The Authoritative Final Fantasy & Bravely Default thread

If you have a game cube and can get your hands on a copy, Tales of Symphonia is probably the best of the franchise.

So it finally leaked, admittedly not in great colour.

I heard she will be the only playable character, does anyone know if this is true?

The main issue with modern final fantasy/square games came at the point when translations mattered to the developers. The absolute perfect example of this was Chrono Trigger. One of the absolute greatest games of all time. Ted Woolsey translated it and localized it to where it connects with audiences in North America. The characters were flushed out with dialogue tics that meshed with the theme and background music well. Did you see the "official" translation they have on the DS release? It is just dry. Frog/Glenn went from dashing and chivalrous but conflicted, to a crybaby emo type. The plot structure still would have made it a great game, but it would not be revered as it is in most gaming circles.

Final Fantasy 6 is the point arguably where most of the modern American fans jumped on to the series. The script you got in the SNES release was so much more flush with character than any other "translation" you got since. Combined with a great plot structure and it was a great game.

Final Fantasy 7 had a sloppy translation. Most of the characters suffered for it. However, the plot was fantastically different. Modern cityscapes, materia system that ties in with the plot, body control through ancient organisms birthed from the stars. It was so different than the previous "castle, airship, chocobo, swordfight". It scratched an itch most people did not know they had.

Then the weeaboo mindset happened. We all fell in love with japanese stuff, and had to have it "pure"(i confess i was kinda one at the time). The same time the japanese guys were sick of seeing their "vision" misrepresented. Every translation from then on is now exact, painstakingly dull. Voice acting only made this worse because you are now paying people thousands of dollars to put words in the mouths of characters.

So it all began to unravel and we get stupid shit like Tidus's laughing in 10 and Necron in FF9. Where did he come from, is he a ghost, is he the reaper? Even the wiki doesn't exactly tell you. It is cool to have world building easter eggs that are inferred, Squall and Laguna's relationship for one. When your final boss is a ghost reaper just because, you lose your narrative. Zemus from 4 is almost the same thing, but at least he shows up to taunt you for a bit. 9 did great with its characters, it did not need this "final battle", it had a complete narrative without this fight. Beat super kuja and you win.

I personally liked 8, junctioning was pretty cool and interesting. Some of the set pieces were great. Fight at the garden, train fight are two examples that are really great. I liked 10 AND 10-2's combat system. I liked 12's ...bigness. Could have done without Vaan as a viewpoint character though. Luke Skywalker was a viewpoint character, but he also wasn't useless. 13's battle system is fun and fast paced, the game however was clearly meant to be the first part of some sort of trilogy. A game spanning hundreds of hours over x amount of games. The first one was some sort of tutorial on whats happening later.

The main problem is that almost every game past 7 was not written for me. It was written for some guy in an apartment in Okinawa. Unless I lived there and had a absolute understanding of the culture I could never understand what exactly the point is. So characters like Lightning and Hope seem derivative and silly. While Edgar and Locke seem interesting and conflicted. I get the fact a king wants to stay out of a conflict to save his kingdom from destruction. I get that indiana jones is looking for a magic macguffin to save his woman. I do not get the point of a guy named hope being hope and that hope needs to have hope about hope and he wants to kill another one of your party members who is a ripoff from zell from 8 when zell was a bad idea in 8. But you have to have hope guys....his name is hope. You do not need a guy who wants to grow up to be a skypirate, when you have the james bond of skypirates, a tortured but chivalrous knight, a queen of a country in the middle of an occupation, and Bjork the bunnylady. You could spend a few hundred hours on Balthier, Fran,Ashe and Basch and it would be EXCELLENT.

The above and a bit of nostalgia we all have for these games and that is the recipe for why final fantasy is so trying to be a fan of nowdays. I even think that Square gets this, they at least tried something with Neir. Hopefully, versus XIII is them actually getting their act together. One can dream.

radditsu_sl said:

The main issue with modern final fantasy/square games came at the point when translations mattered to the developers. The absolute perfect example of this was Chrono Trigger. One of the absolute greatest games of all time. Ted Woolsey translated it and localized it to where it connects with audiences in North America. The characters were flushed out with dialogue tics that meshed with the theme and background music well. Did you see the "official" translation they have on the DS release? It is just dry. Frog/Glenn went from dashing and chivalrous but conflicted, to a crybaby emo type. The plot structure still would have made it a great game, but it would not be revered as it is in most gaming circles.

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A strong memory I have from playing Chrono Trigger was when you travel to the future, climb down beneath the dome for food supplies and Marle exclaims that "Something reeks!" It was the first time I had seen a console game had display such colloquialism and I was really impressed by it. Finally some dialogue with character!

Later on the internet I learned there was a large group of FF fans that despised Ted Woolsey for his "unfaithful" translations. This baffled me, not solely because so much of what we had before the SNES era RPGs was Rang Rang.

However, I'm not sure I totally agree with your point. Dry dialogue and poor voice acting are not the only problems with modern FFs. It certainly wasn't the words that made the Opera scene powerful.

The Ancient_sl said:

However, I'm not sure I totally agree with your point. Dry dialogue and poor voice acting are not the only problems with modern FFs. It certainly wasn't the words that made the Opera scene powerful.

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Opera scene on the ps1 translation is.....not as good. The opera scene was more about the music and the mood and the parallel between what was going on the stage and the fight against time up in the rafters and all that. It's still good, just not AS good. Which, to me, is the same reason the SNES Chrono Trigger is Great and the CT on the DS is not as great. It's little tiny things that make it a little more dry and a little less human. It gets the point across. Words that used to be japanese are now in english.
In CT when frog sees the hero medal in the original then turns and says- "'Tis nary a thing I canst do... please be on thy way." Is a superfluous courtly yoda-esque way to tell someone they can't do it. It also builds him in a slow way. It seems like he wants to help, but he cant due to some sort of fear.

DS version: "Please, leave me be." - Yep sure gets the point across. Also makes him sound like you are bothering him.

FF6: Meeting Shadow: "That's Shadow! He'd slit his mama's throat for a nickel!" vs "He would kill his best friend for money." One gives him a creepy vibe vs that guy would kill a dude.


Modern Final Fantasies also have a real issue in the art department when it comes to character styles. Locke wore thief clothing, he's a Treasure hunter, a shortcut to saying, THIS GUY IS LIKE HAN SOLO AND INDIANA JONES. Sabin wore a tank top and a GI, this dude punches folks, kinda a meathead. Hell even Squall wore black tight clothing, showing that he was an enclosed emo git, for better or for worse. What people wore and looked added to the character.

In 13 the only person they really worried about that was for Lightning it seems. She has some sort of Roman type getup to show that she is a soldier. Snow wears guy clothes, he is a guy. Vanille wore little girl clothes, she is a little girl. Sazh wore greens to compliment his skin tone and have the chocobo look good. Hope is a boy with a boomerang, lets add a bandana! Let's not even go into 12 , every single one of them looks ridiculous, the ultimate belt and zipper fetish. Robes glow to look cool.

Everything is there to look cool, its not there to compliment the character. If you do not have great characters, you need to use visual shorthands to make him subscribe to mental tropes. When you add this stuff to good established characters, it enhances them further. It's not a requirement, but it helps visually tell a story that can be understood.

In real life people get tattoos to say something about themselves (usually). People wear suits for important business. People wear jeans to evoke the feeling of casualness. Lately they have eschewed this for a "cool" factor and add a bunch of stuff that does not mean anything.

Tactics was one of the best RPGs I've ever played and the translation was complete trash and Ramza wore butt pants.

I do agree with your distaste towards the changes in translation you've referenced here. Without having played newer versions myself, I don't know how egregious the changes are.

The Ancient_sl said:

Tactics was one of the best RPGs I've ever played and the translation was complete trash and Ramza wore butt pants.

I do agree with your distaste towards the changes in translation you've referenced here. Without having played newer versions myself, I don't know how egregious the changes are.

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Butt pants are hot. It show's ramza is ready for action!

I love tactics too, but for the life of me I can't really figure out why. I guess it works for me like FF7 works for me. I guess it is more that I can read through the poorly translated political intrigue story to get to pretty good gameplay with a decent AI. The when whatshisface backstabs you, it feels treacherous. When you kill people on the opposing side, you get they are "human". Even if Delita's motivation is mucked up by the translation, its still deeper than any motivation since 10. Yuna had a great arc when tidus wasn't shoving his face in everything. Ashe had a pretty decent one in 12, when vaan wasn't shoving his face in everything. Ramza is kinda a git at some points in time, but he is not oblivious to everything. Ramza is a hero that does heroic things, but he likes the breeze of chaps. Character art helps characters, but as long as he is a clearly defined character he doesn't need the shining white armor.

Not to have the super dissenting opinion, but I really think the simplicity of the characters of old compared to the complexities of modern characters is the turn off. As people, we -want- to see the knight in shining armor who saves the day. We -want- to see the princess that gets saved and sticks by her savior. Shit like that. FFIV was not a masterpiece of writing, it was incredibly simplistic minus the big TWEEEST of Golbez being Cecil's brother. Omg spoilers. The entire last 10% of the game was out of goddamn nowhere really. Once Babel is done that should have been game. No, we get The Moon. Everything leading up to that was generic and super simple. It gets a lot of cred for being around when most the gamers in this forum were young, however. The new renaissance that occurred with FF7 was that you couldn't put in simple lines like "You spoony bard!" and convey emotion nearly as well. The medium had progressed beyond the ability to hide shit within simplicity like the old days.

It was a combination of the concept of keeping up with the Jonses and the need to still have those heartstrings being tugged in emotional and memorable moments. Really, sit down and read through the dialogue in the first 5 games. (6 was an epic game and is tied with 9 for being my favorite of the entire series. Shit was epic) It really isn't that the writers just weren't up to snuff. It is that the medium changed so dramatically that the mid-range writing of yesteryear simply wouldn't cut it in the modern audience. That of course is just an opinion.

Of all the problems 7, 8, 9, 10, 10-2, 12, 13, and 13-2 had, the fucking clothing that they were wearing was the least of my concerns. I'm a pretty big sucker for any final fantasy, but XIII did feel too claustrophobic and linear, the story was the same re-hashed "We can save the world with FRIENDSHIP!" garbage, and the battle and advancement systems lacked any real choices. com/rav/rav -> rav/rav/rav -> stagger -> com/com/com, heal as necessary. even eschewing the auto-battle command at all, you were doing the same goddamn thing over and over.

FFXIII-2 was little better: there were more varied things to do, more open and explorable environments, but it really flew off the rails in terms of story/plot. Just inexcusably bad, littered with head-scratching wtf moments, and quite possibly the worst ending of any video game ever. Including ME3.

I'd really love to see a new game set in the tactics universe, or at least using the same tone in the storyline. To me, what made tactics great is that the story is more like game of thrones, with espionage, power struggles, manipulation, loss and actual human emotion, instead of the JRPG crap that we've been sold for years on end. Does anybody ever like the character who is a spunky teenage brat that squeeks in her high-pitched voice about air-headed bullshit? Does anybody get to the point in these games near the end where each character has to vomit up their motivation and say to themselves, "Man, that was so deep, I just know they'll overcome that bad guy now that they have the power of trust in each other"? Does ANYONE even care anymore in these games who falls in love with who?

Golt_sl said:

God you fuckers are gonna eventually make me finish FF13 just so I can play 13-2 even though I probably don't need to. Irks me i haven't beaten it with the completionist side in me, but ugh is it hard to get the drive to play that again. Why can't they continue making FFT type of games?! Is it just not that popular? I mean with the Disgaea series, albeit a bit different and way more complex in some areas, i would think that type of gameplay is still popular - i mean look at x-com. Similar type of style, different setting but people eat up FF stuff still. And i do not count FFT Advanced as a true continuation of the series.

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Everything in this post regarding FFT is correct. Fuck SE for not making any true sequels.

I played the shit out of FF4, 6, 7, and Tactics. Some of he best games I played as a kid/teen. Multiple play throughs on each, hundreds of hours on each. .... But oh god, FF8 was just so terrible, I just said fuck it after only a handful of hours. Never bought another FF game after that, it just completely soured me on Square's ability not to fuck shit up massively.

The stories found in Final Fantasy 6, 7 and Tactics were pretty dark. The previous final fantasies had innocents dying but the games didn't seem as hostile. Likewise, every subsequent final fantasy has felt more and more like a dance party caught in a fight to save the universe.

I think if they decided to make a brutal final fantasy that was on the verge of fantasy horror, with some really dark and sinister enemies and a cast of characters that reflect the severe nature of the world they are in, that would be amazing. There is a lot of potential to take the series in that direction, but there is equal amount of potential that it might totally piss people off. I am strangely ok with that though.

It needs something though. These afternoon adventures with an upbeat soundtrack and lovable costume selections have totally driven me away from the series. The last one I played was FFXII. I beat all of the side content, and enjoyed the story as well; but it definitely didn't feel very dangerous at any point. I took a pass on X, X-2, XIII, and XIII-2. I seem to recall that the direct sequels were marketed for teen girls in Japan. Would make a lot of sense.

Rezz_sl said:

Not to have the super dissenting opinion, but I really think the simplicity of the characters of old compared to the complexities of modern characters is the turn off. As people, we -want- to see the knight in shining armor who saves the day. We -want- to see the princess that gets saved and sticks by her savior. Shit like that. FFIV was not a masterpiece of writing, it was incredibly simplistic minus the big TWEEEST of Golbez being Cecil's brother. Omg spoilers. The entire last 10% of the game was out of goddamn nowhere really. Once Babel is done that should have been game. No, we get The Moon. Everything leading up to that was generic and super simple. It gets a lot of cred for being around when most the gamers in this forum were young, however. The new renaissance that occurred with FF7 was that you couldn't put in simple lines like "You spoony bard!" and convey emotion nearly as well. The medium had progressed beyond the ability to hide shit within simplicity like the old days.

It was a combination of the concept of keeping up with the Jonses and the need to still have those heartstrings being tugged in emotional and memorable moments. Really, sit down and read through the dialogue in the first 5 games. (6 was an epic game and is tied with 9 for being my favorite of the entire series. Shit was epic) It really isn't that the writers just weren't up to snuff. It is that the medium changed so dramatically that the mid-range writing of yesteryear simply wouldn't cut it in the modern audience. That of course is just an opinion.

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Nah. they COULD stick with simple narratives. but don't. Like I said earlier. theses guys are not good storytellers. there is alot of feeling out the medium and how to write for it. when they were given the chance to write more complicated dialogue, they lost control. You are right, the early games, its not that the early writing was good. There wasn't any. The emotion was narrated visually for the most part, and melodies. You as the viewer filled in the blanks. But now, they don't leave blanks to fill in, and what THEY put into the blanks, is not as good as what you imagined.

Go play Dragonquest 8. Perfect.

Pancreas_sl said:

The stories found in Final Fantasy 6, 7 and Tactics were pretty dark. The previous final fantasies had innocents dying but the games didn't seem as hostile. Likewise, every subsequent final fantasy has felt more and more like a dance party caught in a fight to save the universe.

I think if they decided to make a brutal final fantasy that was on the verge of fantasy horror, with some really dark and sinister enemies and a cast of characters that reflect the severe nature of the world they are in, that would be amazing. There is a lot of potential to take the series in that direction, but there is equal amount of potential that it might totally piss people off. I am strangely ok with that though.

It needs something though. These afternoon adventures with an upbeat soundtrack and lovable costume selections have totally driven me away from the series. The last one I played was FFXII. I beat all of the side content, and enjoyed the story as well; but it definitely didn't feel very dangerous at any point. I took a pass on X, X-2, XIII, and XIII-2. I seem to recall that the direct sequels were marketed for teen girls in Japan. Would make a lot of sense.

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To be fair, you're missing out by not playing X. Main character with extremely whiny voice (seriously wtf were they thinking) aside, it is one of the better FF's - Far better than XII was anyways. XII would've been great, but I never really could get into that faux-MMO combat they threw in. I thought the story and art style were great for a PS2 game.

The direction they've been taking with XIII and XIII-2 is really disappointing though. People didn't play Final Fantasy games because they wanted to play a linear RPG on rails, they played Final Fantasy games because they always had a rich story, decent character development, interesting combat and tons of extra content. What they're basically doing is stripping everyone of all of that. It sucks because Squaresoft was one of the founding father's of the RPG genre, yet now I would rather play other games.

I remember standing in line at EB Games to pick up a brand new Playstation and Final Fantasy 7. That excitement doesn't hit me anymore when I hear about Final Fantasy games. I'm still a sucker and always pre-order them and probably will play them the day they come out, but I'll never have that same feeling again if SE keeps going in this direction. Maybe we can take solace in the fact that they honestly have turned a new leaf with the re-invention of FF14, which by all accounts sounds to be shaping up to be a decent game.

Rezz_sl said:

Not to have the super dissenting opinion, but I really think the simplicity of the characters of old compared to the complexities of modern characters is the turn off. As people, we -want- to see the knight in shining armor who saves the day. We -want- to see the princess that gets saved and sticks by her savior. Shit like that. FFIV was not a masterpiece of writing, it was incredibly simplistic minus the big TWEEEST of Golbez being Cecil's brother. Omg spoilers. The entire last 10% of the game was out of goddamn nowhere really. Once Babel is done that should have been game. No, we get The Moon. Everything leading up to that was generic and super simple. It gets a lot of cred for being around when most the gamers in this forum were young, however. The new renaissance that occurred with FF7 was that you couldn't put in simple lines like "You spoony bard!" and convey emotion nearly as well. The medium had progressed beyond the ability to hide shit within simplicity like the old days.

It was a combination of the concept of keeping up with the Jonses and the need to still have those heartstrings being tugged in emotional and memorable moments. Really, sit down and read through the dialogue in the first 5 games. (6 was an epic game and is tied with 9 for being my favorite of the entire series. Shit was epic) It really isn't that the writers just weren't up to snuff. It is that the medium changed so dramatically that the mid-range writing of yesteryear simply wouldn't cut it in the modern audience. That of course is just an opinion.

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Why are you pretending we went straight from IV to VII?

Look IV's story was pretty simplistic, but the way it established characters was beyond par for it's time. VI took that and ran with it adding a more mature and original story. VI was the renaissance, VII added FMVs.