Final Fantasy general

Oh crap Unsung Story. That... That was definitely a mess. Actually no that was more like a mess singularity; it was a mess that kept messing and then made more messes. And those are only the ones we know about.

Yeah so kickstarter is not where Vagrant Story 2 should come from.

I saw a video that covered the whole thing of that game.

Vagrant 2 would never come from Kickstarer because the IP is still property of Square-Enix.

I meant making a Spiritual Successor like Bloodstained

... I did too. It was Unsung Story. It is a story that will remain unsung.

Although there totally is precedent for a big company to let one of their auteurs try and kickstart an old franchise ressurection.

Note that Shenmue 3 was also kind of hit or miss. Shenmue, like Vagrant Story, was very much an experimental game. And III shows it by being a bit too faithful to the original.

Unsung Story...oh boy was that a garbage fire. Even something like Mighty Number Nine wasn't nearly as bad since Mighty Number Nine actually shipped.

Edited by M84 on Jun 8th 2020 at 2:06:30 AM

Kickstarter really is an investment & not every investment is a good one.

And I'm not sure anyone outside of Hideo Kojima could just walk out and pull a Death Stranding. Even then, he's reportedly having trouble getting his next project off the ground.

Yeah. I've kickstarted a lot of stuff and I haven't always gotten a return investment. Kickstarter is not a store. I'm pretty lenient with troubled kickstarters though, sometimes people try and chase a project they're passionate about and simply fail. Shit happens.

But if I and others didn't take that risk stuff like Children of Zodiarcs and Indivisible wouldn't have happened and that would leave the world a lesser place.

How'd Death Stranding do anyway? Considering it was a pretty niche title that likely had an astronomical budget...

Edited by ShirowShirow on Jun 7th 2020 at 2:26:41 PM

I've backed Mighty No. 9, Shantae, Yooka Laylee and Bloodstained, personally. I dont regret any of them. No, not even that one. But it's a huge gamble for the creator, and just getting to that point tends to burn a number of bridges.

Fairly well for an independant title. More than sales, though, it was an award magnet.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Jun 7th 2020 at 2:24:28 PM

Out of those three, I'd say Bloodstained was the only one that really got what made their original inspiration so great while also improving on them.

Mighty Number Nine was...a disgrace. The Kickstarter was mismanaged from start to finish and the finished game reflected that.

Yooka Laylee had issues too — the humor was hit or miss, the Simlish was more annoying than an endearing callback to Banjo-Kazooie...but imho the biggest problem with Yooka Laylee was the level design. Banjo-Kazooie's level design was top notch, and Yooka Laylee's...was not. Nonetheless, Yooka Laylee did at least do well enough that a sequel was made. Mighty Number Nine was a Stillborn Franchise.

Edited by M84 on Jun 8th 2020 at 2:30:58 AM

At the very least Mighty has been bought by the doing well Inti Creates & they have no problem having their characters in their inter-property crossover games.

So Mighty could get sequel if they so choose to do so & chances are looking at their resume, it will most likely be of superior quality than the original by Inafune.

MN9 was made primarily by Inti Creates. The feature creep and being asked to make eight or nine SKUs simultaneously proved too much for the small development team.

Comcept also severely underestimated the necessary budget and time for the project.

Yooka Laylee, Shantae and Bloodstained were just good games.

Edited by Zeromaeus on Jun 8th 2020 at 3:01:41 PM

I always considered MN 9 the modern day Daikatana. Quite a few parallels there. All it was missing was Keiji Inafune threatening to make you his bitch.

John Romero didnt want to run that ad, by the way.

Romero hired the guy, then immediately decided that was a bad idea after the ad came out.

Romero's real contribution to the failure of Daikatana was feature creep. He wanted Daikatana to be the most awesome game ever. So every time something new showed up, he insisted that Daikatana have it too. This meant going back to the literal drawing board multiple times, leading to delay after delay.

Edited by M84 on Jun 8th 2020 at 6:09:45 PM

Is it dubious? There's at least one location (Valendia) mentioned in both FFXII (I think) and Vagrant Story, and I'm sure there are other common elements I've forgotten. I'd also go further than saying it's the 'twilight' of the magic age; that shit is all but dead in the time of Vagrant Story. Most of the characters don't believe it even exists, and it's kind of pivotal to the plot that powerful magic is exceedingly rare, and magic of any kind basically doesn't exist in the civilised world.

Is it complex? I suppose it is. I find it hard to remember what it's like to play certain games for the first time, when I've replayed them and put dozens, if not hundreds, of hours in. It is pretty true to form of the era and the Ivalice games in general in that there are mechanics that are never explained, as far as I remember, and you just have to figure out yourself. It's also a pretty tough game, probably the Dark Souls of its day.

But yeah, I get ya, there's some games where I'm interested in the story but not so much in actually playing them (usually horror games :D).

Edited by artfulscruff on Jun 8th 2020 at 11:09:59 AM

It's dubiously canon since Word of God has stated it should be considered a stand-alone game. Nonetheless, there are enough references to stuff in it in other games to make it hard to think it's not canon.

It's a twilight in the sense that magic still exists, even if it's all but faded from the world of Ivalice. It's just that what magic remains is confined to a single city and trying to acquire it risks losing one's soul. But it's still really powerful - whoever gains the power of Lea Monde will effectively be a Physical God.

Magic may be all but gone from Ivalice, but it's still a potential game-changer that could shake the very world or destroy it. In fact, the entire game is really an elaborate scheme to find someone who can be trusted with the incredible power of the Blood Sin.

Edited by M84 on Jun 8th 2020 at 6:19:09 PM

Oh yeah, it's far removed enough in time within the setting that it's its own thing, for sure. That's part of what I like about it; how many companies or franchises tell completely separate stories within the same setting?

I suppose the big problem with "Triple Ayyy" devs going Kiskstarter is the fact that they're used to pretty big teams working under them, and might get that the workload of a indie dev team has to be much smaller by necessity.

Iga adapted, though.

Like the creator of Assassin's Creed who created that Ancestors game kept hyping it up as a Triple-A game despite the fact he is working with a substantially smaller team.

So in terms of power levels, how outclassed has Sephiroth become with each sequel?

Like i saw a discussion on who would win between him and Zenos, and i quite agree Zenos outclasses him.

I've never really liked these kind of power level wanking discussions. Suffice to say that damn near every FF Big Bad eventually becomes a world destroying threat or already is one.

Edited by M84 on Jun 8th 2020 at 7:36:39 PM

Not to mention each entry works with its own rules, so the power levels here might not even be comparable.

I mean in FFIV only people from Rydia's village could summon, er, summons, while in FFVII that's just a matter of injecting yourself with magical cocaine.

XIV also has different rules so that nearly every primal is a world ending threat.

And as a result most of them have suffered Villain Decay.

I was always under the impression that SE considered Sephiroth their strongest villain, up until Caius showed up to flex his invincibility and voice. Cannot remember where I read that though, all I can find these days are dubious fan-made lists of who is really the super ultimate omega strongest villain. Even though it's obviously Marche.