Final Fantasy Debate Thread

[Vampyre]

Ok, CreemyNougat suggested that someone start a debate thread for FF instead of using the DoS thread.
So here it is. Few simple rules:

No Personal Attacks
Stay on topic
FF only. No Kingdom Hearts, CoM, etc.


First topic: Final Fantasy VII vs. Final Fantasy VIII

I want a good clean fight...now lets get it on! ^_^

[CreemyNougat]

sigh. I wasn't actually serious...this has been done before and no one changes anyone else's opinions. :p


Screw VII and VIII. VI. VI. VI. VI. VI. VI.

"Hi, I'm a Final Fantasy game whose makers chose to opt for gameplay and character development instead of taking tired old plot lines and plugging futuristic looking characters into them (despite the fact that these games [should] have a medieval undertone) along with making the game focus entirely on sidequests and eye candy. "
FFVI said that in recent interview in "All Those FF Games That Nougat Said Sucked In That Other Thread Still Really Suck In This One" Magazine. :D

[kamilumin]

FFV can kick FFVI's ass any day.

[LL Cool L]

I say in terms of gameplay, all FFs except IX and XI are equal.

They each have a decent and likeable battle system, they each have a growth system that's fun to spend time on, and they each have a really nice ability system. I see no reason why anyone should claim VII, VIII, and X were *all* about the eye candy. Sure, they had it, but so does every game on their respecting consoles. Character developement was there too, just as much as it was there on VI. I'm not saying they're better than VI, I'm just saying that people bitch on how any FF past VI is all about the eye candy, but that's definitely not true. They all (except the aforementioned) had the basic stuff that made VI so great, just different stuff.

Personally, my favorite is VIII. The Junction system took some time to get used to, but once you do you learn it's one of the most dynamic systems in FF. You could make all your characters exactly the same (save for having different GFs and Limits), or you could make them radically different, and I always opt for the latter of course.

Now, the argument of VII, VIII and the rest sucking because new RPG players won't play VI because it's "too old", then yes, I definitely agree with that argument. People that only play new games suck. Plain and simple. But coming from someone that treats all video games equally based on how fun they are to play and not how good they look, I can honestly say most FFs are about equal in fun.

I will say that the two best FFs for story and plot were VI and VIII. VI had the most likeable story for me, but VIII is still my favorite FF because of its gameplay and music.

And there's nothing wrong with sidequests - in fact, the more the merrier. It adds to the game play time, and it greatly adds to your characters' abilities. I think the theory of more sidequests = worse gameplay is definitely not true. The only FF where this holds true is XI, since, technically, the game IS one big sidequest.

The only FF I truly think there was nothing new and it was just boring was IX. The game re-used a combination of IV, V, and VI's growth system. Yawn. I think Square should have just done what they do best and just make it like any other FF with a different growth style then the rest. We'd seen the Ability system before. Another game that comes close to being as boring was VII. It, again, used an ability system that was a bit too much like the older ones. It's a good thing I loved the game's plot, not to mention raising Chocobos.

Edit: Oh, and to expand a bit on why I think VI and VIII had the best stories?

Easy. People could easily understand them. You'll notice that the best FFs are the ones with the best easily understood stories while not being too boring (IV and V had easily understood stories, but they were sort of boring if you ask me, especially IV).

VII had the potential to have a great story, but everyone was so busy trying to understand the whole Cloud thing that they just got angry. The same goes for X. A dream? C'mon square, give me a break.

[CreemyNougat]

I've said it before and I'll say again now that the reason VI is the greatest is because it didn't revolve around a single main character. EVERY character, except the "secret" ones, had a role in the plot of the story.
The thing about sidequests was that in FFVI, the sidequests had a POINT...
Most of them involved either finding characters in the World of Ruin, or delving further into that character's tale to unlock a special ability.
Even FF1 had a sidequest...but there was only one, it was called Class Change, it was damned worth it, and it didn't involve any stupid crap. All the minigames and whatnot killed the series. Final Fantasy now revolves entirely around mini-games and sidequests; they take up more time than the actual story by several orders of magnitude.
And that's the problem.

[LL Cool L]

You're right, I totally agree that FFVI was, and is still, the best FF to deal with sidequests by making them an integral part of the story. But all I'm saying is that because the newer FFs don't do that with sidequests doesn't make them bad. Also, not all future sidequests were completely cut off from the game's plot. Just about every FF past VI had at least a few sidequests that gave you a better understanding to parts of the story. Remember the Anima sidequest from X?

And even if they didn't have any sidequests that were implemented in the story, so what? They're still fun, and they add to the enjoyment time of the game. I greatly enjoyed doing all of the sidequests in VIII - imo the best FF for sidequests. While I do agree that your points that make VI the best FF are quite valid, that in turn doesn't make anything past VI bad, it just makes them different. Although I do wonder sometimes how the rest would be if they had more sidequests dealing with the story.

Also, if they all had sidequests like that of VI, where you would be missing characters had you not done them, then you'd just have a totally different reason to hate the rest of them. That being the fact that they just re-used something Square had already done. Innovation is one of the things that made the series so great. Although I can't agree with the turn XII is taking. I fell in love with the series for being turn-based. While I love action-RPGs, I definitely don't think it's the correct path for the series at all. I mean, growth and ability system changes are one thing - a change that makes you look at the series completely differently is another.

[CreemyNougat]

You want a reason sidequests are bad?

VII. Golden Saucer.
VIII. Card game
IX. Card game...again.
X. Lightning bolts. (Blitzball's too obvious, so I won't even mention it. ...oops.)


Done.
Tell me what place those types of games have in an RPG that's supposed to focus on a character growth system, and you win a prize.

[LL Cool L]

You want a reason sidequests are bad?

VII. Golden Saucer.
VIII. Card game
IX. Card game...again.
X. Lightning bolts. (Blitzball's too obvious, so I won't even mention it. ...oops.)


Done.
Tell me what place those types of games have in an RPG that's supposed to focus on a character growth system, and you win a prize.

You seem to be misinterpreting things here. There is a difference between sidequests and minigames. The ones you mentioned pretty much all fall under the minigame category. And I MOST DEFINITELY agree with you on this front. The minigame trend is something I think the FF series could have done without. However, it's simple enough to just ignore the minigames in them and enjoy the FF for what it is without them.

Sidequests, however, are much different than minigames. The things I'm speaking of are, say, optional dungeons, raising chocobos (call it a minigame if you want, but it's a sidequest. Sure, part of it involves racing, which is a minigame, so kill me), optional quests, that sort of thing. Examples of these:

VII: Raising chocobos, fighting the WEAPONs, gaining the master materias, etc.
VIII: Obtaining ultimate weapons, getting all the GFs (and undertaking their sidequests to do so, such as the Deep Sea Research Center, the Centra Ruins, Cactaur Island, etc)

(I'll skip IX since I didn't care for it)
X: Obtaining Anima (although fairly easy if you were thorough in the Cloisters to begin with), the rest of the Aeons. The infamous Battle Arena sidequest as well. I'm guessing this one is what you were talking about when it came to taking longer to do than beating the actual game. To that I say so what? If it's fun to do, what's wrong with that?

There are alot more sidequests for each of these games, but I just wrote what was on the top of my head. But you get the idea. Sidequests are usually quests that involve normal gameplay in optional quests. Minigames are just as they sound - different types of games entirely to the game's normal style of play. Sidequests are integrated, minigames are not. Hence, why I agree with your minigame hatred.

[iceymoon]

i like mini-games and sidequests because they keep me playing. if i'm in the middle of running around fighting mediocre enemies for hours at a time in order to level up, i like having the option of fighting them on my WAY to do a mini-game rather than just running around in circles. ._.; otherwise it just feels so monotonous and makes me wonder why i'm still playing.

i considered beating enemies in the island closest to hell/heaven (viii) a side quest cuz i got so determined and wouldn't stop until they were all dead and i had collected the items i needed. :]

[LL Cool L]

Those islands were so evil. Mainly for the fact that they alone made FFVIII the easiest FF to reach the maximum level for each character - oh don't worry, this isn't a bad thing :P

Don't get me wrong, I love mindless leveling. But I also love fast mindless leveling ^__^

That's one of the main reasons I loved FFVIII so much - the enemies level up with you. No other normal FF to date has done this since VIII. I'm surprised, too, because it was one of the cooler inovations Square came up with. The same goes for the amount of EXP to the next level always being 1000, yet EXP you get is based on how much stronger you are than your enemy, how long it took you to beat the enemy, how much HP you lost, how much damage you did, etc. Finally had an RPG left the standard of set amounts of EXP per enemy type. FFVIII's system was so intricate it's insane.

There was so much to VIII's system compared to other FFs. I'm really sadened to see no other RPGs use a similar system of EXP and growth. This is probably thanks to so many people hating VIII for no reason thanks to the junction system being hard to understand at first. People just automatically dismissed it as a terrible FF, rather than sitting down and playing it for a while.

[Shin-Peter]

I thought that FF VIII's battle system was amazing. I mean, the only thing I hate about the battle system is the fact you must spend hours and hours trying to gather crazy powerful spells to add to your character. I mean, that is my only gripe about the system, but I still like the GFs and Enemy Level up systems.

My favorite is still FF VI...

[Junior G-Man]

One time, I gave this Ogre a ruby..........

[shinigami_2057]

The main drawback for VIII's battle system for me was the draw system. I could never really like it. Although now I am very tempted to go back and play VIII again...

I personally would love to see a sort of mix of the materia system and the junction system, if that were possible. I really liked the magic system in VII, but the battle system (physical attacks i mean) in VIII was far more refined. it got annoying in VII that eventually, magic was basically meaningless. I could destroy Safer Sephiroth with simply 4x cut + mime + haste, and not have a single character die, and it would probably go faster than watching the Knights of Round summon 3x.

And Noug, don't be hating on Triple Triad. That was SO FUCKING ADDICTING.

[LL Cool L]

Yeah, the Draw system was really tedious and I think it's one of my very few gripes with VIII as well. But I did have it worked out where a party of 3 characters could obtain 100 of one spell in about 10 minutes just by setting up memory menus, setting up which spell they're drawing, and just holding down X for 10 minutes. Eventually they all draw 100 and I can move onto the next spell.

Thankfully, one of the best ideas FF, hell, Square ever came up with was the Refining system. Spells could not only be obtained for drawing, but refining things as well. Whether it be other spells or items. Yet again adding to the fact that there was just so much more to that game than most others.

Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that VIII was also the first FF to employ some sort of special ability that let you have no enemy encounters (Enc-None ability from Diablos and other GFs). This proved to be quite handy once my characters were already at lvl 100.

Although it's important to add that even FFVIII wasn't without the FFVII disease where eventually magic doesn't mean anything. Hell, once you have Lionheart, Pulse Ammo, [insert other final limit breaks here] at your disposal, magic and even GFs become a thing of the past. Hell, ESPECIALLY in FFVIII, being the first FF where you could actually induce a limit break easy enough. Granted, this loss of magic wasn't as bad as FFVII's tactics, but it was still there.

Even though I hated it, IX was the only PSX FF to have magic stay powerful throughout the whole game, since physical attacks couldn't do any more than 9999, and no physical attacks (or at least none I know about) could layer damage like, say, Omnislash or Lionheart did. Which is also why the max HP of any enemy you can find in that game is somewhere around a meager 50,000.

And X, well, 99,999 damage. What can I say? Pretty much the entire reason Nemesis has 10,000,000 HP.

[sorrow]

i liked 4, for the story and music. The boss was pretty tough. Reminds me of illusion of gaia as well, since i played em around the same time

[CreemyNougat]

IV seemed to fall slightly short for me, storywise...but for its time, it was pretty incredible.


Can FF start to have plots that aren't love stories again?
Discuss further.

[sorrow]

...but for its time, it was pretty incredible.

for its time, exactly. you have to remember how much you liked the game when you played it, instead of comparing it byte for byte with current technology. who knows what ff4 would have looked like on todays systems... most likely ffx, based on the market? i'm wondering if squar eonly goes where the money is now.

anyone hear of a release date for the new movie?

[ranatalus]

In reference to the Enc-None ability: It wasn't the first time you were able to not have random encounters. FFVI had the moogle charm. (Or, if you were retarded and saved lone wolf instead of Mog, you could get the Charm Bangle, which would at least decrease your random battles).

I actually got really tired with sidequests/minigames that had nothing to do with the plot (except blitzball, oddly enough). I'm also of the "GOMGOMGOM VI WAS TEH BESTSS" group. I also tend to think that RPGs have just been getting easier and easier. From 7-X, I never got stuck anywhere that wasn't battle based--the only exception to this being the desert prison scene in FFVIII, mainly being because I didn't know what the hell it wanted me to do--was I going left or right? Did I want to stay outside of the prison? WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME SQUARE???

I never finished IX, it was boring and slow, and for some reason, the non-randomizination of damage irritated me. I thought X wasn't too bad, although I'm still not sure how I feel about characters with speech.

And no, Squenix will never have a story line without adding love into it. It's much easier to sell with love involved, because it's a concept everyone easily relates to. I don't know how many people can actually relate to having all your friends die while fighting a giant sand worm, and you having to light them on fire with your mind to survive.

[CreemyNougat]

There's a difference between "GOMGOGMOMGOMG VI RULEZ" and "Wow...these other FF's really kinda suck when you look at what they were actually sequels to."

[ranatalus]

True.

But we're right either way ;)

[Dj. dp]

What i think of Final Fantasy VII is that its too easy and good graffics but no voices... thats the problem lol.... i know they couldnt but vocies in the game but they should make a new game of FFVII like FFIX; VOICES!!..... lol but yea....

Final Fantasy VIII is another whole different story.... what i think of this game is that this game has lost more action and more realistic then all of the other games that i have played all my life....but i dont play it anymore because i already beat it too... many times...lol