Board 8 > Post your hot takes regarding Final Fantasy

(+) Yeah! (+)

NES is my console for FFs.

Leonhart4 posted...

Dubs > subs imhotbqh

100% always

Leonhart4 posted...

I prefer to hear stuff in English. Hearing something in another language does nothing for me, and it has to be pretty bad voice acting for me to even be bothered by it (Triangle Strategy has a few of them).

Triangle Strategy's voice acting was wooden and half assed for almost every character, especially during battle. Octopath did a much better job with it's VA work.

13 Sentinels has a really good American dub fwiw

Dubs > Subs unless the dub is extremely awful which isn't very common any more

dubs > subs sometimes and subs > dubs other times

Video games: dubs > no voice acting at all > subs (I don't know why this is but it kills my immersion for some reason)

Movies and TV: subs > dubs

It's completely dependant on the specific product and anyone claiming a blanket statement is possible is totally hopeless.

FF1 is more fun than most other FFs

NFUN posted...

dubs > subs sometimes and subs > dubs other times

Now this is a hot take

XII has absolutely 0 redeeming qualities. Everyone tries to find 1 or 2 things they liked about it, but there's seriously nothing.

XV is the only game EVER MADE that has a real day-night system, that actually feels like multiple days are passing.

VI's story is shallow nonsense. The world has no weight to it and nothing is believable, especially World of Ruin.

The original FF7 is unplayable in modern times, due to both graphics and gameplay.

Tidus in English is to this day one the best acted characters in all of video games.

FFVII-X and Tactics are the most replayable games in the series to this day

foolm0r0n posted...

Tidus in English is to this day one the best acted characters in all of video games.

I should have thought of this

It was mentioned before, but the laughing scene is legitimately good, and watching it turn into an out-of-context meme was painful

JAT is a fantastic voice actor and always has been

FFX's problem has always been its voice direction rather than the acting. That's the main reason X-2 has better VAing than FFX did.

LeonhartFour posted...

FFVII-X and Tactics are the most replayable games in the series to this day

foolm0r0n posted...

XII has absolutely 0 redeeming qualities. Everyone tries to find 1 or 2 things they liked about it, but there's seriously nothing.

Its fun.

The world is cool.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Its fun.

The world is cool.

I think you quoted the wrong thing. I was talking about FFXII, which has a world that's almost entirely brown

Despite my shade on the cast and story I actually agree FFXII is fun to play.

I've replayed FF12 more than any other FF game. The story disappears halfway through, but I really love its sense of exploration, the hunts, the art style, the atmosphere, the music, and just the general vibe of the game. It is basically an offline MMO though so you have to be down with that kind of experience.

I loved cheesy korean mmos back then so I definitely expected a single player version of that when I first played it, but it missed on every mark. Particularly the progression loop, which is the core addictive element of MMOs, was too slow and dry. Combat came down to doing big quickenings which felt terrible. If an MMO isn't fun when killing lvl 1 bunnies and selling their pelts, then it never will be. Xenoblade 1 in contrast completely nailed the MMO progression loops. Maybe the 1 redeeming thing about XII is that it heavily inspired XC1.

I will admit the hunts were fun to chase down and fight. But then you get story-gated for the next set of hunts.

Oh I never used Quickenings. They weren't fun so I didn't see the point.

Just to be pedantic about it Control is a Finnish developed Italian published game with voice acting done in the UK (DLC was directed by one of Xenoblade 3s co-directors) although the cast are mostly American. With that said yes the voice acting is pretty great.

As for FFXII, it is arguably the best looking PS2 game so theres that. In general the presentation was a huge step up from CX which was showing its age before the PS2 was done.

FFXII is unplayable without the fast-forward option. so bad.

FFXII's battle system is generally uninteresting, and I don't enjoy exploration because you have big open areas with nothing in them except pots with potions and 153 gil.

Are any of you considering Zodiac Age in your evaluation of XII?

redrocket posted...

Are any of you considering Zodiac Age in your evaluation of XII?

Own it but have yet to play it, can't work up the motivation

I hated FFXII for most of my life since it's release, played Zodiac Age last year and started surprisingly enjoying it, but got to the point where it just stops having a story period and goes on for another 20+ hours with mindless treking from map to map, and went right back to thinking it was trash again.

I said it after finishing in the playthrough topic, but I would legitimately say the best way to experience the game is to just straight up stop playing after the mountaintop village gets attacked. There is NOTHING worthwhile after that point

redrocket posted...

Are any of you considering Zodiac Age in your evaluation of XII?

Me obviously, since fast-forward/1.5 speed was implemented in that one

My overall take is that Zodiac Age > the original but that's hardly a hot take. Also the ZA changes aren't enough to drastically improve the game. It's boring at its core.

Storywise, I think it's underrated and I like the characters and cutscenes. There just needed to be more of it.

colliding posted...

FFXII is unplayable without the fast-forward option. so bad.

This is most JRPGs IMO lmao, super glad it's become a consistent trend for remasters and re-releases.

Playing Trails From Zero now, and after experiencing the fast forward speed I would probably drop the game entirely if I suddenly had to play without it.

Chrono Cross was way ahead of its time with the fast forward button, but it's still kinda weird to me how dependent on it some people have become. I rarely use it if it's available, mostly just if I have to replay something or if I have to grind for something.

Before they became widespread, Fast Forward on emulators was the only way to make the grind on JRPGs bearable.

FF characters were much more expressive when there was no voice acting at all.

UshiromiyaEva posted...

Also glad I had it for Geneology of the Holy War because....

I forgot how much I used FF in that game. Prob a big reason why I love that game but hate the newer FEs

FE4 is my favorite FE game for total nonsense reasons, but that wouldn't have been the case if I wasn't using fast forward constantly lol.

I think I only really used fast forward in FE4 during the arena? Presumably the incredibly long time the arena takes without fast forward is meant to be the drawback that balances out how it gives you a bunch of EXP for every unit every chapter for free with no risk, so I feel like it kinda breaks the game to skip through it in a few seconds. but also that bad design choice is on them. i'm not waitin around for it.

Taking advantage of fast forward is nothing compared to taking advantage of savestate RNG manipulation for the arena.

Though utilizing that to it's fullest results in it taking much longer that a normal castle prep WITHOUT fast-forward.

foolm0r0n posted...

VI's story is shallow nonsense. The world has no weight to it and nothing is believable, especially World of Ruin.

The original FF7 is unplayable in modern times, due to both graphics and gameplay.

Tidus in English is to this day one the best acted characters in all of video games.

I liked that FFVI's party party is full of unambiguously bad people. Edgar is a pedophile, Locke mugs people for a living, Shadow kills people for a living, etc. Replaying the beginning of the game recently for Game of the Month I was surprised by how well written the beginning was. Terra's obviously recovering from some kind of brain thing. Locke clearly views her as nothing more than a weapon and Edgar sees her as a sex object. But she's like "Locke is protecting me. A normal woman would find Edgar dashing. Why do I dislike this?" I don't really have an opinion on the depth of the whole story because I only know the rest in extremely broad strokes but the very beginning has some interesting ideas

Pretty much agree with second thing. I played up until Zolomy, which was the only interesting fight in the whole game. I think it was only interesting because it was hard. I ended up using Barrett's limit to kill all its MP. Otherwise I'm like... Why am I fighting motorcycles? Why are they weak to ice? Or maybe lightning. This is dumb. Every character plays basically the same. You want to give them all magic and have them all spam it as much as possible and that's it.

Probably agree with 3rd but need to play more voice acted games (the American ones that are basically TV shows have great acting, the acting is usually good in Spanish too)

FF7 is extremely imbalanced in general. Increasingly broken materia aside.

Haste+All (Or big guard, if you're feeling even cheaper) on one character. Slow on another character. Almost every boss in the entire game is weak to slow and gets run over just by this alone.

The only notable exception I know of is Carry Armor.

I liked XII but I love exploring open worlds in general. I tried to play it again but I just dont want to spend much time with Van and Penelo. It could have been better and didnt really scratch the itch that FF games used to scratch for me.

I tried playing The Zodiac Age. Could not get even to Vaan. Game had potential, but the gameplay is kind of boring. I thought "Maybe I'll give it another shot." Glad I got it on sale.

Crescent-Moon posted...

FF7 is extremely imbalanced in general. Increasingly broken materia aside.

Haste+All (Or big guard, if you're feeling even cheaper) on one character. Slow on another character. Almost every boss in the entire game is weak to slow and gets run over just by this alone.

The only notable exception I know of is Carry Armor.

Yeah if you're gonna add haste and slow the whole game needs to be balanced around it. FFX did this right.

Materia should have big downsides. It's teaching you magic and Cloud has permanent damage from materia exposure ("materia eyes"). Gameplaywise this would exaggerate the differences between the characters in combat which this game desperately needs.

Final Fantasy has the least interesting magic systems possible. Desperately needs more diversity. Compare fire/fira/firaga to the fire moves available in Pokemon. Also MP is so boring. Needs MtG style colors or something

Leonhart4 posted...

and I don't enjoy exploration because you have big open areas with nothing in them except pots with potions and 153 gil.

I was disappointed when I saw my first chest respawn. I want to clear the fields dammit

foolm0r0n posted...

I forgot how much I used FF in that game. Prob a big reason why I love that game but hate the newer FEs

What difference would FF make in newer FEs? You can skip all the animations anyway, so the only things that take time is when you're actively playing the game.

voltch posted...

FF characters were much more expressive when there was no voice acting at all.

Now there's a good take.

I needed fast forward in Engage for the cutscenes because I didn't want to skip them completely but they are so fuckin slow.

also when goldmary gets attacked by 7 heroes that all have brave assist it takes fucking forever even with all animations turned off.

X-2 is great

NeatoAnAccount posted...

Yeah if you're gonna add haste and slow the whole game needs to be balanced around it. FFX did this right.

Evrae is such a god damn brilliant fight

NeatoAnAccount posted...

I don't really have an opinion on the depth of the whole story because I only know the rest in extremely broad strokes but the very beginning has some interesting ideas

That's true, I do think all that felt fresh, even though I played it way after it came out. But once they made Terra an esper it went way downhill.