS5. 
• I'm not far enough in to talk about the story, but based on what I have played I don't think it'll be the story that keeps me playing. It hasn't impressed me yet. 

It's a solid 6/10 currently. If you're a fan of games that are purely good gameplay and nothing else then you might enjoy this, but if you need good graphics, story and cutscenes to hold your attention then Stranger of Paradise will likely disappoint.  

[Daweii]

Finished the game. Wait for a discount. 

[hogso]

Resonant Arcs FFX story analysis started last week

I'm playing along, and enjoying the early game so much more than I remember. It's great. 

I also had essentially the perfect blitzball game in Luca. 

Took an early lead with Tidus, the Goers came back, leaving the score 1-2 at half time. 

Just before Wakka comes on in the second half, Tidus scored via the Jecht shot. 

At 2-2, with about 30 seconds to go, Wakka scores the winner. 

This will forever be my head cannon for how that match should play out now. 

[og1874]

I have to say, in all my time playing video games, I was never able to get into the Final Fantasy thing. I couldn't even get through VII because of the annoying random battles.

Always felt I was missing out on some great stories, but it feels impenetrable

[Keyblade]

8 hours ago, og1874 said:

I have to say, in all my time playing video games, I was never able to get into the Final Fantasy thing. I couldn't even get through VII because of the annoying random battles.

Always felt I was missing out on some great stories, but it feels impenetrable

In the modern ports of FFVII (at least for the Switch one) you can completely disable random battles if you want with a button combo. Grinding is part of the experience but this can help when things get too tedious. And to be fair, I've never found FFVII's encounter rate to be particularly obtrusive. It's definitely not Breath of Fire II levels

[hogso]

Perhaps it depends on your experience when you were younger? I'd agree, FFVII isn't too bad for random encounters...but diving in to a game like that now, I can imagine it would be a bit of putting. 

To expand on @Keyblades point above, not only can you avoid all random encounters, you can also give yourself max hp and stuff like that. It would eliminate any challenge, so I would absolutely not recommend it...but it would at least allow you to enjoy those stories freely.

As it happens though, the FF I'm playing at the moment, X, doesn't have any options like that at all. Which is odd, as the end game is potentially the most grindy FF of all. 

[ender4]

7 hours ago, hogso said:

Perhaps it depends on your experience when you were younger? I'd agree, FFVII isn't too bad for random encounters...but diving in to a game like that now, I can imagine it would be a bit of putting. 

To expand on @Keyblades point above, not only can you avoid all random encounters, you can also give yourself max hp and stuff like that. It would eliminate any challenge, so I would absolutely not recommend it...but it would at least allow you to enjoy those stories freely.

As it happens though, the FF I'm playing at the moment, X, doesn't have any options like that at all. Which is odd, as the end game is potentially the most grindy FF of all. 

Have you played X-2 and did you like it?

[GarethRDR]

18 hours ago, og1874 said:

I have to say, in all my time playing video games, I was never able to get into the Final Fantasy thing. I couldn't even get through VII because of the annoying random battles.

Always felt I was missing out on some great stories, but it feels impenetrable

Reminds me of my first time ever playing FF7, I was one of those for whom it was my first RPG of any kind so the concept of levelling up was totally lost on me and I ended up blazing through the game at pace whilst running away from pretty much every battle.  This culminated in getting completely stuck to the point of abandoning the game at the Gi Nattak boss fight (which is funny in hindsight as unbeknownst to a young me at the time, Gi Nattak can be one-shotted with a Phoenix Down).  I wouldn't come back to the game for another 6 months.

If you wanted to revisit the game now, the PS4 port has a 3 x Speed mod amongst others that really help alleviate the grind.

[hogso]

4 hours ago, ender4 said:

Have you played X-2 and did you like it?

Yeah, it's great. But...it's probably the most divisive numbered FF entry in the series for a number of reasons. 

It's very silly for a start. And then there's the absurd 100% system, which can result in you missing the perfect ending, from more or less the instant you start playing. For that reason, it kinda needs a guide if you want to 100% it. 

[hogso]

Tldw; it's not a good remaster, to the point it shouldn't really be called a remaster. The inclusion of Radical Dreamers is a good bonus, though. If you can, play it on original hardware with a CRT instead. The hope is that SE listen to feedback, and work harder to make the AI up scaling work better with games of this era, or at least present the option for a CRT mask for current tech. 

It is a really interesting game though, which purposely did things a lot different to FF games not just of the time, but in general. The soundtrack may be one of the very best from the 32 bit era as well. 

[Ingram85]

I’ll never understand why companies remaster these good but lesser known games compared to the big games in their respective series. Why not Chrono Trigger? Surely that’s the one everyone would buy. Bizarre. 

[hogso]

I may be well off the mark here, but as far as SE are concerned at least, they appear to me to be a bit more comfortable with putting 16 bit era games on mobile devices rather than on home consoles.

At least gamers in Europe can legitimately buy a release of CC now. I'd take Xenogears getting the same treatment in a heartbeat, warts and all. 

[Keyblade]

On 10/04/2022 at 04:07, hogso said:

Tldw; it's not a good remaster, to the point it shouldn't really be called a remaster. The inclusion of Radical Dreamers is a good bonus, though. If you can, play it on original hardware with a CRT instead. The hope is that SE listen to feedback, and work harder to make the AI up scaling work better with games of this era, or at least present the option for a CRT mask for current tech. 

It is a really interesting game though, which purposely did things a lot different to FF games not just of the time, but in general. The soundtrack may be one of the very best from the 32 bit era as well. 

They should just invest money on coming up with good CRT shaders. It can be done. Games like Sonic Mania have em, and Capcom have some good ones on their collections. Chrono Cross is a good looking game on a CRT, there was no need to butcher it like this. Their upscaling rarely works. Ironically though, the SaGa remasters mostly look pretty good, but I'm not sure it's an AI algorithm for those.

[hogso]

Following @Ingram85s post about FFX in another thread, I almost feel obliged to follow it up with a bit more detail about what was actually going on.

Don't read the following if you ever intend to play Final Fantasy X, as it will give the whole thing away. 

Spoiler

The Fayth are individuals who willingly gave up their lives, and became - literally in a way - immortalised in statues. Their actual bodies were sealed away, and via some sort of ritual, their souls were striped apart from their physical bodies. So they're not exactly dead, but they're not alive in the conventional sense either. A lot of the Fayth were sealed away in temples. 

Pyreflies are an aspect of nature in Spira. They aren't actually flies, although they resemble glow bugs when in high concentrations. Instead, they're something quite ambiguous, but they do have the ability to manifest unreal things, and give them shape, and a physical presence, in Spira. 

Ten thousand years before the events of the majority of the game, there was a war between Bevelle and Zanarkand, which the former won, and the latter was largely destroyed. Yu Yevon, the leader of Bevelle, took his most loyal followers, and turned them in to Fayth. 

Fayth have the ability to dream, and those dreams can manifest in to something real within Spira due to the power of the Pyreflies. So, when a summoner calls an Aeon, they're actually calling forth the dream of a specific Aeon from a Fayth they have encountered at a temple. For example, the Fayth who dreams of Shiva would have lived in a very cold climate, so it's almost like a representation of their personality. 

Yu Yevon encased a large number of Fayth within a wall near to Mount Gagazet, and used their power to dream of Zanarkand at it's peak, as a way to preserve it - the buildings, the people, everything, as it was before the war. In a way, that version of Zanarkand is a huge summon, albeit one completely inaccessible to the normal inhabitants of Spira. The people within this dream think they are real, such is the power of the Fayth. They fall in love, have children, work, play, as if they were alive. And they did this for ten thousand years. 

This summoning of Zanarkand was of great importance to Yu Yevon, so much so that he created an 'armour' for himself so his summoning would not be disturbed. This armour is Sin. Yu Yevon lost his humanity as a result doing this, but such was his obsession, he went on summoning dream Zanarkand via the Fayth. At the same time, Sin began to rampage across Spira. 

Occasionally during those ten thousand years, Sin would be defeated, and a period of calm would begin. In essence this period of time is how long it takes for Yevon to jump from his current body to the body of the summoner who defeated Sin, and in doing so, a new Sin is created. 

The Fayth grew tired of this continual dream, and the effort of maintaining dream Zanarkand for thousands of years. The Fayth from temples who are manifested as Aeons by summoners can come and go from dream Zanarkand as they please. It is Bahamut, who appears as a child, who selects Tidus to be the one to defeat Yu Yevon, and stop the dream of the Fayth. 

Tidus himself, then, is a summon created by the Fayth, and manifested in Spira by Pyreflies, so he appears to be a real person. He himself also believes his Zanarkand to be real.

When Yuna and her guardians eventually defeat Sin and Yu Yevon, they break this cycle, and Spira enters a period of eternal calm. 

Because of that, though, Tidus can no longer continue to exist in Spira, the real world, because the Fayth are finally at peace, their dream of Zanarkand ended. 

There's a little more to it than that - Yu Yevon's daughter, Yunalesca and her husband who were the first to defeat Sin play a significant role in the lore and history of Spira, as does Auron when it comes to the actual 'isekai' of Tidus from dream Zanarkand to the real world. He's actually undead and also comprised of Pyreflies like Tidus, but instead of being a summon, or dream, it's easier to think of him as a ghost who was tied to the real world which prevented his soul from moving on. 

 

It's kind of beautiful when all that comes together at the end of FFX. 

[Dante_Lockhart]

9 hours ago, hogso said:

Following @Ingram85s post about FFX in another thread, I almost feel obliged to follow it up with a bit more detail about what was actually going on.

Don't read the following if you ever intend to play Final Fantasy X, as it will give the whole thing away. 

  Hide contents

The Fayth are individuals who willingly gave up their lives, and became - literally in a way - immortalised in statues. Their actual bodies were sealed away, and via some sort of ritual, their souls were striped apart from their physical bodies. So they're not exactly dead, but they're not alive in the conventional sense either. A lot of the Fayth were sealed away in temples. 

Pyreflies are an aspect of nature in Spira. They aren't actually flies, although they resemble glow bugs when in high concentrations. Instead, they're something quite ambiguous, but they do have the ability to manifest unreal things, and give them shape, and a physical presence, in Spira. 

Ten thousand years before the events of the majority of the game, there was a war between Bevelle and Zanarkand, which the former won, and the latter was largely destroyed. Yu Yevon, the leader of Bevelle, took his most loyal followers, and turned them in to Fayth. 

Fayth have the ability to dream, and those dreams can manifest in to something real within Spira due to the power of the Pyreflies. So, when a summoner calls an Aeon, they're actually calling forth the dream of a specific Aeon from a Fayth they have encountered at a temple. For example, the Fayth who dreams of Shiva would have lived in a very cold climate, so it's almost like a representation of their personality. 

Yu Yevon encased a large number of Fayth within a wall near to Mount Gagazet, and used their power to dream of Zanarkand at it's peak, as a way to preserve it - the buildings, the people, everything, as it was before the war. In a way, that version of Zanarkand is a huge summon, albeit one completely inaccessible to the normal inhabitants of Spira. The people within this dream think they are real, such is the power of the Fayth. They fall in love, have children, work, play, as if they were alive. And they did this for ten thousand years. 

This summoning of Zanarkand was of great importance to Yu Yevon, so much so that he created an 'armour' for himself so his summoning would not be disturbed. This armour is Sin. Yu Yevon lost his humanity as a result doing this, but such was his obsession, he went on summoning dream Zanarkand via the Fayth. At the same time, Sin began to rampage across Spira. 

Occasionally during those ten thousand years, Sin would be defeated, and a period of calm would begin. In essence this period of time is how long it takes for Yevon to jump from his current body to the body of the summoner who defeated Sin, and in doing so, a new Sin is created. 

The Fayth grew tired of this continual dream, and the effort of maintaining dream Zanarkand for thousands of years. The Fayth from temples who are manifested as Aeons by summoners can come and go from dream Zanarkand as they please. It is Bahamut, who appears as a child, who selects Tidus to be the one to defeat Yu Yevon, and stop the dream of the Fayth. 

Tidus himself, then, is a summon created by the Fayth, and manifested in Spira by Pyreflies, so he appears to be a real person. He himself also believes his Zanarkand to be real.

When Yuna and her guardians eventually defeat Sin and Yu Yevon, they break this cycle, and Spira enters a period of eternal calm. 

Because of that, though, Tidus can no longer continue to exist in Spira, the real world, because the Fayth are finally at peace, their dream of Zanarkand ended. 

There's a little more to it than that - Yu Yevon's daughter, Yunalesca and her husband who were the first to defeat Sin play a significant role in the lore and history of Spira, as does Auron when it comes to the actual 'isekai' of Tidus from dream Zanarkand to the real world. He's actually undead and also comprised of Pyreflies like Tidus, but instead of being a summon, or dream, it's easier to think of him as a ghost who was tied to the real world which prevented his soul from moving on. 

 

It's kind of beautiful when all that comes together at the end of FFX. 

Spoiler

Thoughts of the after game scenes in FFX-2 where Yuna whistles for him and he becomes a real boy?

 

[hogso]

5 hours ago, Dante_Lockhart said:

  Reveal hidden contents

Thoughts of the after game scenes in FFX-2 where Yuna whistles for him and he becomes a real boy?

 

Haha, it was a bit fan service-y, but 

Spoiler

There is at least a lore reason that makes sense, Bahamut uses the last of his power as a kind of reward to manifest Tidus again via the Pyreflies.

As such, I don't really mind the scene itself...but the requirements to get the 100% to trigger it...boy oh boy. Tidus should manifest in front of the player, let alone Yuna!

 

[Keyblade]

20 hours ago, hogso said:

Following @Ingram85s post about FFX in another thread, I almost feel obliged to follow it up with a bit more detail about what was actually going on.

Don't read the following if you ever intend to play Final Fantasy X, as it will give the whole thing away. 

  Reveal hidden contents

The Fayth are individuals who willingly gave up their lives, and became - literally in a way - immortalised in statues. Their actual bodies were sealed away, and via some sort of ritual, their souls were striped apart from their physical bodies. So they're not exactly dead, but they're not alive in the conventional sense either. A lot of the Fayth were sealed away in temples. 

Pyreflies are an aspect of nature in Spira. They aren't actually flies, although they resemble glow bugs when in high concentrations. Instead, they're something quite ambiguous, but they do have the ability to manifest unreal things, and give them shape, and a physical presence, in Spira. 

Ten thousand years before the events of the majority of the game, there was a war between Bevelle and Zanarkand, which the former won, and the latter was largely destroyed. Yu Yevon, the leader of Bevelle, took his most loyal followers, and turned them in to Fayth. 

Fayth have the ability to dream, and those dreams can manifest in to something real within Spira due to the power of the Pyreflies. So, when a summoner calls an Aeon, they're actually calling forth the dream of a specific Aeon from a Fayth they have encountered at a temple. For example, the Fayth who dreams of Shiva would have lived in a very cold climate, so it's almost like a representation of their personality. 

Yu Yevon encased a large number of Fayth within a wall near to Mount Gagazet, and used their power to dream of Zanarkand at it's peak, as a way to preserve it - the buildings, the people, everything, as it was before the war. In a way, that version of Zanarkand is a huge summon, albeit one completely inaccessible to the normal inhabitants of Spira. The people within this dream think they are real, such is the power of the Fayth. They fall in love, have children, work, play, as if they were alive. And they did this for ten thousand years. 

This summoning of Zanarkand was of great importance to Yu Yevon, so much so that he created an 'armour' for himself so his summoning would not be disturbed. This armour is Sin. Yu Yevon lost his humanity as a result doing this, but such was his obsession, he went on summoning dream Zanarkand via the Fayth. At the same time, Sin began to rampage across Spira. 

Occasionally during those ten thousand years, Sin would be defeated, and a period of calm would begin. In essence this period of time is how long it takes for Yevon to jump from his current body to the body of the summoner who defeated Sin, and in doing so, a new Sin is created. 

The Fayth grew tired of this continual dream, and the effort of maintaining dream Zanarkand for thousands of years. The Fayth from temples who are manifested as Aeons by summoners can come and go from dream Zanarkand as they please. It is Bahamut, who appears as a child, who selects Tidus to be the one to defeat Yu Yevon, and stop the dream of the Fayth. 

Tidus himself, then, is a summon created by the Fayth, and manifested in Spira by Pyreflies, so he appears to be a real person. He himself also believes his Zanarkand to be real.

When Yuna and her guardians eventually defeat Sin and Yu Yevon, they break this cycle, and Spira enters a period of eternal calm. 

Because of that, though, Tidus can no longer continue to exist in Spira, the real world, because the Fayth are finally at peace, their dream of Zanarkand ended. 

There's a little more to it than that - Yu Yevon's daughter, Yunalesca and her husband who were the first to defeat Sin play a significant role in the lore and history of Spira, as does Auron when it comes to the actual 'isekai' of Tidus from dream Zanarkand to the real world. He's actually undead and also comprised of Pyreflies like Tidus, but instead of being a summon, or dream, it's easier to think of him as a ghost who was tied to the real world which prevented his soul from moving on. 

 

It's kind of beautiful when all that comes together at the end of FFX. 

Bookmarking this for when I eventually complete it.

[ender4]

On 18/05/2022 at 22:19, hogso said:

Following @Ingram85s post about FFX in another thread, I almost feel obliged to follow it up with a bit more detail about what was actually going on.

Don't read the following if you ever intend to play Final Fantasy X, as it will give the whole thing away. 

  Hide contents

The Fayth are individuals who willingly gave up their lives, and became - literally in a way - immortalised in statues. Their actual bodies were sealed away, and via some sort of ritual, their souls were striped apart from their physical bodies. So they're not exactly dead, but they're not alive in the conventional sense either. A lot of the Fayth were sealed away in temples. 

Pyreflies are an aspect of nature in Spira. They aren't actually flies, although they resemble glow bugs when in high concentrations. Instead, they're something quite ambiguous, but they do have the ability to manifest unreal things, and give them shape, and a physical presence, in Spira. 

Ten thousand years before the events of the majority of the game, there was a war between Bevelle and Zanarkand, which the former won, and the latter was largely destroyed. Yu Yevon, the leader of Bevelle, took his most loyal followers, and turned them in to Fayth. 

Fayth have the ability to dream, and those dreams can manifest in to something real within Spira due to the power of the Pyreflies. So, when a summoner calls an Aeon, they're actually calling forth the dream of a specific Aeon from a Fayth they have encountered at a temple. For example, the Fayth who dreams of Shiva would have lived in a very cold climate, so it's almost like a representation of their personality. 

Yu Yevon encased a large number of Fayth within a wall near to Mount Gagazet, and used their power to dream of Zanarkand at it's peak, as a way to preserve it - the buildings, the people, everything, as it was before the war. In a way, that version of Zanarkand is a huge summon, albeit one completely inaccessible to the normal inhabitants of Spira. The people within this dream think they are real, such is the power of the Fayth. They fall in love, have children, work, play, as if they were alive. And they did this for ten thousand years. 

This summoning of Zanarkand was of great importance to Yu Yevon, so much so that he created an 'armour' for himself so his summoning would not be disturbed. This armour is Sin. Yu Yevon lost his humanity as a result doing this, but such was his obsession, he went on summoning dream Zanarkand via the Fayth. At the same time, Sin began to rampage across Spira. 

Occasionally during those ten thousand years, Sin would be defeated, and a period of calm would begin. In essence this period of time is how long it takes for Yevon to jump from his current body to the body of the summoner who defeated Sin, and in doing so, a new Sin is created. 

The Fayth grew tired of this continual dream, and the effort of maintaining dream Zanarkand for thousands of years. The Fayth from temples who are manifested as Aeons by summoners can come and go from dream Zanarkand as they please. It is Bahamut, who appears as a child, who selects Tidus to be the one to defeat Yu Yevon, and stop the dream of the Fayth. 

Tidus himself, then, is a summon created by the Fayth, and manifested in Spira by Pyreflies, so he appears to be a real person. He himself also believes his Zanarkand to be real.

When Yuna and her guardians eventually defeat Sin and Yu Yevon, they break this cycle, and Spira enters a period of eternal calm. 

Because of that, though, Tidus can no longer continue to exist in Spira, the real world, because the Fayth are finally at peace, their dream of Zanarkand ended. 

There's a little more to it than that - Yu Yevon's daughter, Yunalesca and her husband who were the first to defeat Sin play a significant role in the lore and history of Spira, as does Auron when it comes to the actual 'isekai' of Tidus from dream Zanarkand to the real world. He's actually undead and also comprised of Pyreflies like Tidus, but instead of being a summon, or dream, it's easier to think of him as a ghost who was tied to the real world which prevented his soul from moving on. 

 

It's kind of beautiful when all that comes together at the end of FFX. 

Thank you, I finished the game a few months ago and now after reading your post I’ve properly understood what was going on!