I couldn't agree more, so here we are!

Believe me, FFX has the most confusing ending OF ALL! I think they were so hellbent on making the graphics and gameplay superior to all that have come before it, that they have failed on the same level they continue to fail on - the story. The story of this game keeps getting more and more ludicrous as you play, but the ending makes no damn sense, whatsoever. And the mini-game that the story keeps revolving around, Blitzball, is fuckin' impossible! Anyone else figure it out?

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If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have no luck at all. D'OH!

Please note that those of us who haven't finished (or even played) X yet might not want to know anything about the ending beforehand. I just have one question...

What is blitzball?

I understand completely, and I promise not to do so. It's too hard to explain, anyway, because the plot just gets so damn complex.

Basically, Blitzball is the futuristic version of soccer/football played by everyone in this particular FF world. In fact, it is the only sport played because it's the only thing that brings the people happiness in their post-apocalyptic society. The game is a combination of European and American football - played like soccer but using hands. The only difference? It's played completely underwater.

Now, if you got to play it like any other soccer video game, that would be fine...but this is Final Fantasy, where you have to select a choice before making any move! Everytime you get the ball, the obligatory menu pops up and you have to choose: play or pass or shoot or whatever. It's annoying, and the other team is always better than yours. Unfortunately, you have to play it at least once just to progress the story.

Well, enough about that. FF VII is still my favorite, just because it opened me up to how fun RPG's could actually be.

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If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have no luck at all. D'OH!

From what I've heard, it's easier to describe as Handball, that little German sport. Which is the mix of Soccer and American football. Another thing is you can buy "things with special name" for about 5000gil and get a FMV clip, to keep and watch how many times you want, there are also Music versions which are 2000gil. You can also choose who you flirt with which will change the story a tad, (I'm hoping you can flirt with the big blue creature. And that's pretty much all I know about FFX, oh apart from the graphics look amazing beyond belief.

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I am not 16 going on not 17, I know that I'm naive.

The graphics are indeed superb, and sometimes there's just too much going on to catch it all. I often found myself getting beat to a bloody pulp because I was paying too much attention to the details of the background art instead of the game.

I know that there some extra things, but I didn't bother trying to find them. The story is very linear and will not let you deviate at all. Once again, you end up in a airship travelling across the world, but you never get to control the ship. You simply tell the pilot to go, and he takes you straight to the next place that you are supposed to go...no stops. The only time you get to choose where to go on the map is right before you go into the final battle.

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If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have no luck at all. D'OH!

That defeats the entire point of the airship. They might as well have made it a subway or a network of magical teleporters. Flying about the world completing subquests is what the Final Fantasy series is all about.

So this Blitzball thing takes the place of the card games? I spent more time playing the card games than I should probably admit. I found an unfortunately crash-prone version of Triple Triad online; haven't looked for Tetra Master yet. But IMHO, the best minigame ever was G-Bike or whatever it was called from the arcade in 7. I spent too much time playing that too.

I finally bought a PSone last month. I'd played FFs 7 and 8 on my PC before, but apparently 9 isn't coming out for the PC... bastards. Anyway, I just beat Ozma last night and I'm expecting to wrap up a few more subquests and beat the game either tonight or tomorrow. Eventually I have to go back and do a bunch of stuff I missed in 7 and 8 (like meet Vincent Valentine...), but I think I'm moving on to things like FF Tactics and Vagrant Story for now. As for FFX... maybe in a few years when the PS2 costs about a third of what it does now. That's the only one that I haven't played yet. Can't really say I have any favorites, although 2j and 3j are the ones I've played the least of.

Speaking of other Squaresoft games... anyone played Threads of Fate for the PS1? $10 for 15 - 20 hours of gameplay per character (there are two, and you can play the story from either perspective). Reminiscent of the Zelda games for the N64. Almost nothing in the way of side quests, but well worth the money, in my opinion.

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The what mentioned above is total fiction. Please don't take it seriously!

Squaresoft ran out of ideas a few games back. Now they just reorder elements from the previous entries in the series and call it a new game. Have there been any more angels as last bosses since FFVII?

VI is my favourite too, although most die-hard FF geeks seem to think it's too easy.

I'm currently playing Tales of Phantasia on the emulator. It's better than a lot of FF games.

I gotta agree with evil_d here, world exploration is half the fun of these games. That, coupled with a healthy dose of weird humor and seemingly intentionally poorly done graphics was why I thought Dragon Warrior VII was fun despite the outmoded and clunky interface... If only I'd had time to finish it.

But at the same time, I can't quite agree with a statement that says any one thing is what a game series is all about. Actually, if anything, FF is all about changing things around every time a new game comes out.

There's one thing that bugs me about all the FF games ever since VII... why in the world do we still have to contend with this ridiculous "party swapping" mechanic inherant in all these games? Why, in the age of PS2 do we have these groups of a dozen or more people who get together to save the world and then decide they only want to travel in little groups of 3 or 4?

I really enjoyed FFTactics, by the way... only real complaints were that the battle fields were too small and not enough characters on the field for my taste. That and the game is unbelievably easy once you understand a few things about the way it works.

Andy: No, no angels, but in one Squaresoft game you kill God and in another you kill Jesus... or their equivalents, at least... actually, you killed God in Final Fantasy Legends (don't know what it was called in Europe) on the gameboy years and years ago, but that's not what I was refering to just now.

Well, he's called "The Creator", and he's not quite as strong as I imagine God would be (being able to be killed by four mortals, one of whom is some kind of worm), but I guess that's what he's supposed to be. Incidentally, FFL2 was the game that got me into RPGs.

I took climbing the tower to reach him as symbolic of the Tower of Babel. And yeah, he's nowhere near as strong as God should have been... but chalk that up to game mechanics, I guess.

FFL2 was a damn cool game. It wasn't for a long time, though, that I realized how to raise Human's stats like Agility. I ended up using automated weaponry and firearms almost the entire game because I couldn't get their agility high enough to hit anything with melee weapons. I was used to Humans needing those items to increase their stats like in the first FFL and didn't know that they operated more like Mystics/mutants in the second one.

Perhaps. Another example of Square's extremely unsubtle religious imagery.

The monsters were useless. I made the mistake of putting two monsters in my party and then ended up stuck at Apollo for ages. Eventually I discovered that you don't even need to attack him, and can just heal every round.
One thing I didn't like about FFL2, though, was that it "pulls a Zeromus", viz. introduces the last boss just before you fight him. It's better to get to know your last boss. A lot of the recent FFs have been committing this crime too.

They've been doing that for as long as the series has been around. It's part of what I like about it. Continuity in the form of similar names, creatures, etc., instead of an ongoing plot line. I can find an item called "Soft" or a summoned monster called "Leviathan" or a big yellow bird and know pretty much what it'll do for me. At the same time, the battle mechanics have been changing more and more lately -- what with the Materia and Draw systems.

Fair enough. But I think immersion in and complete exploration of a new world -- often to the point of traveling to its moon or its mirror image or something like that -- is an essential element to any FF game. So much so that I don't think you really have a Final Fantasy game without it. At least I don't think the fans would turn out in such numbers to buy it.

Agreed. I wouldn't mind so much having a limited party size -- I understand that even with today's technology there must still be some constraints -- if we could see more dungeons where you got to split into multiple parties and switch between them -- one of the best things about FF6. My biggest disappointment so far with FF9 is only getting to participate in one of the elemental shrine battles. I don't know any reason why the player couldn't have fought all four -- not to mention having something in the way of a few actual dungeon levels before the bosses.

Slightly tangentially, I also hate the fact that the lead character ends up with so much more experience. In FF8 I ran Squall up against the wall of experience at level 100 quite by accident, just the normal course of the game, while the rest of the characters probably never got much past 70.

I kind of fell behind with the Legend and Adventure series. I don't think I finished the second game of either. I'll have to get an emulator... once my computer at home is back in working order.

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The what mentioned above is total fiction. Please don't take it seriously!

They've been doing that for as long as the series has been around. It's part of what I like about it. Continuity in the form of similar names, creatures, etc., instead of an ongoing plot line. I can find an item called "Soft" or a summoned monster called "Leviathan" or a big yellow bird and know pretty much what it'll do for me. At the same time, the battle mechanics have been changing more and more lately -- what with the Materia and Draw systems.

I have nothing against them having some similar themes throughout the games, or items and spells with the same names. But bringing in an airship in every game, always having the main character use a sword, using the same idea for a last boss for multiple games...I dunno, it just all gets a bit repetitive. Also, the plots are frequently identical: some dark power manipulates a powerful nation to try and take over (or pointlessly destroy) the world.

The sequel to Adventure is, I think, Secret of Mana. Secret of Mana 2 is pretty good, if you want a recommendation.

I played all of FF7 and part of FF8 before I got bored and quit. They need to come up with some way to allow you to skip the fancy elemental (or whatever they're called--I don't remember) attack animation after you've already seen it a hundred times. I began to dread battling anything. In general, I find the turn-based battle systems to be fairly boring. It was ok with FF7 because I had never played a game like that before, but after doing it throughout one game it seemed less and less appealing as the time racked up playing the game increased. Also, to me, anyway, the repetitive story elements reduced my enjoyment of FF8. I may check out FF10, though, since it was very highly rated in reviews I have seen.

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"And Wirthling isn't worth the paper he isn't printed on."

Just the other day I bought FF3 on eBay for over 30$ and haven't regretted a penny of it, even though it came with a bad battery and I had to open the damn thing and weld in a new one, or else the game would would lose all saves on turn-off. I've never played any of the other ones (except for Mystic Quest, which royally sucked ass), are they anything at all like 3?

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My love for you is like diarrhea, I just can't hold it in. -Weird Al Yankovic

I could just never get into any of the FF games. A good friend of mine has the PC ports of (I think) 6 and 7, which I borrowed and tried hard to enjoy. I also played demos of 8 and 9. I just don't like them, or at least I didn't enjoy the first few hours of gameplay (or the sample provided in the demos). It's not that I object to turn-based games - I've been playing Civilisation and Warlords since I had a 286, and I enjoyed Jagged Alliance and Fallout. I really don't understand what all the fuss is about, frankly. What I saw of eight and nine was basically pretty graphics wrapped around very dull gameplay. Eyes down... eyes down...

Oh well, different strokes and all that...

I recently started on my first replay of System Shock 2, and it is still fantastic. I am disturbed by just how much of it I remember. I find myself walking into rooms knowing precisely where monsters, security cameras, and loot are going to be. Once done with that, I'll be replaying Deus Ex. My first time through that one was on a woefully underpowered PC, and I want to play it on my new beast and really enjoy the spectacle of it. On the old PC, I had to refrain from looking up at the Statue of Liberty, as it killed my framerate.

Half-Life is calling to me as well. I played the original twice, and a third time when I bought Opposing Force. I am feeling the need to play both through again. Looks like HL is officially my all-time favourite game...

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This signature has performed an illegal operation and has been shut down.

quote:

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What I saw of eight and nine was basically pretty graphics wrapped around very dull gameplay. Eyes down... eyes down...

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Well, FFX breaks the mold, I guess. You don't get to explore anything. And you don't travel to a distant planet or moon or anything in this one...but there is a different kind of travel, but I wouldn't want to give away any "spoilers". FFX breaks that mold, as well. With the new battle system, you can actually swap to any other character in your collective party during the battle! Finally, you don't have to worry about building up the main character so much and no one else getting the power because you can switch between any character, any time, even in mid-battle. Advantage: As long as the character takes at least one shot at the opponent, he gets the Experience Points from the fight. This way, you can switch out every character as many times as you want to during the big fights, and everyone will get powered up! In FF9, the summons movie plays once, and once only. After that, you only get the end result (lots of hit points on the opponent). In FFX, you have the option of leaving them on or turning them off in the Options menu.

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If it wasn't for bad luck I wouldn't have no luck at all. D'OH!

My final fantasy involves bunnerabb.

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“It is only with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” - The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1945)

I have one about Tori Amos.

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I am a delicate fucking flower. https://beacons.ai/jesskent

Well, is it the actual FF3, or the American FF6? That is, is it the NES game with the Onion Kids (FF3), or the SNES game with Locke and the espers (FF6)? All the games are pretty much in the same vein, but FF6 put a bit more emphasis on the storyline than most of the rest (although even in FF6, the story deteriorates a bit in the second half of the game).

A thousand curses. I just saved over my Tales of Phantasia saved game just after getting Luna. Don't suppose anyone's got a saved state around that point?