Final Fantasy General Chat

[Nag]

Play VIII you coward... 😉

[OCH]

8 hours ago, Nag said:

Play VIII you coward... 😉

🤢..Then again.

I only ever played vanilla FF12 and I'm told the Zodiac Age is different? So I might play the third best PSOne FF, as it is technically shorter?

[Metroid66]

I don't think I can 'tune' myself into the pre X final fantasies. I always start with a good heart, enjoy 20 hours or so, then start drifting and losing interest. I think 6 was the one that held me the most, but looking back at the thread I was definitely losing patience at times.

 

10 to 16 have some of my all time favourite games, strangely.

[OCH]

FF8 is basically the template for the series moving forward. It has more in common with 10-16 than FF7 or 9. It arguably has the best card mini game in the series too.

[Maf]

Game’s design and technology dates really easily, and if you don’t have the nostalgia or context for it, it will be hard to have the attachment or patience for it. If you started gaming with the PS2, then your taste makes a lot of sense 

 

Not to derail but it’s the same with younger generations and Sonic where they love the bad 3D games but don’t like the great 2D ones. Game tastes are forged in where you start playing 

[OCH]

Much like how everything FF9 is referencing or pay homage to will be utterly lost on you, if you've never touched FF1-6.

[Metroid66]

31 minutes ago, Maf said:

If you started gaming with the PS2, then your taste makes a lot of sense 

 

That's me.

 

It's not always true though.  Most of my favourite movies were either made before I was born, or at least when I was too young to see/understand them.

 

Games sort of leapt from the 'silent' era with PS2 for a lot of people, possibly myself included.

[one-armed dwarf]

If we're talking movie analogies I'd have said PS1/early 3D era is as close as you'd get to the early sound era in film, where they are grappling with this paradigm shifting technology and working out the best way to express themselves in a new dimension. With PS2 being where those forms are becoming more firmly established, like the 1940s of movies.

 

tho I don't love these analogies cause I still sort of feel 90 percent of games are made as a product in ways which are more and more hostile to artistic expression and so the medium has been derailed by this

 

But I think FFVIII is being given an unfair rap on here, at the very least I would say give it a try if you already have a copy. It's a very experimental entry, and a lot of the experiments don't really work but that is imo what makes it a more interesting title as it ages next to its peers. IX is just a very conservative game that I've never really taken to even if it looks glorious and X, while good, was definitely hamstrung in its ambitions by the move to PS2 and higher budgets/higher technical requirements I feel. 

[Maf]

19 minutes ago, one-armed dwarf said:

 

tho I don't love these analogies cause I still sort of feel 90 percent of games are made as a product in ways which are more and more hostile to artistic expression and so the medium has been derailed by this

Well, this more comes back to the age old question of are video games art and what is art in video games. But that’s an even bigger derailment 

 

But I agree the film and games analogy doesn’t really work at all. Just because both are viewed on a screen doesn’t mean what they are or their histories are comparable 
 

Like if you take a film from 50 years ago they largely look like films today. But if you look at Pong and Cyberpunk they’re not alike at all 

[Metroid66]

You'd have to go back a lot further than 50 years to uncover the 'pong' of cinema.

[Maf]

It’s more about the rapid evolution and diversity of form than a straight comparison to the first movie to the newest movie.

 

What I’m saying is films and games aren’t alike and getting in to films now wouldn’t prohibit liking films from decades ago because largely they’re the same. Where as game technology and design changes so radically they’re barely the same thing, which would stop people liking older games, or games before their time (generally)

[Maryokutai]

1 hour ago, OCH said:

I only ever played vanilla FF12 and I'm told the Zodiac Age is different?

 

Compared to Zodiac Age the original FFXII feels like an abusive relationship. You can see why you got pulled into it and there's something glimmering underneath the surface, but it keeps kicking you in the balls for no discernable reason.

 

I liked FFXII when it came out for what it set out to and specifically for the themes it explored and the mature tone of it all, but its systems are this weird paradox of giving you a potentially infinite pool of tools but it's all a one-way trip so you better not mess up. And that's before we get into random chest contents and all the other JRPG nonsense. 

 

Zodiac Age fixes all that and seems like the initial vision brought to its conclusion. Experimenting with the jobs without any kind of penalty is a huge game changer for a game like this.

[one-armed dwarf]

Final Fantasy XII is The Magnificent Ambersons of gaming. 

 

 

3 minutes ago, Maryokutai said:

Zodiac Age fixes all that and seems like the initial vision brought to its conclusion. Experimenting with the jobs without any kind of penalty is a huge game changer for a game like this.

 

I don't know, I love XII ZA but it will always feel like a huge chunk of something got chopped out of it. It feels like a lot of world building and political escalation kinda just farts its way out of the plot by the end

[Maryokutai]

I was mostly referring to its gameplay systems. You can definitely tell it didn't have the smoothest development period regarding some of its less polished aspects for sure. But with the exception of some of those end-game dungeons that never bothered me as much as the gameplay limits from the first release.

[Maryokutai]

Spoiler

 

 

If you want to go all analogue. Nice packaging artwork.

 

https://gb.store.square-enix-games.com/final-fantasy-xiv-ttrpg-starter-set---wave-2

[Maf]

 

This is only £60 😮

[Maryokutai]

I wasn't quite sure where to put this, but I think this should be okay. While on a short trip to Milan I went to visit Amano's Kickstarter-financed art expo, Amano Corpus Animae, with FF-themed work and also a lot of other designs he did over the years, ranging from interpretations of DC characters, to Sandman, to a Vogue cover, and some funny/creepy renditions of Pinocchio. It was quite an interesting mix of exhibition pieces, really enjoyed going through it. Would I recommend going to Milan for it? Maybe not – but from what I gathered (my Italian is almost non-existant) they do plan on going to other countries as well and I wouldn't be shocked if the UK would pop up at some point.

 

Anyway, here's a few pictures, but I didn't take too many because the cam I borrowed was awful and I don't really like going through something like this taking it in through a screen.

 

 

 

Spoiler