The Authoritative Final Fantasy & Bravely Default thread

FFV is super fun, and has way more replayability than other FFs due to the class system. The story/characters were very generic and not very interesting, but that's because FFV was made as a successor to FFIIIj (which didn't originally release in the USA until I think the DS overhaul with modern graphics). The two games are very similar (generic story, very deep class system).

I've played through FFV a lot more than other FFs which I actually prefer as games, just because you can do single character class challenges and stuff. If you enjoy the combat system and tactical gameplay, FFV is great. I still have most of the bosses' attack scripts memorized from doing scc challenges.

If you guys like Final Fantasy Tactics, download Bahamut Lagoon which was basically the SNES version of Tactics. It even reuses a lot of sprites from other SNES FF games so I'm not sure why they didn't just give it an FF title. It came out just a couple months before the N64 was released so it never got an official USA release.

I just started the international house of zodiak version and its pretty cool, but the stuff I read about good class makeups is all about leveling six characters to 99 and I have zero fucking interest in doing that. In fact I'd rather get away with only ever playing 3 as much as possible.

It seems if you throw out the lv99 min/max stuff and want something able to cover it all without killing slow as fuck you want something like Vaan - Monk, Ashe - Red Mage, Basch - Uhran. Technically penelo or fran would be better in the caster spot but pen looks like a boy with pigtails and fran has bunny ears so, no.

idk what house of zodiac is but FFXII is so easy you can just press random buttons and complete that piece of shit game, not that I would recommend it though.

The FF12 Retarded Zodiac Name Thingy is basically a Jap-only update to FF12 that splits the shared license board that helped make the game so boring into 12 classes, revamps the way mana and limit breaks work (FF7 style so they don't drain all of your fucking mana), and adds a nice fast-forward button so you can plow through trivial fights at 5x speed. Basically a really nice patch that I guess was sold as a full game and never ported outside of Anime land.

But of course, there's an english converter:http://psx-scene.com/forums/f164/ff1...version-62222/

Needs FF12 USA + FF12 IZJS Jap fromhttp://www.emuparadise.me+ PCSX2 emulator to play it on.

Funny that you would say it is so easy though, as FF12 was the only FF beyond the NES ones where I can ever recall anyone in the party even dying. It was certainly the only one where you'd actually use shit like protect/shell/etc or cast debuffs like blind on enemies and so on.

Kreugen_sl said:

Funny that you would say it is so easy though, as FF12 was the only FF beyond the NES ones where I can ever recall anyone in the party even dying. It was certainly the only one where you'd actually use shit like protect/shell/etc or cast debuffs like blind on enemies and so on.

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Hopefully someday you get to play 13/13-2 (or just 13-2), they have a bunch of stuff that you need to play smart with and buff/debuff and use defensive abilities against. The combat system in 13 is great once you really get into it, unfortunately it only teases you with most of it until late in the game (though there are some fights before that that you can't mash through). Thankfully the whole thing is open from the get-go in 13-2 and you really get to experience the potential that 13's combat system had.

Who and what you setup as different classes in 13-2 even matters quite a bit, since different characters and monsters you raise have different ability sets within those classes.

Badabidi_sl said:

Final Fantasy Tactics was the best, followed by 7, then by 10. The rest of them after the SNES era, including FF5, sucked dick.

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I still get a hard on for FFT. The updated one they released for the PSP with some new characters is awesome as well. Too bad the sequels were steaming piles of shit.

Kreugen_sl said:

The FF12 Retarded Zodiac Name Thingy is basically a Jap-only update to FF12 that splits the shared license board that helped make the game so boring into 12 classes, revamps the way mana and limit breaks work (FF7 style so they don't drain all of your fucking mana), and adds a nice fast-forward button so you can plow through trivial fights at 5x speed. Basically a really nice patch that I guess was sold as a full game and never ported outside of Anime land.

But of course, there's an english converter:http://psx-scene.com/forums/f164/ff1...version-62222/

Needs FF12 USA + FF12 IZJS Jap fromhttp://www.emuparadise.me+ PCSX2 emulator to play it on.

Funny that you would say it is so easy though, as FF12 was the only FF beyond the NES ones where I can ever recall anyone in the party even dying. It was certainly the only one where you'd actually use shit like protect/shell/etc or cast debuffs like blind on enemies and so on.

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That definitely sounds like an improvement with the game, but my main criticism with it was the vapid storyline and the boring/annoying characters.

I thought the game was very easy, mostly a combination of overpowered abilities (those "super abilities" I can't remember the name of at the moment) and the gambit system. I disagree about the buff/debuff thing as wel; status spells were quite powerful in most of the FFs. Mighty Guard was generally a Blue Magic spell that was really important in a bunch of them, especially FFV. And you could totally neutralize a lot of bosses with certain status effects if you knew what they were susceptible to. It felt like FFXII took the fun out of it by just setting up a gambit to have your characters auto-buff you whenever stuff fades. After awhile it felt like the game was just playing itself and I was going through the motions, which would have been alright if there was ever some sort of payoff in the storyline or meaningful character development, but neither of those things ever happened. So you ended up with combat-on-rails without any sort of destination or even nice scenery on the way.

The standard game is pretty easy yeah. If you even accidentally get a rare weapon drop or something from a mob, you plow through the next couple of hours worth of content like a hot knife through butter. The challenge comes, as it does with most ff games, with the additional content. The higher level marks can be pretty rough, and collecting all the espers actually requires you to play a bit if you aren't using a cheat-sheet. But when it comes down to it, if you have played previous FF games, FF12 is cake. Non-ff gamers don't really use curative items against mobs. FF gamers go "Oh hey big undead dragon. LOL PHOENIX DOWN" and sprint past what is a normally difficult fight for people who aren't familiar with the series. Or the ever fun "Hey this thing has reflect on it. Guess I'll cast reflect and rape it with magic cast against myself!" type shenanigans.

Though, at this point, if a gamer is unfamiliar with FF, they aren't really a gamer in my opinion.

I've been playing Final Fantasy Dimensions on my phone. Its a classic Final Fantasy, most resembling FF5. Its Pricey for a mobile game, but the quality is alright and I'm a sucker for classic FFs. The tiny touch screen controls took me a while to get used to but were manageable. It is episodic like FF4: The After Years was, but with the perspective split between two parties of four. One in the Light World and the other in the Dark.

It uses the FF5 class system in parties of five. Four permanent members and a guest character which the episode revolves around. The combat was good, though most trash can be left on Auto combat, some of the bosses were pretty challenging. Customizing the parties was my favorite part as The Light and Dark teams get access to different advanced jobs, which is interesting when they join together for the end game.

I was very disappointed by two factors. First, the episodic nature of the game was too confining. There is zero room for exploration or hidden stuff. And the formula becomes apparent very quickly and gets tiresome.
Town > Dungeon> New Town (Upgrade Weapons) > Dungeon > Recruit Guest > Optional Summon > Final Dungeon > Collect New Job/Switch Parties
It opens up a bit at the end when the two parties combine and get an airship, but there's nothing much to find.

My other gripe is that the characters are so generic and uninteresting. Fine, the protagonists switch jobs and the episodes feature the Guest character. But the real sin is that the antagonists are just as uninspired. My favorite bits in JRPGs are when the villains take the spotlight. Kefka poisoning the water or whatever. None of that.

TLDR: Combat good, story bad

Also, my copy of FF 13-2 finally arrived. I'll see if it lives up to Sean's hype.

Reiker_sl said:

If you plan on playing through the game more than once, I'd play the SNES version and then the Advance version. If you're only going to play it once, definitely play the Advance version. Despite the slightly worse translation (again, my opinion), it's wholly a better game. It's still the best Final Fantasy title no matter which system you play it for.

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Those aren't the only two options. I prefer the RPGOne fan translation over the official ones myself. It's not for everyone, as it's almost entirely a literal translation and not a localization at all, but that's what I like about it.

And Kreugen, you can definitely set up a party in XII IZJS so that you only ever use three characters. Last time I played it, I planned everything out in advance and decided who was going to have what job and get which espers, weapons, etc.:
Balthier - White Mage
Ashe - Samurai
Fran - Uhlan

Vaan - Monk
Penelo - Red Mage
Basch - Archer

... and then pretty much only ever used the first three. That was fine with me though, one of my biggest pet peeves with JRPGs is having a cast of characters larger than the size of the party.

So I bought the new release of FFVII pc edition during the christmas sale.

DO NOT BUY IT.

You have to save the game to Sony's cloud. This seemed pointless to me when I first read this because who the fuck cares about saving to a cloud over your hard drive? Then I stopped thinking about it because it's FFVII! Ahahahaha... so what are the odds that saving to their cloud doesn't work? 100%. Seriously, you cannot save your game because it has constant problems connecting to their cloud network. There was an option for a little while to save files locally (but you had to disconnect from the internet, and you ran the risk of your local files being over written by your older cloud save). They took that option away. So now you are forced to save via the cloud, except that you can't because their cloud doesn't work. Just look at theirtechnical forums. This has been a problem since August.

I'm speechless.

Vorph_sl said:

Those aren't the only two options. I prefer the RPGOne fan translation over the official ones myself. It's not for everyone, as it's almost entirely a literal translation and not a localization at all, but that's what I like about it.

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I've played this, and I didn't really like it. It's probably my least favorite of the translation efforts. I don't think literal translations work very well. Even the different character names kinda ruin it for me. For example, I'm not sure if you've ever triggered the super secret scene the first time you get to the Returner's Hideout and meet Banon. Even in Woolsey's translation, the entire thing makes absolutely no sense. Apparently it's just some sort of Japanese humor that's impossible to really translate to English well without just replacing the entire thing with something else. Woolsey kind of took the liberty to make things read better for an American audience, and I think his games are a lot better for it. When you use different translations, you miss out on those great Woolseyian quotes like "Son of a submariner!" Son of a sandworm or whatever the literal translation uses just don't have the same pizazz. I don't know, like I said before, it's probably completely up to personal preference. I really like how Woolsey handles the translations he's done, some people hate him because his translations weren't strict enough. I don't think that matters if the end product ends up more interesting for the audience you're trying to present it to. I've never been much of a purist, I guess.

My dislike for Woolsey's stuff is less about being a purist and almost entirely about hating campy humor.

And "Son of a sandworm!" isn't a literal translation either. He basically just says, "Shiiiiiiiiit!" in Japanese. It's a perfect example of what I dislike about localizations.

Vorph_sl said:

My dislike for Woolsey's stuff is less about being a purist and almost entirely about hating campy humor.

And "Son of a sandworm!" isn't a literal translation either. He basically just says, "Shiiiiiiiiit!" in Japanese. It's a perfect example of what I dislike about localizations.

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Yeah, amusing and memorable phrase clearly doesn't compare to exclaimed curse.

If I found that amusing then sure, I'd agree with you. Atlus' localizations, for example, are just as far from being literal and don't fall completely flat when they attempt to be humorous. They also don't try to inject 'comedy' into things that were serious in the original context.

xrg_sl said:

FF8 was the last one I bought/played. This thread made me check out some videos on FF9, and I'm thinking about giving that one a shot. It appears to be more inline with what I might like at least.

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FFIX was essentially a love letter to the older (SNES/NES) FF games by theoriginalSquaresoft people, before most of them quit and Square forgot how to make decent games. Some people will bitch about itbecauseof that (i.e. they think it's 'cute' despite it having one of the bleakest storylines out of all the FF games)...but on the other hand, they're the same ones who like FFVIII and FFXIII so fuck 'em.

Vorph_sl said:

If I found that amusing then sure, I'd agree with you. Atlus' localizations, for example, are just as far from being literal and don't fall completely flat when they attempt to be humorous. They also don't try to inject 'comedy' into things that were serious in the original context.

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Well you are wrong for a few reasons, but there is no 'comedy' injection that wasn't there in the original context. That scene was filled with excitement(evidenced by the music), not dire consequence, and Kefka was still a bit of a comic foil at that point in the game. Maybe Woolsey understood the tone of the scene better than you did.

Comparing two lines that stuck out like a sore thumb, Spoony Bard wins for being more out of the blue and iconic, but the Woolsey line wins for being closer to making sense.