The Shrine

Only FF I haven't beaten, maybe I'll give it a whirl.

If there's an option to skip every cutscene and line of dialog in this, I'm in.


Revisited FF12 about five years ago and still enjoyed the combat, but the story, characters and voice acting all had me groaning to no end. Similarly, recently playing the FF10 remaster was even more difficult to get into because of those same reasons (esp. voice acting). Didn't get far and ended up occasionally watching someone else play it.

I think I'm incapable of revisiting a certain era of JRPGs that I enjoyed as a teen without being harshly critical. Specifically, I'd say the PS1-PS2 era, where the cutting edge graphics (FF7) look terrible now, the bad writing and characters were more acceptable to my more patient teen brain (FF8...okay, all of them), the relative newness of full voice acting in games was a selling point no matter how shitty it was (FF10, SHENMUE omg), or where stories of "political intrigue" (FF12) were enough a divergence from "the world is doomed, our upstart band of plucky children need to kill The Ultimate-Evil and restore balance"-type stories to overlook all else.

Maybe it's that I'm older and have grown used to Bioware, Bethesda, and CDPR(♥♥♥) or I just have a general disdain for JRPGs. Or maybe it's just FF. I dunno.

But I mean, having said all that I loved playing boy-hero-saves-the-world-while-trying-to-ressurect-his-dead-mom-or-some-shit-also-Pokemon simulator Ni No Kuni and Persona 5 will be a day one purchase for me.

I'll also take this opportunity on my bimonthly post to say that The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine is fucking fantastic and W3 is the best goddamn RPG ever.

Blahblahblah talk about yourself for a while, BL. Peace.

I'd rather being able to skip all the combat. The dialogue is kind of whatever but it's something I can put up with, compared to have to quasi auto every combat and then rearrange your gambits because the boss generally always tosses out a status effect that something like Esuna -> ally never works on.

Blotus wrote: I think I'm incapable of revisiting a certain era of JRPGs that I enjoyed as a teen without being harshly critical. Specifically, I'd say the PS1-PS2 era, where the cutting edge graphics (FF7) look terrible now, the bad writing and characters were more acceptable to my more patient teen brain (FF8...okay, all of them), the relative newness of full voice acting in games was a selling point no matter how shitty it was (FF10, SHENMUE omg), or where stories of "political intrigue" (FF12) were enough a divergence from "the world is doomed, our upstart band of plucky children need to kill The Ultimate-Evil and restore balance"-type stories to overlook all else.

The early PS1 games just don't age that well now. Although the story in Final Fantasy isn't particularly strong, it's hardly that weak unless you're just picking problems for the sake of doing that. At least FF7 is fairly consistent and the story doesn't specifically say sending a rocket loaded with 4 mega materias was doomed to fail, or that sending a bunch of SOLDIER 1st classes after Sephiroth can't possibly kill him. I mean, neither of those solution would've actually worked, but I thought at the time the cast and even the guys not working with them had a pretty decent plan trying to avert to the Apocalypse. Now FF8 'we were addicted to GF' is probably a bit out there, though I actually didn't pay attention to what's going on in the story.

I don't see a problem with FF10's voice acting other than that Tidus was intentionally meant to be a pansy and sounded annoying, but that's because he's supposed to be a pansy. Yuna's kind of annoying with the faked optimism but again that's kind of the point as she's trying to stay upbeat and not doing a very good job at it because she knows that the best scenario is that she dies like every summoner who ever succeeded in defeating Sin did.

Blotus wrote:If there's an option to skip every cutscene and line of dialog in this, I'm in.


Revisited FF12 about five years ago and still enjoyed the combat, but the story, characters and voice acting all had me groaning to no end. Similarly, recently playing the FF10 remaster was even more difficult to get into because of those same reasons (esp. voice acting). Didn't get far and ended up occasionally watching someone else play it.

I think I'm incapable of revisiting a certain era of JRPGs that I enjoyed as a teen without being harshly critical. Specifically, I'd say the PS1-PS2 era, where the cutting edge graphics (FF7) look terrible now, the bad writing and characters were more acceptable to my more patient teen brain (FF8...okay, all of them), the relative newness of full voice acting in games was a selling point no matter how shitty it was (FF10, SHENMUE omg), or where stories of "political intrigue" (FF12) were enough a divergence from "the world is doomed, our upstart band of plucky children need to kill The Ultimate-Evil and restore balance"-type stories to overlook all else.

Maybe it's that I'm older and have grown used to Bioware, Bethesda, and CDPR(♥♥♥) or I just have a general disdain for JRPGs. Or maybe it's just FF. I dunno.

But I mean, having said all that I loved playing boy-hero-saves-the-world-while-trying-to-ressurect-his-dead-mom-or-some-shit-also-Pokemon simulator Ni No Kuni and Persona 5 will be a day one purchase for me.

I'll also take this opportunity on my bimonthly post to say that The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine is fucking fantastic and W3 is the best goddamn RPG ever.

Blahblahblah talk about yourself for a while, BL. Peace.

Yeah the voice acting is horrid, you CAN modify the PC/Steam versions to use Japanese audio though.

I still really like FF1 and 3-8, and 10. There are elements and sections of FF9, 12, and, 13 I enjoy; but when I replay the games, I find all of them drag a lot - 9 and 12 particularly have a lot of dryness to them. I think I liked FF13 more than most; but after the sequels, it really killed the franchise for me. The games felt VERY repetitive, and the attempt to move towards a more involved battle system were sloppy.

I am still very much looking forward to the FF7 revival, but FF15 has yet to really interest me much. The one part about FF7 revival that worries me is the battle system, it didn't look great in the preview; now if that is just a visual representation of something more abstracted, then I'll be happy.

I may have to pick this up. I dumped a considerable amount of time (90+ hours?) into FF12 on the PS2.