Final Fantasy

[hogso]

FF5 Plat'd. 

Now this is Final Fantasy. Everything Square learned in the 6 years since the first game comes together absolutely beautifully here. For me, this game contains the best song (Battle on the Big Bridge), possibly the best story scene (Galuf v Ex Death), and the best job system in any of the numbered games. 

I did get a bit frustrated with the Blue Magic requirements, it's very similar to 7 in so far as some them require control/manipulation of enemies and there's an rng element too with getting the spawns in the first place, but it's not a bad Plat at all. 

I enjoyed this playthrough so much that I actually did a bunch of stuff not necessary for the plat, like all summons, all songs, and some of the 'secrets' like the Bonobo Gourd accessory, or whatever it's called. 

I love that they settled on 4 (OK, 5) main playable characters as it allows their stories to breathe and build with each plot twist and story development. I know a lot of fans of the series don't rate 5 due it's tone, there are some proper belly laughs to be had and the juxtaposition against some very heavy moments was fine for me. 

It's true that if shows it's age in the way it deals with, let's say some delecate issues as we look back on it from space year 2023...but there's nothing obscene here, certainly not on a par with say Shera in 7.

I also love Bartz as the main character, he's almost like a proto Tidus - laid back, passionate, drawn in to this story through no fault of his own, but along for the ride come what may. 

My play time here was 24:44 taking my total playtime to 71:41

Rolling ranking 

5

4

3

1

2

On to 6, and I suppose the question is, do I dare rank 5 above it? Hmm. 

[villa4europe]

So you've completed the first 5 games in less time than it will take you to dodge the lightning strikes

Hoping you throw vagrant story in as a side as I love that game but probably have very wrong memories of it

And I can't wait to tell you you're wrong when you rank 13...terrible game that pretty much killed the series for me especially with them wasting so many years on it

Edited June 14, 2023 by villa4europe

[Dante_Lockhart]

16 hours ago, hogso said:

FF5 Plat'd. 

Now this is Final Fantasy. Everything Square learned in the 6 years since the first game comes together absolutely beautifully here. For me, this game contains the best song (Battle on the Big Bridge), possibly the best story scene (Galuf v Ex Death), and the best job system in any of the numbered games. 

I did get a bit frustrated with the Blue Magic requirements, it's very similar to 7 in so far as some them require control/manipulation of enemies and there's an rng element too with getting the spawns in the first place, but it's not a bad Plat at all. 

I enjoyed this playthrough so much that I actually did a bunch of stuff not necessary for the plat, like all summons, all songs, and some of the 'secrets' like the Bonobo Gourd accessory, or whatever it's called. 

I love that they settled on 4 (OK, 5) main playable characters as it allows their stories to breathe and build with each plot twist and story development. I know a lot of fans of the series don't rate 5 due it's tone, there are some proper belly laughs to be had and the juxtaposition against some very heavy moments was fine for me. 

It's true that if shows it's age in the way it deals with, let's say some delecate issues as we look back on it from space year 2023...but there's nothing obscene here, certainly not on a par with say Shera in 7.

I also love Bartz as the main character, he's almost like a proto Tidus - laid back, passionate, drawn in to this story through no fault of his own, but along for the ride come what may. 

My play time here was 24:44 taking my total playtime to 71:41

Rolling ranking 

5

4

3

1

2

On to 6, and I suppose the question is, do I dare rank 5 above it? Hmm. 

Personally I'd put 4 over 5. One of my favs from the older games.

[hogso]

3 hours ago, villa4europe said:

So you've completed the first 5 games in less time than it will take you to dodge the lightning strikes

Hoping you throw vagrant story in as a side as I love that game but probably have very wrong memories of it

And I can't wait to tell you you're wrong when you rank 13...terrible game that pretty much killed the series for me especially with them wasting so many years on it

Yeah it's a bit bad when you think about that FF 10 playtime I had versus what my playtime with the pixel remaster is! 

I wouldn't include Vagrant Story, but I am very fond of that game and did a playthrough of it not too long ago on original hardware. In a list of JRPGs in general, it wouldn't be up there with the likes of FF7, FF 10, FFT, Xenogears, DQ5, Chrono Trigger...but it isn't far off. It makes a fascinating double bill with MGS by the way, there are a lot of parallels to draw between the games, and not least because of the 'Phantom Pain' connection. 

I kind of can't wait to replay 13. Not because I think it's amazing - I don't think it's terrible either - but out of all the of the numbered games I have no idea where I will place it. Lower mid table I guess...?

[Keyblade]

I wish I had your dedication. I'm plodding along through 6 right now and have been for months.

[hogso]

On 15/06/2023 at 02:59, Keyblade said:

I wish I had your dedication. I'm plodding along through 6 right now and have been for months.

You could call it a passion project, or a labour of love...but I am sincere when I say I really would love to play them all through sequentially, even to the point that I've considered putting off starting 16 until I've completed the other numbered games. Spoilers, I won't, mostly thanks to the demo. Shall we talk about it?

 

It's kinda great. The main portion of the demo allows you to play the very start of the game, and lasts for about 2 hours. It's exposition heavy as a result, but it does at least allow the player to get a proper feel for the world and characters rather than just being dropped in to a scenario and showing off some gameplay and how pretty it is (which is my enduring memory of the FF8 demo). What is fantastic, and simply must be a main stay of the series from here on out, is the Active Time Lore system, which allows you to pause the game at more or less any time - during exploration, most battles, most cut scenes - and being situation specific will give you lore on your location, the characters who are present at the time, terms they've used, allowing the player to get an immediate fix on 'wait, who is that? what does that mean? where am i?', and it's absolutely seamlessly implemented. 

 A great example is the character of Jill. The writing is good enough to avoid 'as you know' dialogue so there's no unnatural explanation as to who she is between the character, but at the same time we're shown that Clive and Joshua are clearly close to her, they trust and care for her, but actually the player has no idea who she is. Well, the ACL will tell you exactly who she is, where she came from, and why she knows Clive and Joshua so well. 

The graphics and soundtrack are just incredible. I've played it on graphics mode so far and the performance has been really good, to the point that I'm not sure I'd bother with performance mode in the full game. There are vistas presented to the player which you just want to stare in to, and although it may be a gripe of some that this is a not so clever way of making it look open world when it isn't, I don't mind it at all. If the story remains focused as a result, and I hope it does, I'd take that over a fully open world anytime. 

Once you get your hand in with combat it feels really responsive and satisfying. I think that's all I can say about it, it's not the most amazing combat for those who have played lots of action RPGs, or adjacent genres, but man is it infinitely better than FF 15. 

I also need to hold my hands up and eat a bit of humble pie, I think. I felt some disdain towards the comments I'd heard and read when people played the demo versions of the game early as there was a lot of talk about Game of Thrones, when I felt that the identity of FF as it's own thing was so strong it seemed a bit lazy to make that comparison. But, you know what...it's kind of hard not to draw those comparisons now I've played it. There's the political intrigue, there's the betrayal, there's the fore, the swearing, heck even the sex (just a light amount in the demo!)...the tone it sets does indeed draw your mind back to those earlier series/books in the GoT story if you are or were a fan. 

And I think it's that tone that has me so excited for the game now. It's such a departure for the series, which has oft felt very anime esque. OK, I wouldn't say this is a million miles away from that, but it is very, very far removed from the bro's of 15, the destiny fighting of 13, the often light heartedness of 9 and 10...you'll notice that I've skipped 12 there, as for all intents and purposes this is an Ivalice game, and tonally has far more in common with 12, Tactics, 14 and Type-0 to the point that it almost doesn't feel like an FF game. But it is an FF game! For me as a total fan boy, this is the best possible outcome, I love to see the series evolve over the years. I know there is a desire from some to go back to turn based - and maybe they will one day - but when I play the new Dragon Quest games I always find myself thinking 'well it's good...but it's just too similar to the old stuff'.

So if you haven't played the demo, please try and make time! It might surprise you if you don't know anything about 16 yet. And if you have played the initial demo, DO NOT sleep on the Eikonic Challenge section of the demo which unlocks. This isn't simply a little battle, it's a fully formed section of the game from later on, with story, a bit of exploration, bosses, and the chance to use more abilities and experiment more than you can in that section from the start of the game.  

[hogso]

FFXVI release day! Very short early impressions - it's good, but it's not great.

[hogso]

FF6 Plat'd. 

The story goes that during development the team was way ahead of schedule, so much so that by the time the game was 'finished' at the point the party confront Kefka and Gestahl atop the floating continent, they thought, ya know what, we've got time to keep working on this game and do a whole other world! And thus the world of ruin was born, along with all those side quests wrapping up characters story arcs, various secrets, many new magicite, new songs, you name it...and of course the result was an unreal crunch at the end of development to get the game finished. 

And thank goodness they did it. For me, it's this portion of the game that permits FF6s place amongst the very best RPGs of all time, carrying perhaps the best examples of pixel art anywhere. Before the world of ruin it's a great game, the opera scene is unlike anything else really, the empires apparent betrayal after the peace talks is well executed, and the fact that there's no single main protagonist works really well for me. 

But...I still prefer the job system in FF5, and although it's kinda cool having your monk class character, for example, use button inputs like a proper fighting game, some characters abilities are so bad you'd be mad to use them, and some are so good you'd be mad not to. In addition in the late game, once you get the best magic from magicite, say Ultima plus the Soul of Thamasa relic for dual cast, and then recruit Gogo (mime class character) you're pretty much unbeatable against anything. 

Despite that, I've still never experienced anything like the world of ruin once the Warring Triad are unleashed by Kefka. It's underselling it a bit to say 'the bad guy wins', cos he kind of doesn't. That's the brilliance of Kefka's evil and why he's such an enduring villian. He doesn't want anything. In fact he wants exactly nothing, and will destroy everything - including himself - to achieve that. 

To rank this anything other than number one from games 1-6 would be obscene, I think. It has some of the best art (the Matsuda re-designed mechs right at the start of the game!), best story moments (the reveal of Kefka's madness, Celes' anguish in the world of ruin, Maduin's decision, the murder of Cyan's family...the list goes on), the best music (Terra's theme, Forever Love, Dancing **** Mad!), the best locations (has there ever been a more unique town than Zozo?)... 

As this is a platinum trophy run, it would be remiss of me not to mention the pixel remaster trophies here. They're fine on the most part, although the Joker's Death trophy, achieved by rolling all 7s on Setzer's slots, is potential nightmare fuel as the game is rigged to not allow you to hit it every time (odds of 1 in 32 apparently) even if your timing is frame perfect. I got real lucky with this, and used the pause method to get it. Otherwise, the trophies push you to some of those really well integrated extras in the world of ruin, such as the arena which is quite a unique addition (auto battle only with your selected char using whatever they want). 

Clear time was 26:52 which demonstrates some of the really good RNG I got with slots, battle formations on the Veldt for Gau's rage, spawn rates of rare mobs and so on. It's not a precise time as I did try and get joker's death via auto battle, meaning I wasn't probably...2 hours? Due to hitting 7-7-BAR which kills your party rather than the enemy. 

Total play time up to 98:33, really pleased with getting the six pixel remaster plats in under 100 hours.

Also really pleased I did it this way. It might sound odd, but as an unashamed fan boy of the series, to have something tangible as an achievement is really satisfying. 

Rolling ranking

6

5

4

3

1

2

 

I am presented with a bit of an issue now though. I enjoyed 6 so much I've put barely anytime in to 16. And now 6 is done, I just want to continue in chronological order and do 7...I think I might try and play them concurrently, and then go back to 16 and do the Final Fantasy mode run after I've done 15.

Edited July 9, 2023 by hogso

[Keyblade]

I will finish 6 one of these days. Right now I'm in the "it's a great game" stage but nothing really grabs me. It certainly isn't like Chrono Trigger which had me completely hooked from minute 1.

[Chindie]

I picked up FF16.

I'm probably... Maybe 10hrs in, and I really quite like it. The thing is it's not 'a Final Fantasy' game anymore, but they seem to have finally clocked that, if you are going to abandon the roots of the series with the turn based stuff, you might as well just completely bin it and make something else. So they have. They've made Devil May Cry with the edges sanded off and smashed it into a Square style RPG. It works surprisingly well.

I am kinda sad that Final Fantasy as I knew and loved it is dead, but it's clear that's what the developers want.

It's not all great with it. It's story isn't as good as the developers think it is, and while the voice acting standard is good, what they've given them to work with is diabolical. Theres a few scenes where you'll have a character give this completely over the top melodramatic wail, and it's so overblown it's absurd, but then just becomes funny when the animation of the character model doesn't sell the cry. You've got some guy screaming desperately 'IIIIIIiiIiiII'LLLLLLLL KKKKKIIIIIIiiiiiIIIILllllllLLLLL YYYYOOOOUUUUUuuuuuuUUUU...!' and the model is very slightly frowning and their mouth opens marginally more than it would if they were ordering a coffee in a very quiet Starbucks, and it's all just so silly it's hard not to laugh.

Also, you're playing a character called Clive. Just... You don't call call your hero Clive.

But that's all just presentation stuff really. As a game its quite fun. Even when it basically gives you mildly interactive cut scenes, such as their decision to turn summons into kaiju battles with spectacle whacked up to a billion, is fun just hammering the buttons like a toddler while the screen fills up with all the pretty a PS5 can chuck at you.

And it is pretty. Really pretty. The environments are fantastic and the art design has that particular style that first turned up in FF11 I think, but dialled back just slightly into something a little more generic.

Oh and they made Ifrit into Godzilla.

Worth a look.

[Chindie]

FF16's fight against

Spoiler

Bahamut

is quite the thing. All the graphics, smashed into Panzer Dragoon. Even has some Gundam imagery. Very nice.

[Dante_Lockhart]

"Right guys, we need a hero name. Cloud is arguably one of our most recognised heroes. Everyone loves Cloud. Give me a name on par with that"

 

"Clown? Cloak? Clock? Cliff? Clink? Clive?"

 

"That's it."

[Chindie]

FF16 done. May be a platinum in the future, but it requires a full play through on NG+ on the hardest difficulty which even with skipping cutscenes and whatnot is going up be at least... 30hrs? Depending on what additional shit it chucks at you... which is an ask.

Anywho.

Good game but not great. It's too long. The sidequests are absolute trash, awful, terrible, despicable game design. The plot is complete bobbins. The gameplay is good but it's... It's the gameplay of a game that's 20hrs long shoved into a game that's triple that. They try to make it more engaging by dragging out the unlocking of things until the last 10hrs at best, but it doesn't quite work, because fundamentally it doesn't alter the game enough to keep it interesting. So you end up playing just to see what batshit madness is going to chuck at you spectacle wise. And it does deliver, to the extent at the end you're getting 2001 stargate sequence style stuff where you can barely see what the **** is going on.

But I can't deny I've enjoyed it.

[Starscrem_Prime]

Does anyone else play FFXIV?

[hogso]

On 06/08/2023 at 18:43, Starscrem_Prime said:

Does anyone else play FFXIV?

I played for a couple of years on and off, but that was back on the PS3 up to 2.5, I think? Never did go back to play Heavensward or anything since, although I did try to progress through the MSQs around the time Shadowbringers was released. 

I'm just not a massive fan of MMOs. I know the story is very well thought of, and there are some gameplay easements to allow you to progress through the story quickly and get up to date with Endwalker...but I just can't find the motivation.

Perhaps when I get to that stage in my FF series sequential playthrough!

[hogso]

FF7 Ever Crisis is available on your favourite app store now. 

Haven't given it a go yet, will return with thoughts when I have. 

[Keyblade]

Really plowing through (KW.gif) FFVI right now and it's brilliant. Gameplay really starting to come together once you get access to Espers.

[hogso]

No surprises with Ever Crisis then. It's simply a mobile game with gatcha mechanics. Although in theory you could play through a rather nice representation of FF7 with some decent art and re-arranged soundtrack, in practice you'd have to play tiny little sections at a time, and also have to play through Crisis Core and First Soldier in the same manner in order to open up more chapters. 

SE know what they want from these games, they've made an obscene amount of money from this formula, so although it's certainly not 'cheap', it's very very hard to recommend if you're unfamiliar with how these games work. 

[hogso]

They've released some good trailers since the FF7R project was first announced, and this one is a doozy. Cait Sith, Vincent, new summons, Cosmo Canyon, Junon, Gold Saucer, some intriguing story related stuff...

 

[hogso]

As is typical of when a new trailer comes out there's some new info via developer interview on the PS blog.

In it, Nomura confirms that Rebirth ends at the Forgotten Capital/City, ie. when Aerith does or perhaps does not leave the party. 

However...they also say that although the majority of places from the original game will be here, and the player will visit them, the order may not be the same. 

So, it's possible then that the story will take you to the north crater and we'll see all of those events, plus more, with Aerith in the party. 

It's also unclear who exactly is playable in Rebirth. There's reference to some characters not being playable, so it's possible the likes or Vincent and Cid will be like Red XIII in Remake, or it could be a reference to Zack. 

Edited September 16, 2023 by hogso