This is why I didn't play any of them after doing a bit of Assassin's Creed 1 at a friend's house - as a student of that time period.Not a final area, but I literally can not stand the Animus bulllshit in any of the Asassians Creed games. Can be trucking along and fully immersed in whatever setting you are in...and BAM...next 20+ mins are walking around some skyscraper building or controlling a different toon looming at computers.
I fucking hate it. They should remove all Animus nonsense from every game.
Yep, incredibly difficult (and lengthy) boss that comes after an also-lengthy Megaman-style boss rush (no saving in between, naturally). It may literally be the only game that I've ever put down after dying to it and said, "Okay, good enough. I'll just look up the ending on YouTube."Octopath Traveler - Never played this myself, but I heard the final boss is way above the rest of the game and requires all eight characters to be leveled-up (most people will only level the ones they've been using).
Game had production issues and two major rewrites to change the main character:Ff12's ending didn't really ruin the game for me, but it was really disappointing. They made the "boss" super sympathetic during the majority of the game, and then one of the dungeons right before shows you a bunch of interdimensional space demon gods who are really in control. Instead of swapping to following that awesome thread, it is back to fighting the guy that really isn't a villain for the ending. Very unsatisfying after the reveals leading up to it.
Yeah although it's very chronologically and geographically challenged and I guess just an alternate universe version.Ya, the Return to Ivalice raids were a great love letter to FFT and FF12
Vaan and Penelo were obviously tacked on. Just part of the development cycle when the devs are given specific instructions. I think it was more that they had spent so long on Vayne that they kind of forgot about all the other shit that made his nonsense absolutely retarded. Then they introduced the Occuria, which were -obviously- the fucking main problem with the world... but then it goes full circle and "But Vayne!" and you have to do the airship hop.Game had production issues and two major rewrites to change the main character:
#1 "Can't have Ashe be main character, our japanese male audience can't relate to a women"
#2 "Can't have Basch be main character, our effeminate otaku audience can't relate to a man"
Every FF game has some crazy twist ending with some sort of godlike being to fight, FF12 gave us nothing.
FF14 did take up that plot thread in an awesome way though and even reused the names (eg Venat).
re: xenogears - sorta; apparently they had pretty strict "finish by x and release" timelines, and Squaresoft wanted Xenogears to be done. The material on the second disk wasn't finished (turnover/new hires/etc) as they were approaching the deadline, so instead of ending it at the escape from Solaris (where Squaresoft wanted to end it since the rest of the content wasn't fully complete) the director opted to try and tie up the storyline with the finished material in the montage format for disc 2.
I mean, I liked the parts you could actually play on disc 2, but yeah I was extremely disappointed with how it was when released. Still one of my favorite games of all time, but definitely a let down in presentation for the last third of the game.
SoM, I think I actually just abused the ever living crap out of max level holy magic (the one with the beams) where if you kept casting it fast enough the beams would tangle up before hitting the boss. That was like... 90% of the damage I did, and it was maxed out so doing 999 with every cast. Literally just spammed it and ate the mana regen nuts until it died, entirely because they said not to use the thing to make it more powerful. Could have been a translation issue, but yeah definitely not the "intended" way to fight the boss.
This is why I didn't play any of them after doing a bit of Assassin's Creed 1 at a friend's house - as a student of that time period.
Played Oddessy earlier this year and it was amazing until some random lesbians in the modern day showed up to deliver SJW dialogue.
It was so jarring, that's exactly what I was thinking.Gotta love the way they just shoehorn that stuff in. It probably isn't even the main writers. I envision a scenario where the main (talented) writers do all of the historical stuff, then the Corporate wing butts in and has their people add some present-day scenes with Wokeness that have little to do with the rest of the game and add nothing, but sufficiently boost Ubi's social credit score with Blackrock to keep the investment dollars going.
I remember Xenosaga being god damn hard with its combo system.The Mana Beast is probably a translation thing, like FF7's "attack when its tail is up!" being the opposite of what you're supposed to do. I didn't even know it was killable without using Mana Magic.
The end of Xenogears Disc 1 is actually a potentially good stopping point and feels like the end of a normal RPG anyway. However if they'd stopped there and saved the rest for a sequel, then Squaresoft didn't greenlight said sequel... that would have been a huge waste. So I don't blame them for squishing all of it into the game to meet the deadlines. They had one shot at this and wanted to finish the story in case they never got the chance.
Just a shame that they got rushed like that and a shame that Square didn't let them make any sequels. It was quite obvious that it was intended to be Episode 5 of a six-game series, A New Hope style.
Not getting Xenogears Episode 1 through 4 is probably the biggest missed opportunity in gaming history for me personally. We got teased heavily with the Xenosaga games being a "retelling" of Xenogears Episode 1, at least, but we got absolute squat for Episodes 2, 3, and 4. I think Episode 4 in particular would have been perfect for an RPG, with the Solaris/Shevat war and the Diabolos invasion etc. But I'm just as interested in Episode 2 (early civilization, Emperor Cain's reign) and Episode 3 (Zeboim civilization, AKA the modern world).
Xenogears is the only game I know of that has a potential story as rich and time-spanning as Dune. They just abandoned most of it though and gave us a quasi-reimagining of one portion of it and it drives me nuts. Maybe that's why I can't get into any of the Xenoblade games, because every time they do a new Xeno I just want it to go back to the first one's Jungian concepts and Mitsuda orchestral arrangements.
If I woke up one day and found out Monolithsoft got the rights to Xenogears from Square and their next big project will be a six-game deep dive of the entire unused Xenogears mythology, it would literally make my decade. Even if each game takes like 3-4 years to come out or something. I'll take anything.
Note: I've been told that the Torna DLC of Xenoblade 2 is basically a Xenogears Episode 4 retelling. I think Xenoblade X has some things in common with Episode 2, specifically humanity starting over on a new planet with a crashed ship as a base. But I don't know, I haven't played either. Maybe I should.
Gotta love the way they just shoehorn that stuff in. It probably isn't even the main writers. I envision a scenario where the main (talented) writers do all of the historical stuff, then the Corporate wing butts in and has their people add some present-day scenes with Wokeness that have little to do with the rest of the game and add nothing, but sufficiently boost Ubi's social credit score with Blackrock to keep the investment dollars going.
I remember Xenosaga being god damn hard with its combo system.
Never finished it as I was in the army at the time and we had to go off somewhere so I stopped playing it.
Xenogears was one of the best games I remember playing as a teen. Absolutely deep story. My game froze and corrupted right at the last boss. Ended up watching the ending on youtube years laterThe Mana Beast is probably a translation thing, like FF7's "attack when its tail is up!" being the opposite of what you're supposed to do. I didn't even know it was killable without using Mana Magic.
The end of Xenogears Disc 1 is actually a potentially good stopping point and feels like the end of a normal RPG anyway. However if they'd stopped there and saved the rest for a sequel, then Squaresoft didn't greenlight said sequel... that would have been a huge waste. So I don't blame them for squishing all of it into the game to meet the deadlines. They had one shot at this and wanted to finish the story in case they never got the chance.
Just a shame that they got rushed like that and a shame that Square didn't let them make any sequels. It was quite obvious that it was intended to be Episode 5 of a six-game series, A New Hope style.
Not getting Xenogears Episode 1 through 4 is probably the biggest missed opportunity in gaming history for me personally. We got teased heavily with the Xenosaga games being a "retelling" of Xenogears Episode 1, at least, but we got absolute squat for Episodes 2, 3, and 4. I think Episode 4 in particular would have been perfect for an RPG, with the Solaris/Shevat war and the Diabolos invasion etc. But I'm just as interested in Episode 2 (early civilization, Emperor Cain's reign) and Episode 3 (Zeboim civilization, AKA the modern world).
Xenogears is the only game I know of that has a potential story as rich and time-spanning as Dune. They just abandoned most of it though and gave us a quasi-reimagining of one portion of it and it drives me nuts. Maybe that's why I can't get into any of the Xenoblade games, because every time they do a new Xeno I just want it to go back to the first one's Jungian concepts and Mitsuda orchestral arrangements.
If I woke up one day and found out Monolithsoft got the rights to Xenogears from Square and their next big project will be a six-game deep dive of the entire unused Xenogears mythology, it would literally make my decade. Even if each game takes like 3-4 years to come out or something. I'll take anything.
Note: I've been told that the Torna DLC of Xenoblade 2 is basically a Xenogears Episode 4 retelling. I think Xenoblade X has some things in common with Episode 2, specifically humanity starting over on a new planet with a crashed ship as a base. But I don't know, I haven't played either. Maybe I should.
Gotta love the way they just shoehorn that stuff in. It probably isn't even the main writers. I envision a scenario where the main (talented) writers do all of the historical stuff, then the Corporate wing butts in and has their people add some present-day scenes with Wokeness that have little to do with the rest of the game and add nothing, but sufficiently boost Ubi's social credit score with Blackrock to keep the investment dollars going.
If you roll up a spear / constitution build, its a ton easier to learn the fights while doing good damage. I think thats my most hated fight too until you learn itNioh 2 as well. Some big snake boss, I beat my head against for a long time and never got close, finally threw in the towel and never went back.
Both were a shame cause I really liked them.
Final Fantasy VIII : While I appreciate the weird anti-JRPG vibe this game gives (no equipement, no chest, no conventional dungeon, etc) the meta game is pushed too far for me in the last area as you are deprived of all your combat menu choices and have to find and fight bosses in a huge manor to regain little by little the abbilities you gathered through the game. I was not amused, so I just visited a buddy of mine as he was beating the game and never touched it again (youTube was not a thing back then).