Final Fantasy Discussion Thread

[Gravity]

Well, they are doing this to FF1 and FF2. They might give it a shot for FF7.

I still believe Aeris's death was a vital importance to Cloud, his mission, and his life though. But if people want to play her so bad, then I guess Square could add her in there.

[JewelRay]

Id dint like her that much and I wasnt that sad when she died.
I would like them to re do it for ps2 and maybe improve the graphics. but some of those scenes could never be done in better graphics or the game would be rated muc more than mature...

[Justin]

I don't know about you guys but ever since FF3 the series has been going downhill. Even 2 and 3 pissed me off a little as I couldn't choose any character classes, but the storylines made up for it. 5 and up I have owned and played and sort of enjoyed but I can't really call them classics. As I have gotten older I find myself liking more and more adult oriented RPGs. I probably won't buy FFXI, maybe the ones after that but who knows.

[JewelRay]

im not really an oldschool gamer so i think the newer ones are better. I think the series got better as it went on. Everyone was a little different than the one before it. and if there was a something that sucked, they took it out.
I think a major problem people have is that they compare the games too much. ex. FF8 was a bad game becuase it wasnt enough like FF7.
people shouldnt do that! just becuase you liked one game doesnt mean the rest should be exactly like it. heck youd probably get bored if they all were.
Ok, so FFX strayed from the FF norm (no world map, no levels, voice acting, ect.) but that doesnt make it a bad game. just becuase it has good graphics doest make it bad either. a lot of oldschool gamers automaticaly despise any game with good graphics.
people also have a tendancy to like the first game they play the best. If you grew up with snes games theres a high chance you like them best. If FF7 was the first FF you played, you probably like it best. Then it automaticaly becomes the standards that all must match. ex. Tidus was ditzy and Cloud wasnt so therefore Tidus is a bad main character.
If people took each FF game more as a seperate game and less of a continuation to the rest of the games people would find much less fault with them.

[Rowde]

im not really an oldschool gamer so i think the newer ones are better. I think the series got better as it went on. Everyone was a little different than the one before it. and if there was a something that sucked, they took it out.
I think a major problem people have is that they compare the games too much. ex. FF8 was a bad game becuase it wasnt enough like FF7.
people shouldnt do that! just becuase you liked one game doesnt mean the rest should be exactly like it. heck youd probably get bored if they all were.
Ok, so FFX strayed from the FF norm (no world map, no levels, voice acting, ect.) but that doesnt make it a bad game. just becuase it has good graphics doest make it bad either. a lot of oldschool gamers automaticaly despise any game with good graphics.
people also have a tendancy to like the first game they play the best. If you grew up with snes games theres a high chance you like them best. If FF7 was the first FF you played, you probably like it best. Then it automaticaly becomes the standards that all must match. ex. Tidus was ditzy and Cloud wasnt so therefore Tidus is a bad main character.
If people took each FF game more as a seperate game and less of a continuation to the rest of the games people would find much less fault with them.

Very nice observations, this is going to be a bit off-topic, but people aren't very good at expressing their emotions.

I consider myself to be an old-school gamer as well, and to really understand what the heck we're talking about, you have to be slightly familiar with the entire FF series. You know, you can't judge a book by it's cover. You have to look at it as a whole. I have some of the same sentiments though, about feeling that the series has been going downhill since FFVI (FFII in the US). It's not the story, or the graphics, or the gameplay however. It's the overall lack of ingenuity and creativity the FF series has been lacking lately that is making me not like it so much. I mean, the differences between the early FF titles were astronomical, each one was unique in it's own way. I myself think that FF VI was the brilliant culmination of all these elements. Now, what I want out of future FF titles is for them to top that, not more of the same, but even better. I think that part of the reason FF titles haven't been so good is cause Squaresoft is trying to maintain more of the same, why risk breaking their cash machine? The differences are merely a facade, I can barely tell the difference between the latest FF titles... Also, I have a wierd love/hate relationship with FFX, I didn't like most of the characters or the story, The gameplay was no different from usual... except for the Sphere Grid. That was the only thing new and it had me hooked on that game for so many hours, and i don't believe most people realized the scope of it. In almost every other RPG I have ever played, the way your characters leveled up was determined from the beginning. A character would level up, a stat would increase, etc. I had full control over how the characters developed in FF X, and that is really all that kept me playing that game. I thought the Sphere Grid was a fun and interactive way to go about levelling up and I would spend hours figuring out how I was going to get a character from point A to point B. I mean that, literally, I would level my characters up to 99 sphere levels, get 99 of each activation sphere, and then move around the board for hours at a time. I eventually colo coded my board as well. There is a red section, blue section, green section, yellow section. I admire FF X, but I simply abhor the ho-hum storyline and gameplay. People want to blame something you know? It's a difficult thing to put your finger on right away. It's not so much that the graphics are 3D, but why are they in 3D? If you take my view into account, that's all we really got at first, 3D graphics, so what, it's still the same game. The FF series is becoming stagnant, and they hide this with these little new features that aren't anything but glossed up conventions used in previous FF titles.

[Iznoach, Legendary Dragon]

I agree much with Rowde's sentiments...*looks up*...but, contrary to that, I didn't just dislike FF10 because of the graphics. I prefer good graphics, it's just that when the company disguises a mediocre game with great graphics and voice-acting, and tries to use only these things as marketing tools, that's just wrong. I know they used the 3d from FF7 as a marketing tool, but that one just had a very good story, and an awesome ending. FF8, I think it was decent also, but they put too much emphasis on the full scale people...I never beat that game, for two reasons: I got tired of drawing magic, and by the time I made it to the castle on Disc 4, I was plainly bored with the game. FF9, I thought it was cute, but they tried too much to make a FF3 clone, I think. I didn't make it too far on this one anyway, cause somebody stole it not long after I got to disc 2, and I was mired in all kinds of problems then anyway...FF10. I just, simply, could not get into the story. It's that simple, I never got to enjoy the greatness of the sphere grid, because my boredom wouldn't let me fully immerse myself like the older FF's. Square, please start making quality product again...

[JewelRay]

I dont understand why people dont like FFXs story. I think it was the best story. It was the deepest one and was the most contraversial. It had great themes too (religion, organized religion, death, corruption, etc...) Its story can be looked at from much more than one level. I just dont know why people dont like it. Probably becuase its the least like the old FFs. I think FFX is a better game taken on its own than taken as part of the series.

Personaly i think that FF7 is way overated. Its a very good game but i didnt see any themes. the best FF games are the ones that have a deep theme and most of them have them. FF7 had them too but they werent as noticable. the characters were good and it had a great villian but other than that I think its overrated.

[Gravity]

I beg to differ, only because I don't pay much attention to how good the story is. I'm more of a "battle system" person, which caused me to dislike the junction system very much.

As to the theme of FF7, I think it's "Finding yourself will have greater results when friends help," since Cloud struggles to find himself, and everyone helped him to get through and appreciate himself. That's what I think.

[JewelRay]

I agree about the GFs. I didnt like them that much. but junctioning could really be used to your advantage. I think it was a great improvement on materia. And junctioning ultima to strength is fun...

FF9 had a simaler "friends help you to find yourself, or the meaning of life is to live for your friends theme" which was ok. They throw in a fear of death theme at the very end which was interesting. I didnt like the game all that much because they didnt get to the good parts till really late in the game. the last 10 hours or so were really good and exciting but the first 3/4 were dull. Except for vivi. he kept my atention.

I guess I'm more about depth and story in my games. And emotion. I didnt get any emotion from FF7. well some... but especially not at the ending. I think FF7 was the funniest. There were some great scenes in there... hehe...
FF7 was also very "nature/ be kind to the planet" which I dont really like. I did like the whole thing with midgar/shinra thing with the corruption and people living in the slums and the wealthier people who live on the plate.
that had depth to it.

[The Great Zhang Liao]

I was wondering which FF was your favorite,and if you had to make an FF with 5 main chars from the other games, who would you pick and why?