dscross said:
i recently rediscovered the series and played some of the old ones. I've played 4-9 and loved them all. However, I know the series changed a lot after that.
Question is, with me liking the styles of the older games, should I dive into the newer ones? Some insight into the way it plays for anyone who has stuck with the series from old to present day would be appreciated.
I say yes. Here are my reasonings:
- The thing that you see right after a few minutes of the game is that the setting is a mixture of fantasy, Sci-Fi and post-post-apocalypse. I always found a mixture of Sci-Fi/cyberpunk with magic to be appealing.
- The story is great. Yes, it has some cliche moments (I mean, arrogant, self-centered protagonist who later becomes altruistic was done at least once in FFVII) but is still well-written and has a few nifty plot twists.
- It has one of the best character casts in my experience. Some are weaker, sure, but I found all of them to be dear to my heart: Tidus, who starts off as self-centered shmuck but later becomes... Well, he matures. Yuna, who is to this very day is my favourite female character, who has great design and whose decisions and development still make my eyes tear a bit. Auron, who is one of the badassiest badasses I've ever seen (can't say more because of spoilers). Wakka, a guy who may not be the brightest bulb in the group, but still serves as an example of the fact that sometimes you have to think and not believe blindly. Well, other 3 (Kimahri, Lulu and Rikku) fill the roles of No-emotion sentinel, no-nonsense woman and cheerful young girl, but they are not boring.
- Part VI has Keffka, Part VII has Sephiroth, part X has... No one. And I don't mean that the bad guy/gal is bad. I mean that there is literally no actual bad guy. I don't want to spoil the story, but in short, even the guy you fight most of the time I personally consider more of an evil rival than actual bad guy. It is quite an interesting concept.
- Combat I found to be enjoyable. It is fully turn-based, unlike your usual ATB system and, well, I like full turn-based combat. Also, it has hands down THE BEST iplementation of Limit Break system out of 4 games that had it (I mean FF games from VII to X included).
- Rather flexible development system. Yeah, most of the time people will stick to the roles that characters are supposed to have, but you can still swich it around. For example, people who are doing speed run of the game switch Yuna from being White mage to being Black mage right of the bat because she has the highest Magic stat.
- Don't listen to others, Blitzball is fun, or at least not as boring as some make it out to be.
Sure, it has flaws (Tidus looks like shit, Kimahri doesn't have his own development path, Blue magic is messed up with all of blue magics being limit breaks) but it is to this day one of my favourite games.