That’s how I felt.
That and the world didn’t feel particulary Ruined or wild. Chrono Trigger and FF5 did both better, IMHO.
The people in the Chrono Trigger future would have killed to live in the World of Ruin.
I am going to throw in quotes here and there but not in boxes for the most part; thus, I will mention here that a lot of this (though not all) is in friendly response to Tengu.
I actually see 5 get a ton of love. It has a couple silly plot-things that bug me a little, and it loses points because the main character’s name is “Butz” (I mean, really, some guy on the English translation team couldn’t change that and keep the spirit of the game? Please - did they fix that in any of the official US releases? I played the fan-translation well before the official one was out). The only place it really fails is where pretty much all of the main-line games except 4 fail to some degree: the characters are almost entirely interchangable (within the battle system). They end up being who you tell them to be as fighters, rather than having a clear role or a purpose for their own existence.
The original, badly-translated FF2-US cartridge is my favorite in the series (it seems to have some character that the later better-translated-but-more-generic versions of 4 lack). I like it because:
- for all the cliches, I still care more about Cecil than any of the later lead-guys
- some of the best of Nobuo Uematsu, made all the more amazing by the musical limitations of the SNES
- among the best “chill scenes” in the series the first time you play through it
- a bunch of fights and other events that are just plain cool
FF6 is the best game in the series, though, and I don’t think you could convince me otherwise. The first half introduces you to most of the characters while playing you through a typical (but well-done) “evil empire” type storyline. It’s console-style RPG at its best, telling a story rather than letting you wander around in circles. Then, the world goes and gets all blown up. You are welcome to wander around and find the heroes doing (often less-than-heroic) things and get them to join you (though finding them is far more “quests” than “sidequests”), or you can charge right into the final dungeon by which all other final dungeons should be measured.
I disagree that “Fight and most special abilities become completely useless about then” - if you don’t stop and hardcore level/magiclearn as soon as you get access to Ultima/your other high level spell of choice, it’s extremely possible (and likely a lot more fun) to play through with fight/blitz/swdtech/capture/etc. Not to mention that Ultima probably isn’t helping you THAT much unless you go through any of the number of routes to get a ton of economizers. I guess what I’m saying is that in a “first time through the game” mentality, where you’re just playing it and not min-maxing, everything is pretty well balanced; then, of course, there’s the option to load everyone out with gem boxes and economizers if that’s your thing. I don’t think the characters are differentiated as much as they probably should be, but I could (and in fact will) say that about every game in the series except for 4.
I agree with you about the real 2 - the story was way ahead of anything else being made in the mid-NES era, but the character advancement system was just silly. It should be noted that the first two FF Legend games for the Game Boy had a similar advancement system, and it didn’t particularly work any better there (though FFLegend 3 might be the best game released for the original Game Boy not named “Tetris”). I also like the real 3, though the whole cyphers bit kills it for me a little.
Also, I’m hoping that intermittent post didn’t include a dig at FFTactics 
Will come back with more later, I LOVE talking about these games. Maybe we can start ranking them or something, or discuss whether Mystic Quest is a quaint “beginner-oriented” RPG or a disgrace to the legacy of cartridge games everywhere.
I enjoyed it. Maybe not worth buying new but there are tons of stuff to do. Story wise though not so much. And like I said, way to J-Pop for me.
VI
IV
V
IX
II
VII
X
VIII
III (I thought the first official English release was still down the road?)
I
I’m not afraid to dock points for them being primitive. I’m rating how they are to me now, not when I first played them. But none of them are bad. In fact I wish I was still unemployed so I could play them through all in a row.
Good times.
So?
Quite easily, actually, once you’ve managed to draw enough spells, and junction them. Only a few random battles tend to be on the difficult side if you’ve been junctioning well. Mostly on the islands where the Ultima wells are.
That’s really only for you to say, isn’t it? I enjoyed it. Not for the ogling (although I can’t say I didn’t enjoy the mostly gratuitous hot springs scene), not for the ‘dress up’. (Although I do try to keep the girls in the dresspheres that I think look best now that I’ve gotten them all maxed out.) It’s a fun game. It gives Yuna, especially some further growth from the first game. Spira’s history is fleshed out. Rikku gets to be cute and Rikkuish. (That’s a major selling point for me.) And it’s got a neat little system.
That’s exactly my point, actually.
In the first half of the game, you’re railroaded through the Evil Empire plot, with little-to-no character development for anyone except the 3 main characters - Terra, Locke, and Celes.
Then the plot you’ve been given for the last 30 hours stops dead, and you spend another 30 hours re-recruiting your characters, and finally finding out why you’ve got any reason to care about most of them. Or, you can take the fastest route to the end of the game, forget about most of the party (and any development you’ve put into them), go straight for Kefka, and give up a full half of the game. It’s horribly balanced between the two worlds.
HPL also makes a good point about how the World of Ruin…really wasn’t very ruined. I actually don’t think FFV does it a whole lot better. But Chrono Trigger certainly did.
Kiros’ post deserves a whole post of its own, so…
I got mixed up reading Kiros’ post. Reading about 5 but thought it was about 3.
They call him Bartz, which is, honestly, worse. And, while I make jokes about Butz, it’s not silly enough to dock points for, IMO. Video games and anime are full of silly names. I find it sillier (and more than a bit annoying in some cases), when they’re changed to make them less silly. (One of my favourite anime character names is Lettuce from Tokyo Mew Mew.)
IX and X did a very good job of differentiating the characters, both in battle, and as the plot went. IX, of that group, did the best job of making all the characters useful - even better than IV, which one would assume would have done a better job of it because it doesn’t allow you to change your party. But the original English version weakens Dark Knight!Cecil severely, and all versions stick poor Palom and Parom in the party with Telluh, who has a tendency to reduce them to ancillary characters, even with his MP as restricted as it is. X had Khimari, who was nigh-on useless, and it’s not long before Wakka’s niche is intruded upon by Lulu - and, to a lesser extent, Rikku and Tidus - badly enough that there’s not a whole lot of reason to have him in the party except when it’s required.
I WILL concede this much, though: Better than most of the games in the series, it differentiated the characters in battle. I’ll also admit that with X, if you’re willing to invest the time, you can give everyone the same abilities. But it takes an extreme amount of work, so it doesn’t encourage it, like VI and VII do - like I, II, III, and V, it allows for it, but it makes you work for it, if you want it. You need to be levelled excessively in the limited skill sets to make up for the losses of others if you do it from the start, and if you do it later, after building everyone up enough in their base skill sets you won’t feel the loss, it takes more effort to build everyone up to that level. IX has a few crossover abilities, but they’re chiefly defencive, and they’re usually restricted to two or three characters. IV and IX are the only ones that makes it impossible to make the characters the same, but VI and VII are the only ones that make it easy - or necessary.
Needless to say, I couldn’t disagree more with this.
Cecil, I couldn’t care less about. That holds true for Cloud, Locke, Celes, Terra and Butz, as well. Squall and Tidus I want to throttle, as often as not. The only leads I really care about at all are Zidane and Yuna. It’s the supporting characters that do it for me - not always playable. And IV and VI do a real bad job on that side for me - beyond 2 or 3 playable characters, I just don’t care about anyone. VII and beyond have gotten progressively better at making me care about the NPCs until the pinnacle with X, which had truly heartbreaking scenes. I will admit that IV and VI did have a few scenes that got me the first time, but X is the first to keep them on replay. The attacks on Home and Mount Gagazet, the first sending scene - even Seymore’s history - still make me tear up after 3 replays (Well…2 for Seymore…I didn’t get Anima until the second time through). Nothing in IV or VI managed that even on the first replay - even Palom and Porom’s sacrifice or the story of Locke’s girlfiend. I can’t comment on how the one scene to do that in V held up, since I haven’t replayed it. And the Thunder Planes concert in X-2 kills me. (Only the English version…there’s a difference between it and the original that seriously twists the knife for me.)
Then there’s the villains - Kefka’s the first villain with STYLE, and VIII, IX, and X all had villains that I CARED for, who I understood, who I wanted to be happy, and, in the case of Seifer, who I agree with.
The music…eh. I can’t even remember any of the music from 4 except the Crystal theme. The best music in the series is hard to pin down…VII, IX, X and X-2 all have pieces that bring me back into the moment when I hear it. The Cosmo Canyon theme, the ‘Lalala’ version of Melodies of Life, the Hymn of the Fayth, 1000 Words… The worst in the series is VIII, except for Eyes on You and its variations. The porn music used for Laguna’s scenes…
I’m not sure what you mean by ‘chill scenes’, so I can’t comment.
The fights…meh. CT, VII, and X all had fights that let you use the environment. VI and X had fights you could win by stealing. THOSE are cool fights. (OTOH, X also has the Lamest Final Boss Fight Ever…stupid Autolife.)
Fair enough. By the same token, it’ll take a lot of doing to convince me it is.
See my post about the structure above for my thoughts on that.
As to Kefka’s tower, I don’t think ‘frustrating beyond reason’ is exactly the effect a final dungeon should be going for. (The original was even was for this.)
You’re making a very incorrect assumption about my play style.
I’m talking about the first time through, when I haven’t brought my characters to ridiculous levels - the time I finished the game with everyone in the mid-40s, with almost no complete Materia, no Ragnarok (materia OR sword) and actually tried to build everyone in fitting with their characters. Fight was useless. Tool was useless. Swordtech was useless from the moment I got Cyan. Celes’s little magic magnet ability was useless from the start. Draw and Command were far too easily resisted to be of any use except against enemies that posed no threat anyway Lore required way too much work to make it useful. Steal was only periodically useful. Only Blitz and Rage maintained any usefulness throughout the game. (I made heavy use of Blitz even on my most recent play through when I was making an effort to get everyone to level 99 (although I gave up after getting most of them to the early 70s…)
It wasn’t until my third or fourth play through that I uberleveled everyone, and could actually Fight in the lategame. Not that I actually did unless I was trying to conserve MP, since everyone had Fire, Ice and Bolt 3 and Flare, and I usually had Raiden and Ragnarok equipped on someone.
You already did, and I’ve already commented on it.
Obviously I’m in complete agreement with this. Although I’ll note that none of the GB FFs were technically FFs - they were games in other series (I think one was SaGa, I can’t remember the others) that got repackaged as FFs for the NA market.
I’ll admit it, I don’t like Tactics AT ALL. I just can’t get into it. Maybe if I forced myself to go through the first couple scenarios, something might hook me, but…I just can’t make myself do it.
It wasn’t really a ‘dig’, so much, though…It seems like a good game…just not to my taste.
Shit, I even previewed and all. The original was even WORSE.
I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on a lot of this stuff 
I will probably reply again tomorrow when I have the time, but I’ll hit as much as I can now. I take it you seem to like 9 and 10? 9 was my favorite of the three for the PS1, so I’m already a little off the mainstream there, I think. I will admit that I haven’t played completely through 10; I don’t own a PS2, and while my current housemate has both a PS2 as well as the game, I’ve been hooked on Star Ocean 3, Fire Emblem Whatever Number We’re Up to Now, and Civ 4 for the better part of the last year. What 10 I have played through has turned me off a bit (to the point where I dropped it for other things), but it’s extremely possible that there’s stuff in the mid-late game that would pull me back in. I should note that I’m not an especially huge anime fan, though I’m not really sure if that matters.
I HAVE heard a bunch of the music from 10 and 10-2; OC Remix totally owns me, particularly anything orchestral, and I used up most of my free songs when they released the FF OSTs on iTunes. It’s… pretty good. Certainly still well above average for “video game music”. I’m a sucker for covers of the older stuff, though - the music itself (though often good on its own; see the Red Wings theme, the FF4 version of the Final Fantasy theme, Cyan’s theme from 6, the opera stuff from 6, and of course Dancing Mad) was definitely limited by what the SNES could do, but some of the interpretations (both the “approved” Black Mages stuff as well as the stuff on OCRemix) have been amazing. Of the newer games, I like 9’s soundtrack the best - I LOVE the version of Vamo Allo Flamenco on the Piano Collection of the OST.
I think you’re right about some of the FF6 command-related stuff - as I think back to the first time I played the game, my primary party didn’t use a ton of magic; my top four were Terra (with economizer and magic), Celes (with genji glove and offering), Sabin (blitz), and Shadow (throw things). A bunch of the damage in the “secondary” parties though came from the fire/ice/bolt 2 (aside: I like the numbers much better than the fire/fira/firaga way of doing things, and I also liked Meteo more than Meteor in 4), and only a few of the other chars were doing anything fun (Gogo, Mog, and Gau, I think, plus Edgar’s tools weren’t really THAT bad).
I liked the World of Ruin better than the wild in FF5. No contest that Chrono Trigger wins out - but Chrono Trigger will almost always win out
FFTactics is… deep, I think, is a good way to put it. The story is extremely good but extremely complex; the biggest flaw is that I’m not sure ANYBODY knows exactly wtf is going on the first playthrough of the game (many relationships are downright obscure if you don’t read through the “history” entries). It’s definitely a strategy RPG, and you have to be willing to deal with that. The jobs (and a couple of the unique characters) later on aren’t especially well balanced. There are a number of other flaws that keep it from “best of the best” status. That said, the story is excellent once you get into it, the job system is pretty fun, and it’s ridiculously replayable. It’s possibly even more of a niche game than console RPGs in general, but it’s ridiculously good if that’s your niche.
FF Adventure for the game boy was one of the Seiken Denetsu games (which they later remade for the GBA as Sword of Mana), not sure what the three “legend” games were based off of (though SaGa for one sounds right).
Okay, need to sleep. Been thinking about the music and poking through the collection for the last 20 minutes, I’m exhausted, and I could still do it for another hour.
It was my favourite of the PS games, too, and it’s quite popular - just not among the crowd who think VII is the best game in the series. (My favourite on each system so far’s been the third - III on NES, VI on SNES, and IX on PS. I haven’t played XI, but I doubt I’d be that into it…but X-2 is my favourite of the ones I’ve played on PS2 (and from the preview of XII with DQVIII, it’s liable to stay that way), and it’s, technically speaking, the third for the system. Probably because that’s where Square’s really getting a handle on the system’s limits, and using them to the fullest.)
I never used Shadow’s Throw - the few items that had damage worth their expense to my eyes (a few of the bigger swords, mostly) were unique, or at least rare, so I didn’t like literally throwing them away.
I forgot Mimic…Mimic was good - of course, that’s because it let me Fire-3 forever when I was in that damnable magic tower.
Dance was interesting, but, like Lore, it required way too much work to get it useful, it had a sharp taper in the WoR, and its randomness was never a mark in its favour - although not an insurmountable problem - Gau’s rages are fine, even though they’re equally random.
The Tools were GREAT early on, but, like most anything else except magic, they taper sharply as one gets towards the end of the WoL.
(FTR, I prefer Spell, Spella, Spellaga spells…More flavourful.)
All this talk about music, and not one mention of One Winged Angel?
Come on - I can’t believe people’s jaws didn’t drop when they first heard it and Safer Sephiroth descended from the sky.
Y’know, I have to say I think that Final Fantasy games have ben going in the wrong direction in regards to character development. SOme of you may not have thought much of characters outside of Tera, Locke, and Celes in FF6, but I disagree. I though that they spent exactly the right amount of time playing with each one: Cyan and Edgar, Sabin and Shadow. More to the point, the scenes which revealed their character were direct and to-the-point.
Frankly, I think most of what passes for “characterization” in Final Fantasy today is mediocre voice acting involving a bishounen. Think abut some of the critical scnese in FF7, 8, 9, or 10. Most of them are long, with little interaction. There’s very little “hidden” character material: once through the main plotline everything has been revealed automatically.
It’s been a while since I’ve played X, but I’m a good ways through it now (just past the Guado village) and Tidus isn’t very powerful at all. He doesn’t really have any spells to cast and he does around 200-250 damage with his attacks while Kimahri and Auron are dishing out twice that with much better HP. Pretty much the same story with Wakka. What gives? I’ve been leveling them up pretty much evenly.
Tidus has haste/slow/etc., and Wakka has blind/mute/sleep. They’re not much towards the middle of the game, but later on that sort of thing can be very helpful.
Auron also has a very slow attack speed–he may be doing twice the damage per hit, but he’s getting fewer hits in.
Are you using them to only attack monsters made for them? Like the fast but weak lizard things for Tidus and anything in the air for Wakka.
Either that or maybe you took some “creative” turns in the grid.
The parts about VI that got to me were the beginning, Terra getting swept out of the Esper village and most especially the island you wake up on in the WOR. Particularly because I sucked at catching fish.
As an aside, the thing that annoyed me most about FF8 (y’know, the game in the topic line) is the fact that they had obvious pauses where you could rename characters, but TOOK OUT the option to do so.
Grrr.
About 40 minutes after making my post, they seemed to make a big jump in strenght. Now that they’re the only two with counter attack weapons at this point, Tidus and Wakka are my most powerful two.
Auron’s slowness isn’t a problem until later on, and by then he can eat up little portions of Tidus’ piece of the grid and stay competitive. That’s how I remember it working, anyway.
Leaper: True, but they gave you the ability to rename Rinoa’s dog! Her dog! He always got named ‘Angelus’ in my games. Seriously though, I wonder why you don’t get to mess with the names of the secondary characters? It’s not like they had a bunch of FMVs of people shouting each others’ names.
I hope you’re all happy now. I had to dig out my copy of FF6 and I’m replaying it. It’s the remake for the PlayStation, and I LOVE the new intro movie. I’d rather play FF8, but it’s out on loan to one of my daughter’s friends.