As long as you don't take it too far and become a Square B*tch, and start buying things "because it's SQUARE!", you should be all right. All it took was FF8 to prevent me ever from going that far...

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"You can seriously drop the controller onto a cat from 5 feet and break its back... so I've heard."
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Anomalous Arts

VIII was pretty good. It was the first FF game I ever purchased. I then got VII, then IX, then X. The old-fashioned VII and IX game characteristics really bring the spiffiness to the game. I also played V and VI. I played FF back in the day on Sega Game Channel.

I usually get pretty anxious when Squaresoft releases a new game, because it's always pretty good. The Bouncer even rocked, although it only takes an hour or two to beat. And I might be trying Kingdom Hearts soon.

But Squaresoft should stick to RPGs, unlike the racing game they made, which I haven't even attempted to look into.

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Keep what ye c'n git, an' keep what ye ha'e, for that is the wey t' gettin' rich - Old Scottish Commoner Saying - "Mac users are loyal. PC users are stubborn" - The Space Between on converting someone to another OS.
"Every story has an ending." – Auron
1600 posts 10-11-2002 19:29 PM (09:29 PM ASW Time [ET])| Newgrounds.com – The Problems of the Future | StupidVideos • Your Web-Repository of Stupid Videos | My Messages To You :: message 1 • message 2

Final Fantasy X could have been very good, but it had too many flaws. It was too easy (I don't really count though, I've been playing RPG's since I was 7), the plot took FF melodrama to a level I was hoping it would never get to, and it was too linear. The fact that menu commands weren't available until half way through the game is ridiculous, the combat system was bastardized down to remove any kind of strategy, I don't think I ever had to actually think about what I was doing until I fought the Gatekeeper boss. The sphere grid system cracked me up; it gave you the illusion that you could go anywhere and teach any character anything, but try it and you're stuck experiencing-building until you can get that character up to speed.

That's not to say that X didn't have anything going for it. While generally I don't care much about a games graphics, the addition of facial expression actually helped FFX in telling it's story, even if I think that the stor was a step down from IX, and in particular VIII.



VIII? Really? Well, I suppose I do understand. Most people hated that game. I personally think of it as the best in the series. Actually, it's my favorite game of all time.

Yes, I know I'm in the minority on that one.

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The greatest mistake man can make is believing he can destroy evil.
The greatest thing he can do is fight it.
0===|ZZZZZZZSilverbladeZZZZZZZ>

[This message has been edited by silverblade (edited 10-26-2002).]

I believe X's story was very unique and captivating. However, I do enjoy IX a lot. I just hope XI improves on the story. I'm pretty sure XI will have the medieval theme to it and the 'little' characters, like VII and IX did. That's what rocked about those two games.

Don't feel too alone; I, too, am an FFVIII fan. I can't say it's one of my favourites, due to the in-game graphics, but the storyline and theme was pretty gnarly.


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Keep what ye c'n git, an' keep what ye ha'e, for that is the wey t' gettin' rich - Old Scottish Commoner Saying - "Mac users are loyal. PC users are stubborn" - The Space Between on converting someone to another OS.
"Every story has an ending." – Auron
1600 posts 10-11-2002 19:29 PM (09:29 PM ASW Time [ET])| Newgrounds.com – The Problems of the Future | StupidVideos • Your Web-Repository of Stupid Videos | My Messages To You :: message 1 • message 2

Preach on, dude. Final Fantasy VIII remains my favorite game in the series. It continues to offend many traditionalists because it was the first in the series that was willing to try some radical changes in its approach, but I personally feel the old formula, which held up pretty well through the SNES trilogy, was definitely getting a bit worn by the time it was recycled yet again for VII. I still don't understand the universal acclaim FFVII receives, as it was fairly mediocre in most areas and only really innovated in the area of graphics, a necessity as SNES-quality graphics simply wouldn't have cut it on the far more sophisticated PlayStation.

FFVIII's main character, Squall, was everything Cloud was, but actually had a personality and didn't look like Popeye, and at least he tried to find an original weapon, as opposed to Coud's standard issue Big Sword™. Seifer is undoubtedly cooler than that boytoy Sephiroth (he almost kills the main character in the opening movie in a fair duel, rather than literally stabbing a supporting character in the back a third of the way through). The realistic look and movement of the characters is also far and away superior to VII's inflatable anime dolls. The ballroom dance scene in VIII absolutely stunned me the first time I saw it, with its incredibly lifelike waltzers. By comparison, seeing Aeris for the first time in the opening of VII was very jarring, as she stood in stark contrast to the much more realistic cars and surrounding city.

To this day, I'm still not sure I fully understand what was supposed to be going on in Final Fantasy VII. While VIII doesn't fare that much better in terms of plot clarity, it's fairly comprehensible until well into the fourth disc, which is when things start getting convoluted. All in all, Final Fantasy VII is a game for anime geeks and ultra-purists, while Final Fantasy VIII is the first in the series to achieve truly cinematic storytelling.




The only racing game I know of made by Squaresoft is Chocobo Racing, an obvious attempt to exploit the Final Fantasy franchise (there's even a Cid character in the game, and he's an engineer). All the racers are generic creatures and characters from the FF games (you can also unlock Cloud and Squall as secret characters), including, obviously, a chocobo, and the powerups allow you to cast familiar spells and use unique special abilities. It's pretty good as far as cartoony racing games go, but doesn't stand out much within the genre.

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"I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid... and I went ahead anyway." -Crow T. Robot
Just Games • The Devil's Dictionary • Yosh!

Ah, but you forget Rad Racer, a classic of NES mediocrity.

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"You can seriously drop the controller onto a cat from 5 feet and break its back... so I've heard."
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Anomalous Arts

Come on. FF VII was indeed a massive step up in quality, but it was also a massive step up in story line, and overall atmosphere of the game.

Mediocre? Materia was not used in any game before it, so the battle system was good. The characters were good. There was lots of stuff to do after you completed the game. Such as go back and complete all the side quests and beat the Weapons.

FF VIII lacked alot of this and more, which I'll deal with later.



Okay, FF VII's characters were 'super-deformed' because the designers didn't think they could make the characters look realistic yet. They weren't sure what the PS could do yet. You say that FF VII has good graphics but then turn around and go, "But VIII's" were better. Of course they were better, the game was released way after VII. If a graphical leap is all it takes to make a game better, then X would be hands down the best game in the series.



Aeris was supposed to contrast with the city. She was from the earth, natural, and pure, surrounded by the dark brooding atmosphere of the city.



What?! VII's plot was brilliant and tied in perfectly. I'm not going to run down the plot for you, but it's all there I promise. Indeed, it's so comprehensive that if you go back and play it again, one of the hobos in the city has a number tattoo on his hand and he's dribbeling which anyone who's played through the game, realizes the signifigance of it.

VIII by comparison has virtually no clues or foreshadowing for the plot. It's just all of a sudden they "remember" that they all attended nursery school together?? Give me a break. That was the most forced, and stupid plot twist of any FF. Why would they forget this? What's the point?

In VII you're presented with an amnesiac trying to piece together the fragments of his past, which is all brought together in one scene of the game. It all makes sense, why the events were what they were, and if you play back through, you can pick up on the hints towards this. It's nothing like VIII where it's just sprung on you.

Finally, some more gripes I had with 8. There's an item in the game that allows your characters to auto-limit break making the game ridiculously easy. You just dupe the item and you've virtually beaten the game.

Also, on the fourth disc, you can't explore the world because all the cities are closed! Come on! The most fun to be had in the FF games was going out and exploring and finding sub-quests and things to do. VIII by contrast pulls you along by the hand and then never lets you go.

Also, VII has many, many mini-games throughout the game, whereas VIII has only the one card game. If you don't like the card game? Too bad. It's the only one you get.

In my opinion, VIII tries too hard to be a game version of a movie. If I wanted a movie, I'd buy one. FF games, are games, and the fun element of it being a game was totally lost for me on VIII. I felt like I was holding the play button on my VCR for forty hours.

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"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Thoreau

Each game tends to come up with a new system for earning new spells, and in VII's case, Materia was it. It doesn't seem like that much of a progression from buying spells, as one did in earlier games, and I don't see how it alone causes the battle system to be good. The battle system was good, but mainly because it was basically the same tried-and-true formula from the previous games, and like the rest of VII as a whole, didn't offer that much in teh way of originality. While teh junction system in VIII was admittedly far too complex,, I much preferred the draw system over anything the previous games offered, combining the process of earning new spells with earning the power with which to cast them. I was also getting a bit sick of having to keep track of separate pieces of armor for each different section of each character's body, something else VIII mercifully did away with.



Well, I'm certainly glad you're around to clarify this for me, because to me it looked more like the contrast stemmed from the fact that the character was a much simpler design than anything around it. Aeris looked as inorganic and sterile as the dark brooding atmosphere, if not more so, for want of detail. In general, the graphics in FFVII were excellent in all areas except for the characters themselves. It's just difficult for me to take a supposedly dramatic FMV scene seriously when the players are bobbleheads with immense eyes that look better suited for characters on the Cartoon Network.



Again, this is nothing new to the Final Fantasy series. Plenty of things appear in IV-VI that have no significance until you learn more of the plot. The power of the PlayStation simply allowed for finer details, permitting the game's designers to go about seeding foreshadowing elements a bit more subtlely.



Yes, the nursery bit did seem to come out of the blue, but that would hardly make it the first FF in which the characters had an unlikely past connection, would it? And what's all this about no foreshadowing? What about the mysterious first appearances of Rinoa and Ellone? How about the Laguna sequences? They don't seem to be relevant until you start finding yourself in the same places he once visited, and then everything gradually begins to fit together. It's not that unlike VII when it comes to the "mysterious hero rediscovers his past" bit. But in VIII, the pieces fit together in a puzzle-like fashion, while in VII, Cloud just seems to go nuts every once in a while, and flashback sequences drops bits and pieces of the greater picture like a bad psychodrama.



It's been quite a while since I played it last, so I'm not quite sure to what you're referring, but it sounds like it's probably not something you can drop by any item shop and pick up for a few thousand gil. Are there not secret items of this sort in most FF games? And the only method I know of that will duplicate items involves cheating, and isn't the point of cheating to make the game easier anyway?



I'm not sure what would be the point of holding down the play button on a VCR (mine works after just one press), but I didn't notice that VIII spent any more time on non-interactive story scenes than VII did. I see a bit of inconsistency in your dislike for movie-like games since you seem to hold subplots in such high regard. I think Final Fantasy games are long enough as it is without having 25 inane side-quests to divert you from making any real progress. Final Fantasy VIII obligates you to advance the plot at at least a somewhat regular pace for the sake of dramatic realism. Were the FF games real, I doubt the ultimate evil force/power/villain would reschedule his/her plans to take over/destroy the world simply because the only people who can stop them are busy completing "side-quests" and can't be bothered to show up and make things interesting until they're good and ready. The card game is a popular trend in the world of FFVIII that can be played quickly without having to jaunt off to some otherwise pointless part of the world on a five-hour quest that will either get you killed or achieve nothing whatsoever except the apparently great satisfaction of having done it. What VIII lacks in pointless distractions, it makes up for in plausability. I start a Final Fantasy game expecting to play though one larger adventure, not a mini-arcade of smaller ones.

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"I calculated the odds of this succeeding versus the odds I was doing something incredibly stupid... and I went ahead anyway." -Crow T. Robot
Just Games • The Devil's Dictionary • Yosh!

[This message has been edited by StarStrafer (edited 10-27-2002).]

StarStrafer & Draconix: You're both wrong (well, there was that old one, but that's not what I was thinking).

Driving Emotion Type-S

Blech! A cheap rip-off of GT3. Needless to say, GT3 has more cars, tracks, etc.

Check it out. Make your opinion.

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Keep what ye c'n git, an' keep what ye ha'e, for that is the wey t' gettin' rich - Old Scottish Commoner Saying - "Mac users are loyal. PC users are stubborn" - The Space Between on converting someone to another OS.
"Every story has an ending." – Auron
1600 posts 10-11-2002 19:29 PM (09:29 PM ASW Time [ET])| Newgrounds.com – The Problems of the Future | StupidVideos • Your Web-Repository of Stupid Videos | My Messages To You :: message 1 • message 2

It was a spell called Aura that you could draw out of some kind of monster. Anyway, once you'd drawn enough of them, you could do the limit break at any time.



Most of the side-quests in FF7 are optional, and are meant to further enhance the storyline. Also, to me, the idea that they are optional, and that the user has the ability to control the outcome of where he goes, or what he does, further enhances a game mentality. I'm not sure why you'd want to simply go straight through the game without any sort of exploration, collection, character enhancement, etc. To me, this is what an RPG Game is all about. I guess it's just a matter of preference, but VIII's total lack of interactivity made it very boring for me.

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"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." - Thoreau

I agree with Number279. Though I do prefer games with a linear plotline over non-linear games such as Half Life, I do like a good share of non-linear elements in a linear game. I like the ability to go off on sidequests and go back to the main storyline.

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"You can seriously drop the controller onto a cat from 5 feet and break its back... so I've heard."
---
Anomalous Arts

Then GTA VC is the game for you, my friend!

Yeah. I found that about The Bouncer and FF X quite appauling.

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Keep what ye c'n git, an' keep what ye ha'e, for that is the wey t' gettin' rich - Old Scottish Commoner Saying - "Mac users are loyal. PC users are stubborn" - The Space Between on converting someone to another OS.
"Every story has an ending." – Auron
1600 posts 10-11-2002 19:29 PM (09:29 PM ASW Time [ET])| Newgrounds.com – The Problems of the Future | StupidVideos • Your Web-Repository of Stupid Videos | My Messages To You :: message 1 • message 2

/me applaudes Number279 and his skills.

Providing each point you make with some backup description that makes it make more sense, very nice. I must agree with the many points you make, as I too believe as you do.

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We were the first political party to advocate renaming the Washington Monument the Big Stone U.S. Penis and putting big, orange foam testicles at the bottom.

Whoa whoa whoa, I never said FF VII was bad, in fact, I don't mean that in the least. FF VII was a great game, it made huge strides in the genre and had many things going for it. I just happen to like VIII better.

All in all, my understanding of the long-standing debate over the two games is this: They are both wonderful games, but in different ways. FF VII has wonder gameplay and a bevy of extra stuff to do, while VIII excels in it's presentation of story and in atmospheric feel. While neither is bad in any particular category, they just are better than the other is some. Frankly, it comes down to preference. What do you look for when you play Final Fantasy?

I perfer plot, therefore I perfer. I have a good friend who perfers gameplay, he perfers VII. Neither of us is wrong, neither of us are right, we're just different.

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The greatest mistake man can make is believing he can destroy evil.
The greatest thing he can do is fight it.
0===|ZZZZZZZSilverbladeZZZZZZZ>

Ah, yes. that and Ultima are my fave. Don't forget about the world map draw points. That's where I got my Auras from.

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Keep what ye c'n git, an' keep what ye ha'e, for that is the wey t' gettin' rich - Old Scottish Commoner Saying - "Mac users are loyal. PC users are stubborn" - The Space Between on converting someone to another OS.
"Every story has an ending." – Auron
1600 posts 10-11-2002 19:29 PM (09:29 PM ASW Time [ET])| Newgrounds.com – The Problems of the Future | StupidVideos • Your Web-Repository of Stupid Videos | My Messages To You :: message 1 • message 2