this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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This is partly why FF9 was a terrible installment in the Final Fantasy franchise. Such a garbage thing to centre the game around and with zero innovation in this aspect.
At least 7 played around with a magic system and the way it interacted internally.
At least 8 changed the system for summons and stat boosts, despite being flawed.
Each of those were central to the story and the way the game played. What did 9 do? Uhhh... you have to steal. A lot. Also there's a job system except it's a pseudo-job system which is really anaemic. How thrilling!
First of all, I will not stand for this FF9 slander. It's my favourite or 2nd favourite behind FF7 depending on what phase of the moon you ask me. Seriously though, replaying and playing through classic turn-based JRPGs as an adult has led me to realise the underlying gameplay systems just suck in general. The games are all piss easy and there's basically zero skill or thought involved
I mostly just enjoy and evaluate them on aesthetics, music, characters and story. Someone should try making a classic JRPG but with the game mechanics replaced with something that's actually good
9 has that in spades.
One thing that frustrated me with FFs starting at 12 was relative improvement to combat coming at the expense of more and more story beats. 15 was the worst offender, but it was all downhill after 10.
I don't understand. You're saying 12 improved combat at the expense of its story? And that 15 did that too? But 12's an autobattler that's all about political intrigue and 15's so trivial that it might as well be an autobattler (its story is a mess though, I agree).
The gambit system was significantly more involved and allowed combat to proceed in near real time. Very stark change from 10.
Also, 12 had political intrigue as a backdrop, but it was all on rails. This wasn't Crusader Kings. Nothing you did influenced the outcome.
It ended up being button mashing in practice. But you had more real time control over the character than in any prior version. Much closer to a Zelda style of combat than a traditional FF.
The shift in gameplay was so stark they basically never finished the story. By the time you're in the third act, you can practically see the stage hands pulling ropes in the background. The dramatic, expansive open world they lay out in Act 1 collapsed into a few repetitive hallways and clumsy boss battles by the end.
All that so you could do a half assed implementation of Kingdom Hearts.
They even released a movie and an anime series to do world building! And it all got flushed down the drain by the end.
12 is linear with only one ending yeah, but its politics are remarkably grounded and well-integrated into its world. It's light on the crystal, magic, divinity stuff and heavy on the geopolitical. Out of all the FF games, Ivalice is the setting that's the most thought through imo.
Regarding 15, it's funny how the combat mechanics are most relevant in comrades where targeting weak points to break them actually matters. And this might just be how I played the game, but I didn't mind the shift toward the end. I got my fill of wandering, camping and questing before I set sail so the oppressive hallways came off as a purposeful artistic choice to set the tone. Like, the road trip has ended, the boys are in enemy territory, they're being obviously manipulated by Ardyn, and there's nothing they can do about it. The miserable way the boys are restrained into realizing the worst ending feels thematic.
The OVA and movie came out before the game released, didn't they? I'll admit, I liked them but I'm also a massive FFXV fan so that might be apologia.
I genuinely enjoyed the way the crew fractures and falls apart towards the end, only to have to come together despite themselves for the finale.
But it all happens in a rush, because they burned through their budget and squandered so much time/energy on the Act One overworld that ends up meaning nothing.
The better FF games tend to take you though the setting two or three times - first to set the stage, then to establish the stakes, and finally (in epilogue) to pay off the conclusion.
Because 15 wants to keep stringing out the world in Act 2 and 3, the stakes/pay off are heavily clipped. Lunafreya is built up enormously in Act 1 only for Act 2 to exist in what feels like a closet. By Act 3, she feels like an afterthought. And all the scene setting in Act 1 collapses by Act 3, because they never had time to properly mod the original continent into its "bad ending" failed state. All those side characters and places you met just vanish.
You never get that Golden Saucer moment - discovering the wonder, witnessing the seedy underbelly, and then finally watching it flounder in the face of calamity.
Yes. And (setting aside the fact the movie was mid) they felt very disjointed from the game itself.
I remember watching the Gungrave anime and genuinely enjoying how they morphed a Scarface-esque mob story into Sci-Fi bullet hell backstory. Was excited to see something like that.
Instead, it was this cheesy canned action-romance that mashed proper nouns in with a mush of noisy melodrama. The OVA was much better. But it sets up a bunch of story beats that the game barely explores.
Who thing feels like a Too Many Cooks situation.
I haven't played it but I struggle to imagine how it could be worse than FF13, a game that was nothing but a bunch of cutscenes strung along by narrow corridors
Give me my guy running around on a big globe map representation of the game world or give me death
For all its sins, FF13 was a complete story that closed its loops. Not a great story, but it at least had FF vibes and a dramatic ending.
FF15 just kinda gives up on itself in the middle of the game. You can tell the developers were throwing up their hands and announcing "We don't care anymore, just send it out the door".
A ton of story beats are littered across the first arc that just get dropped. A bunch of story beats are introduced at the top of the third arc seemingly so they can immediately be resolved.
The Act 2 final fight feels like someone cobbled together a God Of War quick time fight over a long weekend.
FF13 is consistently mid from end to end. FF15 drops straight off a cliff once you leave the main continent.
Old ways are best ways
I know I say this like every time it's brought up, but I will reiterate yet again: FF13 is the ideal JRPG to play while drunk. The out-of-combat mechanics are "Hallway Simulator 2009." The in-combat mechanics are "mash these three buttons in this sequence, unless it's this slightly more annoying type of encounter, then use this other sequence instead." The rest of it is forgettable cutscenes where Snow yells a lot over his shitty nu-metal leitmotif, and the story is so incoherent that it wouldn't matter if you were sober anyway. Some people drink to forget; if you're playing FF13, you drink to not remember in the first place, and it's a better experience for it.
Gonna make Final Fantasy nerds mad, every time they try a new system that isn't just "select attack until you win, heal as needed" they get mad and claim that changing away from that system "dumbed it down" and "made it a mindless button mashing game" ironically.
My main issue with the action game mechanics is that it stops being an ensemble cast and turns into a story about one dude because turn-based is the only reasonable way to control an entire party
One thing I hate about a lot of classic Square JRPGs that you are strictly verboten from benching the designated anime boi hero. Let me run around town as Cid, Tifa or Red XIII you assholes
Yeah you either need the Chrono Trigger treatment or an ensemble cast like FF6.
I don't mind having a forced party if it makes sense for the story. I don't like it as much when it's enforced for no apparent reason
Am I a joke to you?
Yeah, on reflection that was something they really got into with the PS1 games
Honestly FFXII is probably my favourite because it successfully merged real time with party control through the gambit system. Tell 'em what to do and you just need to switch around the characters for a bit of fine tuning. Having to unlock the gambits was bullshit but apart from that I had no complaints.
I thought the FF7 remake handled that pretty well
FFXV did a great job of telling a four character story with action rpg mechanics.
But dis it do a good job of feeling like you were playing the whole party?
The original release: absolutely not. Noctis is the clear protagonist and occupies 75% of the player's attention
With the DLC or in the Royal Edition: Noctis occupies about 30% of the player's attention. Each other party member gets their own lengthy side quest and returns to the main storyline as playable characters and with deeper motivations for their actions and contribution to the plot.
It's one of those games where they solved many of it's initial flaws way after the impression of the game was set in the public mindscape.
No lol it sucks so much that the other three boys are unplayable until you unlock them one by one on the skill tree. And that you can only momentarily play as them during a fight, after which you'll immediately switch back to Noctis. Noctis is the lamest one!
The devs couldn't even give us the decency of playing as them in comrades beyond one (1) mission. The only good mission.
Yeah that's a pretty fair criticism. The last couple have felt that way.
Yeah but when JRPGs try to do something different, they usually end up with incredibly contrived and bizarre nonsense, like the Dressphere stuff from FFX-2 or the Paradigm system from FF13. What I'm saying is: make a Fallout 1/2 style CRPG that looks like Xenogears
I liked the Paradigm system.
My absolute favorite turn based combat system is in Star Renegades. Never been more engaged in video game combat without real time elements than in that one, unfortunately it's a roguelike.
You're looking for FFXV which pushed the limits of Final Fantasy innovation.
I liked that one a lot, though the latter half of the game felt a little rushed. It was pretty despised by a lot of old final fantasy fans though.
That sort of thinking is what got us in the mess we're in today, with everything being just shittier action game.
JRPGs were fine
Have you played Omori? It's not rocket science, but I thought the emotion system was fun to play with.
I beat ff9 as a stupid kid without ever stealing anything, it's only necessary if you're trying to 100%.
It's like arguing that maxing out Freya's dragon slayer move is a necessary mechanic. Sure, it'll make the optional super boss less annoying, but it's really not necessary.
In the same way that you can beat FFX without playing Blitzball (aside from half of a mandatory game) but my point isn't that you must do it, rather that it's central to the story and yet it's straight up tedious and completely lacking in any imagination.
I guess having more than one item available to steal was the major innovation in this respect?
Blitzball is a major aspect of FFXs story, but in FFIX stealing is just an option on a menu. I guess I agree that it's not a good mechanic but I disagree with the weight you put on it.
I mean, the protagonist is locked into a pseudo-class of thief, he is part of a troupe of thieves, and thieving is a motif throughout the game with you visiting the thieves' hideout, going to a city of thieves, the kidnapping of royalty and fighting against others to protect your loot etc. etc.
From my perspective you're underselling how thieving is central to the FF9 story by saying that it's simply one command in a battle menu.
It's a bit of a problem when most of the game's mechanics feel unnecessary
Stealing during combat was not nearly "most" lol, rest of the game was more or less fine.
I mean most of the deeper mechanics and content. It's just there for completionists
I would argue that grind for full completion is not even mechanics, it just fake content using the normal mechanics and maybe force you to minmax and run around really much.
Yup, this mechanic is EXACTLY what killed FF9 for me. I'll probably get around to finishing it one of these days, but I'm not going to be happy about it.
FF9 was amazing.