You could hit escape to skip it; do JRPGs let you do that?
Final Fantasy IX’s summon animations had both long and short sequences; most of the time the short one plays unless you specifically equip an item forcing the long ones to play.
Final Fantasy X’s summons were their own playable characters; their Overdrives lasted maybe 10 seconds and couldn’t be used every battle. I do not recall if they could be skipped or not.
Final Fantasy XII’s summons were their own playable characters, very costly summon (basically making you choose between using the Esper and casting regular spells, and as such were useful only in specific situations) and their final attacks were for the most part very short. Battles were seamless and quick. I do not recall if the final attack animations were skippable, but I can’t think of watching the same one more than once in a single battle because of how the system worked.
Final Fantasy XIII’s battles were insanely fast and furious, and rarely were you ever free to sit down the controller and look at the screen.
Tales of Vesperia’s special moves have more in common with a Street Fighter Hadoken than a conventional limit break/select-and-watch ability, especially with how they can be chained into each other. No summoned creatures. Short and flashy, but you’re working on the next move before the first one finishes.
Persona 3, Persona 4, The World Ends With You, Paper Mario, and Mario & Luigi featured no long attack animations of any kinds that I can recall.
Skies of Arcadia’s special moves were all skippable with a press of the start button.
Let’s see … I preordered it and paid for the Guide sight-unseen.
I might still win in the FFXIII-burned race.
I prepordered the JP version with all associated shipping and import costs…
Summing up; most of them do, yes. At least most of the ones that I’ve played. It’s a bit of criticism that was valid in regards to Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy VIII (though it at least introduced a button-mashing mechanic to boost the summon’s power – not a perfect solution, but an attempt), and criticism that was taken to heart and worked on for the future games, both in half-length summons in IX and an effort to go to shorter summons overall in the later games. There’s often one super-powerful summoned creature that breaks this rule, as a reward for undertaking some ludicrous list of actions to get it (Eden in VIII, Ark in IX, Magus Sisters in X, etc).
Torment also had other spells that took a long time to complete; there was a Fire and Ice spell that triggered for quite a while (I remember using it to fight Trias), and then almost all of the level 8 and 9 spells were very long. It never struck me as a negative; I liked them a lot, and I still do.
I did that, too! I ended up giving the guide to someone here on QT3 after I sold the game. I’m still bitter.
But yes, Razarok wins.
I play it several times a week!
The DS remakes have little to no grind in them from what I recall. The difficulty has been relatively toned down and the overall speed of the games greatly increased over the originals.
DQ9 can be grindy if you try to accomplish all the alchemy pot stuff but the core game doesn’t really require grinding. The alchemy stuff also clicked with me.
A game being retro can be both good and bad. At the time I played Skies of Arcadia it just didn’t do anything for me. I also am more forgiving of handheld RPGs that let me save anywhere or at least use sleep mode.
I think aside from the stagnation of the RPG genre, the major problem became the general bloat of the games. FF4 was about 30-40 hours your first time through, ditto FF6. Chrono Trigger was about 20 hours. Then we get to the PS1 and all of a sudden games are going 50, 60, 70, 80 hours long. For me it just became draining to do the same bullshit for an extra 10-40 hours, or to have to play some half baked mini game, or snape hunt or whatever.
I remember playing Tales of Symphonia on GCN and getting pissed off because there were about 3 times that I thought that game was done and it kept going for another 10 hours, and each time the story got stupider for it. When the core experiences are already kind of dull, stretching them out for another 20 hours is just cruel. I was glad that LO was mercifully only about 40 hours long and I completed everything except the optional super boss.
I bought it at a local import shop for over $100 even though it had been out for a week already and people were already dismissing it.
At least 10 hours of FF 7 was summons animations.
But yeah, 30 - 40 hours is perfect for any RPG. Keep your lousy summons animations, mini-games and hunts. Oh and keep your feature length cut-scenes too.
Thanks for the guide Matt. :) Sorry you’re still bitter.
As for JRPG’s, and more specifically FFXIII, I think my issues lie in the dull stories and insanley slow paced voice acting. I love the combat in FFXIII, but the story is so fucking obtuse it’s just worthless.
Every time I see the title of this thread I get Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” stuck in my head.
One of my primary concerns when buying any japanese made system is the viewpoint that few good games actually make it outside of japan and i would just be looking at this list of games for the system i own that never get made in english. It kept me from buying a ps3 for a long time and the same with a psp.
Recently i’ve been playing Valkyrie chronicles 2 on my new psp and while i love the game, i just read that valkyrie chronicles 3 will not be making it to the rest of the world because Sega is exclusively made up of racist bastards who hate freedom.
This will for sure negatively affect my chances to ever buy future sony systems as i have once again lost confidence that they will push platform exclusive games to be released outside of japan. Without strong exclusives, i might as well just buy a 360 to play multi platform games or better yet, stick to my PC again.
Yet, there are exactly zero non-Japanese dedicated gaming handhelds (at least none I know of). Does this mean that for the rest of the world the future of handheld gaming is on smartphones, primarily? I have a Droid X but I have zero games for it, as the handful I’ve tried have left me unimpressed. Will we get games at the level say of Tactics Ogre for our phones? Maybe they already exist and I just don’t know about them, that’s entirely possible.
I don’t really care about the platform per se, only about the games and ease of play. I don’t have an iPhone but the Droid hasn’t been terribly impressive in terms of controls/interface as a gaming platform, certainly not as good as a PSP or DS.
I understand the economics behind not localizing games that aren’t expected to sell well enough to justify the cost (even though it makes me rage, because I’m usually more interested in the nichier stuff that -doesn’t- get localized, or only gets a tiny print run from Atlus). What I don’t understand are things like releasing only in Europe even though you’ve already localized to English and half a dozen other languages. Or not bringing over main series sequels to games that have already proven to have a built in audience, like Front Mission or Fatal Frame. (Fatal Frame IV continues to mystify me. I mean, they actually sold a second print run of the Fatal Frame games years after the current console generation came out, but no, it’s not worth it to bring over Fatal Frame IV? What?)
I’d really have enjoyed watching a documentary of the pitfalls and development hurdles that was the FFXIII process. I never paid much attention to the coverage leading up to its release, but the final product REALLY came across as an 11th hour rush job with so many concepts and ideas gutted for a looming ship date. As if it suffered from multiple development teams weaving in and out over the years, having entirely different conceptualized concepts that never cohesively gelled. Truly embarrassing given the 4+ years of production and resources.
And yes, FF12 was a massive leap in a bold new direction that challenged the team to broaden the current technology and brand with a very unique identity that fit with the era. FF13 ended up a poorly constructed retread of a decade old design doc(FFX circa 2000) with absurd limitations that generated nothing new for the waning genre.
This is one of those things I really hope a move towards digital distribution might fix. Other than paying for the localization, the companies no longer have to deal with physical copies, so they could afford to release an english version for less risk. (or release in a new SKU)
Two totally separate teams, utterly unrelated projects. FFXII was made by the Ivalice team, who are pretty much the only people left at Square willing to take risks and implement new ideas. FFXIII was made by the FFX team, which had already established itself as an utterly by-the-numbers grist mill that is clearly uninterested in anything other than pretty pictures and simplistic design.
I can’t find any of the interviews right now, but I remember near the beginning of the generation the FFX/XIII guys were basically saying that modern systems were too resource intensive to be able to create the towns and massive worlds of traditional JRPGs anymore. Of course, they said that back when FFX was criticized for being one long linear road on the PS2, and the Ivalice guys promptly showed them up with FFXII.
I don’t know what the hell is going on with the FF brand these days, but I hope they figure it out and start putting out quality content again next gen. Maybe just hand FFXV over to the Ivalice team and let them go nuts, assuming any of those people still work there.
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Also, did it ever become factual that Matsuno left Square over creative differences during FF12? I know ‘health problems’ was the official line for his departure, but I always got a kick out of the rumors such as ‘Vaan’ being shoehorned(forced) into the protagonist role to better market to children, etc…
There are a number of JRPGs that I have loved over the years, but I don’t really do handheld consoles, and they kind of skipped over the Wii with them. Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, The Mana series all kind of took weird… turns in the end regardless of the systems they wound up on. I still have a soft spot for JRPGs, would consider them again.
What world have you been living in? People don’t jump on Bald Space Marines? Right.