The Great Final Fantasy Retrospective - Let's Mosey

[meiam]

You know something, I really fuckiing like that intro song.

Fuck it FF12 can wait, I'm gonna do FFX-2!

The song isn't bad, sorta generic pop song but no big deal. Maybe I should have linked this instead


The concert that happen in literally the worst possible location in the entire world

or


or


Or


(You know I never noticed but there's a couple of frog people leering in the background, just one more creepy thing)

 

[Drathnoxis]

So fun fact FFX was the first game I got on the Playstation 2, and it was also the first PS2 game I rushed back to Gamestop for something else. Impatient little fucker I was, I was not used to voice acting in games, at least not 100% of the dialog being voice acted. As a result of that it annoyed be the sheer amount of talking in the first few hours of FFX.

What a fucking dickhead I was.

To be fair to your younger self, a bunch of the dialogue is really bad and the English voice actors don't do it too many favours. "Praise be to Yevon... that's what I would have said, If I was a follower of Yevon." Really, you don't say, Tidus.

Or someone win a chocobo race with a time of 0.0? How do you win a race with no time on the clock?

I'm envisioning a Chocobo bred with a Super Saiyan.

And then there's Seymour, the game cleverly let you control him for a boss fight early in the game, where he can easily wipe the floor with the boss. But then 5 hours later you kill the dude and its hard to take him seriously after that... To compensate that the game give him the toughest boss fight of the game, but its pretty gimmicky and mostly annoying because if you die you have to watch the same cut scene over and over again. Also the game made him look super fucking evil and always play this evil theme whenever he shows up, which makes it really hard to act surprised when he turn out evil. A bit of subtlety would have gone a long way here.

Have you seen his hair? Subtlety does not enter into the same room as Seymour.

 

[CriticalGaming]

The song isn't bad, sorta generic pop song but no big deal. Maybe I should have linked this instead


The concert that happen in literally the worst possible location in the entire world

or


or


Or


(You know I never noticed but there's a couple of frog people leering in the background, just one more creepy thing)

Stop i can only get so excited.

 

[Hawki]

Oh hey, it's the only Final Fantasy game I've played. That's...neat, I guess.

Anyway:

As a result of that it annoyed be the sheer amount of talking in the first few hours of FFX. What a fucking dickhead I was.

I'm actually in the same boat (airship?). IMO, the game doesn't really start until you reach the High Road, and there's a lot of talking before then, not to mention blitzball. Bleh.

but the combat felt like a step back. At least at first, but ultimately the return to pure turn-based really helps FFX because it's the first game in which you have access to all your characters almost all the time. So at anytime you can swap who is in battle DURING the battle, and as a bonus it doesn't even cost a turn to do.

I really like the combat system as well.

But the attempt to make every character except Kimari matter is well done for the most part.

Hey, I'll have you know that Kimari is a very important character who...um...let's see...

Yeah, I got nothing.

Thing about Kimari is that he isn't that good in gameplay either. He's a bit of a jack of all trades character which is great at first, but at least for me, he lost his usefulness as time went on.

The story begins in a big city called Zanarkin

That's "Zanarkand," you scrub.

What makes the story of FFx so great is that it sets you up with a solid premise and a good world. Then continously twists with revelations of truth around that world. And just when you think it doesn't have any more twists, it has more twists. But each twist manages to not come out of nowhere or make no sense, they all work and fit. Spira is the best world building a FF game has had since 7. Which makes FFX another incredibly good stand out for the series.

I'm afraid I'm not as onboard with FF10's story as you are.

FF10 has a lot of "weird for weirdness's sake," and while it's not the only JRPG guilty of this, this is still a game where beach balls are lethal weapons, for instance. Plus the wonky voice acting, plus how you can't skip cutscenes (so for every boss fight I have to see the same damn cutscene again), plus how Seymour is a terrible villain, plus various other niggles. For instance, there's the priest guy who mentions "Yu Yevon" near the end (that he's Sin), and I was left to ask "wait, who?" I assume this is explained somewhere in the game, but if so, I missed it, and it's not like I wasn't watching the cutscenes or anything.

Also, the game's so damn linear. For instance, I get on the High Road, but the game won't allow me to get off the actual road, for instance. Usually RPGs like this have you going from Point A to Point B, but they at least gave you wide areas you could explore, even if you're on a set path, effectively. FFX, on the other hand, just dispenes with the pretention. Sure, the Quiet Plains are fairly open, but that's about it.

TL, DR, FF10 is a game with very solid gameplay, let down by a very flawed story. It's a story with beautiful moments, sure, but flawed all the same.

FFX easily sits in the top 5 imo.

It's, um...yeah, only FF game I've played, so...

It's the No. 10 RPG I've ever played (confining things to one game per IP), so there's that, I guess.

Next I will NOT be doing FF11 because aint nobody got time for that shit.

So FF12 is next on the chopping block.

You're going straight to FF twelve?
While eleven, you shall shelve?
That is a travesty!
It may be odd,
But by God,
It's still Final Fantasy!

(Or not, I get why FF11 is being skipped.)

 

[Hawki]

The story biggest weakness is it lack of a good antagonist, Sin is more like a natural disaster to really work. Yu Yevon isn't introduce until way late in the story. And then there's Seymour, the game cleverly let you control him for a boss fight early in the game, where he can easily wipe the floor with the boss. But then 5 hours later you kill the dude and its hard to take him seriously after that... To compensate that the game give him the toughest boss fight of the game, but its pretty gimmicky and mostly annoying because if you die you have to watch the same cut scene over and over again. Also the game made him look super fucking evil and always play this evil theme whenever he shows up, which makes it really hard to act surprised when he turn out evil. A bit of subtlety would have gone a long way here.

I don't even count Yu Yevon as a villain. I may have missed stuff out, but when I played the game, he was name dropped at the end, and never elaborated on from that. Sin, I'd call the main villain, but I think Sin works in the sense that the villain is a "system." I mean, you have a world called Spiral, which is in a spiral of death, that Sin represents/inflicts, because of this world's past mistakes. Sin works as a villain in the same way that Godzilla does - not a deep character, but it represents a fair bit.

As for Seymour, bleh. His design is terrible, his voice acting is terrible, and his motivation of "I will make everyone undead, because life is terrible" is old and hackneyed. This trope CAN work (this is ironic coming off XC2, where Amalthus is similar to Seymour, but done better), but Seymour isn't capable of pulling it off.

 

[meiam]

Hey, I'll have you know that Kimari is a very important character who...um...let's see...

Yeah, I got nothing.

Thing about Kimari is that he isn't that good in gameplay either. He's a bit of a jack of all trades character which is great at first, but at least for me, he lost his usefulness as time went on.

Khimari job is to get steal before you get Rikku...

Yeah that's about it.

Oh but if you don't use him there's mandatory boss fight with him just to screw you.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

What’s funny is Tidus is shown to be a fucking Blitzball ace…until I started playing and he instantly was not.

Also, X has easily one of the best FF themes -

 

[Drathnoxis]

I mean, you have a world called Spiral

That's "Spira" ... you scrub :P

 

[Dalisclock]

As for Seymour, bleh. His design is terrible, his voice acting is terrible, and his motivation of "I will make everyone undead, because life is terrible" is old and hackneyed. This trope CAN work (this is ironic coming off XC2, where Amalthus is similar to Seymour, but done better), but Seymour isn't capable of pulling it off.

Oh, XIII-2 is even better. The villain's motivation is "Time travel keeps killing my girlfriend, so I'm gonna mess around with time a bunch to cause Time itself to crash and destroy the universe because that makes so much more sense to kill everyone". He apparently never once considered just how fucking stupid his plan is but he's also voiced by Liam O'Brien so...call it a draw?

 

[meiam]

Oh, XIII-2 is even better. The villain's motivation is "Time travel keeps killing my girlfriend, so I'm gonna mess around with time a bunch to cause Time itself to crash and destroy the universe because that makes so much more sense to kill everyone". He apparently never once considered just how fucking stupid his plan is but he's also voiced by Liam O'Brien so...call it a draw?

He's in a FF13 game, you have to give him some slack. 13 villain main goal is "maybe if I kill my little brother dad will come back from buying smoke and kill me".

 

[sXeth]

Now another thing that FFX does as a first for the series is that you do not control the "main" character. Yes Tidus is very much a focus of the story, but the journey you go on is not his, it belongs to Yuna. She's the main character, it's her fight, her journy, her struggle. But Tidus is used as the focus because he is an outsider to the world so through him the exposition and big reveals in the plot make sense. Not that Tidus doesn't have his own nightmares.

Eh I'd make the argument against that.

5.... was Galufs story more then anyone. No one was exactly busting out complex character arcs, but Galuf actually had one. Bartz was probably 4th or 5th out of the set.


6 - Kind of infamously, Terra is literally an optional character by the end of the game. For most of the pre-World of Ruin she's a macguffin more often then a protagonist. Opinions may vary on who'd actually claim the role, but Celes is the one with most overall motivation, character presentation and interconnection with the villain.


8 - Squall sure is a dude, who does things. On odd occasions this results in the story progressing. But Rinoa's 100% the one that has an actual story to tell.

 

[CriticalGaming]

But Rinoa's 100% the one that has an actual story to tell.

Except they don't really tell it. Sure she has the most "story" but it's all like revelationary story and not main character story. Her story honestly feels like they couldn't come up with a good reason for the bad guy so they made up some time-travel bullshit and put it on Rinoa for a "twist".

 

[Silvanus]

Some of these takes on FF games are upsetting me. I'm not going to go into more detail because I'll get more upset if I do.

Suffice it to say: lots of you are wrong. Some are less wrong.

 

[Dalisclock]

He's in a FF13 game, you have to give him some slack. 13 villain main goal is "maybe if I kill my little brother dad will come back from buying smoke and kill me".

That might be the best summary of the FFXIII storyline I think I've seen.

 

[Hawki]

Some of these takes on FF games are upsetting me. I'm not going to go into more detail because I'll get more upset if I do.

Suffice it to say: lots of you are wrong. Some are less wrong.

But what if you're wrong about people being wrong? Does that place us in the right? Or am I taking a hard left?

 

[thebobmaster]

FFX is an interesting one to me plot-wise, because as you say, Tidus is almost a background character to the real story that is Yuna's pilgrimage...until it turns out that he has a vital role to play in the end, and in multiple ways, it does become more of his story once they actually confront Sin. It has that nice little balancing act where the playable character is perhaps not the main character, but he's not pointless, either, and does go through his own character arc and contributions.

It's also a damn fine RPG, even if the voice-acting was questionable, which I chalk up to A) being one of the earlier attempts at a fully voice-acted game on that scale, and B) poor voice direction (apparently, Hedy Burress was told to match her speech patterns to the lip movements, which explains SO MUCH of her line delivery).

 

[sXeth]

Except they don't really tell it. Sure she has the most "story" but it's all like revelationary story and not main character story. Her story honestly feels like they couldn't come up with a good reason for the bad guy so they made up some time-travel bullshit and put it on Rinoa for a "twist".

I mean, bland and geneic as her story may be, its still the one in the group of even less that stands out. She's the initial plot driver, the one who's connected to Squall, Seifer, and the Sorceresses.


Beyond being designated love interest, Squall's got no more or less then any of the other crew members. A batch of SeeD bodyguards who follow Rinoa around while she makes all the decisions and has actualy things happen to her.

 

[CriticalGaming]

FFX is an interesting one to me plot-wise, because as you say, Tidus is almost a background character to the real story that is Yuna's pilgrimage...until it turns out that he has a vital role to play in the end, and in multiple ways, it does become more of his story once they actually confront Sin. It has that nice little balancing act where the playable character is perhaps not the main character, but he's not pointless, either, and does go through his own character arc and contributions.

I'll talk about this more when I get to FF12, but Tidus being Isakaied into Spira in a way is a great way for the game to explain shit to the player. Tidus doesn't know about the world and neither does the player so there is an in-game reason behind people explaining how things work to him/you. Which used very well in FFX, while at the same time grants Tidus importance and connection to the whole plot as well.

 

[CriticalGaming]

Some of these takes on FF games are upsetting me. I'm not going to go into more detail because I'll get more upset if I do.

Suffice it to say: lots of you are wrong. Some are less wrong.

Who's takes? My takes? Bro don't tell me FF8 is your favorite.

Beyond being designated love interest, Squall's got no more or less then any of the other crew members. A batch of SeeD bodyguards who follow Rinoa around while she makes all the decisions and has actualy things happen to her.

I suppose, but FF8's story sucks I sort of checked out of it mid-way through so i probably just didn't make the connection.

 

[Silvanus]

Who's takes? My takes? Bro don't tell me FF8 is your favorite.

Nah, either 9 or 10 would be my favourite.

9>10>7>6>8>12>4>15>3>1>13>5

(Haven't played 2, 11, or 14)

But what if you're wrong about people being wrong? Does that place us in the right? Or am I taking a hard left?

I suppose it would, but luckily I'm not wrong.