PixelPrinny

@StarvingGamer said:

Man, maybe you're cursed. I am reading your list and I encountered a total of 0 of the issues you're complaining about.

Naw, OP isn't cursed. I can back up a number of those claims.

Examples:

- Teammates looooved walking in front of me while I was firing (and I wasn't standing in the middle of the passage blocking their path to cover). And IM the bad guy for that? Pfft. Stupid NPCs! Go sit back down behind cover and continue being useless!

- Dialog options ranged from clear and obvious to muddled and the exact opposite of what I wanted to answer. For example, someone would say "Don't you want to do this?" and the choices were "Fuck!", "No", and "Yeah" I'm not even sure why the firs exists, while I'd think saying "yeah" means "yeah, I want to do this" but it turns out it meant "Yeah, I don't want to do this". Very confusing dialog choices at times.

- "Hey are you okay? Want me to help?" *chooses yes, expecting a revive* ... *watches as NPC just keeps firing away and never makes any attempt to come and revive me* Fek it, I'll rez myself. Again.

- Obvious story is obvious. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing though. While I didn't personally care for the story much, I didn't hold it against the game. It never felt super serious. If anything, it felt like a crazy Japanese homage to 80s action movies, trying to cram in as many tropes and cliches from them as it could, especially in the third act.

- Upgrading teammates definitely felt completely worthless. Also I couldn't help but wish I could upgrade more than just my assault riffle :(

- Lots of fun "Yay just revived, oh wait, I'm dead again before I even got to do anything. Great" moments. Reminded me of The Last Story, only at least Binary Domain never had any frame rate issues, so point for Binary Domain!

- Boss fights definitely could be long in the tooth. Like that chase in the van one with the weird motorcycle transformer thing? Went on for like 8 minutes; and the boss never hit me once. Super boring. "Oh look, it's moving to the other side of the van. Again. Wake me up when this is over, guys." On the bright side, I thought the character design for all of the bosses was great. Very Bayonetta-esque in a way, I thought.

- Definitely plenty of redundancy and padding in some of the levels, but I found they broke it up with other things enough to keep my interest throughout the game.

As for the aimlessness, bad graphics, and UI issues. Can't say I had any of those problems. Game looked pretty, was super linear and corridored, and the menus were clean and simple *shrugs*

@SharkEthic said:

@laserbolts said:

@PixelPrinny said:

@ImmortalSaiyan said:

@PixelPrinny said:

Augh, Journey!

What do you have against Journey?

Well, the title, for one thing! It's more of a pilgrimage than a journey, really. Or even a peregrination. Calling it "Peregrination" really woulda made people think! "Journey" is just so generic; so blasé.

what?

the hell?

is that user icon you're using?

@ImmortalSaiyan said:

@PixelPrinny said:

Augh, Journey!

What do you have against Journey?

Well, the title, for one thing! It's more of a pilgrimage than a journey, really. Or even a peregrination. Calling it "Peregrination" really woulda made people think! "Journey" is just so generic; so blasé.

Augh, Journey!

I'mma count Skyrim cause modding didn't really come into fruition until this year, and mods made the game a whole new experience.

Other than that, it'd be Street Fighter x Tekken, Guild Wars 2, and Kingdoms of Amalur.

@Animasta said:

@PixelPrinny said:

@Animasta said:

(also I'd rather play XII than any other final fantasy, your point is mad anecdotal son)

LOL

my point still stands, in that you cannot just blankly state "oh yeah final fantasy is shit now because they stopped making games I like". I mean, my favorite FF games are 12 and 13-2 so whatevers.

You can, however, cite the fact that they've handled both Versus and FFXIV poorly. The first being stuck in limbo for, what, over 5 years now? And the second requiring a full out relaunch because it was so poorly developed and executed. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the handling of FF has been shit, but there has definitely been a change in the winds from X onward -- from market strategy to the games themselves. I think the quality of the games (aside from XIV which I'm sure we can all agree was not good) is a subjective matter, but to say Square hasn't changed on a fundamental level over the last decade or so would be ignorant.

That being said, one could say the same thing about pretty much any company ever over the span of a decade. The marketspace changes, trends change, what sells changes, and the companies that don't evolve die. We've seen Square adjust by trying to reach out to a broader market -- buying up Eidos (which is arguably their smartest move as far as the western market is concerned), focusing heavily on the social and phone markets, and generally shifting away from their old cashcow of console RPGs (aside from the oooold standby -- the rerelease).

I think as a long time fan, it's very easy for any one of us to lash out at them for catering to markets that we are not apart of; for us to think they're a making a huge mistake by ignoring their once beloved JRPG genre in lieu of more "casual" games or "westernized" rpgs and such. I don't think that's the right response, really. It's more of a can't see the forest for the trees kind of approach, but at the same time I can't really blame someone for longing for those yesteryears of Square RPGs.

But it's been a looong friggin time since that era. It's time to wake up and check in with reality. Square's not the Square that many a fan grew up with back when they published games like Xenogears or Secret of Mana or Chrono Trigger or even Final Fantasy X. They've changed. Whether that is for the better or worse isn't really the issue here, it's just a simple fact that they have one interest at heart; the same interest they've always had at heart -- money -- and in this age, making that money requires different approaches and different markets than it did 15 years ago.

What were we talking about again? Uhh... I dunno, but essentially I agree with you. At least, I think I do? Do I? You tell me. I dunno, I forget. Aaaanyway, it's 4 am. I'm tired.

PS: For those wanting another more classic Square RPG type of game, I hear Bravely Default: Flying Fairy is just what the doctor ordered (of course I'm just going on the opinions of reviewers, at this point, as I haven't played it myself). Here's hoping it gets localized.

@Animasta said:

(also I'd rather play XII than any other final fantasy, your point is mad anecdotal son)

LOL

@Animasta said:

@PixelPrinny said:

Nier is worth playing for the music.

In fact, just listen to the OST; skip the actual game playing part.

I don't think the OST is as impactful without playing the game.

songs like the dark colossus destroys all or song of the ancients / fate would not be nearly as good without knowing what happened in the gameplay.

Meh, the only song that I felt had any sort of real emotional connection to the storytelling was 'Grandma', but even without the scene (if you can really call it that, since you're just reading a story) that goes with the song, it's still a very moving song.

Nier is worth playing for the music.

In fact, just listen to the OST; skip the actual game playing part.

Sooo... did you try -calling- them? Or is chat reps the only support they have? Cause call me crazy, but don't people have this exact same problem with like every gaming company ever and the solution is always "Call and talk to a real person instead of talking to a chat rep, durrrr".

Maybe I'm just missing something here.