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Post by eric on Apr 10, 2017 18:45:21 GMT -6
hey y'all
so growing up i played Final Fantasy 1 on NES on a black and white TV
which made it really hard to tell which were Imps and which were GrImps
anyway i made it happen
fighter - black belt - white mage - black mage party naturally
before Tiamat i slew WarMECH and was left with a fighter with 19 HP
this was before your pampered bubble wrap disneyland participation trophy "phoenix down" garbage
so my fighter soloed Tiamat
nbd
we never bought another final fantasy game
later i emulated every other final fantasy up to six
but only really stuck with FF5 and of course FF6
the greatest RPG ever created
recently i decided to try out final fantasy seven
and here's what happened
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Post by eric on Apr 10, 2017 18:48:41 GMT -6
wow @ starting the game with the lullabye. brought a tear to my eye i wanna name the main hero after myself but sheesh, two minutes in and i can already tell he's a (*^%boy so here's the problem. i alt-tabbed out of it, and it destroyed my whole computer because how could Steam keep up with these new fangled inventions like alt tab who could expect their program to work with that gonna try windowed mode this time, don't have high hopes though booting it up now, pray for your boy so far so good oh wow i don't even need a relic to sprint  no victory fanfare!! :( except now there is one!! but now there's not again?! after first mission seems to always be there so let's talk about these graphics i love moving through the stars in the beginning one of my biggest pet peeves is panning over a picture of a landscape instead of actually moving through it but these hideous textured faux 3D maps are hard to take it's really hard to tell what's actually a path, when i can jump things, where i can walk and i get it with the changing camera angles during battle, but i'm getting motion sickness over here "when you've been a train man as long as I have, you see a lot of people and a lot of lives. people meeting, parting, joy, sadness... after a while, it doesn't even get to you anymore. dawn comes and things never change" i feel you, emo train man first two dungeons are literally identical :/ :/ come on, son :/ interesting how they went hard asian on the text and general atmosphere all the way down to the karaoke bar i wonder if that was a nintendo of america thing or just a conscious change just finished the plate falling part game so far is super linear no side quests, no branches the max three party is an interestingly different dynamic from the traditional four not ever being able to decide who's in my party is dumb and bad and lazy to be continued thanks for watching like and subscribe |
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Post by Odin on Apr 10, 2017 19:12:01 GMT -6
Yes the beginning is linear and has some party restrictions but that doesn't last very long.
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Post by eric on Apr 14, 2017 12:31:42 GMT -6
the mini game / change of pace stuff has been fun so far
running around getting the cross dressing stuff
sneaking past the guards
navigating through maps is still a chore due to the art style though
the music has been disappointing
for starters there's an odd bug
a certain zone or moment will have its own theme that overrides the battle and victory fanfares
really jarring to fight to the somber quiet music in post-massacre shinra
second of all it's just not good so far
i guess it's goodbye midgar...
the flashback sequence is fun and funny
but also illustrates one of the issues the game has in general
they broach dramatic themes and immediately undermine them with comic relief
e.g. "is tifa being forced into prostitution?" "look it's cloud in a wig yuk yuk yuk!"
e.g. cloud having a nervous breakdown as he relives a devastating betrayal "let's rifle through tifa's underwear yuk yuk yuk!"
i'm all for tonal variation but this is just slapstick
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Post by Delap on Apr 24, 2017 7:26:45 GMT -6
What happened here?
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Post by eric on Apr 24, 2017 8:22:15 GMT -6
the nba playoffs on TNT got a couple weddings this weekend too, and then softball starts, but i will beat it eventually |
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Post by BKay Jewelers on May 6, 2017 7:26:34 GMT -6
played any more? where are you exactly?
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Post by eric on May 6, 2017 10:56:37 GMT -6
played any more? where are you exactly? nope. i'm on the boat after the part where you chocobo across the desert. still feels like i'm on rails a bit, but it was clearly a priority for them to break up the traditional "walk back and forth, fight, walk back and forth, fight, x infinity" routine, and even as a grinder (9:99 in every secret of mana spell) i can't complain so far. |
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Post by SugarShaun on May 6, 2017 16:09:10 GMT -6
I have never played a FF game
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Post by BKay Jewelers on May 6, 2017 16:12:16 GMT -6
played any more? where are you exactly? nope. i'm on the boat after the part where you chocobo across the desert. still feels like i'm on rails a bit, but it was clearly a priority for them to break up the traditional "walk back and forth, fight, walk back and forth, fight, x infinity" routine, and even as a grinder (9:99 in every secret of mana spell) i can't complain so far. That's not a bad part of the game! Do you like rogue-likes at all? What appeals to you in grinding just the min max? |
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Post by eric on May 6, 2017 17:53:34 GMT -6
nope. i'm on the boat after the part where you chocobo across the desert. still feels like i'm on rails a bit, but it was clearly a priority for them to break up the traditional "walk back and forth, fight, walk back and forth, fight, x infinity" routine, and even as a grinder (9:99 in every secret of mana spell) i can't complain so far. That's not a bad part of the game! Do you like rogue-likes at all? What appeals to you in grinding just the min max? I am a big time min maxer, but it's not even that. I just want to bite the horizon. It's there. I have never played a FF game Final Fantasy VI is the truth. Terra is pretty easily the greatest hero in video game history. |
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Post by KwYawnza on May 7, 2017 11:49:48 GMT -6
i enjoy 7 got it on steam and still fire it up every so often.
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Post by Odin on May 7, 2017 20:43:35 GMT -6
I have never played a FF game i don't understand how this happens |
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Post by SugarShaun on May 7, 2017 21:13:18 GMT -6
I have never played a FF game i don't understand how this happens I can't recall having any friends who played them either  I played a lot of sports games. NBA Live, Madden. Played wrestling games |
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Post by Odin on May 7, 2017 21:37:05 GMT -6
i don't understand how this happens I can't recall having any friends who played them either I played a lot of sports games. NBA Live, Madden. Played wrestling games sounds exactly like my situation but i still played them |
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Post by eric on May 14, 2017 13:28:03 GMT -6
got off the boat, decided to farm up a few levels
farming brings up the same monster over and over and over and over and over if on the same terrain
even in final fantasy I the original there were a couple options they cycled through, come on dog
i started humping the shoreline just to change it up a little
leveled up materia! it's a lot better than the esper system in terms of use/equip, but the explanation of what does what is a little lacking
got some new gear to FAST GROWTH it up, which fine, good, i like the tradeoffs between slots and connectors and growth and whatnot
it's a little weird to have defense and defense % and one can go up and one can go down
but i'll just level up to 100, whatever, fight me irl
one quick thing is the quality of the weapon graphics is WILDLY, WILDLY uneven
like any netizen i knew what cloud's sword looked like
then the first "upgrade" was some mspaint garbage
i mean come on
hopefully that picks up as the game goes along
i was not a fan of the the pseudo 3D at first
but it has made for interestingly new maps, like the train tracks / roller coaster (because even coal deserves a little happiness)
the music continues to be kind of odd
in retrospect almost all of the FF6 music was sad/desolate/mournful so i get wanting to switch it up
but it's still jarring to go from "here's some peaceful music, la la la OKAY NOW FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT! okay back to serenades"
and i'm all for leitmotifs but it makes the transition to "LOOK! it's a Shinra thing!" even worse
needs some variety
the gold saucer casino is lolbad
hopefully i don't have to spend any more time here than moving the storyline along this one time
everyone hates chintzy carnival games, okay?
again i see very clearly how high a priority it was to them to break up the "walk walk fight walk walk fight walk walk shop walk walk fight" routine
but there are ways, and then there are ways
overall though i'm glad to have time for the game again
these minor points notwithstanding at its core it's final fantasy
they've got the drama and the convoluted plot
they've got the battle engine
i look forward to going further
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Post by Odin on May 14, 2017 17:27:08 GMT -6
The Gold Saucer is great, how dare you
Well, the ff14 Gold Saucer is great and ff7 one has the nostalgia factor.
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Post by TimPig on May 16, 2017 20:11:52 GMT -6
I loved this game when I played it through, but that was probably close to 20 years ago.
I started to play through it again and probably got about 20 hours in before I stopped. It certainly wasn't as great as the first time, but there was such a huge nostalgia factor.
Still, I'll always say it was one of the greatest RPGs ever.
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Post by eric on May 25, 2017 20:03:13 GMT -6
i heard a film critic tear into some scriptwriter for the following reason a studio would come to him with set piece A, B, and C and say "connect the dots" even if it made no sense, he'd just make a tenuous thread between them i bring this up because the plot of FF7 more and more reminds me of loosely connected set pieces the only connection is trailing idly after sephi which fine, not every overarching plot will be perfect but they're not even tying up the individual set pieces for example, dio "you killed everyone!" "no we didn't!" "you go to desert prison!" "no seriously we didn't! the body of the guy who did it is at the bottom of a ravine in the middle of an unnavigable desert!" "well why didn't you say so? you're free to go also here's a cool car"  i get that when you're a muscular plutocrat in a speedo you can make up the rules as you go, but come on man they didn't even bother to put in a shocked reaction from everyone at this comical level of dio process get it due process, dio process i got a million of 'em anyway the cosmo canyon music was awesome and it's really obvious from the foreshadowing and the terrain that nibel is a Capital P Plot Advancement point, so hopefully the storytelling starts to pick up |
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Post by Delap on May 25, 2017 20:38:21 GMT -6
Cosmo Canyon music is quite awesome.
Nibelheim is muy importante.
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Post by Odin on May 25, 2017 23:17:14 GMT -6
it was a game made before half life, of course the story is fractured and barely coherent at times
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Post by eric on May 26, 2017 8:22:09 GMT -6
it was a game made before half life, of course the story is fractured and barely coherent at times for future reference i'm grading it against final fantasy VI, which i think is fair, and whose story was amazing, emotional, and coherent. |
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Post by Odin on May 26, 2017 10:39:35 GMT -6
it was a game made before half life, of course the story is fractured and barely coherent at times for future reference i'm grading it against final fantasy VI, which i think is fair, and whose story was amazing, emotional, and coherent. I think thats a bit dangerous, storytelling was going to go down a bit with the switch to 3d, well kind of 3d. To me, ff is clearly separated into pre ps1 ff, ps1 ff, and post ps1 ff. Comparing 7 to 4 then 10 is great for discussion but kind of sucks because of how different they are. If we are talking compared to other ps1 era jrpgs (like Legend of Dragoon) then i think theres a real discussion to be had about everyones favorite ff. It is however not my favorite ff. |
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Post by eric on Jun 1, 2017 17:48:02 GMT -6
i'm growing more and more dissatisfied with the story here we are in nibel, and it's a really smart play on cloud's memories there's clearly a big something going on we got creepy cloaked guys all over the place we revisit where it all began there's sephiroth! oh boy! something's about to happen! homeboy flies out of here like a three dollar neo and that's it no plot resolution, no plot advancement, no nothing . and this is my biggest complaint, and it happens over and over and over the characters don't care at allcloud doesn't even do his f!@#boy shrug sometimes the pieces all won't fit together as a storyteller, i get that but to just ignore it makes it 100x as jarring gimme something here here was the state of the plot on leaving midgar: sephiroth has VVVT lost it aerith is a knockoff terra or whatever cloud has PTSD i've visited nine towns since then and absolutely nothing has changed as far as i know sephiroth has been getting a mani-pedi in the nibel basement this whole time let's compare FF6, the nine towns after the starter area -we join the Returners -kefka poisons an entire city -cyan meets his dead family -the Empire besieges two distinct towns -terra's true nature is revealed . . it's a problem. it's a problem. |
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Post by eric on Aug 5, 2017 16:45:21 GMT -6
finished disc one. knew it was coming, what with being on the internet these past some odd years. sephiroth's whole character design is just so bad. "okay we need an antagonist. and let's have him fly around and show up literally anywhere at any time whenever he wants, and the player can't affect the interactions in any way" this is why you introduce secondary antagonists, so the player at least has SOME agency in the plot. this is why you have side quests, so we can at least get some character development 7 has nothing. the turks do like two things before "Oh, I was tricked... I am... still alive..." okay cool buddy, we're gonna cause this temple to shrink and kill you instead of, you know, casting cure on you or just dragging you to safety it briefly felt like the game was camp all along when they lampshaded it in the temple: sephiroth flies away for the millionth time, the temple starts shaking, everyone says "oh no sephiroth!" and sephiroth LITERALLY FLIES BACK TO SAY "NOPE NOT ME GUYS HAHAHAHAHA OKAY BYE" AND FLIES OFF AGAIN and then he kills aerith, whose body inexplicably loses all buoyancy in an inexplicably 100' deep pool  FF6 had ten times the plot in half the time. it's really bad, guys. it's really bad. |
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Post by Delap on Aug 5, 2017 17:21:48 GMT -6
Geez, such anger
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Post by Odin on Aug 15, 2017 8:36:10 GMT -6
You should stream this
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Post by eric on Oct 2, 2017 11:07:20 GMT -6
so i like the transformers movies i'm not afraid to admit it you wanna go? we'll go right now when i watched Age of Extinction, it was very clear that there were (at least) two distinct screenplays that had been jammed together into one (extremely long) movie. this was very jarring when for example a main antagonist abruptly changed sides halfway through, or when a new main antagonist with an entirely different motivation was introduced two hours into the movie. i'm getting a similar feeling the more i play FF7. in addition to the general incoherence and inconsistency of the plot, there continue to be abrupt and inexplicable shifts in tone. let's do an example. we're running around a glacier that is incredibly hostile and difficult to traverse we finally finish the grueling climb and find a titanic creature, also sephiroth, wow this is intense! let's have scarlet waltz in in a friggin' SLEEVELESS DRESS and HIGH HEELS on the friggin' GLACIER are you KIDDING ME okay time for the big reveal: Cloud isn't Cloud at all, he's a CLONE BABY! a clone, comma, baby! he is not the clone of a baby. this is a surprising reveal, which isn't necessarily or in fact a good thing, because it hasn't been set up at all, and the characters' previous actions make no sense. Tifa supposedly knew all along, except she never mentioned that in any way AND had no hesitation letting Cloud walk away with the Black Materia that would literally wipe out the entire planet if it fell in the wrong hands, which here's a shocker it immediately did. okay so sephiroth wakes up a giant ancient monster, super terrifying, gonna destroy the world, what are we gonna call it. MONSTER! no wait too on the nose. SCARY! hm no, we need a noun. guys i got it, WEAPON! between calling an elite army unit SOLDIER and this it often feels like the game is a FF parody, and then we turn sharply back into pathos, as we do here. just to be sure sephiroth also summons Meteor to smash everything to bits, the fellowship is broken, Tifa and Barrett are about to be executed, so grim, much angst. but wait! the party daringly sneaks in to break them out! Tifa saves herself with a grueling test of determination, how heroic! what a soaring narrative! you know what we need to cap it off? let's have Tifa and Scarlet slap each other. literally slap each other. that's the big fight scene. alright so we haven't blatantly ripped off FF6 enough yet, let's foist a C-list hero on the player because he has an airship. Cid, you aren't fit to carry Setzer's jock. and let's have the main hero still be alive after all, but they'll need time to recuperate. Terra in Zozo, meet Cloud in Mideel. wander around getting some mcguffins, okay, i don't mind this that much, you gotta do what you gotta do, time for the big reveal! ACTUALLY, Cloud wasn't a clone at all! he was a generic character! how do you like them apples? what's so frustrating is that Cloud having the blue hat in and of itself IS a good reveal. it completely explains and is consistent with everything that happened... EXCEPT for the giant reveal we JUST DID, which turns out to have been a complete waste of time and energy. this is just sloppy writing. compare to Terra's reveal in FF6, which by the way happened in about a third of the time. on literally the first mission she causes a mysterious reaction with an Esper, she explicitly has no memory of her childhood (unlike Cloud who does, except when he doesn't, which tips Tifa off, which she ignores, until she doesn't), every time she uses magic people freak the f out because humans can't use magic, and in the climax she is revealed to be only half human and half Esper. that's a good reveal! it's a surprise, it's dramatic, it explains rather than undermines the previous plot, and it sets up further lines of inquiry that keep the plot moving. . i will say this though, as i have said several times already. the designers went to a lot of effort to make the gameplay less monotonous (not that i mind the traditional jrpg grind) and it really paid off. should they have devoted some of that effort towards making the plot less stupid? of course. but doing one thing right is better than doing nothing right. |
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Post by TimPig on Oct 2, 2017 11:23:01 GMT -6
So wait...how far are you?
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Post by eric on Oct 2, 2017 11:25:24 GMT -6
So wait...how far are you? just got Cloud back on the team, Tifa put him together in the dream world dealie |
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