VII I remember being a ton of fun, once I got over my aversion to the 3D visuals, but it’s been like fifteen years since I played it. I’m watching the VII Remake project with … interest.
VIII I freaking hated, because of the spell system mostly, but I’m told the story is amazing so I regret not giving it more of a chance. I don’t think I’d be into it on any level, good story or no, these days. Sadly.
I remember when I was working at GameStop, most people I talked to seemed to prefer one or the other. It was far less common for someone to like both. My employees used to argue over which they thought I’d like more.
I played tactics A2 on DS for about 80 hours…about half of that in the guide planning character builds, lol. Never finished it.
I ADORED Chocobo Tales on DS. Actually finished that one, which is unusual for me.
Personally I would strongly push towards IV and VI. The problem with VII is that… the story is way oversold for what it is. This was a game that got a ton of hype, and was a breakaway success. And it’s not bad! But I don’t think it’s nearly as good story wise as VI.
Plus VI had more memorable characters, and a more interesting villain. I know this is highly subjective, but that’s my thoughts.
Well, if you haven’t played it yet the very best turn-based Final Fantasy game is actually Final Fantasy Tactics, and I recommend the wide-screen War of the Lions update that came out for the Vita and other platforms a few years ago.
Though, that being said, the best “Final Fantasy Tactics” like game is actually Tactics Ogre. :)
To be clear, VII would be pretty far below IV and VI for me as well, but he only asked about VII and VIII! I don’t want anyone here believing IV and VI aren’t in my top 5 FF games.
I agree, but this seems like a conversation we’ve had once before ;)
You know, I tried FFT on iOS and found both the interface and graphics dreadful. There was a time that wouldn’t have mattered, but I’m long past that point, I think.
Sorry for carrying the discussion so far off track.
LOL you fool, you fell right into my trap - all I really wanted was to get a discussion going about Final Fantasy because I’m just really excited about it at the moment, and have no real outlet for it right now. :)
ATB is basically regimented real time, and it’s how every game in the series from 4 on at least worked, with tweaks, except for X, which is actually turn based. One reason it’s my favorite. X-2 is very fast ATB. I haven’t really played anything past XIII so I can’t comment on those, but I was very disappointed to hear they were making the Vii remake fully real time. Talk about fucking up the original feel.
I’m pretty much in agreement with @Scotch_Lufkin on all this.
But “having to manually un-gimp the combat AI” is really not what FFXII is about, @Misguided. It’s more like setting up your little script and tweaking it to be as efficient as possible given your current party, their equipment, what you’re fighting, etc – except you can always jump in and tell someone to do whatever if it’s not working out quite right in the moment.
I love XII’s combat. It scratches the Majesty itch for me, but inside an awesome Final Fantasy game. It’s so good.
Also, not to go too far off-topic, but by far the best FF Tactics-style game of all time is the PSP remaster (I don’t think it was ported anywhere else, sadly) of Tactics Ogre. It’s so good. Hard as balls if you don’t know the system pretty well, and with all the permadeath and branching story shit everyone always says they want and then the game sells for crap and we never get another one and I’m still mad.
I ain’t even mad that Unsung Story looks right now like I got taken for a ride for $20, because Tactics Ogre is so damn good.
Second to that of course is the actual FFT remaster, on PSP or Vita or phone or whatever you like. The phone interface isn’t ideal, true, but I found it pretty playable. The cleaned up translation is mostly a huge improvement, and helps the story makes way, way more sense.
FFTA and FFTA2 are mechanically sound and huge, but the story is absolute nonsensical tween garbage. A2 is much better in that it softens the “laws” mechanic and some of the other rough spots a bit, but they’re both quite fun even if you have to turn off your brain during the dialogue or risk losing 1d4 points of INT until you rest.
Anyway, FFXII is amazing and I’m so on board with this as soon as it comes out.
Even as a person who loves FFTA games, this is true. The story is among the worst in the entire franchise, and a real step back from FFT. However, mechanically, it is a sound game, and was wonderful on my DS between classes.
100% this. I referenced this earlier in the thread, but I failed to mention it’s only on the Vita as far as I know, sadly. I wonder if it can be played from the PS3?
Unlocking all gambits from the get go takes FF12 is enough of an imrpovement to get me interested in the remake, honestly.
Not sure how I feel about the class system; will we be able to scan the license boards before we select a class? Otherwise how can we be certain we like what we see? Sure, I know that Dragoon will have spears/jumping, red mage both white and black magic (but will they get access to the highest levels? or just take longer to unlock them), etc.
You’ll know them well enough to make better decisions on your second playthrough, duh.
Also: any word on if they ditched the godawful “please buy the strategy guide, really” Zodiac Spear thing? What an insulting piece of nonsense that was.
Heh, maybe I should use tactics ogre as an excuse to pull my vita out of mothballs like Scott did.
Actually this was one of the things discussed as being addressed in the newest edition, but everything I’ve seen so far seems to be speculation based on some JP magazine article from months and months ago. The radio silence on this project is driving me crazy.
As for @peacedog question, I am reasonably sure you can review the boards before picking a class. :)
I guess I should say that I’m sort of remembering the “biuy the strategy guide” aspect. I don’t mind consulting a guide - I’ll do it for free in this game, of course, as there will be readily available stuff at Game faqs - but it always drives me crazy when a game masks basic information that impacts such a crucial decision.
Still, I will probably get this just so I don’t spend 30 hours going “when am I going to get that fucking gambit” over and over.
Yeah, all gambits from the start is a good fix to a needless problem they created for themselves in the original.
Totally agree on obfuscating basic game info @peacedog, but I probably wouldn’t mind some hidden info on the class boards that get uncovered as you level up. I feel reasonably empowered making a decision on something like choosing a class as long as I get a decent class description and maybe some info on signature attacks and preferred weapons and such.
RYDIA LEARNS METEO is fun when you don’t know it’s coming.
That’s a reasonably fun thing. I basically want to know “max level of black magic learnable” and stuff like that. Basically if I want to play a party I want to be able to properly tick off boxes “this guy will be a good backup item user in addition to X”, that sort of thing. Very old, very well honed habit going back to Wizardry.
Surrpises for late game abilities (whether it’s just surprise asbilities, or not knowing what Black Magic 7 etails) is a fine thing.
Oh, totally. If they fail to give out that level of information, that’s pretty dumb.
Though in a Final Fantasy game, you almost certainly know what each class is going to entail just from the name.
Is this out yet?
@peacedog @inactive_user
Sorry to bump this without any actual info on FFXII Remastered itself, but someone posted a video of the original Zodiac Age and showed off all 12 class boards (with text, and bafflingly the text doesn’t sum up to the amount of squares, at least on the board I was looking at, so I don’t know what that’s all about).
But I believe I can answer in part at least how much info you get on the boards - a little, not much.
Here is the interface (forgive the image quality, it’s a screen grab from the strange looking video).
You can see a description for the class in the lower corner which is probably handy to get a sense of what you are getting into, so you’ll know what weapons types and skills you can largely expect to see, but no fine details like “this class can go all the way to White Magick 9” for instance.
You can view the board, but … there isn’t really much to see?
In the video, the guy puts up a helpful (but I feel incomplete?) text description of what you will find on the board for each class.
I looked at half a dozen classes and it’s kind of cool how they break up the skills and who gets access to what types of weapons, armor, spells, and abilities. I quite like the system actually, but I do wish there was a little more information on what to expect. Though I suspect it will be more fun to learn what unfolds with each purchase more so - which is probably why they did it. You won’t get a message like “Rydia Learns Meteo!” but rather, “Oh, I just unlocked Staves 4 and look, with 120 more LP I could unlock Souleater!” which is kind of fun, I think.
Of course, it may change in the remastered version
