A few things on Final Fantasy X. (NO spoilers.)

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>I'm about 18 hours in, and I'm really enjoying the game.

It probably has something to do with wanting to look at the pretty graphics, but getting into random battles is <i>fun</i>, not an annoyance as it sometimes is in other games. And I can't stress this enough: the ability to switch characters in at any time is the most useful addition I have ever seen to a Final Fantasy.

For the first time, all of my characters have a roughly equivalent development rate. I don't have to chose anymore which characters I want to use all the time, and neglect the others. If there's a character I don't like much, I can still use their special aspects when the time calls for it. Every subsequent Final Fantasy better have this substitution ability. I love the freedom it provides me. It adds a new dimension to battles that I don't want taken away.

The voice acting works well. I commonly have problems with it (mostly Tidus' voice), but overall, I think it adds to the game.

This is also the most linear Final Fantasy yet, and it doesn't bother me. I love walking around in overworlds, but I find that I don't miss it in FFX. What this has eliminated (as much as I can think of) are fetch-quests.

I was thinking about this yesterday, and I think it's strange how at the moment, the PS2 has the most linear and the least linear Final Fantasies to date, coming out back-to-back. FFX does not allow any significant deviation from the path laid out, and FFXI, being an online game, doesn't even have a path laid out.

I also like the sphere grid. I get to choose what development path my characters take, but it's not as constraining as a class system is. I like knowing "When he gets a few more points, he'll have these stats added plus this ability."

I don't know how much replay value this Final Fantasy is going to have, but I'm certainly enjoying it my first time through.</div>

[Shrinweck]

<div style='font: italic 11pt ; text-align: left; '>I wish they'd port the game to the PC... but it'd be an incredibly large game to install :D</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Seeing from your stats, you've posted in other forums before, but this is the first I've seen you, so, greetings.</div>

[Blotus]

<div style='font: 10pt "arial narrow"; text-align: left; padding: 0% 5% 0% 5%; '>You kind of answered you last question there my mentioning how linear the game is. I loved it, but haven't gotten around to doing it again. But I've got other stuff to play now, so that's a big factor too.</div>

[kent]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>i agree with everything you said (except i never have opinions on voice acting, maybe because my RL friends don't all speak English well)</div>

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

<div style='font: 10pt georgia; text-align: left; '>I had problems with both Yuna's and Tidus' voice actors, but I've gotten to like them. Tidus' voice just seemed to fit him, after I got used to it. He gets some great lines, and carries them off really well. "I'm tired of talking to you!" Ha!

The proper sidequests come much, much later in the game (and they've at least doubled play time for me so far, and I'm barely close to seeing the end to most of them!). The game doesn't have replay value in the usual sense, more like extend-current-game value, which, my God, it has in droves :). I've replayed it twice, though: not because I missed a bunch of things the first time through (even though I did), but because it was just fun to start over and build up my characters again (and to understand a little more of what those damned Al Bhed were jabbering on about!).

Auron is the fucking <i>coolest</i>. He really bugged me when I first started playing, first because I thought he was a bad guy and then because he was so irritatingly mysterious, but he's become my favourite character (just slightly edging out Wakka in the late game :).

Best FF for me so far, definitely.</div>

[Lox]

<div style='font: bold 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Definately agree...I'm having a ton of fun.</div>

[Blotus]

<div style='font: 10pt "arial narrow"; text-align: left; padding: 0% 5% 0% 5%; '>I got used to Tidus's voice actor, but not Yuna's. I still think hers is terrible. She always sounds like she's out of breath, rushing her line, or has a cold.</div>

[Andrew, Killer Bee]

<div style='font: 10pt georgia; text-align: left; '>It's an acquired taste, definitely :).</div>

[Derithian]

<div style='font: italic bold 14pt ; text-align: center; '>I liked tidus'. I fell in love with it when I first heard him say "uh", "eh", and "ah"......since he said it like a fucking billion times.....The main thing I enjoyed about the dubbing was the interaction in battle....tidus comes in "Newbie here" wakka:</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '>Woah, you didn't like Auron at first? The guy's quite possibley the most badass FF character yet. Out of everyone, I think his voice acting is the best.</div>

[Zeus]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>One of the coolest things about CC was the fact that the characters you didn't use increased levels at the same rate as the ones you did. Hopefully, from now on, Square will adopt the CC or FFX ways in regards to character development, the old way is just archaic now</div>

[Gentz]

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>"Pray! NOW!"</div>

[Gentz]

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>I also think it has some of the coolest PC's of any FF game yet. Auron, Lilu, Rikku...even Yuna and Wakka are decent.</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>I probably will never get around to playing that game, same as Chrono Cross (even though I did play it), I can't get into the game at all.</div>

[Zhuge+Liang]

<div style='font: ; text-align: left; '>I didn't think Square could possibly worse than ff8, but for me, ffx is giving it a run for the money.

Complaints:
Linearity. Holy crap, why bother with game design? You can play 90% of the game based on that little map on the corner, which usually gets about as complicated as a big square or a straight line.

Sphere grid. Okay, for the moment, I'll overlook the fact that this system has no logical merit. I have no idea who's ass they pulled this out of. Probably the same ass ff8's junction system was pulled out of. Anyway, even though there is *some* customization of your characters stats for this system, a huge majority of the time, it's just move, use. move, use. Mostly on a linear path. You end up having to go into the sphere grid after practically every battle to do the same thing over and over. A trained monkey can do this. Good game design involves giving your players *meaningful* descisions to make, not have them do tedious repetitive tasks involving little to no thought at all. But then, we're talking about Square games...

Script/Story. I like the story, but some things were a little to unbelievable for me. Like the time *spoiler* Rikku joined the party after the second Yuna kidnapping incident. I found it hard to believe that Tidus wasn't even remotely curious as to why the Albed where kidnapping Yuna. Then of course there's the overreacting and underreacting of various characters throughout the game.

Random battles. I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate random battles. You know what I hate more than random battles? Random battles with average of less than 5 second intervals. I guess this is how they made up for the linear map designs.

Graphics. Normally, I would say that good graphics is a plus for a game, but I don't think I can say that for this game, or other Square games in recent years. It's obvious to me that Sqaure is likes pretty graphics. So much, in fact, that they are willing to sacrafice other, more important, qualities so that their games looks that much prettier. Gameplay and story continuity take a backseat to graphics, much more so than many other games out there. It's not just the games either. Even the Final Fantasy movie was more about pretty graphics than a story that made any sense or was even interesting. It's like Square is masturbating or something.

Saving grace:
The story as a whole is pretty interesting, and it's the only reason I'm gonna finish the game. I'm not even gonna bother the the side quests, collecto-thons, and blitzball because playing the game is such a chore for me.

Let the flames roll in. I won't be around to bathe in it though. Now Shenmue 2, that was a good RPG.

Zhuge Liang</div>

[Torgo]

<div style='font: 9pt Arial; text-align: left; '>It's Lulu! Lulu! Don't ever make that mistake again!</div>

[Agent 57]

<div style='font: 9pt ; text-align: left; '>Linearity - I too thought it was too linear. I kept thinking to myself "when do I get to decide where we go?" and it kind of turned me off the game while I was playing it, i.e. I didn't like it as much as I did after the game got nonlinear.

Sphere Grid - For the most part, usage of the Sphere Grid <i>is</i> mostly just move use, move use, which I agree is pretty darned boring. However, it got a little more interesting with the addition of all the 'extra' spheres you get - skill spheres, friend spheres, special spheres, white/black magic spheres, and the like. So yeah, taking each character through their own path is pretty worthless, but the interaction of everybody's finished paths later in the game does get intriguing.

Script/Story - *shrug* I thought the story was intriguing enough to keep playing, but it was in no way perfect. I liked the addition of voice acting - and for the record, I liked Tidus' voice in his narrations much more than in his normal conversations, Auron was indeed badass, and Wakka's voice was just hilariously well done - but there were times when the dialogue was either crappy or made very little sense.

Random Battles - Considering they're an integral part of probably 75% of all RPGs, one would think you'd be used to them by now. ^_^

However, I do agree that they came with a little too much frequency in FFX, and while the switch everybody in/out thing was a welcome addition in the beginning of the game, at times it felt like a chore to make sure I got all seven characters into every fight, and eventually I just didn't care. At one point I even used an FAQ to find the item I needed to put "No Encounters" on one of my weapons/armor.

Graphics - It was a very pretty game, but I have a hard time believing the whole "they spent so much time on the graphics they didn't bother caring about anything else" theory. I mean, to get a game of this magnitude made, you've got different teams doing different things. One team is doing the music, another the programming, another the graphic modeling, another the writing, etc., etc. It's not the same five guys making the entire game and three months into the development process saying "Crap, all we've done so far is the graphic design! We need a story!" They simply decided to put their development efforts around a story that had a couple holes in it, which to be honest does not surprise me, considering the time pressure these guys are most likely on.

It's the same thing with movies - any big-budget movie is going to have plot holes, but it's because the writing team is made up of a bunch of people and they just don't end up making a coherent story, not because the writing team was busy doing something and the director yelled at them to come over and help the pyrotechnic guys set up the explosion or anything like that...and besides, can you even name me a game that you feel did the opposite? Concentrated so much on story and gameplay that the graphics suffered for it?

It's not a matter of focus, I don't think - it's more a matter of the writing and game design teams just not doing a good enough job, that's all.

Other concerns - I didn't bother doing all of the sidequests either, and I have no clue who the heck thought that blitzball was at all fun.

Oh, and Shenmue II DID kick ass.

<i>-57</i></div>

[Mr.Person]

<div style='font: ; text-align: left; '>Yea, I really liked FFX, but I can safely tell you that it's a game where you will MOST LIKELY have no compunction to play again once you beat it, because it's too damn linear.</div>

[G-man Joe]

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>Now I feel kinda guilty playing Vandal Hearts three times. It was linear...but short enough to play it more than once.</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '><b>Link:</b> <a href="http://www.dictionary.com/search?q=comp ... unction</a>

Pssst. "No compunction" means "no problem with."</div>

[Kupek]

<div style='font: 10pt verdana; text-align: left; padding: 0% 10% 0% 10%; '><b>Linearity:</b> Completely understood. On my first play through, it doesn't bother me. It might on further play throughs, if I ever do them. I'm interested to know why they made the design decision to make this game so radically linear. (Even more so than FF7, which was a common complaint.)

<b>Sphere Grid:</b> I usually hold off on going to the sphere grid until people have about 3 or more levels. Then it's not tedius. I think they came up with a good system that allows custumization (as an alternative to classes), but at the same time, implicity emphasizes what a characters strengths are. It also adds interactivity to leveling up; I don't just fight a bunch more battles and learn a new thunder spell. Along those lines, I know exactly how much time I have before I can learn certain things; it removes the guess work. I have made meaningful decisions as to what a character is going to learn.

<b>Random Battles:</b> This FF is the FF that random battles bother me the least. Only two times so far have I felt frustrated by random battles. I understand, however, hating them in general: it removes player control, and forces focus on something else.

<b>Graphics:</b> Square certainly likes their pretty polygons, but I think that in this case, the story has not suffered at all. I think you could make a case for the gameplay (not the battles, but moving around). I don't think I'd but it, but you could make a case.

I'm curious: what did you think of FF7 and FF9?

I will also freely admit that this is the first PS2 game I've played, and as such, I'm still engrossed by the capabilities of the system.</div>

[Gentz]

<div style='font: 11pt arial; text-align: left; '>Heh, whoops. There's a member named Lilu at the other MB I go to and I get the names confused sometimes : )</div>

[Julius Seeker]

<div style='font: 12pt ; text-align: left; '>Note, I bought every single one of these at the date of their release.

1) Final Fantasy - Compared tot he Dragon Warrior series, this one was just crap. The major problem was that you couldn't get past certain points without hours of level ups. Unballanced gameplay really blows.

2) Final Fantasy II - boring, I didn't like this one, there were a few good parts, but again, there were much better RPG's out by Enix at the time. Even Seventh Saga was more entertaining than this game.

3) Final Fantasy III - It looked like Square had learned a lot from Enix, then again their Gameboy games were fun, but this game was actually extremely fun, good characters, there was nothing I didn't like about this game. It was great.

4) Final Fantasy 7, I really liked the game when I first started playing, thought it was the best thing to ever be released, but then after leaving Midgar it seamed like everything just kind of fell apart. 98% of the rest of the game just seamed like one big chore, the plot didn't make much sense and was not interesting at all, the game was slow, very slow and dragged on. I couldn't help but to associate this one with Riven.

5) Final Fantasy 8, it was a step up from the last one, but not much, this one was even slower than the last one. Luckily the characters were a bit more interesting and the music was better, I hated the draw and junction system, this is the sort of thing you just do not put in a game, I wonder what the hell the deelopment crew was thinking? If it weren't for the junction system, and the game wasn't so slow, this would perhaps be the best PSX Final Fantasy.

6) Final Fantasy 9, this one was actually a great game, though it did seam like it was missing something, the towns were all fairly boring compared to Final Fantasy 8. The characters were awesome though, and it was a huge step up in gameplay, and the plot was one that actually didn't suck.

If I were to rank them in order, I'd go with this order of my likes: FFIII, FF9, FF8, FF7, FF2, FF.</div>

[Blotus]

<div style='font: 10pt "arial narrow"; text-align: left; padding: 0% 5% 0% 5%; '>Jesus, don't remind me of Tidus' pansy-ass remaks in battle. "Seeya!", "Jah like that?", "Told juh!"</div>

[G-man Joe]

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>I got no compunction with Kupektion.</div>

[G-man Joe]

<div style='font: 11pt "Fine Hand"; text-align: left; '>Maybe he meant "compulsion".</div>

[Zhuge+Liang]

<div style='font: ; text-align: left; '>I may sound like a Square hater now, but it wasn't always so. I was a huge fan of their games during the FF4, FF6, and Chrono Trigger times. Admittedly, those games were not quite as ambitious as the FF7 and later games, but there is something to be said about their relative simplicity. The gameplay was simple and and fun. They did not complicate things for the sake of complication (ala FF8's POS draw system). The storylines' simplicity were were an asset also. Even though they were the cliche "save the world" type deal, they were within the scope of competence of the game designers. As such, the stories were a lot more consistent, believable, and interesting. Square's newer focuses of life, the universe, the essence good vs evil, is not something they do well. There is nothing wrong with the topics themselves, but Square designers are not competent enough to tackle those issues meaningfully. I was saw a commercial where this DJ was comparing his scratching skills to Mozart. He claimed he "understood" Mozart's creativity through the rhythms of his scratching. Give me a break. It's also like those poets who try too hard to write meaningful poems and end up with esoteric, convoluted garbage. But they're vague enough that most people won't call them on it for fear of sounding unintelligent.

Now, about my opinions on FF7 and 9. I haven't played 9 yet, mainly because I was so turned off by 8 that I didn't buy 9 and encourage Square towards their current path, though it probably didn't do much good. The only reason I'm playing 10 now is because my girlfriend bought it, along with the PS2 for me for my birthday. Anyhow, with regards to 7, I thought it was ok. The gameplay was simple enough, and the characters were interesting to me. The materia system wasn't overyly convoluted and still allowed good customization. Even the story was good, until I got to the ending. I thought it was incomplete and inconsistantly vague. So my opinion of FF7 is generally favorable.

The best RPG's I have played by far is Panzer Saga and Shenmue 2. The tone of PDS was consistent and the story was very good. It just had a very good atmosphere to it. The gameplay was also simple and didn't get in the way. I am perhaps unfairly baised towards Shenmue 2 because the martial arts theme resonated heavily with me. I particularly liked the parts that espoused kung fu philosophy, such as the 4 Wude, training hard, having a calm mind, etc. It also had a good, down to earth, believable story, good gamplay, good pacing, and pretty graphics to boot. The only thing that I would have like more was if there were more meaningful side stories and if most of the NPC's don't all say the same thing ("Go talk to the bookstore owner", "I think the bookstore owner would know more", "I suggest you talk to the bookstore owner").

So much for my RPG brain dump.

Zhuge Liang</div>