The Great Final Fantasy Retrospective - Let's Mosey

sXeth

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12 felt like I was playing an MMO in singleplayer, and as has been pointed out, the most relaible way to play that was to program the macros to do it for you (given I was playing Runescape around the same time period, not hard to grasp, but not engaging either).


2 and 3, I had, but I don't think I ever got far in them. In the same bundle there was 1 which largely got by on nostalgia cred with me.


Having played 4-14 (minus 11). 6, 9 and 4 would be a top 3. X would be the runner up. 13, 12, and 7 would be pretty solidly be my bottom 3. 8 probably would be the runner up there (giving 1 a pass for its era)


(For full disclosure purposes, I played maybe 5 hours of 14 before the inane targeting finally got me to abandon it completely (also the whole having to pay a subscription for it)
 
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Drathnoxis

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I guess I'll wait 3 year till criticalgaming gets there to go over in details, but 13 is in my list of worst video game. There are technically plenty of worst game, but 13 budget was probably high enough to make 50 AAA games and they managed to make one mediocre game, just pathetic. And the story is flat out insulting, the group of main character literally do exactly what the bad guys want them to do to kill humanity, but its okay because literal deus ex.
Reminds me of Bravely Default: Wait the thing that we've been doing the entire game is exactly what the villain wanted us to do! Oh well, let's just keep doing it because we can't think of another plan.

Also, I believe in Critical Gaming. If he plays 40 hours a week and we assume 100 hour average per game he'll be done in half a year.
 
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thebobmaster

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Here's my thing with FF2. Any game where "beat up your own party members" is a legitimate strategy for leveling up properly needs some work done.
 
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Dalisclock

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Reminds me of Bravely Default: Wait the thing that we've been doing the entire game is exactly what the villain wanted us to do! Oh well, let's just keep doing it because we can't think of another plan.

Also, I believe in Critical Gaming. If he plays 40 hours a week and we assume 100 hour average per game he'll be done in half a year.
Most of the FF games are like 40 hours long, at least the early ones were, IIRC.
 

Dalisclock

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Here's my thing with FF2. Any game where "beat up your own party members" is a legitimate strategy for leveling up properly needs some work done.
That's FF2's biggest flaw. The leveling system, in theory, is really cool. In practice it's pretty garbage and encourages a lot of stupid grinding to overlevel the enemies.

And it's too bad because it otherwise could have been pretty good game. There's the famous plot point where you kill the main baddie, which sends him to hell, but unfortunately that just lets him take over hell and release a demon army on the world, so you have to go to hell itself and kill him again(for real this time).

It's technically a spoiler, but really that's all there is to it and it's a 25 year old game.
 

CriticalGaming

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I guess I'll wait 3 year till criticalgaming gets there to go over in details, but 13 is in my list of worst video game.
I hope it wont take that long. I'm almost finished with FF2, so I should update in a couple days. I'm moving along at a nice clip considering the grind FF2 has.
 

CriticalGaming

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Most of the FF games are like 40 hours long, at least the early ones were, IIRC.
Less technically. FF 1 - 5 are like 10-15 hour games. The average for the rest of the games is closer to 30ish hours depending. There are a couple of longer ones like X is longer and 15 takes longer too. But for the most part they aren't exceptionally long games. DragonQuest games are really fucking long, but FF games typically aren't.
 
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Drathnoxis

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Most of the FF games are like 40 hours long, at least the early ones were, IIRC.
That's true for a normal playthrough, but considering he's going to be doing 100% more or less it's probably going to trend upwards considerably, especially with the later games. I think my playthroughs of FF7 were around 60 hours and I didn't do most of the optional endgame stuff. Same with FF12, which I basically rushed through. I could see someone easily spending over 100 to do all the hunts.

But yeah, the average is probably going to be closer to 70 hours a game, which actually doesn't change my original 1/2 year estimate because of 33 weeks wasn't half a year. Oops.
 
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Dalisclock

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That's true for a normal playthrough, but considering he's going to be doing 100% more or less it's probably going to trend upwards considerably, especially with the later games. I think my playthroughs of FF7 were around 60 hours and I didn't do most of the optional endgame stuff. Same with FF12, which I basically rushed through. I could see someone easily spending over 100 to do all the hunts.

But yeah, the average is probably going to be closer to 70 hours a game, which actually doesn't change my original 1/2 year estimate because of 33 weeks wasn't half a year. Oops.
Ok, I missed the 100% part, so my bad.
 
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Drathnoxis

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Wow thanks for believing in me. I mean that honestly. It means a lot more than you might think.
Well it also means that I believe that you do basically nothing but work, sleep, and play video games, which not everyone would take as a compliment, but you are more than welcome to.
 

Drathnoxis

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Here's my thing with FF2. Any game where "beat up your own party members" is a legitimate strategy for leveling up properly needs some work done.
Look, DBZ already proved that this is the most effective strategy for gaining power. Can't fault a game for falling in line with the facts.
 

immortalfrieza

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Reminds me of Bravely Default: Wait the thing that we've been doing the entire game is exactly what the villain wanted us to do! Oh well, let's just keep doing it because we can't think of another plan.
And if you DO go against the villain's plan, you get the bad ending... for some reason, even though it's very obviously the best thing to do.
 
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meiam

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Less technically. FF 1 - 5 are like 10-15 hour games. The average for the rest of the games is closer to 30ish hours depending. There are a couple of longer ones like X is longer and 15 takes longer too. But for the most part they aren't exceptionally long games. DragonQuest games are really fucking long, but FF games typically aren't.
Hum 4-5 are probably close to 30 hours even if you skip all side content. 6 I honestly don't know, not sure how much of the second half is side content, probably most of it so it might be a 30 hours clear too. 7-10 I wanna say 40 hours, I don't remember 10 being much longer than 7-9. 12 can drag cause area are pretty large, but if you want to do low level run you can easily skip a lot of it. 15 I feel like its probably super short since you can skip most of the open world segment and doing low level run is super easy, I'd say 30 hours is probably more than enough (unless you planning on doing DLCs).
 

CriticalGaming

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Hum 4-5 are probably close to 30 hours even if you skip all side content. 6 I honestly don't know, not sure how much of the second half is side content, probably most of it so it might be a 30 hours clear too. 7-10 I wanna say 40 hours, I don't remember 10 being much longer than 7-9. 12 can drag cause area are pretty large, but if you want to do low level run you can easily skip a lot of it. 15 I feel like its probably super short since you can skip most of the open world segment and doing low level run is super easy, I'd say 30 hours is probably more than enough (unless you planning on doing DLCs).
Part of what speeds me up a bit is previous knowledge of these games for the most part. While I might not remember the games I've only played once, I have played every FF game except 6 in some capacity. So a lot of the story bits, and the mechanics I've already kind of have understood which allows me to play with a bit more efficiancy.

Of course when the cut scenes start getting long and unskipable, there is only so fast I can go. :(
 

Specter Von Baren

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FF4 feels like where Final Fantasy really begins as an actual series with its own identity. It's like how Street Fighter has a Beta version we call 1 and the actual first Street Fighter is 2. Or like how Mario technically starts with Donkey Kong but Super Mario Bros. is when it really starts.

Also, didn't Critical specifically say he wasn't going to 100% these games because that would take too damn long for so little return?
 

Drathnoxis

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FF4 feels like where Final Fantasy really begins as an actual series with its own identity. It's like how Street Fighter has a Beta version we call 1 and the actual first Street Fighter is 2. Or like how Mario technically starts with Donkey Kong but Super Mario Bros. is when it really starts.

Also, didn't Critical specifically say he wasn't going to 100% these games because that would take too damn long for so little return?
He said he wasn't going to platinum, but was still going to play all the content in the OP. That's 100% in my definition.
 

Specter Von Baren

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He said he wasn't going to platinum, but was still going to play all the content in the OP. That's 100% in my definition.
"Unlike the Souls playthroughs where I tried to get absolutely everything and platinum every game possible, (didn't plat DS3 because....no thanks) I will NOT be platinuming any of these games. The achievements in the FF games are utter grindfesty bullshit for the most part. However i will try to play through all possible content, which means super bosses, extra dungeons, or whatever else the game may have if reasonably possible. But unlocked every node on the sphere grid for every character in FFX? No thanks."

Which I take to mean he won't be going for extremely rare weapon drops from enemies that require grinding, or the best weapons for every character in FF10 that also require a chore list just to make them worth getting (As an example). But he will do things like fight Emerald and Ruby Weapon in FF7 or get all the summons in FF10. Stuff with meaningful content attached to it and not "Jump through these hoops to get better stats".
 

09philj

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I've played bits of Final Fantasy VI, XII, XIV, and XV, and XIV's the only one I've enjoyed enough to play to the end. VI's story was kind of intriguing but the gameplay is very odd and unintuitive, since every character behaves differently and SNES games don't have enough storage space to include tutorials. XV's combat is flashy but a bit mindless, and the bits that aren't are clunky. It's very pretty but I wasn't into the story much and it didn't run too well on PC. XII's the one I played most recently. The gambit system is a bit of a strange choice, but I think it works fairly well. What I had more of an issue with was how stingy the game is with gold and how long the dungeons could drag on for. That leaves XIV which is different to the majority of the other numbered entries in that it's an MMO. There is a lot of collecting bear arses and other MMO grinding, but being an MMO also gives it the scope to convincingly tell an epic story in a world with a lot of texture and character.