Board 8 > Nook's FF Topic [FF16 hype] [Series Ranking]

(+) Yeah! (+)

This is a muddy topic these days due to extended game life cycles, but for a single-player RPG you can't really say a game is good because of DLC released a year after the fact that 95% of people won't touch.

Did they want $30 or $40 for that DLC?

Seems like a big ask for DLC of a game that wasn't good in the first place.

TomNook7 posted...

And I genuinely enjoyed learning all the quirks of the early game through trial and error - old skool NES / Fromsouls style.

I noticed this too while playing the Pixel Remaster recently. All the cryptic stuff makes it feel like you're actually on an adventure.

Yeah the KH3 DLC was $30 which was way too expensive. And I don't really think KH3 was very good either, those DLC fights were just great. The KH combat system is flashy and button spammy but with actual difficult content there's a lot of nuance that is underrated I think. That's all I was trying to say!

KH3 feels like it didn't know if it wanted to be a sequel to Kingdom Hearts II or to the franchise as a whole. Which left casual fans confused and hardcore fans dissatisfied. Then of course they released the 30 dollar apology DLC that everyone (myself included) gobbled up. The whole thing just left me very disappointed with the franchise in general.

Like ffs Sora doesn't even know who 90% of these characters are, despite a chunk of them being himself!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/1/3/6/AAXPReAAEagQ.jpg

I think it's good form in a topic like this to hold off on full series rankings until TC has finished

not to be hard on Nick! I just don't think it'd be great to have this thread devolve into a bunch of lists.

it'd be a good fit for a "hot takes on final fantasy topic" but we just had one of those

Especially because one of those is absolutely bait, lol.

Nah you guys feel free to post whatever

Ive been having a lot of fun reading yalls hot takes

If it's XIV in F it's not bait and is a vali-

*gets shot by Yoshi P acolyte*

I think Nick has only played XIV 1.0 so to be fair that is a perfectly reasonable assessment based on what he's experienced.

yup.

1.0 only

Did Alpha and Beta testing then played the launch and my god it was bad

Oh well

Yeah fair

F probably not low enough.

Am I crazy or is Record Keeper in S Tier a worse offender?

played it daily for years

Is there a way to play original versions of MMOs or are they just lost to the digital aether

It varies from game to game. XIV 1.0 is gone, though.

"Have you ever thought of releasing FFXIV Classic?"

https://youtu.be/KpGRfmRaIx8

redrocket posted...

Am I crazy or is Record Keeper in S Tier a worse offender?

No it was a legitimately great game, super sad that the global version died. The high end fights were very hard and required a lot of skill/strategy to beat, particularly if you were F2P

Also look up some of the music from the game; some fantastic remixes there

For example

https://youtube.com/watch?v=EzrOvqggGoQ

Nick what the fuck are you thinking with XIV being that low reeeeeeeee--

Whiskey_Nick posted...

yup.

1.0 only

...Understood.

UltimaterializerX posted...

14 is low because 14 is an MMORPG. Perfectly valid take.

he has 11 in S tier tho

UltimaterializerX posted...

Hes also a tiny bit biased because that game got him a literal one in a billion quality for a wife. Cant fault him there.

I want to hear this story

#12. Final Fantasy VII Remake

oh boy

lets talk about it

Me personally - just such mixed feelings all around.

The stuff from the original game felt fresh and exciting, and everything new felt underwhelming and uninteresting.

And I honestly didn't mind if they changed things or did things different but damn... it's like at least don't make the game worse.

Like take the highway section for example. They somehow managed to make it boring in the remake. The big health spongey bosses kept coming, and I caught myself thinking like god is this over yet?

(I really wanna see a map of the chapter 18 highway in relation to Midgar. Midgar: eight sections, about a 5-10 minute walk to cross one. Also here's a 20 mile long highway with no exits that snakes back and forth.)

wait was there ever any payoff with that motorcyle guy? What the fuck was that about

ANYWAY, FF7R reminds me of some Shenmue style game design. A bunch of arbitrary hurdles they want us to jump over for the sake of length at every juncture. But at least Shenmue used that to make the world and characters more colorful. FF7R? Now whenever I think of Tifa, I think about jumping across the ceiling to get a keycard.

Everybody loves the combat, but I felt it seriously suffered from overdesign. There's a constant flood of information that creates a poor sense of feedback on what is and isn't effective, too many systems and cooldowns and character mechanics to manage in real time, and even then all the battles ultimately feel pretty samey for how much mental energy I need to expend. I'm not actually strategizing. I feel like a nurse trying to monitor a bunch of vital signs for a patient and responding to them constantly dropping.

Honestly my enthusiasm for FF7R as a "series" dropped significantly in the final chapter of the game. Nomura basically just wrote himself a ticket to change whatever he wants moving forward without ever really making a case for why anything needed to change. Meta narratives are insanely hard to craft well, and he fumbled it so hard.

I'm going to be surprised if Aerith dies. All of this - everything - felt like it started with the question, "What if Aerith didn't have to die?"

Also why couldn't you play as Red XIII?

And you wanna know what really sucks? Games like FF6 and Chrono Trigger will never need remakes to realize their original vision. Those games still stand as complete experiences that never felt hindered by the technology. So if they got shoddy remakes, there wouldnt be anything to lose.

With FF7 there was something to lose: it was hindered by the tech at the time, and we may now have forever lost the chance to see it truly unhindered by those limits.

8.4/10 i guess. Im really trying hard to be reasonable here.

And obviously the original FF7 has aged quite a bit by todays standards, but I still think its at least a high 8/low 9 in 2023. So yeah it kinda blows my mind that FF7R isnt as good as a game from 1997.

The ranking so far
#12. FF7R - 8.4
#13. FF1 - 8.3
#14. FF15 - 8.0
#15. DoC FF7 - 6.0
#16. FF2 - 3.5
#17. FF13 - 3.0

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/7/5/5/AAK53VAAEap7.jpg

FF7R had some amazing parts. I absolutely loved the first mako reactor, the Airbuster fight is incredible, Wall Street rules, etc. But it is absolutely a slog. Make the game 10 hours shorter and you have a much better experience. Everything with the ghosts sucks. The final chapter and the highway scene are boring. Them deciding to only make two more games for the rest of FF7 should be a good thing, since it'll be much less drawn out (hopefully).

As someone who does not care about FFVII in the sleightest and quit after disc 1, I thought 7R was fantastic!

As someone who dropped FFVII Remake halfway through, I thought 7 was fantastic!

As someone who loved FFVII, I thought 7R was fantastic!

I finished it and immediately started a hard play through which I NEVER do with games.

As someone who loves ff7, ff8 is fantastic

As someone who is tepid on FF7, the whole ghosts + meta narrative killed my desire to play it.

I wonder how the consensus would be if they clearly advertised it as a sequel because that's definitely what it is.

skullbone posted...

I wonder how the consensus would be if they clearly advertised it as a sequel because that's definitely what it is.

Isnt it more of an alternate timeline?

It's maybe both! We'll have to see. But there are plenty of hints that Sephiroth and Aerith have some knowledge of the original game

skullbone posted...

I wonder how the consensus would be if they clearly advertised it as a sequel because that's definitely what it is.

If they'd done that people would've hated it, since most of the game is retreading content from the original FF7. And even the new content isn't really a sequel. Like the entire Yuffie DLC.

That's a good point, yeah that would have been worse. Maybe just be more open about the changes, IDK.

How was Intergrade? Ive been making a list of every FF game i still need to play, and im probably gonna bite the bullet on that one eventually

Good in the first half, bad in the second half. Yuffie's fun to play as since she has so many options, the new Fort Condor minigame is a good one, and going around doing sidequests is reasonably enjoyable. The second half is all a big set of combat trials in a bland environment though, which isn't particularly interesting.

Yuffie is so great to play I have to wonder how much they're going to be boosting up the rest of the party in Rebirth. As they are now, none of them come close to scratching how fun she is.

Also i just wanna say how great FF5 has been so far. I played it as a kid, but never finished it, so Im doing the pixel remaster now.

Ninja / Mystic Knight is so ridiculous

But Rangers animals ability is just hilarious. Just a bunch of angry squirrels run out and attack the enemy

7 Remake pretty good but the complaints about the battle system are fair. If you were locked into Cloud I would probably think it was awful, but there's just enough strategy involved between switching characters / ATB management that I find it a fun if not brainless experience.

I definitely think Rebirth is going to go off the deep end in terms of new stuff/story changes though. It'll still feature the iconic scenes but it's just going to be surrounded by kruft.

Xiahou_Shake posted...

Yuffie is so great to play I have to wonder how much they're going to be boosting up the rest of the party in Rebirth. As they are now, none of them come close to scratching how fun she is.

This is the important thing. In particular, I suspect they noticed that the element tax was kinda shit in an ARPG and every character is going to get some way to flex higher amounts of pressure because man, Yuffie's ninjutsus were night and fuckin day compared to everyone else's shit in terms of materia efficiency.

https://twitter.com/aitaikimochi/status/1651184387579580416

Just saw this on Twitter lol. Amazing

I kinda expected Remake to have some fumbles, but I did largely enjoy it. My main complaint is how they botched Sephiroth.

They completely removed all of the intrigue associated with his character by having him pop up for no reason at the start of the game. On top of that he didn't need to be the final boss either, they should've just focused on Shinra as the villains.

BetrayedTangy posted...

On top of that he didn't need to be the final boss either, they should've just focused on Shinra as the villains.

THANK YOU

UshiromiyaEva posted...

As someone who does not care about FFVII in the sleightest and quit after disc 1, I thought 7R was fantastic!

You the kinda person that says "slight of hand"