Final Fantasy general

Guys. I need an honest answer here.

I think I might be a bad person.

I like the FFXIII trilogy. Even though the Internet tells me. constantly, that they are the poison of FF and JRP Gs in general. My brain knows I should hate them. Reject them. I acknowledge XIII-2's inclusion of Time Travel is one of the surest signs of Sequelitus.

But in my heart, I like them. And I should not. Truly, I am not a true FF fan...

I am just some fake.

Well, now we know who to sacrifice to the volcano god.

Nah, it's not too bad. I'm an unabashed, unashamed VIII fan, after all.

The XIII games, while deeply flawed, are not bad games. Anyone who says they are has never dealt with a truly bad game before.

If they were spinoffs or something and not a mainline game and it's sequels, they probably wouldn't be anywhere near as hated.

That's actually a pretty good barometer of how good something is. Separate it from it's series and look at it on it's own. That doesn't mean it can't be a bad game, for the series (see Suikoden IV, it's not a bad game, but it's not a good Suikoden game.), but if it's perfectly playable and has an interesting story, it can still be a good game on it's own.

Was tired of seeing all polls about "Best FF characters" always have the top 8 being 6 from VII and Yuna and Kain and decided to check if a site with a diverse userbase had done a good poll.

The FF wiki did. Vivi from FFIX won.

Btw, last year SE did 3 big polls: the "Best Main Heroine" poll where Yuna was 1st Lightning 2nd and Tifa 3rd, a "Best FF Male" poll where Zack was 1st and a "Best FF Female" poll where Lightning won.

Re: liking XIII.

Really, I just think it should be a rule that you shouldn't try to convince someone that they're wrong for enjoying a particular entry in the series. You can disagree, with them, sure, and there ain't anything wrong with explaining why you like a different one/don't like that one, but to try and convince them that liking [x] title makes them not a true fan is just bad.

In other words: go on enjoying XIII, man.

I loved FF13 and 13-2 (Still need to get Lightning Returns), they had their flaws sure, but they were still a ton of fun and had strong character development that I enjoyed. Also made me wonder What Could Have Been if all of the cut content was still in 13.

edited 27th Apr '14 5:30:56 PM by DamascaRamza

Fuck what the majority thinks - everyone says Viewtiful Joe was a good game, Frozen and Avatar were good movies, and 1984 was a good book, and I don't care for any of the aforementioned. If XIII appeals to you than more power to you.

I couldn't bring myself to even finish it, though, so I'll just say I agree with the majority and move on.

I am an odd duck in I loved all the characters the "majority" hates. Snow and Hope had the best character arc in the game. Vanille meanwhile had a great dynamic not only with Hope in the beginning but theN Sazh in the middle and Fang for the rest.

Always found it so odd people bitch about Vanille while saying Sazh was the only redeeming thing about the game when Sazh and Vanille have the best interactions.

They also had one of the best scenes. Only slightly marred by me dying a billion times to Sazh's worthless Eidolon.

There's the greatest flaw about XIII. Eidolons. Annoying and unnecessary and I never used them so why do I have to fight them again?

Honestly I would have been all on-boad witH XIII being an Okay Game if it wasn't for Pulse and everything after that. The plot just kinda falls apart when it stops being about the characters.

"We gotta save Cocoon! By doing exactly what the guy who wants to destroy Cocoon says!"

Is it true that XIII's development was just a bunch of teams designing Cool Stuff and then they slappd it all together and came up with a plot around it?

I will say that I liked the fal'Cie CONCEPT a lot. You got these seemingly all-powerful robogods who rule over the human slaves. Then it turns out that the robogods are themselves the biggest slaves of them all. I just wish they had done more with it. There's no indication at all Barthandalus was a Death Seeker until his actual death.

That was perhaps another one of XIII's great failings. XII focused a ton on the villains. Same for VII and IX and X. You got whole segments of the villains talking to each other, establishing their motives and personalities better. XIII? Nope. (okay, there was only a single scene like that in X but you get what I mean. There were lots of them in VII, IX and XII)

edited 27th Apr '14 6:19:54 PM by Nikkolas

X 9

Why sacrifice one such as me, filthy and despicable, to thine deity? I mean, come on! We have the Virgin Sacrifice trope for a reason!

But regardless, thanks for the replies.

AND NOW FOR AN FFVIII ANECDOTE!

So, when I was little Polar Phantom Jr., my sister, some older friends and myself huddled around the T.V. playing FFVIII. Now, we were in the final dungeon of Disk 2, and in this final stretch you can encounter enemies called Slappers, who are demi-human ice hockey players that attack the party.

...

Do we have an equivalent trope for Giant Space Flea from Nowhere with regards to random mobs?

Anyway, me being a little kid, I thought such a silly name was funny. Suddenly, the older players, sister included, started getting worried, like, really scared, telling me not to say "slapper". When I asked why, they just said that I shouldn't.

Later on in my life, when I was not so naive, I learnt why. See, I live in England, and in our Country "slapper" is a fairly rude slang word.

It basically means "whore", "slut", "slag" etc.

And here I was, little ol' me, just blurting it out. Needless to say, if my Mum or Nanna learnt I had picked up such Filthy language from FF, they would have thrown the Playstation into some great abyss.

God, kids are adorable when they cuss in ignorance.

...

Seriously, evil Hockey players? I knew I feared Canada for a reason.

XIII definitely had some decent concepts, but none of them were really utilized properly. I'd say one of the biggest problems is that I was never given a reason to care about Cocoon. You never stay in any place long enough to get a good sense of it, aside from maybe the city with the chocobos, and you could probably count the non party member cast on one hand. And like three of those are villains! Sorry game, but I'm not invested in this world just because Hope's dad lives there.

Regardless, I did play the whole damn thing, which is increasingly rare for me to do with RP Gs lately, so it must have done something right.

Oops, forgot about NORA. Okay, two hands.

edited 27th Apr '14 8:54:31 PM by Crowfall

I think FFXIII is OK. It's got all kinds of problems, but it's still a satisfying game. The main issue I have is all the wasted potential. It could have been really incredible, but the way things all came together was pretty underwhelming.

Haven't played the sequels, though, so I can't judge those.

Polar: Don't the hockey players only show up in the hockey rink?

Indeed.

They also happen to be one of the enemy's last lines of defense.

Like, who thinks of that?

The Dev Team Thinks of Everything.

Phoenix Pinions can auto-life your party if you all die as long as you hav ea lot of them in your inventory, right? Or do you have to use them in battle to get that effect?

I'm playing that FFVIII mod I mentioned earlier and Ultima Weapon killed me just asI had him down to 40K. (Rinoa and Squall Triple Casting Ultima for a combined total of about 15K damage and they were both down from 100 Ultimas to somewhere in the 50s or low 60s....) So many Full-Lifes and stress and I dared to Scan him and see that we were so close....SO CLOSE...and then bam, triple light Pillar.

There's nothing you can do about that though, hence my inquiry about the Pinions. They may be my only hope should it happen again.

Also Hero's and Holy War's in this version do not make you invincible, they give the character/party Protect, Shell, Regen and Haste.

EDIT:

Well I did it. I am proud of myself. Now I just have to figure out how in the world I'll be able to beat Ultimecia's four forms with their cumulative 2,000,000 HP if my strongest magic attack is shit and physical attacks don't seem to do much....

edited 28th Apr '14 3:25:08 PM by Nikkolas

I think you have to use at least one Phoenix Pinion to summon Phoenix, and then the GF will sometimes come and rezz your party if you get TPK'd.

Also, what, does spamming Lionheart not work anymore?

Well for one thing, you never want your characters in critical health. Even with Triple junctioned to Speed and Spd + 30% (the highest it goes in the mod), the boss was still crazy fast. His sword attack -only- does 3K damage but that's still more than enough to take out anyone in critical. He'll do that at least twice a turn before I can do anything.

I think there are ways to cheat the system....Something about Critical Levels but that is getting into the nitty-gritty of FFVIII's game mechanics and I don't know anything about it. I read on the Insane Difficulty forum that some guy casts Pain on his character to get them to Limit Break? But I've never tried it.

A Anyway, Squall did get low HP a couple time sand got off his Limit and both times the only finisher I got was Rough Divide, his level 1 Limit, and it did a brand total of 600 damage.

As for Lion Hart, i've used it a couple times on random encounters and all it does is about 800 a hit as far as I can tell. Both it and Duel had their power significantly reduced. I never use Zell though so whatever.

Really, for the Ultima Weapon fight in this, you don't even really want to bother with the HP+ Abilities. At Level 100 everyone has 6K HP (everyone in my party anyway so Squall, Rinoa and Quistis) and with Protect and Shell you can survive all his attacks comfortably save for the insta-kill Light Pillar. Speed+ Abilities are the key. Also Auto-Potion. (another thing nerfed in this since even if you use an Elixir with Auto-Potion it will only heal the character using it instead of the whole party) And Auto-Haste, I just never take that off anymore. After Raijin and Fujin obliterated me a few dozen times in less than two minutes because i was dumb and didn't get the Kiros Card, I came to appreciate Auto-Haste.

Gotta admit, I was bummed to learN Forbid Med-RF was completely removed from the gmae. I've never used Doomtrain before and that seemed like his best asset. Guessing it's to make sure you don't just stat up to the max....which I was planning to do. Bleh.

edited 28th Apr '14 3:55:39 PM by Nikkolas

Ah, it's a mod. Nvm then, although Aura should let you use Limit Breaks at much higher health.

Anyway, come to think of it, I'm not sure if I ever took on Ultima Weapon in VIII. I don't think I fought Ruby or Emerald in VII either, now that I'm on the subject - looks like V and X are the only games where I've actually went after the Bonus Bosses so far.

edited 28th Apr '14 4:05:24 PM by EvaUnit01

Aura was pretty much removed from the game. You have a slight chance of getting it with Mighty Guard but that's it.

FFVIII's Ultima Weapon is really frickin' awesome. I'm glad he was such a challenge in this because he is by far one of my favorite FF bonus boss.

Say what you will about FFVIII but that is some top-quality build up. The choice of music for the fight is also perfect.

Also yes, Ultima Weapon is holding a giant version of Cloud's Ultima Weapon.

edited 28th Apr '14 4:18:22 PM by Nikkolas

Ah, Critical Levels. You can affect reach not only with HP loss, but Status ailments as well. So, if you didn't want to use Physical or Magic attacks, you can inflict Blind and Silence on yourself to make it easier to Break your Limit. On a side note, the Zombie status halves the amount of physical damage from enemies. Of course, there's the obvious disadvantages.

I learnt this stuff from a Challenge Gamer on You Tube doing a limited run on FFVIII. I don't think he's finished it yet. Let's see...

Alright, here's the Playlist if you're interested!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL89218ADF6022E1D1

That's pretty cool, thanks. I think I'll need all the help I can gt from experts on FFVIII's mechanics if I'm going to beat it.

Quistis and Shockwave Pulsar just might save my life and if I can figure out how to spam it without being super low health... But I need to get more Dark Matter.

I think i broke the game clock in FFVIII. Just defeated the Jumbo Cactuar and am closing in on the end of Disk 3 so I wanted to check my progress. It says 0:52 in red. ???

edited 29th Apr '14 12:00:47 AM by Nikkolas

Means you've put over a 100 hours into the game. Don't worry, it still works properly.