ff7

[brinstar]

so as not to further abuse the ff14 thread, here is a thread about ff7 for drem and me to sperg out

i found the main characters completely unengaging. cloud is boring and moody, tifa is nothing but a walking set of tits, and barrett might as well be called Token. aeris had little to no personality either, and her death scene was vastly overrated. character design was silly yet seemed to take itself seriously. oh, a snowboarding minigame! /barf

the story reads like dozens of other movies/animes - evil corporation is hurting the world for energy and profit, ragtag rebels do what they can, the world itself starts fighting back, etc. cue giant robots. ho hum. hero loses himself, those who care bring him back, bla bla bla. main villain was so one-dimensional he's barely worth mentioning. look at his sword! look at his hair! look how evil he must be! i must name my gerbil/WoW character/yahoo address after a misspelling of his name! and his origin? aliens lol

to be fair there were parts of the story i genuinely enjoyed. cid and his failed/successful trip to space was particularly well-done, and believe it or not i enjoyed vincent's murky background well enough to actually seek out a used copy of Dirge of Cerberus (which was not very good either, unfortunately). the "greyhat" turks were not wholly boring, Hojo's mad science made him a great villain (though rather unoriginal for those familiar with FF4's Dr. Lugae), and even the red panther thing wasn't a total loss.

the music was great, although that's a moot point because it's hard to find fault with anything nobuo-san does, regardless of the installment. i won't rag on the jagged polygon toons more than i already have either, since that was more a limitation of the system than the designers (although the character animations outside of battle could have been better). the environs/scenes were drawn well - alright, some of them were downright beautiful - but i intensely disliked their static nature. too often The Path was not clear (enough) for the fixed-view/pan-and-scan scheme to work, and i'd waste time running up against the edges of the walkable area looking for a way through. camera mechanics should never ever impede gameplay.

what i really believe happened is exactly what the phrase "babby's first RPG" was meant to imply. it was a well-marketed and fairly easy game on a blockbuster new system that all the kiddies had to have, and consequently there was a huge influx of noobs who were completely new to the series and, more importantly, the genre itself. of COURSE they were wowed by its size and scope, of COURSE it was a shock to see a villain gank a main character, of COURSE the sidequests seemed endless, of COURSE they were dazzled by the FMV cutscenes, and of COURSE it seemed hard. to them it was brilliant and earthshattering, but to me it was just a first clunky foray into next-gen game design that was necessary to pave the way for better games

in a vacuum i might be pressed into conceding that it is a decent game, but taken in the context of the rest of the series (and the larger catalog of Squenix offerings) it's unremarkable at its absolute best.

my ranking, in order of excellence: 6, 4, 9, 12, 8, 7, 1
did not play: 2, 3, 5, 10, 13, remakes
these don't count: 11, 14, gameboy/spinoffs/sequels/non-sequential (though IMO tactics is badass and MQ gets a bad rap)

[10sun]

Best FF was Chocobo World for the Pocketstation. Shut your bitch face.

[leah]

so as not to further abuse the ff14 thread, here is a thread about ff7 for drem and me to sperg out

i found the main characters completely unengaging. cloud is boring and moody, tifa is nothing but a walking set of tits, and barrett might as well be called Token. aeris had little to no personality either, and her death scene was vastly overrated. character design was silly yet seemed to take itself seriously. oh, a snowboarding minigame! /barf i actually really like the characters and i think that's why i've come around on it. playing the whole way through (rather than watching some jackwagon play and missing key parts of the story omg don't get me started) let me delve a little deeper and actually enjoy the characters and see why they are the way they are. /shrug

the story reads like dozens of other movies/animes - evil corporation is hurting the world for energy and profit, ragtag rebels do what they can, the world itself starts fighting back, etc. cue giant robots. ho hum. hero loses himself, those who care bring him back, bla bla bla. main villain was so one-dimensional he's barely worth mentioning. look at his sword! look at his hair! look how evil he must be! i must name my gerbil/WoW character/yahoo address after a misspelling of his name! and his origin? aliens lol i think part of the reason these things don't bother me is that i am a simple, simple girl and don't need a story any deeper than that. when you think about it, it's pretty similar to ff6--the empire = shinra and kefka = sephiroth and espers = the planet... lots of similarities, even though ff6 was obviously 100x better fleshed out. so i guess it just doesn't bother me that it's a fairly traditional story--for me, it just made it easier to follow along. but again, i'm pretty simplistic when it comes to games.

to be fair there were parts of the story i genuinely enjoyed. cid and his failed/successful trip to space was particularly well-done, and believe it or not i enjoyed vincent's murky background well enough to actually seek out a used copy of Dirge of Cerberus (which was not very good either, unfortunately). the "greyhat" turks were not wholly boring, Hojo's mad science made him a great villain (though rather unoriginal for those familiar with FF4's Dr. Lugae), and even the red panther thing wasn't a total loss. hojo is freaking awesome, and his second form in the final showdown with him is so great-looking and kind of scary. ha. cid is my favorite ancillary character--my party pretty much always consists of cloud, tifa, and cid. and i was pleasantly surprised by cait sith's story, even though i can't stand to use him as a party member. and i love red xiii's story--got a little choked up when he howled at his petrified dad. but that should come as no surprise since i love animals.

the music was great, although that's a moot point because it's hard to find fault with anything nobuo-san does, regardless of the installment. i won't rag on the jagged polygon toons more than i already have either, since that was more a limitation of the system than the designers (although the character animations outside of battle could have been better). the environs/scenes were drawn well - alright, some of them were downright beautiful - but i intensely disliked their static nature. too often The Path was not clear (enough) for the fixed-view/pan-and-scan scheme to work, and i'd waste time running up against the edges of the walkable area looking for a way through. camera mechanics should never ever impede gameplay. it was so freaking amazing to see nobuo's music played live, and to see him conduct a couple of songs in person (on his birthday!). lovvvve the music. the jenova fight music is especially great. i also think the entire game is very pretty, and a lot of the summons are SO cool (even though they take way too long... seriously, fighting emerald/ruby is TEDIOUS because of how long those dang attacks take. good grief. i think you should be able to click through.

what i really believe happened is exactly what the phrase "babby's first RPG" was meant to imply. it was a well-marketed and fairly easy game on a blockbuster new system that all the kiddies had to have, and consequently there was a huge influx of noobs who were completely new to the series and, more importantly, the genre itself. of COURSE they were wowed by its size and scope, of COURSE it was a shock to see a villain gank a main character, of COURSE the sidequests seemed endless, of COURSE they were dazzled by the FMV cutscenes, and of COURSE it seemed hard. to them it was brilliant and earthshattering, but to me it was just a first clunky foray into next-gen game design that was necessary to pave the way for better games none of this bothers me.

in a vacuum i might be pressed into conceding that it is a decent game, but taken in the context of the rest of the series (and the larger catalog of Squenix offerings) it's unremarkable at its absolute best.

my ranking, in order of excellence: 6, 4, 9, 12, 8, 7, 1
did not play: 2, 3, 5, 10, 13, remakes
these don't count: 11, 14, gameboy/spinoffs/sequels/non-sequential (though IMO tactics is badass and MQ gets a bad rap) i've only played 4,6, and 7 and don't really foresee myself going further than that because they just get more and more overly complicated. (see the theme? i like easy!)

[Tikker]

.

[brinstar]

FF7 was awesome when it was released

stfu

eat it bitch

[Drem]

Yeah leah n tikker covered it. Also, finding out you were a clone (of the bad guy) was pretty raw. And Tifa was awesome. Total moral support. She was Cloud's rock, hahahah. And developed into an even doper character in advent children

I, too, bought dirge of cerberus. what a fucking awful game

Raising chocobos was sweet. Developing materia was sweet. It was like the last of the treadmill style games, too, where you'd end up racking xp for hours in the same place. I really miss that. Putting in hours, getting results, not getting your hand held for the whole fuckin game

The two weapon fights were insane, too. And going after knights of the round

God damn, so many good memories. Ff6 never did as much for me. In many of the same ways. Nondescript/throwaway characters, predictable plot, etc. kefka was way more intense than sephiroth tho, i'll give him that. It's still one of my favs, dont get me wrong, but it's not nearly as deep as 7's world

I think i'm more surprised that you think 8, 9, and 12 are better. Dont you have a fucking tail in 9? 8's card game was great tho. 12 pulled me in because it's set in the same world as tactics, but it way too MMO-wannabe. You could see what 11 directly imparted to it. 13 had awesome combat but probably the gayest story besides 10 i've ever seen in a jrpg

I know i said 7 was my fav, but really it's a 3-way between 1, 4, and 7, not including tactics because it's so different

[leah]

Yeah leah n tikker covered it. Also, finding out you were a clone (of the bad guy) was pretty raw. And Tifa was awesome. Total moral support. She was Cloud's rock, hahahah. And developed into an even doper character in advent children

I, too, bought dirge of cerberus. what a fucking awful game

Raising chocobos was sweet. Developing materia was sweet. It was like the last of the treadmill style games, too, where you'd end up racking xp for hours in the same place. I really miss that. Putting in hours, getting results, not getting your hand held for the whole fuckin game

The two weapon fights were insane, too. And going after knights of the round

all of these things are how i feel! that part with cloud finally figuring himself out, i was like whoa. i actually created multiple saves so i could go back and watch cool parts throughout the game—the first account of nibelheim, aeris's death, cloud's freakout with the black materia, tifa helping cloud discover himself, etc. etc. yeah, turns out i actually really like ff7 now that i've played through it myself. i had a negative opinion about it for a long time because of my first experience with it (playing through only as far as the first disc on my own and then seeing bits and pieces of the rest of the game as someone else played it), combined with all of alex's ff7 haterade. now that i've given it a fair shot, it's definitely up there in my favorite games; it might even knock ff4 out of third place. (ff6 > chrono trigger > ff7 > ff4)

i am and always will be a mega leveler. i will grind like nobody's business so that when i finally go after something, it doesn't take me 100 tries. so technically i'm right at the end dungeon but i'ma go level for a while so i can enjoy it more. like i said, i like easy. plus i didn't do any of the chocobo side stuff, so now that i have hundreds of thousands of gil racked up, i'm going to do it all at once.

i will say that i've seen the end of the game (shut up, i like spoilers) and was kind of disappointed that there isn't a lot of resolution. though advent children definitely helped with that. now i want to go watch the movie!

[Drem]

Really makin me want to play it again. Racking levels is the only way to go!!

Also gonna give a shoutout to barrett n marlene. Might be a lot of token dudes in games, but he was legit. Great translating for the time period. Hilarious golden era hip hop slang. Better than most animes even today. He was straight out the slums. Prolly my favorite dude in the game. Chaingun arm? Fuck outta here

[Zanchief]

Final Fantasy 7 just marks the beginning of a different kind of RPG. where decisions are absent and character development is irrelevant. Your characters gain levels, but don't even have unique abilities. You have equipment that is scripted in places as too remove all choice. The style of RPGs, which consist of little more then watching a poorly told anime story with slight interactions doesn't interest me at all. Couple that with terrible polygon graphics (Brin is spot on with this), it just makes the game unplayable to me. To be honest I've never finished it. How could I? I've seen my brother play it at length though, and I don't see the charm in snowboarding and chocabo racing.

People look fondly on this one, as bring said, because it was many peoples first RPG. It was not mine, so all I see are the warts.

FF6 on the other hand, has character with abilities, choices in which party members you take, choices within characters that greatly influence there productivity. The story, I'll admit, is just as shallow as FF7. I love it more because I played it more, and little touches like Celes and Locke in the Opera house take me back, but I've never given FF7 a chance to win me over with those moments, so it's possible they exist (but I doubt it). To be honest though, I've always been a function over form guy, which is why Dragon Quest has a bit more appeal to me. FF has always boasted the best graphics and the best sound. Technically better games, but terrible gameplay. It seems to be something their proud and it seems to work since they still sell a lot of copies. Good for them. Not my scene.

[Gaazy]

I always had a boner for Tifa. I even have some Tifa p0rn somewhere rofl.

And I bet Marlene grew up to be hot. But Id definitely have peed in Tifas butt

[Tikker]

.

[Jay]

6 is the best but like all FF stories go, it's always a shallow and easy story to follow and the meat is in the characters themselves. FF8 was horrendous because the characters were idiotic with their decision making and the story was convoluted and stupid.

Now Chrono Trigger on the other hand...awesome story and awesome characters. The story was easy to follow yet still had enough depth to keep me caring. I know this is a FF thread but I wanted to use Chrono Trigger to illustrate what I think is the perfect balance between story and game and not being too linear as far as JRPG's go.

[Zanchief]

Agreed on Chrono Trigger. Its not a game I played as much as FF6 but I still loved it. I've been meaning to go back.

[brinstar]

shit yeah, CT is pretty much pinnacle console rpg

if i'm ranking it with the FF games it's definitely a photo finish (FF6 by a nose)

[Tikker]

.

[Drem]

CT and secret of mana were my favorite square games. I have never played a dragon quest game aside from dragon warrior 1 & 2 on NES. Anybody ever play breath of fire games?

[Tikker]

.

[brinstar]

i played through breath of fire 1 and half of 2, decent

explain to me how dragon warriors and dragon quests are related? i crushed me some DW on the NES (never found a copy of 4 but 1-3 owned bones)

[Zanchief]

Dragon Quest is just the Japanese name. The series switched to Dragon Quest recently (similar to how the FF games switched to the Japanese numbering system).

[brinstar]

okay so they're the same then. any numbering change? or is DW3 = DQ3?

[Zanchief]

Numbering is the same.

[brinstar]

secret of mana

SoM was baller too. this will blow your mind tho, guaranteed

watch this:


and then watch this:


and then listen to this (specifically 2:40-3:17):

[leah]

i have a gold chocobo now (named kevin). really didn't take that long, given my W-item materia and piles of money and high level. maybe five or six hours of grinding over the course of the weekend. so, i now also have the KoTR and mimic materia and i'ma go after them ruby and emerald weapons. woot~

[Gaazy]

boner

[Jay]

Holy shit Brin. That Balinese monkey chant @@