soimadeanaccount

I guess I will still be the odd man out here.

I liked FF13 a lot. I like the "story", world building, and its linearity format specifically, but kind of hated the combat and the open world bits, so the Crystarium being somewhat linear actually plays well in a way that I kind of don't want to waste time thinking about it too much. I like the discovery journey the player is put into viewing how the characters' acts and behaves the way they do. It was eyebrow rising at first, but once all the pieces comes together it was a revelatory moment that very few game tops.

FF13-2 was a weird experience for me. I was sort of looking forward to it. Its opening felt like it had potential but mixed in with a bit of generic expectations regarding the state of the world with Sarah and the starting village. Sarah and Noel are good characters I don't have issue with, Noel actually grew on me as the game goes on. Also they both have their own romantic interests already with Snow and Yeul which works out well considering square tends to do better when it comes to platonic relationship than trying their hands at romance.

I agree the combat is over all better than FF13, but it was still missing some pieces i wish it had and added unnecessary baggage. The diverse combat role is a necessity with the limited cast, the newer Crystarium is...honestly kind of wack if you don't know how you are suppose to game it, it could lead to underpower character, but if you know what you are doing it's just a matter of pick str or mag on one of your character, and min max that direction. Usually people pick str on Noel and mag on Sarah...however the most annoying fight in the game might turn out better with Sarah on str. Also no respec is such an old concept that needs to die. Plus I do find a lot of the battle + exploration to be a chore if not annoying

The issue with 13-2 starts front and center with Caius being either a complete shitshow of a character or complete mishandling of him or both. Which then bleeds into disregarding the rules set up by the world and I am still very conflicted about how I feel about it. Which at this point is more established since it is coming off the set up by the original game. The playing with timeline and different endings is pretty much lifted from Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross.

Anyways with all that said, 13-2 is in competition for me as one of the worst FF games I have played, a good deal of it is because of the potential it has, and complete butchering of it.

Metal Gear Solid 4 came to mind even though I never actually played it myself lol

I also want to say Shadow Hearts 2, but I am not sure if the reveal was more of a post credit thing.

Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger dev ending/credit is kind of fun.

OK I am almost afraid to ask since I haven't play it, but want to so no spoiler please; for Nier Automata did they pull the same trick they did with the last ending of Nier? Is that what people are talking about?

The one that actually blind sighted me was Twisted Metal 3.

Reading these only solidify the divisions in the player base that has always existed in the game.

I personally found the grind in the game to be abysmal, yes I was part of the level 75 era. The whole exponentially ramp up of grinding rather it is for exp, money, and end game gear are all terrible. The "special" quests and missions to unlock certain things all felt annoying more than anything else. The whole giving a sense of accomplishment after X hours/days/weeks/months is probably the worst part of the culture. That we are encouraging this behavior. Keep in mind that this is a subscription based game.

The underlying quasi-hypocrisy that existed in the community has always irks me as well; the elitism, group-think, maintaining of facade. The harsh nature of the game does not help in the slightest along with SE's dodgy attitude towards the mechanics of the game at that time.

...Yet the game had its charm, rather it was that FF flavor that still meant something back in the days, or perhaps they were actually able to craft a world/story in a MMO that was actually good and engaging, or maybe the potential of job/sub job system...which would have been great if it isn't lock in a MMO.

Then again these issues aren't exclusive to FFXI, I would argue all MMOs have this problem one way or another, and it always boils down to "play this with a group of people, and you'll have a good time...but then why does it have to be a MMO with all its traditional failure points if all you want is a small set of people anyways."

It is less that I don't think they should try something new, but more I don't have faith in them getting it to work nicely.

I have not played FF7R being primarily a PC gamer now a days, I just have to hang tight until the time comes.

I probably like FF13 way more than most people, but I find the combat to devolve into absolute shit fest towards the end of the game, and ruin something that have great potential. I find the combat to be way better in the beginning when options were small enough that fits within the available interface.

FF15's combat is ok enough, but plague by slightly weird control, targeting, and camera issues. Along with fumbling around weapon switching between menu and in game.

Maybe they finally starts to iterate and FF7R actually worked out the issues, again I haven't played it so can't say.

If they are doing something new for FF16, I can almost see them giving enough thought about it cross the two genre not unlike FF15. But at the same time I can also absolutely see the system getting tangle up by some weird issues that cause the whole thing to collapse.

Oh boy...

So much to unpack

Very brief history of that time, MMOs were and still is never about quality of life and making things easy for the player. WoW was probably arguably the first to toss players a bone. FFXI however came out before that, it is probably the last big pre WoW MMO. IMO they were all pretty terrible, and to be honest a lot of MMOs today aren't good either, but that's an entirely different topic. I distinctly remember WoW causing a small exodus from FFXI which sort of overlap with the release of CoP expansion. I also left a little afterward due to not willing to grind anymore, not into the game meta at the time, and didn't want to further invest extra money on the expansion.

The warrior's Mighty Blow used to be known as a 2hr ability. Every class has a 2hr ability. Why is it call 2 hour? BECAUSE THE RECHARGE TIME WAS TWO HOURS LONG! The fact that it is 1 hour now is already half of what it used to be! It is basically an oh shit button or something that is a pretty big deal. Not all are created equal...some are better than others, but we can talk game balancing at a later time if you really want to kick that hornet nest.

The pace of the combat is what it is. Sometimes I almost prefer the quasi ATB/turn base combat than a lot of newer game's "action" style combat that feels terrible because they are fitting a square peg in a round hole. The greater issue isn't just the combat, but rather EVERYTHING feels like it is slower than it needs to be.

The control takes a while to get use to. It was probably designed with a controller in mind first. Macro short cuts are pretty much a requirement, you pretty much bind one to each job ability along with a few to your weapon skills of choice. You also macro equipment switching so you can do it during fight (yes it is as ridiculous as it sound, but very common) and occasionally a few system message like recharge timer and hp/mp/tp report, you can also use it as a timer to plan weapon skill and magic combo.

The biggest system level combat hot key you need is the target lock and unlock button which dictates where your character faces and what range of movement is aviliable. Basically if you are trying to hit something you lock on. If you need to run away you lock off.

...and onto running away...it is basically a crap shoot. The game was (is still?) punishing and unforgiving and pretty much require a group to get anything done. The fact that you can do so many quests solo is already an improvement. Especially given how fast level scales in the "main quest"

Speaking of quests, the truth is MOST of them weren't worth it. It's hard to explain, but it pretty much boils down to going on the internet and filtering through which quests is worth doing/farming/prereq for others.

Wait what what what? I haven't been logging into GB for weeks, what madness is this!?

As for PlayOnline it has been about 15 years, and from what I heard it is still terrible. The game itself underwent changes obviously, I am not following it closely anymore, but from what I gather it has gotten better, although it is hard to say how much that means.

I remember there was a long quick look of this. and that actually drove me to give this game a try.

All of the middling feelings this game brings are all true. The trying to be Mass effect/Dragon Age with dialog was a decent effort but amount to nothing major one way or another. There are some two layers deep branching in the ending, like if you have A + B you get C, but if you have A + D you get E kind of deal. However you are actually incentivize to lean towards one choice over another base on what character you are playing because of the stat boosts major decisions give.

With a controller I found the gameplay to be exceptionally good. You have exactly everything you need at your finger tips, all 9 skills are always no more than 2 buttons/modifier presses away, no need to fumble around with numerous hotkeys and clicks, and the gameplay also design around what the game has access to rather than trying to do things differently just for the heck of it.

The combat resource management also works seamlessly. I think it was regular attacks charge focus, spend focus to use skills, and skill usage charges your defensive skills resource which can buff/heals, so you have to be mindful of everything you have in your arsenal, keep a rotation going, maybe even a little combo-ing. I found even today's game are doing that worse.

The inventory in the game is a shitshow if I recall. It also kind of ran into character build being too samey issue. Since you have to use both attacks and skills in tandem specialization doesn't really pays off.

Jeff and Vinny is rarer now, but we still get that every now and then.

Vinny and Austin, and the short lived rare combo of Jeff and Austin, which we can still catch glimpse of if the stars align.

Sadly the combo of Jeff or Vinny and Ryan is forever lost to us.

Y'all talking about FF, jobs, and job systems, even went down the MMO hole, yet not a single word of FFXI. You are all criminals as far as I am concern!

Job system isn't limited to just FF tho, I mean someone mentioned it earlier even Square itself has Bravely Default and Octopath.

Depending on how you want to slice it, the jobs never really went away. Post FFV, 6,9,10,12,13, I am already excluding the MMOs, all have some sort of jobs representation, with 12's Zodiac edition filling in postmortem. 13 was the closest to having mid battle jobs change for better or worse.

Arguably the 7 and 8 era which had the biggest impact lack job representation, but I guess FFT filled that gap.

I would very much like to see a modern take on the classical jobs of FF, but I don't know if that's something they can keep doling out. However with the rate of FF coming out, It should last them a decade.