Disclaimer - This is meant as a debate rather than argument because it's just a game and this doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. Just thought it would be fun to talk about it.FalloutJack said:Here, you need my link [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.941929-Games-that-youve-played-that-were-NOT-well-received-that-you-cant-help-but-Lambast] to the thread in question with my rant. I made it and favorite'd it because I got tired of re-writing the thing. Apologies for the Top Gear intro not working. That's youtube's bullshit. Just pretend I'm impersonating Jeremy Clarkson as you're reading. It should answer all questions, from the mechanical to the 'Why the hell would this even make sense?'.dscross said:Is it mainly gameplay you have a problem with or the story as well?
Your problems with the story and characters sound a bit over the top to me. Without wanting to prejudice anything (it's only from what I read of it) I feel like your hatred for the cast and parts of the story came afterwards because you hated the gameplay so much first and that drove you find loads of other problems with an unconscious bias against it. I didn't feel like your character review is particularly fair with what they were trying to do with them, as ambitious as it was.
As I've said further up it was supposed to be a character study about adolescent pain, as was a trend of the time and I think they did it pretty well. I've given lots of reasoning why I think the story and the bits you ranted about were there for a thematic reasons further up the thread.
From a gameplay perspective, I know where you are coming from (I hear this argument constantly) but honestly, I don't get why I didn't have any problems with it and loads of people seem to.
It's not that confusing for one, it may take some time to learn but in the meantime there's a handy "Auto Junction" tool that means you don't even have to worry about junctioning your spells manually. Later on you may want to adjust some junctions for more difficult enemies but those guys don't show up until like 50 or more hours of casual play so you have plenty of time to learn over time.
Drawing is not that time consuming. You can draw a few powerful spells when you see them but you don't need 100 of each. That's just people's obsessions kicking in. I used to draw based on time. Draw for a couple minutes if there's a spell I want some of and then kill the enemies, you can always draw more later or you can top off your spells using the many refinement abilities you learn which turn items into cards or level up spells. Not a big deal.
Also, the game never becomes unbeatable. There is one boss that can be very difficult to beat if you don't have decent strategies and junctions but it's not like you have to start over, you just have to adapt. That's just people giving up. I did EVERYTHING FF8 newbies do wrong on my first playthrough since I didn't spoil myself with info or guides and I struggled a little bit here and there but it was perfectly beatable, drawing was not boringly time consuming and the junction system was not mind bogglingly cryptic.