Final Fantasy general

The Stranger of Paradise demo seems more like a public alpha test.

Edited by MarkIV on Jun 20th 2021 at 11:07:50 AM

I feel bad for the Devs because it was probably not ready for prime time if thats the case

I mean it literally didn't work at first.

So I just started on FF XV on the Xbox. It's pretty, but I can already see plenty of problems. The game is caught between different influences, both in aesthetics and gameplay.

It takes very obviously from American road trip films. Rather too obviously; everything looks rather mundane, except for the fighting and monsters, which sometimes look out of place. Meanwhile, it isn't a road trip like FF X; it is an open world where the roadside station we start at acts as a hub of sorts. The atmosphere of four guys aimlessly wandering the desert suggests adventurers of no special standing seeking fortune; but no, our protagonist is a prince who is set to marry in a few days. Indeed the low-key realism makes the talk of prophecy and alliances, and other things I know will come, feel like they belong in a different story altogether. It is also difficult to reconcile the talk of dangerous monsters and daemons with all these cars running the road seemingly unarmed. A bit of Mad Max would have helped.

The car follows the roads so well, I am reluctant to go off of them. Both the car and their outfits are so clean and crisp that it feels like lèse-majesté to take them into the wilderness. Indeed the realistic graphics makes me ponder all kinds of questions I wouldn't bother with in more cartoonish art styles, such as where they keep the camping supplies.

Yet for all that, I will continue with it. Nothing in it makes me excited or invested, but it has a nice relaxing feel, like K-On! with the music replaced by fighting monsters. But the frantic combat is jarring, yet another bad mix: it's spammy hack and slash, but tries to have some party co-ordination despite no time for it. A slower tactical system would be better, and more in line with the franchise.

I will say that it does one thing well: party interaction. I can tell none of these guys has a tragic backstory or a dark secret, they just feel like friends talking openly, and that is rare in this sort of game. But this is undermined by how similar they look, three pretty boys and a more heavily built pretty boy all wearing black. FF is well known for pretty boys, but VIII and X managed to make everyone look distinct not only in clothing but also in animations. Basically, this game had a lot of effort put in, but seemingly in the wrong places.

Nioh was apparently also very messy in the early builds but improved greatly with more dev time when it was finally shipped out. So I don't expect the game to stay this way.

Been messing around post-ARR for a while now, clearing out the billions of sidequests that opened up (minus Hildibrand and courier stuff for now), figured I might as well work on the Do L jobs.

Good god, I absolutely despise the crafting job quests. It's already a time consuming endeavour to gather half the materials needed to craft things, but I have to somehow craft the super awesome version on top of that? Even when the base materials are high quality, it's virtually impossible to finagle it in a way that the HQ item is crafted. I feel like I'm missing something huge there.

The early crafting quests are a complete pain in the ass yes, buying completed ones is the option I take for the 45 and 50 quests, once you get past those it gets significantly easier. To the point 60-70 quests require no materials.

To push HQ it’s really a gear and stats thing in addition to getting that quality stat up with moves. The easiest way to get HQ is to simply over level the quest and use better gear.

Edited by Memers on Jun 20th 2021 at 6:08:30 AM

Hell House was a lot less tedious on Hard than on Normal. I did watch a couple guides, but it's mainly a combination of actually knowing its patterns (such as they are) and having the requisite Materia, abilities and slots to take advantage of its weaknesses. This game is so made for postgame. In related news, Vs Top Secrets is kicking my ass, but we're getting there. Going for the death or glory slightly cheesy don't-let-them-act glass cannon strategy has a learning curve, but I'll take that over tedious DPS races.

This is really late since I just beat the demo myself, but I agree with you that it's not the best way to encourage upgrading equipment for some people. I never did more than one playthrough of Nioh because of it.

@Tropay: Especially in Heavensward, the quests aren't really balanced so that on-level gear will get you HQ easily - this gets fixed in Stormblood, where they give you the materials for free, but it can still be difficult to achieve HQ. I'll second Memers' recommendation and suggest you just overlevel the quests; you should be able to access the Moogle crafting quests in Churning Mists now, or soon, and those are free daily experience.

I didn't find SoP's Randomly Generated Loot to be all that great either. It doesn't detract from the experience, but I don't feel like it added a whole lot and I mostly just replaced whatever equipment I got with whatever provided higher attack/armor bonuses. Maybe this changes in the final product where higher level loot has drastically stronger bonuses but otherwise, I've never really been a fan of having my inventory clogged with 10 copies of Some Random Armor where one gives you +1.5% Water Damage, another gives you +1.0% Duration to Specific Skill, etc.

That was also my general problem with Nioh 1 and 2 despite mostly loving those games. At least So P doesn’t have an equipment weight mechanic though.

I like the idea of how every piece of gear that drops could be perfect for one person's exact playstyle but if there's one thing that drove me crosseyed about Nioh was how much goddamn gear dropped. I was absolutely not willing to pick through every piece I found.

At least there was a lot you could do with them; sell them for money, sell them for EXP, donate them for "Glory", break them down for materials...

In other FF topics, when do Opera Omnia units get announced usually?

I've decided to go through the plot and game with a team of Terra, Alisaie and Alphinaud to help make that Endwalker wait less painful.

there’s usually a livestream at the last Monday of each month where they detail the next month’s schedule. Also keep in mind that because of Covid they had to slow down the rate of which new characters were being added (one every two months) and they only recently got back to normal on the JP side. Though to make up for it there’s now more New LD weapon banners every month.

This month’s new character was Kadaj, and going by the JP schedule the next new character should be Iroha from XI in August.

Edited by dmysta3000 on Jun 21st 2021 at 2:29:29 PM

We won't get any in July?

Ah well.

IX is getting an animated series by French animation studio Cyber Group.

Well that came out of nowhere.

Edited by dmysta3000 on Jun 21st 2021 at 3:54:45 PM

YES

Wow. That's a left field reveal.

And here I am, on the verge of finishing IX for Switch, after playing it on the OG Playstation years ago.

How will they handle the brutal deaths and genocides?

The same way the game handled it, distract you with the cutsie visuals

I'm wondering if it's set before or after the main plot of IX,or even a prequel series,or its going to be part of alternate continuity

Edited by Ultimatum on Jun 21st 2021 at 9:35:55 AM

I'm incredibly surprised we're sudden getting an FF animated series.

I'm incredibly surprised the one they chose was IX.

But both decisions have made me VERY happy!

It better not be clickbait.

... Uh, I don't see how it could be clickbait? I'm not sure how that term applies?

I mean,I sure hope the story is true and not a lie

Surprised Netflix didn't get this.