It's coming...in 53 days, 13 hours, 44 minutes, IT appears

http://www.ff12.com/

Man, despite the absolute whoring of the Final Fantasy name since IX, I absolutely cannot wait for this. By the time its released it will have been three years since a normal, proper game in the main series has been released. Just hearing The Prelude and seeing the art is enough to make jump on the bed and kick my feet in the air with glee, or go running around in circles. Of course, seeing as how its named Final Fantasy, they had me at hello, but that’s NOT THE POINT! :p

FFX ranked up there with the original and FFIV as one of my favorites in the series. From the many places that reminded me of home (Besaido, Luca, Gagazett) to the beautiful soundtrack and the very touching story (minus Tidus) to the great kind of “Wizard of Oz” odd sense of fantasy tale around Yuna and her pilgrimage with a yellow-brick road style journey, I really enjoyed it. It is, easily, the best of the modern FFs and the one to integrate the cinematic movie flair the best. The trigger commands in battle, the totally revamped sphere grid, the extremely lovely ending (well, after the retarded confrontation with Jecht). The battle with the guardian of Yunalesca’s shrine, not to mention Yunalesca herself and the beast on Gagazett mountain, as well as the many battles with Shin and his offspring were some of the best boss battles ever in the series and did what Final Fantasy does best: offer some exciting, thrilling, mildly intelligent puzzley RPG design. The sphere grid and Blitzball took me hours and hours of good fun to get bored of. Seeing as how the uberlinearity didn’t bother me and the sidequest parts were more goofy typical Square design awkwardness, they were but small flaws (well that and Tidus). Good stuff. Very, very good stuff. Yuna’s story really appeals to me on a personal level (which is another reason while I’ll never buy the godawful FFX-2.)

But this, this, is just in another league. First of all, no Tidus (YAY!) and second, headed by Yasumi Matsuno, AKA The Man. This will be his second straight RPG since the sublime masterpiece Vagrant Story, but he’s no stranger to tactics, what with the fact that he headed the teams that produced Ogre Battle, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together and the Final Fantasy Tactics games. He’s known for his great sense of balance in each part of game design, for challenging and greatly advanced gameplay systems and extremely deep games.

Yeah, yeah, Dragon Quest is the better series, but FF’s definitely got its charms. Neither one is ever very far from my gaming heart.

Does anyone here like Final Fantasy games?

-Kitsune

I’m so goddamn stoked for Final Fantasy XII I put a mention in my column for tomorrow of this stupid web site that’s a teaser for the first information of the game. Yasumi Matsuno proved himself as a master designer with Vagrant Story IMO. The cinematic approach is so amazingly well-coupled with a fabulous bunch of gameplay in that one. The Tactics games are all equally treasured.

Square couldn’t have made a better choice for someone to head up an entry in the main series. Just that one piece of art says so much about the game and the detail we can expect. I cannot wait for Final Fantasy XII. It’s easily one of my top anticipated games and I’ve been playing a lot of really fun stuff lately including Final Fantasy Tactics Advance which is basically a portable version of game crack.

–Dave

I stopped playing FF games after the last SNES one (it was released as 3 here in the US, I think IV everywhere else). But after all the hype surrounding FF X got to me, I finally decided to give it a shot. In my opinion it seems they (Square) decided to make an interactive movie rather then a game that was fun to play. Not that they aren’t allowed to take the series in that direction, but it seems to me if you’re going to make a game that’s meant more to be watched then played, you should at least hire someone to write an interesting script. From the terrible dialog (both as written and delivered by the voice actors), the tedious leveling up of your party, frustratingly frequent random encounters, and the groan inducing story clichés I was only able to soldier through about half the game before I gave up.

Oh well, I least the CG movies were pretty.

And don’t forgot the horror that was Blitz-ball

Play Final Fantasy Tactics or the Ogre games and Vagrant Story and then come back here and tell us you’re not excited about Final Fantasy XII.

And yes DaveC, I know I’m breaking my own “You can’t get excited about this game, it’s over a year away!” rule with this one. Given the pedigree, I’m making a fucking exception. :)

–Dave

Umm, was I even aware that you had a rule?

P.S. - I think BioWare has enough of a pedigree that some people can get excited about our games, even the ones a year away.

Do I like FF? Yes and no.

I’ve played all of 8 and 10, and I played as much of 7 as I could before I gave up. I played the amazingly buggy Windows version of that - I think it’s only compatible with DirectX 2 or some crazy shit, it simply does not stop crashing, and that’s not cool when you can’t get to the next save point before the guaranteed “crash every five minutes” bug hits because you’re about to go through one of the longer cutscenes in the game. When I first played it before it went totally apeshit on me, I got to some temple with an annoying maze and rolling boulders in it. Anyway…

7 - I liked the beginning a lot, but it dragged somewhat once I fled Midgard. They had this great Shadowrun-esque thing going on at the start - why not stick with that throughout the whole game? It’d help the game stand out from the others in the series very well. But it never really got bad or anything.

8 - I hate. Hate hate hate. Insert a page-long diatribe about all the usual complaints most people had about it here. It just rubbed me the wrong way in so many ways. Cool movies, cool final boss, cool secrets - that’s about it. The basic game just drove me crazy. And yes, I’m severely masochistic to have actually played it to the end. It’s why I’ve struggled through everything from Might & Magic 8 to Trespasser… once I buy a game I try hard to finish it unless it’s absolutely unplayable. FF8 may have sucked, but at least it was stable.

10 - yes, VERY good stuff indeed, although it’s definitely not without flaws. I could easily tolerate Tidus - at least we finally got a hero who wasn’t a moody, aloof jackass. The production values were simply off-the-charts… a great mix of fruity beauty and true badassery. Blitzball didn’t really do much for me, but it was a huge improvement upon 8’s Triple Triad (I will forever DESPISE the “random” rule of FF8, I think that accounted for about 50% of my hatred of that game all by itself). And yeah, the boss battles were mostly extremely cool. I wish more CRPGs would get that part right - they sometimes boast fun battles, yeah, but most of the actual bosses are just pathetic on a “how monstrously badass does this guy look” basis. BG2’s Irenicus doesn’t transform from an ordinary looking guy into an uber-ENORMOUS badass with a sword sticking through his abdomen, or a huge disemodied medusa-like head, and so on. On the downside, the random battles got on my nerves, the dialogue was decent at best and mostly just kind of enh, and while the secrets were annoying enough for the most part (aside from the Weapons), it was the puzzles you COULDN’T skip that drove me up the wall. I cannot tell you how much I hated that one temple where you have to deal with the icy stalagmites or whatever.

X-2 - The bizarre premise intrigues me, the fruitiness of determining your characters’ powers by swapping outfits in mid-battle sort of baffles/sort of horrifies me, and the fact that it’s lighthearted in a general sense instantly makes me like it a trillion times more than FF8. Of course my favorite console-style RPG of all time is Anachronox despite ITS considerable flaws, so maybe this is just me, but I’m at a point in my life where I’m much more down with “whimsical” than I am “brooding”. So the idea of making Final Fantasy a little ghetto-fabulous appeals to me. Somewhat. I’m still kind of looking at it with suspicion.

FF12 - it’s hard for me to get really pumped up about what looks like one screenshot or maybe one bit of concept art. But what I do see does look nifty.

I swear I’m one of the very few who liked FFIX. Something about the return to roots characters and story just made me fall in love with the game.

Plus, it had the black mage, you can’t go wrong with that.

Hey, Dave–seeing as how you’re probably going to be waiting until 2005 for FFXII, why don’t you buckle down and, you know, finish FFX so I can discuss it with you? :wink:

Can’t wait for XII. But what’s the deal with this new FFVII thing? Is it just a CG movie sequel to the game? Is it a new game?

I swear I’m one of the very few who liked FFIX. Something about the return to roots characters and story just made me fall in love with the game.

I adored FF9. I mean no game is perfect(Loadtimes for combat, Kuja…ugh), but the world design and cast of characters were purely a class act, rich in directive care and emotive features. A simply wonderful adventure marked with an expressive visual style that I lost myself in for a good month. Even without the pretense of it being some ‘revitalized’ stylistic entrant for the series, this was quality production through and through.

I tend not to go apeshit over very early information about any game, but it’s very nice to see confirmation of progress in some sort being made for FF12 these days via that weblink. I’ll be quite curious to find out what is in store for us as info gets revealed later this year.

[quote][/quote]

I thought IX was great as well. Probably my favorite FF for the PSX. Very nostaligic. No materia, no drawing magic crap. Really a cool game.

I liked FFV-VIII… IX and X I didn’t even finish. FFI-IV I didn’t play. Call me stupid, go ahead asshole, I liked FFVIII the most.

etc

Count me in the “Loved FF9” category. It’s easily my favorite of the series (except, MAYBE, 2 (or 4, depending on how much of a crazy fan you are)) and was very fun to play, even if it was a little on the easy side. The translated version of FF4 for the playstation was an unexpected treat - a story that actually makes sense, and the game is made a little harder, with one of the best midi soundtracks and world-hopping gameplay around.

FFX just seemed so foreign. No world map, incredibly super linear - I couldn’t get through it. I quit after the first forced blitzball level and returned the game. I simply had no desire to play and all the characters were such whiners. I think FFVII is overrated and never touched FFVIII based on a lot of people’s recommendations. I think I’m better off for it.

ff7 was a good one, but i honestly have never played the ones before so i can’t really say otherwise

ff8 was the one that i got totally pissed off… the special attack thing of the main character made him at least 5 to 8 levels above the rest of the party mid way through the game and the monsters were all scaled to his level so i couldnt even beat normal groups of monsters with ease… gave up right there and then

ff9 i was biased against, by then i was already thinking that the ff name is blown way off scale, and in truth 9 wasnt all that good either… tho the cute factor might have gotten some players to like it, it was a complete turn off for me. in any case the production cycle of 8 and 9 was only about a year if i remember right…

ff10 was when i had no spare money at all… definitely not going to blow any time or money on a game title that i dont particular like anymore

x-2 lord oh mercy, color me whatever u want to say, i just couldnt get myself to watch yuna dancing and wiggle her body in front of me the entire game… my sexual preference on the this matter is entirely inconsequencial…

x12 if u guys are so positive about this i might just take a look and put my prejudice aside…

but yes ff tactics was a fun game… i never got the chance to play ogre, which many told me was far better than ff tactics…

Nah, FFIX has a lot of fans. Believe it or not, there are even a few of us crazy enough to think that VIII is the best. Junctioning p0wnz j00!

I loved IX as well and was the first one I finished since III I think. However, after playing X, I’m done with the series. Square is still about making epics, but they’ve become epic movies and not epic games. I avoided Xenosaga after hearing about how long the cutscenes were (and by god, people touted it as though it was a GOOD thing).

Give me the varied gameplay of Dark Cloud 2 any day. At least the cut scenes were short (after the first 30 minutes anyway). Or maybe another Castlevania game. I don’t recall getting bored to tears with tales of a young boy having to save the world and summoning the same 30-minute materia cutscenes over and over again.

And by god, if I never hear the name ‘blitzball’ again, it will be too soon.

I guess there isn’t just a few… I was always under the impression that IX was the orphan Fantasy between the grown up VIII and X- and no one liked it.

I’M NOT ALONE IN THIS WORLD!!!

Ahem.

It’s too bad that new VII is a movie, not a game. :?

I played FFVII - FFX each from start to finish and I’d say my least favorite would be X. I think the series has lots of issues (It’s amazing to me that the combat has remeained virtually UNCHANGED since FF1) and I guess I’m getting tired of the cliche everything. I’m going to be very hesitant with FFXII since the reviews for X lead me to believe it was really something special when in reality it was MOTS with a higher coat of gloss.

FFX remains the only FF game I could never finish. It just bored me to death, although it was nice to have a main character who wasn’t a brooding twit.

The best FF since FFVI is FFIX, IMO. In fact, I consider it the only good one since the SNES era. The characters were likeable, Vivi had a great character arc (until it disappeared halfway through the game, never to be mentioned again except for an “I’m fine” near the end), and the utterly retarded final 8 hours or so. That game should have ended after the Trance Kuja battle.

~MJK

Damnit! I thought this was going to be a post about DUKE going gold.