FFVII was the first RPG I ever played. As an immigrant from a poor Balkan country, I never had access to computers and the only console I had ever played until 1997 was Atari 2600, which was a clone with built-in games (although it did have a slot for cartridges as well). I did buy an SNES after much convincing my father, against the advice of my friend. It was basically EOL at that point, but the price was right for our family's budget.
I borrowed the same friend's PS1 and had a blast with Resident Evil 2. Then he lent it again for FFVII.
When I started it,it seemed so stupid. Short, polygonal characters, lots of text and no context. Still, I kept on going. I discovered a whole new world of video games I hadn't encountered before. Began slowly immersing myself into it, and reading up on it at the middle school library's PCs. (486 running win 3.11 and slooow thrashing pagefile due to what was probably 4mb or less of RAM). Once I got started, there was no stopping me. I bought the official strategy guide, learned how much fun the materia system was, got emotionally involved when Aeris (Aerith) died, and spent more than 100 hours in that first game, and with some internet sleuthing, used the mega potions glitch to help me fight the mega bosses. At that point, the final boss was a cakewalk, with the most powerful summon a few times.
Lest one thinks it's nostalgia talking, I ended up playing it again twice more all the way to the end throughout the years.
The remake held my interest for a bit, but didnt like the new combat system, so lost interest . I'll try and pick it back up when the 2nd part, Afterbirth, is released.
Don't bother with FF7R, it sucks. I tried so hard to like it, as FF7R is my favorite game of all time. But it's just a bad game.
1. It's a remake which completely diverges story wise and gameplay wise from the original. So not a great thing off the bat, because it's a "remake" which is really a new game with an FF7R coat of paint on.
2. The game was needlessly padded out to try to justify why they split the game into multiple installments. That might've been fine if the new content was good, but instead there is so, so much boring filler content which exists just to pad the length of the game. It's a 40ish hour game iirc, and at least half of that could have been cut (and the game would've been better for it).
3. The story goes way off the rails and ends up with some fourth wall breaking stuff that is just plain amateurish in its writing quality. And to add insult to injury, the fans of the original who wanted a faithful remake are not so subtly implied to be the villains.
4. The combat is... ok for what it is. I don't like action combat. But it's very poorly tuned. For example, take Air Buster, a boss fight that takes a few minutes in the original. In FF7R, it's a 10 minute fight. It's the same basic strategy - it's weak to thunder, so use that a lot (and your abilities that add stagger, which is obviously not a thing in the original). Then the boss will be staggered, and you can unleash limit breaks to do big damage. The problem is, it's 10 minutes of just doing that. Nothing new or interesting happens, just hit the boss with chip damage until it's staggered, then do real damage for a few seconds, repeat for 10 minutes. It's not horrible as a system but it's really badly tuned.
So yeah, you're not missing anything with FF7R. It's just a really bad game, which isn't worth your time or money.
I enjoyed my time enough with Remake, but it's relied waaaay too much on having prior knowledge of FF7 and its extended universe. Remake threw Sephiroth in your face within the first hour of gameplay, without much explanation of who the guy is. In the original, Sephiroth was just the subject of whispers and rumors until you got an up-close look at him in the flashback after you've left Midgar.
That is because if you don't know the story of the original, you don't even realise that the loop is there. (That's not meant to insulting - the game is specifically written that way.)
Throughout Remake, the game toys with the knowledge and expectations of the player who's familiar with the original - in ways that are sometimes moving, subtle, beautiful and elegant (e.g. Chapter 8), sometimes ridiculously clumsy and terrible (e.g. Chapter 17). But it is written so that a new player wouldn't even know there is a whole layer of the story that they have missed. That is why so many players who don't know the original never even realise, even after they finish Remake, that it is not a "remake", in the sense of a modern version of the original; the word "remake" in the title is wordplay, and the game reveals itself to be a requel. I've watched quite a few streamers start with the Remake, love it enough to go back to play the original, love it, then go back to replay the Remake - and start seeing this whole layer that they didn't see before, didn't even realise was there. It would be a lot better if Square Enix were honest and clear about this, but I guess they know they would sell far fewer copies if they told everyone how much of the story depends on knowledge of the original and its spinoffs. It doesn't mean Remake can't be enjoyed on its own - it's written so that its story makes some sense on its own - it's just that you miss out on a lot if you don't know what came before. (I mean, they're now saying that Rebirth can be enjoyed on its own too, without having played Remake. What they never bother to make clear is that "can be enjoyed" and "best enjoyed" are very different things.)
<spoilers>It is wrong by the original story, but Remake doesn’t follow the original story - it is more along the lines of “what if sepiroth projected himself back in time to mess with the timeline and ensure that his original plan succeeds?”. Most of Part 1 features weird ghost things which block any attempt to stray from the original timeline, but they die at the end of Part 1, so I’m expecting Part 2 to go far further off the rails</spoilers>
Hm, that’s interesting. That could be awesome. And although I loved the idea of a remake, it seems right to have fun with it and diverge from the original a bit.
See also Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, in which time fuckery-duckery is involved to tell a different story with the same characters. I rather liked it, but I guess I was in the mood for something different from seeing a rehash of the comic or movie.
I enjoyed your story, but I do want to make one correction. The upcoming second part to the remake is called "Rebirth", not Afterbirth. I think that would be a very different game indeed.
I played FF7 three times during my pre-pubescent years. Along with Chrono Cross twice, Chrono Trigger, FF9 and FFX. (I could not get into FF8's story or magic system.)
I really wanted to like FF7 Remake but stopped around 2/3 way through Midgar.
I don't know whether it's my lack of patience with with single player RPGs at this age, or whether it was just not a good game. I find I can only really get into the odd competitive multiplayer game these days because of the community & friends factor.
That said I always found I enjoyed FF7 much more after getting out of Midgar and having a semi-open world to run around in, versus the more on-rails experience of Midgar. I suppose I'll give the next installment a go.
Permanently missable secrets and a lot of farming are things that lose a lot of interest. I'm having trouble with ALL square games, there is just too much farm.
The revamped FFVII on PC (own it on Steam) and I believe on consoles (not the remake) has boosters and random-battle skipping, as well as other features (like fast forwarding, I think). It makes it more approachable and less time-consuming to get through the game. The random battles time fillers are practically eleminated, and understandably make the game a breeze, as well, which removes much of the challenge.
As a teenager, I had plenty of time to explore the ins and outs. Nowadays, especially since I hit 40 recently, I realize I don't have the patience for such nonsense, either. My Steam backlog is at almost 3000, meaning I'll need a few more lifetimes to do them justice. Nowadays I'll just focus on one or two games till I finish them, and sometimes, when not tired or sleepy, sample others. The thought of games like Factorio fascinates me, but also turns me off. Especially the rogue-like genre games.
Square has updated, I believe, all their FF series games with this in mind. These features are optional and can be enabled/disabled on demand, as well.
Oh you are on a similar boat as mine. The problem I have with the remake is that it's not turn based, this means it has to compete with other action-based games and I have more interesting games to play in that department.
The old one had a very interesting materia system, that is still unique.
I'm like you, I have 1000 games to play and I usually go super deep in what I play, so it's rare I finish anything before 50 hours. Given that, I'm at a beautiful point where I cannot play games that are just good, only great games.
I do love factorio, although I think dyson sphere program is better (lighter and more interesting).
In 2020 people were complaining about lack of games, while I had my incredible year with Ori and the blind forest, ori and the will of the wisp, dyson sphere program, hollow knight and xcom 2. That was my best year probably.
Sorry for the wall of text. All of this to say, square enix doesn't innovate, I prefer indie gamea, gameplay for me it's everything. Plot is nice, but i'd rather watch on youtube if the gameplay is average.
And yeah, if there is farming that's not fun, I drop the game or occasionally I look for cheats to skip the farming.
This allowed me to play monster hunter iceborne endgame, which requires thousands of hours, in single player and by enjoying it way more (very strategic when changing build doesn't cost a fortune). Had a great time with it, but I was about to drop it when I realized how much farm it needed
>I also think that while the cinematic scope and melodrama would eventually be copied by “Western” rpgs like Dragon Age, Mass Effect, and Witcher, there is a degree of vulnerability to Cloud and his Final Fantasy successors that still isn’t quite allowed to exist among most of the gruff dudes and sad dads of ‘western’ games.
JRPGs are just much more open about feelings. It's really hard to describe. I'd actually even say that you can see that across all japanese games really regardless of the genre.
The thing that bothered me about the later Final Fantasys is that as the series went on, the protagonists got younger and more like pop stars than original characters. At some point it seems like they forgot they were making fantasy games and just started aping pop musicians (both in fashion and appearance/age) and Hollywood.
This happens to a lot of game companies though. Turnover leads to teams with no connection to previous games in the series and with that a loss of connection to what made the games so special.
> Turnover leads to teams with no connection to previous games in the series
It's even weirder and more fascinating than that. Turnover eventually leads to teams made of people who were fans of the original series, and the risk there is that their own interpretation of the series can become a navel-gazing love letter to the superficial stuff that floats on top of their memories (e.g. references, callbacks, tie-ins, inside jokes, and memes) while neglecting the underlying qualities that made them fall in love with the series in the first place.
Oh yeah! But this is a problem with a lot of game designers, not just those who join the teams of their childhood heroes. There are quite a few games out there that lean so heavily into navel-gazing love letter territory and what's even more depressing is that they seem to have an audience.
Well, I have good news for you: the most recent Final Fantasy has the oldest protagonist in the series (after the prologue), at a grizzled and careworn 28. Prior to that the oldest protagonists were Cloud and Lightning, both 21. (Zidane is the youngest post-Famicom protagonist at 16.)
I don't consume japanese media too often. But from what I've been sensing, there is a real class tension in japan'a young population now. It's not like in america where we villify the powerful. It's quite the opposite. The lower class gets villified and portrayed with a certain malice that i find quite distasteful. There is a presaure to be in communion with the so called 'elites'. And this partly drives the change of theme and feeling in their media.
With a heavy dose of Blade Runner too. Sephiroth is pretty much gaming's Roy Batty. The dynamic between him and Cloud is even very close to that of Batty and Deckard.
It's ok though, in the 90s, homaging Blade Runner in Japanese media was a total belt onion -- something people did because "it was the style at the time".
Before FF7 they were aping fantasy tropes. This is fine if you're making a fantasy game! Though my favourite game in the series is 6 which adds steampunk to the mix but without being overly self-conscious about it.
I wonder if there's any connection between theater and video games in Japan, since theater is another medium where emotion has to be exaggerated to get across to the audience. And some JRPGs (e.g. Final Fantasy or Octopath Traveler) are not just open with emotion but pull out all the stops to get across the emotion they're going for.
That's Kabuki theatre, but they are that way also thanks to the immense popularity of shōnen manga, aimed at young boys, where the main storytelling device is "tell, don't show".
As someone that wanted to get into anime and Japanese media in their 30s, this characteristic has majorly turned me off from the most anime, manga-derived games and JRPGs. I just cannot stand their lack of subtlety and nuance in writing.
It is a major and understated expression of the Western-Eastern cultural divide. In the Western world adults tend to appreciate sophisticated stories, maybe too much so, while, from what I understand, the traumatic break from happy school life to overly-rigid business Japanese culture is the reason why even grown adults tend to find refuge in late teen/school-age drama. Most Japanese animated media is made of, but not strictly for, 17 year olds in their senior year of high school fighting the universe and God himself.
Interesting thought - I wouldn't say there's a strong connection, but it feels a bit less distant than in the west, e.g. stage show adaptations of videogames are relatively common.
Manga got its style from shitty printing presses. They were not reliable enough to draw small detail faces realistically so they started drawing huge, super emotive faces instead with giant eyes and what not. I would guess it’s the root of it
One of the things that made FF7 special for me, beyond being my first JRPG, was that there wasn’t voice acting and I was ignorant to the fact that it was a Japanese game, so I was completely unaware of all the weird translations. This forced me to resolve my own interpretations of the characters, their mannerisms, speech patterns, etc.
I think this is what made FF8 and FF9 quite approachable, but then 10+ were jarring with the overly vocalized characters, verbalizing every slight emotion.
I think this is what led me to appreciate a less-is-more personal opinion on video game storytelling. Voice acting can sometimes be incredible. But often it’s just in the way.
I think you are in a minority.
Ff10 was huge leap at the time and they never looked back.
Voice acting is something most people enjoy and make the story actually enjoyable.
Sales have generally been trending down substantially since FF7. [1] X and X-2 only sold better by merit of both being two games counted as one, and by being released and released on a zillion platforms.
I think in general though there's this weird paradox in games that things we think we enjoy can make games worse, yet it feels bad to try to 'fix' now. I think the best example would be quest waypoints in various open world games. It's absolutely painful to play without them now, but on the other hand when one actually had to pay attention to your quests and goals, it resulted in vastly more satisfying gameplay compared to what's gradually turned into some weird ritual across a million games of fast-travel to nearest location, bee-line to colored dot, skim text, repeat.
No idea who first said the quote (that's been attributed to Gabe Newell) but it's just so true: give players the opportunity to, and they'll optimize the fun out of your game.
I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve got into arguments with people by saying the addition of the automap feature was bad for the Metroid series. The original Metroid was an old school hard game and a big part of its difficulty was due to the lack of a map to guide you. The feeling of tension was palpable, when you were profoundly lost and low on health. When the automap arrived that feeling was banished forever.
I think in general there’s a problem with gamers who demand that their games give them nothing but good feelings all the time. They don’t want to experience sadness, sorrow, heartbreak, fear, stress, or frustration. They just want the game to feel like a Christmas party that never ends. How dreadfully boring!
Super Metroid is still a very difficult game despite the automap. Getting lost in a game where you can warp to the start by dying isn't scary, it's tedious.
This is why Demon’s Souls really resonated with me back in 2009 or whenever. The victories were truly earned. Every souls game since then has gotten easier by eliminating, one by one, all those unforgiving mechanics. (But I still genuinely enjoy them)
Perhaps OP is in the minority, but I am too then - I couldn’t enjoy the voice-acted versions; they all sounded cheesy.
With text only, I imbued the game with a little imagination - not unlike reading a book - and also found the weird translations let my imagination fill in the gaps
“You spoony bard” is one of the best lines in the whole series. Why would you want it to be changed to something unobtrusive? It has tremendous staying power and it gets people talking about a game they might’ve otherwise overlooked. And that’s tragic because FFIV is a wonderful game that should not be overlooked.
I think SquareEnix agrees with me, as they’ve kept the line in retranslations of the game.
This reminds me of how the Demon’s Souls remake cleaned on a lot of translation issues, but not all. The Maiden in Black is the same voice actor, who speaks in very broken phonetic English, which is generally agreed adds considerably to the atmosphere.
That's a perfectly good and underappreciated translation. The guy is a hundred-or-so year old sage, he's not going to be turning the air blue, in that scene he's finally flown off the handle and is not going to be choosing his words carefully to match the modern ear. If you ignore the meme and read the words as they are, it really helps the emotion of the moment come through.
The pearl-clutching of the author regarding the women of the story, and Cloud's aversion to cross-dressing, is about as eye-rolling to me as those elements were to him.
That aside, it was a decent read, and in the end he said what I was hoping he'd realize: It was a game targeted at a particular demographic, though potentially enjoyable by anyone. The easter eggs which he chose to ignore are a part of the "openness" of the game that makes it feel like a more immersive world - I remember farming chocobos for hours in order to get the golden one, which would let me get the Knights of the Round summon.
As the author realizes but doesn't quite say, it was a product of its time. It is amazing as a video game the same way Zeppelin and Black Sabbath are amazing rock and metal - their sound is more impressive when you realize they were the vanguard of a new way of music. Seinfeld is "just" a nihilistic comedy like dozens of others, but it was first.
Some of these games are considered so great as a bandwagon effect, but I say that in a kind way: It's part of the common culture of gaming, and so experiencing it (and hopefully enjoying it) brings you into a familiarity with the subculture, the same way one has probably watched Star Wars or Star Trek to be a "sci fi" geek.
I'm eagerly waiting for 7 Remake's part 2 this February, having not played the original since it was on Playstation & I only had an N64. Having played a lot of SNES JRPGs via SNES9X or ZSNES, I loved the story and character building in FF6, gameplay of Tales of Phantasia and Star Ocean, and overall gameplay of Lufia 2 and Chrono Trigger when I was younger.
I think back and I find that not that many modern games have the same influence on me as those older games from my childhood - I don't think it's necessarily the quality of games has gone down, FF16, Tales of Berseria, YS VIII are all exceptional RPGs, but it might be that we have so many entertainment options these days that truly memorable games get lost when there's always something new around the corner.
I’m in the minority, but I was let down by the game. I have RSI so forcing me into the modern combat in games destroyed it for me. I just wanted my turn based game. It also just didn’t feel like the original at all for as far as I played. Barrett’s voice was embarrassing to listen to I also remember feeling.
Yes you can switch off the fighting but that other system is very broken and it’s nothing like the Orginal.
I loved Lufia 2 as well, especially the Ancient Cave which blew my mind when I was younger since I didn't realize how they could make a full game and a replay-able 100 level dungeon in the same SNES cart.
My favorite game from SNES era is probably Tales of Phantasia though (the DeJap fan translation) - the gameplay mixed with a fun story across 2 different time periods was an amazing experience. I probably have FF5, 6, Chrono Trigger, Fire Emblem 4, or Star Ocean somewhere in the 2-6 range.
Lufia 2 came out in North America in May of 1996, just 4 months before the release of the Nintendo 64, so it may have been overshadowed. A lot of other late releases for the SNES are similarly underrated. Likewise with games like Kirby's Adventure for the NES, which was actually released 2 years after the SNES's debut!
Final Fantasy VII Remake was an exceptionally good game. It managed to make me feel like I was a kid again when I was playing the original game for the first time. The graphics, music and overall mood was just right. I can’t wait to play Rebirth in February.
I personally found the music “overdone”. I get wanting to spin it for today, but found in every reimagining that there was just too much going on with it.
Few games inspired the unexpected wonder and scale that FF7 did. 8 did a little. 9 hit the mark. So did X. Everything after was kinda of numb... I felt nothing for FF12 characters, or for the absolute trainwrecks that were FF15 and FF16. FF15 was an excuse to market real-life products to the player. It was exchausting having immersion broken by nissin noodles ads, and coleman camping gear ads. FF16 is some of the worst fighting I've ever had in a game, with a focus on these garbage cinematics. The brand is dead to me. I'll only replay the classic games, and that's why square has 1-6 pixel remasters at a staggering $80 virtual, and you can't even find the physical version for less than $110 on ebay. That's how bad the new series are.
Now we're awash in a cacophony of copycat indie devs who flood the market with cringeworthy half-finished games that can only copy the wonder of the FF series.
We at-least have hope with stunning remasters like Star Ocean Second Story R, which has that feeling of depth, progress, story, and nuance.
>Few games inspired the unexpected wonder and scale that FF7 did. 8 did a little. 9 hit the mark. So did X. Everything after was kinda of numb
The FF games you loved were created by the two talents at the heart of FF: series creator Hironobu Sakaguchi and legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu. They left after X. I think the soul of the franchise left when these two did.
I played FF12 about 12 years ago and I couldn't name you a single character (or remember their personality/story) or hum a single music track. I played FF7 25 years ago and there's a few music tracks I still remember, and I can name most of the characters (though it helps that they're popular in gaming culture).
I replayed 12 a couple of years ago, the new Zodiac Age version. The quality of life changes in that have made it a significantly more enjoyable game, you can see now what they were aiming for and where they were up against the limits of the PS2.
Story is still a bit of a mess, pacing wise, but its voice acting has aged well (unlike X).
It’s a different game to the classic run, but I would rank it up amongst my favourites in the series now.
I don't care for the occasional cinematic quick time event combat in FF16 either but once you get the abilities maxed out the normal combat is actually amazing, particularly in Final Fantasy mode. I feel like the game should have been in Final Fantasy mode from the start.
For me, the highlight was FFVI. Square was firing on all cylinders on the SNES.
FFVII started the tilt into anime and, aside from FFIX, they've continued to lean into that. I don't care for it.
Luckily the indie developers (and even teams within Square Enix) have taken up the mantle. Chained Echoes, Sea of Stars, the Star Ocean Remake, the Tactics Ogre remake, Crosscode, the Seiken Densetu 3 remake, Live A Live, SaGa Frontier 3, the Octopath Traveler games - they're quite good, and that's just in the last few years! Maybe not to everyone's taste, but they are well made games and there's no shortage of good stuff to play.
I'm not sure what "tilt into anime" means here. FF has always been heavily influenced by anime. If anything, the earlier games bore those influences more obviously.
I don't think it's exactly a tilt into anime per se...
FF1-6 & 9 had very distinctive characterization and art styles, with out of proportion characters. A lot of it was forced by technical limitations of the NES/SNES, but it's a style that we grew to love.
7, 8, and the rest -- not so much; it's a much more mainstream aesthetic.
I love that game. I don't know how much of it is the excitement, but having enjoyed "III" and then going to VII I was pretty hyped when the opening sequence switched to player control. Nobuo Uematsu is a genius, you're basically at the peak of console music and graphics for the time, and it came in a thick box with three CDs.
Materia is on of my favorite systems, too, it made getting new weapons, armor, or materia more exciting than other games because you'd usually have a new way to combine the skills you want, or a far stronger attack with worse skill slots.
FFVII hit massive popularity by being the right game at the right time. And it's a great game, and one of the better FF games! But it was a bit of an experimental bridge between 2D and 3D RPGs.
Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy X are much better in terms of gameplay and storytelling.
The original commercial in America was the greatest commercial I’d seen around age 12 or so that wasn’t a Super Bowl ad. It would only be matched in awe for young me by GTA 3’s montage ad backed by “O mio babbino caro”
I would not have been as kind to FF7 as this author was. By any modern measure it is a bad game. The raw story material and the character design is fantastic. But the gameplay. The gameplay is so tedious the author couldn’t even continue without modifying the game.
I think the main problem with 13 is that it doesn't give the illusion of freedom. I finished FFX for the first time recently (having previously gotten stuck on Gagazet Seymour), and it's almost as restrictive as 13, it just hides it better with cities, temple puzzles, and the sphere grid. In 13 there's no illusion about the fact that you have no choice but to keep running straight down the hallways, and leveling up only at the pace the game allows. A little misidrection or a few minigames would have gone such a long way to break up the pacing.
Totally agree; I started replaying 13 somewhat recently, and just felt worn down after playing for a few hours. The nonstop battles with no real break between them just isn't fun, despite the game having amazing aesthetics.
yeah, one of my problems with Japanese properties in general is this obvious design by committee thing and budget issues that turn great pitches into incoherent nonsense by the end
you can basically count on one hand how many anime style or Japanese gaming properties don't go off the rails and finish the initial story.
Final Fantasy VII is a prime example, the world building at the beginning of the first game in the “VII” franchise is fantastic. In such an arduous funnel, most people see that. But then there’s vampires, dueling identities, ridiculous backstories that cause continuity issues and separate subsequently released games for each, pretty much just ignore the final boss in the first game and the resolution in the post cut scenes, because now there’s multiple universes for no reason with no foreshadowing whatsoever. like. stop. there was no cliffhanger or loose ends.
they even got fans jumping through mental hoops about the definition of “remake” to rationalize the unnecessary ridiculousness of breaking the story even further for no benefit, but in 4k. they could have just done the exact same story without the kingdom hearts nonsense but its like someone at Square can’t be fired for some dumb distinctly Japanese reason.
It seems like you’re talking about the modern FF7 Remake, which is actually an alternate universe version of the original FF7 series.
The original didn’t have a lot of the bits you are calling out because it wasn’t trying to retcon in 20+ years worth of story buildup, and is a much simpler story.
That’s not to justify the complexity of the FF7 lore. I think it and Kingdom Hearts are both ridiculously over complex now, but that people delineate between Remake and the original because of that huge divergence in story.
The article and rest of the comments are about the original game.
I was referring to the first game until I was referring to the remake. read it again?
I find the first game charming and evocative, while acknowledging there were some parts to expand upon, loose ends even, but the way they did that definitely jumped the shark.
Ah my bad. I misunderstood what the subject was in the paragraph when you talked about the “first game” and the criticisms after, since they’re largely scoped to the remake rather than earlier games in the franchise.
When I played it in college - I recognized that playing it fair and square would create undue competition for my studies.
I used the hex edit cheats to max out my characters, and breezed through it in 23 hours. A great decision. I got to experience all that plot, all the mini games, and only compromised the combat build aspect of it. The last battle, even at max stats, was not a cakewalk. There were weapons I still have not defeated.
They don't like the encounter rates. It definitely got annoying at times, but the encounters and leveling up have been part and parcel for this genre of RPGs.
Personally I'm the delayed gratification type where I'll level up to a point where I steamroll all the bad guys in the main storyline. Even high encounter rate areas aren't bad when it's a one hit kill.
I'd do that pretty much every playthrough when I got to the woods where you find Yuffie. I'd farm limit breaks up to lvl3 on the groups of 5-6 little bug guys that you can run into. By the time I'd get my limits to 3 they'd all be pretty OP in terms of their level.
I played several FF games a few years ago for the first time and felt like this for almost all of them (all on the Switch, don't remember which numbers offhand). The gameplay elements were just clunky and I gave up on those a few hours in, though I did complete X. Haven't done X-2 yet though.
> I look forward to giving Final Fantasy VIII a try; although it’s widely regarded as one of the black sheep of the Final Fantasy family
FF8 is actually so bad as to possibly turn this person off the series entirely IMO. Bad characters. Questionable, easily exploitable battle mechanics. Terrible, nonsense story with some of the dumbest “reveals” of virtually any game ever. It’s a kinda of neat setting and world, but just used so so so poorly.
For anyone that has played them but wants to, I still recommend 10 with a mod to give everyone experience every battle (spoiler, 10 still had the “haha gotcha for not levelling everyone equally” annoyance that was popular in JRPGs of old).
All I remember about VIII was fighting with everyone over playing Triple Triad. I can't remember anything about the story or the game, it was all about working out how to collect those cards.
The thing about VIII is that it has all the pieces of a really interesting story, but they completely fail to cohere into a narrative that supports the themes. The Laguna dreams are a fantastic narrative concept that results in an incredibly dumb reveal, for instance. If you play the game with the idea that it's a story about Squall overcoming his fear of forming connections with others, you can kind of do some surgery on the story as you go, but it still feels like a fever dream. (The story almost makes more sense if you interpret everything after the failed assassination of Edea as being Squall's dying fantasy -- which is not a good sign for the coherence of a narrative!)
xenogears was amazing, even with the unfinished nature of the second disc. you should definitely play FFT. just make sure to keep multiple save files so you don't get stuck like many including myself have at this one infamous part
Not VII, but I never played a Final Fantasy before, and the internet told me X is modern-enough, good, and approachable, but I'm having a really hard time getting into it. Plus my time is more limited these days. Maybe I should try powering through?
It really depends on what you mean by "having a really hard time getting into it". If you let us know what you're not enjoying, we may be able to tell you whether it's worth you trying to power through.
I think people tend to recommend X these days as the first one for newcomers primarily because it has voice acting and relatively modern graphics, so it's more approachable in that respect. X is my favourite FF, alongside VII, but that doesn't mean it's best at everything, even compared to other FFs. For me, its strength is primarily in its storytelling (which includes things like writing, music and cutscenes) - but all that really takes quite a while to fully reveal itself. I don't personally actually think too highly of X's gameplay. The turn-based combat and the sphere grid are ok, but for me not the best even in the FFs (though I know quite a few people who consider it the best, so it's all personal taste). The temple "puzzles" are terrible. It has some truly terrible minigames (although Blitzball is really great - it just has a terrible tutorial). And it's not as if there are no flaws with the storytelling either - the party members are not on the whole as good as in some of the other FFs, and it was the first FF with voice-acting, so there were some infamously awkward moments. But its storytelling highs are some of the highest I've ever experienced in games - I am still in awe of the sheer beauty of some of its best moments. I mean, it's a game about a giant whale, that makes many people sob their eyes out, fall in love with it, get tattoos for it, etc. But that is also very much personal taste. Are you enjoying the music? Did you like the music and the environment in Besaid? Did the scene of Yuna performing the sending do anything for you in Kilika?
May I ask what you don't like about it? It eases you in with a tutorial, there's a lot of story and dialog for the "movie game" generation, the Sphere Grid is mostly locked so you can't cripple yourself by picking bad upgrades (unless you played one of the remakes and picked an open grid?), it's the usual high production values FF title...
FFX to me is the pinnacle of the FF turn-based battle system. That said, it IS over 20 years old.
I think there's some game genres which, if you didn't grow up on them, you might not enjoy them. Kinda like how you have to eat sushi a few times before you start liking it. I think turn-based JRPGs are aimed at people who enjoyed those games in the 25 years ago. The Metroidvania genre, even more so.
I don't know if it's the gameplay or the writing that you're having trouble with, but if it's the latter, you're not alone: I think it has overall the worst plot/characters/setting of the single-player FF games I've played (I haven't played XV or XVI). And XIII provides some really stiff competition in that regard.
I know it's an unpopular opinion, but for me, FFX has the best and deepest story of all FFs I played (which are 7, 8, a bit of 9, 10, 12), closely followed by 8.
7 and 8 suffer from too much arbitrariness for me, 10 is just the right kind of mixture of weirdness with proper storytelling for me, and with 12, Final Fantasy started to become bland.
I don't think it's an unpopular opinion. X is very popular (there's a reason there's so much sequel material for it). I just find the Zanarkand stuff to be a real lead weight on the story, and the emotional heft of the story requires you to care about Tidus, which I absolutely do not.
X-2 is silly but I at least sympathized with the characters. The entire party in X could be eaten by Sin for all I care.
It might actually be the writing. So the main character is a "blitzball" player with throngs of fans, there's a bit of an apocalypse with unclear motivations, his friend sorta saves him, and they're transported to a new place? It was a whole lot of eyerolls.
I played VII - X when they came out, X was pretty bad. None since VII had any content worth powering through for; if you don’t dig it, I wouldn’t recommend it. (Doubly so because JRPGs are extremely grindy and the opposite of time-efficient.)
> JRPGs are extremely grindy and the opposite of time-efficient
Good point. I've played Pokemon and South Park: Stick of Truth, so maybe I've had enough of a taste of JRPGs to know what they're about.
I wonder if the grinding was because content was expensive to produce, so it's a lazy way to add gameplay, and their target market is kids who will happily grind if it's a video game (vs. a piano).
Nah, grinding was (and remains) in CRPGs with adult audiences. Some people just really like it. These days people, adult people with jobs and families, will pay a monthly fee just to grind.
No, pretty much every one of them. I prefer darker, heavy themes. For example I love Double Dragon and Castlevania on NES but never enjoyed Mario or Zelda or such — found them too naive for my taste back in the day (was eight year old)
Pokemon's pretty dark. Where's Ash's father, exactly? And we're in this world where kids leave home to enslave monsters to fight other kids? Plus the local mafia also fights these kids?
I borrowed the same friend's PS1 and had a blast with Resident Evil 2. Then he lent it again for FFVII.
When I started it,it seemed so stupid. Short, polygonal characters, lots of text and no context. Still, I kept on going. I discovered a whole new world of video games I hadn't encountered before. Began slowly immersing myself into it, and reading up on it at the middle school library's PCs. (486 running win 3.11 and slooow thrashing pagefile due to what was probably 4mb or less of RAM). Once I got started, there was no stopping me. I bought the official strategy guide, learned how much fun the materia system was, got emotionally involved when Aeris (Aerith) died, and spent more than 100 hours in that first game, and with some internet sleuthing, used the mega potions glitch to help me fight the mega bosses. At that point, the final boss was a cakewalk, with the most powerful summon a few times.
Lest one thinks it's nostalgia talking, I ended up playing it again twice more all the way to the end throughout the years.
The remake held my interest for a bit, but didnt like the new combat system, so lost interest . I'll try and pick it back up when the 2nd part, Afterbirth, is released.