But it’s NOT; I’ve already cited several games that KILL this problem dead. And I missed the ultimate winner, which is Grandia 3 (which incidentally is a completely terrible game otherwise, and I do NOT recommend it, but the battle system is AWESOME.). It is possible to build games with fun battle systems. It really, honestly is. And there’s no reason to settle for “push A to advance” combat.
I can’t guess at the reason either, but you’re right - the phenomenon is definitely there. I think it’s the #1 reason why Dragon Quest is HUGE, HUGE in Japan and kinda…not all that over here. Dragon Quest is GRINDY.
But again, I’m not really arguing for “old school hard” here. I’m arguing for entertaining. Though heck. Even “just hard enough that you can’t just push A all the time” is fine with me - Phantasy Star 4 is a pretty darn basic battle system, and the game is neither hard nor grindy, but the random encounters really just WORK.
Again, this is bad design; Long arsed “summon” animations are yet another problem that was “doubled down on” by FF7.
Yes, that’s a valid strategy, but I’d argue FF8 doesn’t really do it - it just shifts the grind from “XP” to “magic for junctions”.
I’m inclined to agree with you here, which is why I tried to point out games that did the “fun” method more EFFECTIVELY than FF13. There’s no question what they were going for in FF13, but I don’t think they really got there, whereas I can practically just PLAY Tales of Graces F freakin’ forever because the combat system is just that good.
I’m inclined to agree with you here too, but the Tales battle system makes this unfeasable. That said, they invariably offer fairly good control over what you want the AI to do or not do, so it’s generally possible to arrange it effectively.
No, it’s absolutely a failure. There are solutions to that failure that do away with every single one of your issues. They have been built. Hell, the combat in Penny Arcade Adventures 3 is leaps and bounds more entertaining than any entry in any FF game EVER. (The PA3 combat system, for the record, is a hybrid knockoff of Grandia 2’s time system mingled with Mana Khemia’s style, but it lacks the full feature set of either.)
Again, none of this contradicts the idea that you can’t make combat ‘easy enough’, ‘quick enough’ AND still interesting. To suppose otherwise is to cop out and act like there is a fundamental flaw in the genre when other games have already proven that there is not.
See, this too, is an example of bad design; FFT is a strategy RPG. This means battles are supposed to be long and intricate. It ALSO means that putting in random encounters at all was an F-ing stupid idea. Check out Shining Force. Check out Fire Emblem (excellent new iteration of that series now available on the 3DS). Neither of those games has random battles. Look at La Pucelle Tactics, or any Disgaea game. No random battles. Check out Valkyria Chronicles, which in spite of its non-fantasy trappings is a pure SRPG. Random battles don’t have any sort of place in that genre. Some of those games offer the option to fight “optional battles” if you want to, but otherwise, the sequence is Battle->Plot->Battle->Plot. And it works, because battles are long and substantive and you only need one between each plot segment.
Can you describe it? I’ve never played the Grandia series
To be honest, I don’t really enjoy “old school hard”. I think that the option to grind should be there for those of us crazy enough to try to get 100% completion, but in the regular story, you shouldn’t have to grind a couple of levels to reach the next destination. That’s why I enjoy the entertainment of having that option in the optional bosses and characters. In FFVII, Yuffie’s side-quest requires a bit of grinding to beat that 5th floor boss in the tower at Wutai. Vincent’s was a different sort of grinding where you had to linger around the Shinra Mansion to solve some puzzles to unlock him. Plus, there’s the traditional grinding of reaching max level before you could take on Emerald and Ruby weapon. Each FF afterwards has those options. You’d have a regular boss for the game plus a boss so hard that’s optional its a wonder why he doesn’t take over the world by himself.
I think you’re mistaken in 2 ways. First, the long summon animations started with FFVII. There was no long cutscene in the middle of the battle before that. Even the Espers from FFVI was a quick flash then special move. They fixed that a bit in the later FFs. FFVIII allowed you to skip them by selecting short animation in the menu (I think) but then you couldn’t boost them up. FFIX had the full animation the first time you used the summon, but only a chance of a full animation every time after that.
The other way you’re mistaken is because I think its simply a matter of taste that summons or attacks are semi-useless. In most JRPGs I’ve played, that was pretty much how it was. Its not a design flaw because I think its a preference by the game designers, though one that hasn’t been fully embraced. Its like if I said Skyrim was too open. For most, that’s the point and why they like it. For some, its too open and the main story suffers as a result. The only flaw I would say it really has is not being able to appeal to everyone. I mean, suppose you liked that stuff. You wouldn’t call it a flaw then, right?
Final Fantasy Tactics then? Enemies leveled up with you, but weaker, beginner enemies like goblins were generally still weaker than their counterparts of equal level from later on in the game. Battles hinged upon the amount of abilities and type of abilities that monsters and players had. A more difficult monster would have bigger area effect abilities, faster attacks, or are just monstrously overpowered physically that you had to kill it using combinations of different skills rather that just walking up to it and pounding on it. I mentioned chocobos earlier. The Red Chocobo, at a certain level, gets this chocobo meteor attack that can one-shot a character no matter how strong. Compared to the normal chocobo which is blessed with speed and the ability to move across the map quickly, the Red Chocobo has those advantages and the meteor move. Abilities differentiate how battles are won, levels are kind of secondary. Is that more your preference?
Can you describe Graces’ battle system?
The first game that I remembered having some automated attacks was Star Ocean 2. Of course, that game’s combat didn’t move in the traditional way. You basically were on a battlefield and could move your characters around like an action RPG. This way, you could only really control one of your characters, and you’d relay commands to them on a real-time basis with some sort of active time battle gauge like the later FFs have. I can’t remember how the computer determined the other 2 characters moves
I’ll wait until I hear how the system works before I pass judgement. One question though, how long were those games?
Unfortunately, I never played those games. I didn’t have any of the Sega games and missed out on stuff like Phantasy Star and Shining Force. I would imagine though that I would feel a little left out if it was simply battle->plot->battle. I actually enjoy some regular random battles. Final Fantasy Tactics was just so difficult until you stick some good abilities onto your characters but it took a while for you to get them.
I recently played through FF7. I started a “Since I’m broke, I’ll play through all the FF I have.” So I started at 5, did 6. Then did 7. I stopped at 7 only because my friends bought me an XBox 360 Kinetic and Dead Island so I could play with them because they took pity on me.
I have to say FF7 really wasn’t all the hype and nostalgia that I thought it would be. I haven’t played it in years. During my WoW age, I touched only FF12 and didn’t even get halfway through.
So my review would be something like this:
The Good:
I love summons that I can just watch the beauty of and watch them blow stuff up. I was so happy to get Chocobo Summon Materia and just BLOW EM UP GOOD! Yay for blowing stuff up good! FF8 summons, bah, I want to watch, not punch buttons. FF9, they were pretty dang it, I wanted to see them! FF10, oh they are characters I have to play now, but the other peeps don’t get AP/XP if I don’t use them in the fight? BLECK!
The materia system is fun! I can create fun interesting combo’s to blow stuff up, or heal everyone, or you hit me once and we destroy all creation! BOOM! Fun.
The characters are iconic enough, but have their faults and flaws enough that I enjoy playing with them. Sure FF6 had some really fantastic characters, but FF7 did too. I even kinda like Yuffie. There are some faults here and there: I get pretty bleh about the romantic triad thing, I wish Vincent had you know… personality. (If you haven’t watched the Crisis Core movies on YouTube and you are a FF7 fan, go watch them, they are fun!)
Gold Saucer, Gold Saucer, Gold Saucer! I love this place. Chocobo racing and raising was still fun! My reflexes are shot since I was 22 when I first played it, but I did okay with snow boarding. No other game really had the total side quest love that FF7 did (except maybe 10.)
The Bad
Poor poor Sephiroth. I mean XxXSephirothXxX. I mean Seeffiroth1. The guy has been so played out since this game he is more a caricature than a character. But that is mainly the fan’s fault. He’s still cool, but made me just :rolleyes: at times.
The combat time system still makes me just :o yawn with boredom. Come on stupid Active Time Battle, be more active! Thank my lucky Shiva for Big Guard! I think FF10 really made the best combat “time” system of any. I love that you just get to go. No waiting. If you want to take time to figure out how to do something, you can. Or you can just attack forever very quickly!
The times I hate in the game are really the times you have to change everyone’s materia because you have to switch parties 5 times over. Gah, the interface sucks for that.
The Ugly
Woof, the graphics. I mean, wow, the general blocky characters were terri-bad. If they could have used the characters in the battles, it would have been good. But the blocky hands, etc, just wow that really was awful.
The Amazing
Plot, yes, I’m going to say it, I love the plot. Some say it’s a total rip off, some say it was just FF6 all over again. But I love this part of the plot: Cloud’s schizoid self really resonates with me as I feel very much the same way. I know a friend that really finds Squall on his level. Well I feel a serious connection to Cloud. Everyone thinks I’m perfectly put together and such a cocky/assertive guy, but really most days I get home and feel like an abject failure of a person.
The music. Good heavens, I love the music. Yes, Aeris’s theme is pretty much Celes’s theme. But when I first heard it, I made some serious connections between the games that I still think they tried to imply. I just re-listened to Terra’s theme and I have to say, wow, what a good piece of music. The music is just great in all FF’s, but the PS really made it able to do wonderful things. I only really love FF9 due to the integration of the summons into the game plot and the music. (Terra and Freya’s themes are my favorite. They are simple, beautiful and amazing.)
So that’s what I think. Do I think the game was terrible now? Heaven’s no, I really enjoyed it for it just recently. Would I love a remake. Yes. I would prefer a remake of 6 first though.
Sure, but it’s a bit long. Here’s the gist. First off, there are no “Random” encounters - all encounters are visible on the map and you can run into them or not (though sometimes you can’t avoid them). Battle takes place in a “faux 3D” plane - i.e. characters can move in all directions, but they mostly stay on the ground. They mostly move as necessary to perform their attacks, and you don’t directly control their movement (most of the time). There’s an “initiative line” (okay, technically Grandia 3 used a ‘ring’ but whatever.) at the bottom of the screen with markers for each character and enemy on it (some boss enemies have multiple “parts” and therefore multiple markers on the line). The markers move along the line at a rate dependent in the character’s agility stat. When the marker gets to the line that says “Command” if it’s a character, time pauses and you get a menu with your battle commands (if it’s an enemy, they just pick an action seamlessly and time keeps going.) The actions are:
Combo - a “basic attack” that does multiple hits and does pretty solid damage if it’s an attacky character. Basically, your standard "attack’
Critical - a single hit attack that does less damage than a combo, but deals “knockback” and can interrupt. (more on this in a sec)
Spells/skills - a selection of special abilities.
Item - yeah, you know, use an item.
Defend - block and take less damage until your next action, also causes your next action to come around faster (instead of resetting your marker to the beginning of the initiative line, it resets it to like halfway).
Evade - causes your character to run to a different place on the screen (of your choosing). This is the only way to directly control your party’s positioning, as otherwise, they move as needed to perform their attacks. How fast a character moves is based on their speed stat.
Escape - run away.
Once you select a command, time resumes, and your marker starts moving towards the end of the initiative bar, which is marked “act”; How fast the marker moves NOW is determined by the action you picked - Defend and Evade happen virtually instantly, attacks take a little bit of time, skills and spells depend on the skill/spell and how experienced the character is at using it. When the marker reaches “act” the character performs their action (or at least, starts doing it - if it’s a melee attack, this is when the character will start chasing their target.) While the marker is between “Command” and “act”, if your character is hit with a “critical” attack, or with an ability that causes knockback, they will be interrupted, and their initiative marker will slide back down the bar a ways, and will have to get back up to “command” before they can act again. And the same thing works against your enemies - if you can hit them with a critical or a knockback skill while they’re preparing their action, you can keep them from doing anything.
That’s the simple gist - you have to choose between attacks that do good damage, and attacks that interrupt your opponents, based on how fast your opponents act, the relative position of the initiative markers, etc. There are some added complexities in Grandia 3 like aerial combos (if you hit an enemy with a critical RIGHT before they act, or while they are in the process of being hit by another character’s combo attack, you can launch them into the air and do more stuff), but the initiative system is the meat of it.
It sounds complicated, but it’s pretty easy to get the hang of. Here’s a video of Grandia 2 that might help you get an idea of it.
I tend to agree with you; But I cited Phantasy Star IV as an example of what I consider to be an entirely balanced game; There is ONE dungeon (pleasantly located INSIDE a town, allowing for easy rest and resupply.) which I usually need to retreat from once, but otherwise, it’s entirely possible to play through the entire story with zero grinding - but to feel challenged the whole time.
I’m going to have to disagree with you here - FF5 and FF6 had summon animations that were, yes, not on the scale of FF7s ridiculous stuff, but which were definitely longer and more elaborate than other spells and attacks. FF7 just took this to it’s (il)logical extreme.
I’m not really sure we’re disagreeing here. I’m just asserting that just because it wasn’t a 5 minute long animation doesn’t mean there weren’t relatively ‘extended’ summons previously. Basically, they were limited by technology, so when they discovered they could go nuts with stuff in FF7, they did.
Er…what? I didn’t have anything to say about the utility/value of them, just that they were long and slow. My understanding is that they were often quite USEFUL, which contributes to the problem because it makes you want to use them often, except that they take…so…long. Is that a design decision? Sure. It’s a design decision to make things take a long time for “cutscenes” you’ve already seen. Making them skippable was an extremely WISE design decision.
Not really familiar with it, but yes, levelling up enemies to match your power level is a legitimate but “gamey” solution to the grinding issue. Honestly though, it feels very artificial to me and I think it tends to annoy people. I prefer diminishing XP for two reasons:
#1: It’s just easier for me to rationalize - “Okay, I’ve killed a kajillion slimes, I’m not really learning anything from that anymore.” vs “I’ve killed a kajillion slimes and gotten much stronger, but somehow, so have the slimes.” #2: Levelling up the enemies with the party tends to destroy your sense of progress - in games where enemies remain static, you might go back to an early area for a quest and easily trounce opponents that once gave you trouble. It’s not very much fun to return to an easy area only to find that the monsters have inexplicably grown to match your power level.
Sure, but brace yourself for another Wall of Text.
Graces has the same “non-random” encounters style that Grandia uses - enemies are visible on the mainmap and can be avoided or engaged as you see fit. It also uses the same “flat arena” sort of style. That’s where the similarities stop though. Combat in Graces is action and real time; Your basic controls move the character you control (the rest are controlled by fairly excellent customizable AI, unless you have friends, in which case you can play multiplayer with up to 4 total players, which is EPIC.) forwards and backwards relative to your target, which you can change by pushing a trigger button (a quick tap targets the nearest enemy, hold pauses the action and lets you choose your target). You can also hold a trigger button to “quick step” - either forwards, backwards, or in a circle around your opponent - or “free run” which changes the controls to just moving your character in the direction you push. Using free run depletes your chain capacity, however. (More on CC in a sec.). Another button causes you to guard, and still another opens the menu, from which you can use items, retreat, adjust your AI settings, give direct commands to AI party members, and so on. Oh, and you can use the D-pad to instantly change to any other character in the battle, so if you need to spam a spell or something, you can just tap and take control of a mage.
Your characters have two different types of actions - “A Artes” and “B Artes” - and what they do varies from character to character. “A Artes” are generally your “Attacks” which can chain together, while your “B Artes” are your spells or your special moves. Using either one will consume CC. CC can be thought of as a sort of ‘action points’, where you start with a certain number, and a certain maximum. They are used up by using artes or using free run, and are gained by guarding, doing nothing or successfully evading an attack using quickstep. So the gist is to alternate unleashing barrages of attacks (or spells) and then defending in some way to recover your CC. There are some extra wrinkles on a character specific basis as well - for example, spellcasting takes a pretty good chunk of time (relatively) during which your character is stationary, but if you used any A-artes immediately prior to casting the spell, the casting time is reduced, so you may want to try to use as many A-artes as you can “afford” and still have CC to cast your spell.
Actually, there’s a lot more to it than that, but those’re the basics. Once again, a video may be worth a thousand words. Also shows some ‘map’ travel, so you can see what I mean about enemies being visible. It’s an unapologetically action based system, but it’s doesn’t require any great degree of mastery from you unless you crank up the difficulty slider - even my generally “reflexes challenged” wife plays it on Hard without difficulty.
The Star Ocean system isn’t too dissimilar from that used in the Tales games - and the “fury” gauge is not entirely unlike Graces “CC”. I enjoyed the heck out of battles in Star Ocean 3. They felt sufficiently skill based to be entertaining without dragging on.
How long? Dunno. I must’ve spend at least 40 hours on each of them, probably more. It’s super rare for me to finish a “modern” JRPG in less time than that. It’s been a while though, so I don’t recall exact numbers. I’m a moderate completionist - if I find a sidequest, I’ll do my darndest to do it, but I don’t play “guide in hand” in generally, nor am I concerned with “100% completion.”
Well, Shining Force I and II (alas, not 3) and Phantasy Star 2-4 are all available on Steam. I recommend Phantasy Star 4 particularly, and Shining Force 2 is also pretty good. Avoid PS2 if you don’t like ‘oldschool hard’ and I generally don’t recommend PS3 for other reasons.
I don’t know - when you really think about it, since SRPG battles take so relatively long, it’s basically the same rhythm as “dungeon with a bunch of random encounters” -> Plot -> “Dungeon with lots of random encounters” -> Plot, only you’re doing one long intricate battle instead of a bunch of little throwaway battles. It also makes battles more meaningful because many of the combats can be made into some sort of “set piece” with different environments or allies or hazards or whatever to mix it up. I’d suggest giving one of these games a try before you judge.
And, as a final aside to Black Bisector - it’s probable that FF7 ‘works’ for you on a story level because the main character resonates for you. That’s very personal and a great thing, but it’s not something that objectively reflects on the game overall.
Back in October, I had major surgery and was out of work for six weeks. The first two weeks, my husband worked from home with me.
He did a FFVII “series” marathon. Started with Crisis Core and went all the way through to Dirge of Cerberus. I played some FFT as I recovered, and guess who was always in my team?
FFVII is still an excellent game. I think the in-battle graphics are still passable. I was shocked at how good it looked, considering the game is so old.
Music? Gorgeous, even if it is midi.
Characters? Lovable. More than the anemic crews of latter series games. The only character I still absolutely despise is Tifa. I have always and will always hate her character, particularly after I read she was only invented to add some faux “tension” to the plot.
Story? Sure, the dialog is wonky in places, but it’s a story where the protagonist has an arc that makes more sense than any character’s that followed. Everyone is important to the story, even the bonus characters. I find it agreeable. It balanced drama and comedy pretty darn well, too.
Now, FFIV is my favorite, hands down, but I’d give VII high marks anyway.
I don’t think it’s overpraised. I think, if anything, all of the games that followed were inadequate. The original was a rare gem they have not repeated again.
I remember the entire time I was playing FF7, thinking how much more fun I’d had playing Suikoden (one of the few PSX RPG’s that predated FF7) and screw polygons, this looks ugly.
Off course the sloppy translation didn’t help much either. If only Ted Woolsey hadn’t left Square to go make that awful Shadow Madness game.
While you do get the gondola ride with Barret, you don’t get to do the play.
I love Tifa’s character design, but I agree that they really wasted her character and I’m not surprised she’s at the bottom of a lot of people’s lists. She’s supposed to be the girl-next-door kickass tomboy, but instead she turns out to constantly be playing the damsel-in-distress and seems like the “weakest” character emotionally. The worst moment is probably in Disc 2 when
she takes over control of the group with Cloud gone… and when they find an incapacitated Cloud in Mideel, immediately decides I CAN’T BE ANYWHERE WITHOUT CLOUD and stays by him. Maybe it was intended to show the strength of her love for him, but it makes her just seem kinda pathetic.
I did always find it interesting that, despite the stereotypes one might assume from their visual designs, Tifa is the damsel-in-distress type while Aeris is the hard-nosed, self-reliant one.
This is more a reflection on the crap they’ve been passing off as FF games since than any particular glowing praise for Cloud, IMHO.
I consider this to be the bare minimum of acceptable in a ‘standard’ JRPG. (SRPGs get a bye because the cast is usually so large that trying to have everyone have a big part in the plot would make a heinous mess.)
If you mean "all of the FF games that followed…’ then yes, fine, if you mean “all JRPGs” sorry, pistols at dawn.
Everything BUT the polygons looks great, IMO. The backgrounds are very attractive, the movies are good, but the characters, when not in movies, are horrible. I was struck by the extreme attractiveness of the “let’s race up Shinra building on a bike and car” scene. It’s like the development team was deliberately trying to make the characters ugly during the regular game. Very aggravating.
Also, it’s very aggravating that I have to stop in the middle of a quest and travel back to Fort Condor to get all the mini games won. “Here’s a whistle, Cloud. If you blow it, then you can advance the story.” But advancing the story means losing out on a battle, and the spoils. I’m not going for a complete game, but I do want to get most of the game done.
I will admit that I’m looking forward to chocobo breeding and racing, even if it’s stupid to stop one’s quest in order to breed racing animals.
You praise Graces, but were all the characters in that really important? Most of the main cast was (though some like Pascal took a damn long time to become relevant), but as I recall it, it would take fairly minimal effort to write Cheria out of the story. I could be forgetting something, though.
I’d like to point out that I praise the Graces BATTLE SYSTEM, which I will defend at great length.
Graces itself is…okay. And yes, Cheria and probably even Malik could have been written out of the plot relatively easily, but they weren’t. It’s not like they were just there to tag along and provide color commentary or something. They had connections to the plot, they just weren’t particularly strong. It’s definitely the weakest of the recent Tales entries in that regard, though still probably better than some of the earlier entries. It still manages the bare minimum requirement though.
I wonder why it is that games with good battles systems so rarely have strong plots and character. The obvious answer, I suppose, is that neither good battle systems nor good plots and character are particularly common, so the intersection is going to be especially rare.
Here’s the gist. First off, there are no “Random” encounters - all encounters are visible on the map and you can run into them or not (though sometimes you can’t avoid them). Battle takes place in a “faux 3D” plane - i.e. characters can move in all directions, but they mostly stay on the ground. They mostly move as necessary to perform their attacks, and you don’t directly control their movement (most of the time). There’s an “initiative line” (okay, technically Grandia 3 used a ‘ring’ but whatever.) at the bottom of the screen with markers for each character and enemy on it (some boss enemies have multiple “parts” and therefore multiple markers on the line). The markers move along the line at a rate dependent in the character’s agility stat. When the marker gets to the line that says “Command” if it’s a character, time pauses and you get a menu with your battle commands (if it’s an enemy, they just pick an action seamlessly and time keeps going.) The actions are:
